The document discusses implementing a collaboration platform and provides guidance on key steps. It recommends:
1) Planning for both initial platform deployment and ongoing collaboration solution design to ensure long-term success.
2) Conducting initial deployment followed by designing specific collaboration solutions that match tools to business patterns.
3) Budgeting for both deployment and the ongoing costs of solution design to avoid cost overruns.
Tech Trends 2024 and Beyond - AI and VR and MOreBrian Pichman
Join Brian Pichman, the tech geek from the Evolve Project, in a
jolly tech-filled sleigh ride through the hottest trends that'll make
this holiday season merrier for librarians! From digital AI elves
to magical augmented reality, this fun-packed presentation will
unwrap the tech wonders that'll keep libraries ahead of the
game in the North Pole of innovation. Don't miss out on the
holiday cheer and the chance to sprinkle some digital snow on
your library's future!
In this presentation, Mike Amundsen, Francois Lascelles and Devon Winkworth of Layer 7 Technologies provide information on:
The latest trends in the API economy and best practices and tips for securely exposing enterprise APIs
Key issues around API Management, including access control, data security/privacy, developer management and API performance management
In this session from IoT World 2019, Craig Williams shared how AWS IoT helps our customers around the world easily deploy IoT solutions. He shares how you can use our services to easily collect and analyze data, take preventative measures to secure their fleet of devices, actively monitor devices, and deploy machine learning models onto the devices.
Sokszor találkozol a digital thread kifejezéssel, de nem tudod hogy pontosan micsoda? Kíváncsi lenné rá, hogyan használják a cégek? Olvasd el prezentációnkat, amit előadtunk az idei Simonyi Konferencián!
Tech Trends 2024 and Beyond - AI and VR and MOreBrian Pichman
Join Brian Pichman, the tech geek from the Evolve Project, in a
jolly tech-filled sleigh ride through the hottest trends that'll make
this holiday season merrier for librarians! From digital AI elves
to magical augmented reality, this fun-packed presentation will
unwrap the tech wonders that'll keep libraries ahead of the
game in the North Pole of innovation. Don't miss out on the
holiday cheer and the chance to sprinkle some digital snow on
your library's future!
In this presentation, Mike Amundsen, Francois Lascelles and Devon Winkworth of Layer 7 Technologies provide information on:
The latest trends in the API economy and best practices and tips for securely exposing enterprise APIs
Key issues around API Management, including access control, data security/privacy, developer management and API performance management
In this session from IoT World 2019, Craig Williams shared how AWS IoT helps our customers around the world easily deploy IoT solutions. He shares how you can use our services to easily collect and analyze data, take preventative measures to secure their fleet of devices, actively monitor devices, and deploy machine learning models onto the devices.
Sokszor találkozol a digital thread kifejezéssel, de nem tudod hogy pontosan micsoda? Kíváncsi lenné rá, hogyan használják a cégek? Olvasd el prezentációnkat, amit előadtunk az idei Simonyi Konferencián!
Event specialist, Cheryl Lawson, shares how she created the Event Planning Tools App.
As an instructor of event and meeting management, I have the opportunity to see the tools to which my students gravitate. Most of them are drawn to ‘make my life easier tools.’ When I asked them to ‘create a budget’, they would download the same Microsoft template.
One of my ‘make my life easier tools’ is the meeting space calculator.
After I decided to create an app, it was an easy decision to bring these tools to a mobile platform.
I’ve created a list of steps to help other professionals create their own apps.
@Partyaficionado
Internet of Things is a new world order. It is connecting billions of devices to each other and the Internet. These devices capable of sensing, communicating and decision-making are expected to make human environment smarter. This is your first introduction to this emerging world and opportunity
The idea is to create a social network of sensors in which various sensors integrated to intel Galileo will send the data to the user.
Nowadays using various social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, google+ has become too main stream.
Now the idea is to integrate our home status to these social networking sites that is, creating a “Galileo link”.
Home status will be comprised of various readings taken by the sensors like IR sensor, LDR, temperature sensor.
Sensors send data to intel Galileo then Galileo acts as a client and sends that data to the social networking site.
For example in Facebook an account is created and that account is registered on Facebook developer. As soon as the account is registered on Facebook developer it creates an access token.
Access token is then included in python script running in the Galileo device.
Hence our data can be seen in our news feed and we just have to add the registered account as our friend
The mobile ecosystem and development strategiesIvano Malavolta
The mobile ecosystem
Mobile as the 7th mass medium
Designing for context
Mobile development strategies
Types of mobile applications
Tips for the project
This presentation has been developed in the context of the Mobile Applications Development course, DISIM, University of L'Aquila (Italy), Spring 2013.
http://www.ivanomalavolta.com
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Training & Virtual Internships P...Ravikanth Jagarlapudi
We run an online training program for young adults. This is a 30 hour training and virtual internships program where participants are taught artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts and algorithms along with Python programming.
