September 2010 – Page 2

Adriatics Dynamics Community

Post published:September 23, 2010
Post comments:11 Comments
Reading time:4 mins read

It’s the second “me too” today. Waldo has started the day with announcing the new season of the Belgian Dynamics Community, which was me-too-ed by Marq announcing the Dutch Dynamics Community. It’s my turn now to me-too the announcement of the Adriatics Dynamics Community. Three community announcements in a day—now that’s something!

I call this community Adriatics, because it won’t be limited only to Croatia—the idea is to spread it to other neighboring countries: Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia. We kick it off in Zagreb on October 4th, with the theme of upcoming localization of NAV 2009 SP1 and Sure Step 2010.

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Solution overview: hablamos tutti die gleiche language?

Post published:September 23, 2010
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Reading time:5 mins read

One of the biggest obstacles of the ERP projects is the language. Not the spoken language, such as Spanish or German, but the lingo of the business, of the branch, of the company. The consultants speak their lingo. The customer speaks theirs. Especially in the early stages, the projects can fall apart on understanding each other.

If there is one profound risk that all ERP projects share, it’s that during requirement analysis and early stages of design the consultant won’t understand the customer’s need, and that the customer won’t really understand what consultant is proposing. A bad choice, and there goes another failed project.

Luckily, there is a tool in Sure Step which is used specifically to eliminate this risk of misunderstanding: the Solution Overview.

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Sure Step or Sure Wheel?

Post published:September 22, 2010
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Reading time:15 mins read

Sure Step or Sure Wheel? Almost exactly two years ago, incited by a comment from a reader, I wrote an article in defense of Sure Step: Read My Lips: Why?. The point was: is Sure Step a new methodology, or is it just a wheel reinvented?

After having taught about a dozen of Sure Step courses all over Europe (and just preparing to take my flight to Århus, Denmark to teach the next one), I’ve decided to prepare an overview of how Sure Step aligns with other methodologies. Students often ask me about this, and often come with previous knowledge of existing methodologies. Being able to map your existing knowledge to Sure Step will be of great help to learn and understand Sure Step in the future.

So, here is a little reverse-engineering of Sure Step from methodology point of view, and an overview of how it aligns specifically with MSSP, MSF, PMBOK, Scrum and MOF.

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ERP will make my problems go away!

Post published:September 17, 2010
Post comments:9 Comments
Reading time:6 mins read

Some say that ERP will solve all your problems. A deus-ex-machina which takes you to the promised land and brings you years of prosperity and bliss. Reduced operating costs and administrative overhead, improved inventory, higher customer retention, better profitability. It will streamline, improve, integrate, leverage, increase all your good things, and reduce, decrease, eliminate all your bad things.

You don’t buy it, do you?

ERP may help you solve your problems. Eventually.

First thing it will do, though, is—expose them. The question is… are you ready to face them?

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Decisions Fall 2010

Post published:September 15, 2010
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Reading time:3 mins read

It seems like yesterday that I was posting about this last time, but time does run fast. And so do technology and innovation. Decisions virtual conference is here again, this time in its Fall 2010 edition, bringing a lot of fantastic content split into four separate tracks (AX, GP, NAV and CRM) delivered over four days, starting with November 1. For me, and I believe you too, the most important day is the NAV day, which will be delivered on November 3.

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