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Impressions from Convergence 2010, Prague

  • Reading time:5 mins read

convergence[3]Convergence? Divergence. I’m sitting in Aquarius conference room in Clarion Conference Hotel, Prague, attending a presentation about discrete manufacturing at the Partner Day of the Convergence 2010 Europe event in Prague.

Over the next two days I’ll probably leave the dormant-blogger state I have again entered over the past two weeks due to projects, and share my thoughts on the conference, news, developments et cetera.

My first impression about the conference is: come on, seriously?!

One persistent trend of Microsoft events over past several years is cost-cutting, and it’s now that obvious that people are already making jokes about it. I was standing in the lobby with an ex-colleague from Microsoft, when a partner fellow came with a promotional badge he picked at a partner booth nearby, saying: “I have a great badge for you!”

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1st rule of agile ERP: deploy vanilla ERP

  • Reading time:4 mins read

image“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” That’s the very first principle of the Agile Manifesto.

The problem with ERP is that the first deliveries are all but early: they typically occur only after about twenty months.

Twenty months is a heck of a long time. And value achieved after a twenty-month implementation is often far below expectations.

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Panorama’s ERP Report reveals important facts

  • Reading time:3 mins read

For a long time, the ruler of project reports was Standish Group’s (in)famous Chaos report, which analyzed IT project success/failure factors. While many of the Chaos report’s findings applied to ERP implementation, the report as a whole was primarily about software development projects. And as we all know, implementing ERP is not the same thing as software development. Hopefully.

Panorama Consulting Group, an independent ERP consulting firm from Denver, Colorado, has conducted a market research in 2008, that explains ERP implementation project success factors and reveals some interesting metrics about real ERP costs, duration and benefits. Finally, we have a decent ERP project report, which reveals some important facts about Microsoft Dynamics.

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Read My Lips: Why?

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Recently, a reader, commenting on my last post about Sure Step, pointed me to an article by Karl E. Wiegers
“Read My Lips: No New Models!” I initially responded to the comment, but I figure the comments aren’t read as often as posts, so I decided to blog it.

It’s doubly funny that the reader is using Dr. Wiegers to devalue and dismiss Sure Step: firstly, the article has really nothing to do with implementation methodologies at all, and secondly, when I delivered Sure Step training at WinDays pre-conf earlier this year, I gave to each attendant a copy of Karl E. Wiegers’s latest book “Practical Project Initiation”—at the time it was the best book available that matched both the message of my training and the point of Sure Step as a methodology.

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A case for Sure Step: how Sure Step brings project success

  • Reading time:8 mins read

Methodology is a tough topic. There are good methodologies, there are bad methodologies, there are good methodologies gone bad. Methodology is not a silver bullet, it won’t just make any problems disappear, and is hardly ever the single source of success or failure. But a methodology can be a major contributor to success. I could put it this way: you stand much better chances of success if you apply a methodology, then if you don’t. With something as critical as an implementation of business software, methodology is a key success factor. According to Jim Johnson of Standish Group, it’s number nine on their ten identified most important success factors.

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Errata, or maybe not

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Few days ago, when I wrote about Navision, I made an on-purpose mistake: I kept talking about, well, Navision. It’s wrong. And it’s not.

The story is not very short, but let me strip it down to the bone.

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Introduction

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I first heared about Navision five years ago, when I was working as a .NET developer on a web shop project. One of my tasks was to integrate the ordering functionality with customer’s existing system using the fixed format document exchange. At that time my whole world was object oriented, I used C# more than any other language, human or computer, and solution to any problem started with { and ended with }. Business logic was farthest I went in touching any business problem. Business was for businessmen, I was a programmer.

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