Participants with the help of a mentor end up doing a project by coming up with a business model and then creating a working model.
Internet of Things(IoT) Applications | IoT Tutorial for Beginners | IoT Train...Edureka!
*** IoT Certification Training: https://www.edureka.co/iot-certificat... ***
This Edureka tutorial on "IoT Applications" takes you through the 6 domains which IoT has reinvented, namely,
1. IoT in Everyday LIfe
2. IoT in Healthcare
3. IoT in Smart Cities
4. IoT in Agriculture
5. IoT in Industrial Automation
6. IoT in Disaster Management
Know real-time examples of IoT applications in the most interesting use cases of today's world. Understand how they work and how can IoT be used to its complete potential.
Follow us to never miss an update in the future.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edureka_learning/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edurekaIN/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/edurekain
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/edureka
An Introduction to Internet of Things (IoT) Course was conducted at the International conference on Smart Technologies for Smart Nation 2017, REVA University, Bangalore, India.
Project management is more than, "just do your job". All projects have stakeholders and their perception is reality when it comes to influences projects: the best case - stakeholders improve project roll out, utility, and adoption. The worst case: … well, roads are paved with projected intention. Draw upon design thinking, user experience, and digital marketing techniques to improve stakeholder involvement with examples for change management, product management, and tactical tools for an enterprise-level project to manage 'What’s In It For Me?'
Event specialist, Cheryl Lawson, shares how she created the Event Planning Tools App.
As an instructor of event and meeting management, I have the opportunity to see the tools to which my students gravitate. Most of them are drawn to ‘make my life easier tools.’ When I asked them to ‘create a budget’, they would download the same Microsoft template.
One of my ‘make my life easier tools’ is the meeting space calculator.
After I decided to create an app, it was an easy decision to bring these tools to a mobile platform.
I’ve created a list of steps to help other professionals create their own apps.
@Partyaficionado
Internet of Things is a new world order. It is connecting billions of devices to each other and the Internet. These devices capable of sensing, communicating and decision-making are expected to make human environment smarter. This is your first introduction to this emerging world and opportunity
The idea is to create a social network of sensors in which various sensors integrated to intel Galileo will send the data to the user.
Nowadays using various social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, google+ has become too main stream.
Now the idea is to integrate our home status to these social networking sites that is, creating a “Galileo link”.
Home status will be comprised of various readings taken by the sensors like IR sensor, LDR, temperature sensor.
Sensors send data to intel Galileo then Galileo acts as a client and sends that data to the social networking site.
For example in Facebook an account is created and that account is registered on Facebook developer. As soon as the account is registered on Facebook developer it creates an access token.
Access token is then included in python script running in the Galileo device.
Hence our data can be seen in our news feed and we just have to add the registered account as our friend
The mobile ecosystem and development strategiesIvano Malavolta
The mobile ecosystem
Mobile as the 7th mass medium
Designing for context
Mobile development strategies
Types of mobile applications
Tips for the project
This presentation has been developed in the context of the Mobile Applications Development course, DISIM, University of L'Aquila (Italy), Spring 2013.
http://www.ivanomalavolta.com
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Training & Virtual Internships P...Ravikanth Jagarlapudi
We run an online training program for young adults. This is a 30 hour training and virtual internships program where participants are taught artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts and algorithms along with Python programming.
Participants with the help of a mentor end up doing a project by coming up with a business model and then creating a working model.
Internet of Things(IoT) Applications | IoT Tutorial for Beginners | IoT Train...Edureka!
*** IoT Certification Training: https://www.edureka.co/iot-certificat... ***
This Edureka tutorial on "IoT Applications" takes you through the 6 domains which IoT has reinvented, namely,
1. IoT in Everyday LIfe
2. IoT in Healthcare
3. IoT in Smart Cities
4. IoT in Agriculture
5. IoT in Industrial Automation
6. IoT in Disaster Management
Know real-time examples of IoT applications in the most interesting use cases of today's world. Understand how they work and how can IoT be used to its complete potential.
Follow us to never miss an update in the future.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edureka_learning/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edurekaIN/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/edurekain
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/edureka
An Introduction to Internet of Things (IoT) Course was conducted at the International conference on Smart Technologies for Smart Nation 2017, REVA University, Bangalore, India.
Project management is more than, "just do your job". All projects have stakeholders and their perception is reality when it comes to influences projects: the best case - stakeholders improve project roll out, utility, and adoption. The worst case: … well, roads are paved with projected intention. Draw upon design thinking, user experience, and digital marketing techniques to improve stakeholder involvement with examples for change management, product management, and tactical tools for an enterprise-level project to manage 'What’s In It For Me?'
Say goodbye to PSD files or seeking for those outnumbered Macs to export sketch files. There is a new kind of collaboration between designers and developers. If you missed our Zeplin presentation you can check out our presentation and learn a little more about this collaboration tool.
DevOps within the Hybrid Cloud Deploying to the VMware Platform on the IBM CloudMichael Elder
Delivering quickly means leaving automation across applications and infrastructure as a wholistic approach to development, test, and operations. At IBM, we've made it easy to extend your existing VMware platform onto IBM Cloud - from provisioning new VMware clusters with vRealize Automation management all the way through deploying and operating your applications using IBM UrbanCode Deploy, the market leading DevOps release automation provider. We'll show you how to optimize existing app delivery processes without significantly re-architecting what you're running today. We will demonstrate how the creation of infrastructure automation can be done seamlessly onto the Cloud Foundation platform with direct UrbanCode integration into vRealize.
For the full lecture: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beyond-code-why-you-should-learn-how-start-today-illai-j-gescheit?trk=prof-post
Why you should learn how to code, and should start today. A talk I gave during Code.org's Hour Of Code at the American International School.
Using Yammer & SharePoint Intranets to Drive Employee EngagementPerficient, Inc.
We take a look at what planning for Yammer success really entails, and the importance of a social maturity assessment, community use case planning and a communication plan. We also discuss the value of a Yammer pilot, or SharePoint social on premises where appropriate
Cloud and agile software projects: Overview and BenefitsGuillaume Berche
Slides from the session "Cloud and agile software projects: Overview and Benefits" at Agile Grenoble 2014, co presented by Guillaume Berche and Alain Delafosse.
http://agile-grenoble.org/
Using Sketch in Your Workflow – From Idea to Finished ProductBrian Louis Ramirez
This presentation goes over what Sketch is, why you should use it for wireframing, UI design and prototyping, and how to incorporate it in your software development workflow.
How To Do Kick-Ass Software DevelopmentSven Peters
With Kick-Ass Software Development you actually get stuff done. Feedback cycles are short, code quality is awesome and customers get the features they lust after. Less mangers managing, less testers testing and less IT-operators operating. The developers take the power back, making them much happier. Sound like paradise? It is! This session will show you how we do Kick-Ass Software Development at Atlassian.
I talk about how we: use pull requests for better code quality; collaborate fast to develop ideas; avoid meetings to get more stuff done; tighten our feedback loops to fail faster; shorten our release cycles; and work together happily on different continents. It's a great way to develop software and we think it can work in your company, too.
Watch the video if this talk: http://vimeo.com/70102926
This is an updated release:
First, I released the Platform Design Canvas alone, then I added the Platform Motivations Matrix to a newly born "toolkit" made of different tools (most of them are still in the making).
Here you can find a context post with a step by step guide to using this preliminary version of the toolkit: http://bit.ly/PDToolkitGuide
Organizations need a plan for moving from their current state toward cloud models based on standardized and consolidated platforms, shared services, self-service and metered use. How can organizations get started on the evolution to cloud computing? This webcast explores how enterprises can create a roadmap to cloud computing, including developing the business case; financial models; governance considerations; security considerations; organizational, policy and process considerations; and technical architecture considerations.
IBM DevOps Workshops at IBM InterConnect 2017IBM DevOps
Learn how to jump-start your digital transformation. DevOps workshops are different from the regular breakout sessions. They are interactive, small-group workshops, led by IBM DevOps experts, who oversee the discussion and provide inputs to further the attendees’ understanding with structured exercises and sharing ideas and experiences.
Achieving IT Strategic Directives When Evaluating a New Promotional Content E...Cognizant
By embracing a collaborative assessment model to evaluate technology platforms, life sciences organizations can better address cross-functional stakeholder needs.
Five Reasons To Integrate Microsoft Visual Studio Team Systems_victoria
This guide will provide you with a comprehensive overview on why VSTS is vital across all phases of product life-cycle management. It will also help you to better understand how you can rationalize development costs, gain higher product quality and accelerate development cycles with VSTS.
Selection of a standard collaboration platform and toolset used to be easy: Microsoft or IBM Lotus. Now there are many competitors in this market, fueled by the rise of Web 2.0 collaboration paradigms, requiring organizations to know what the problem is they are trying to solve.
This storyboard will help you:
•Understand and identify collaboration opportunities that exist within your organization.
•Identify leading vendors and compare capabilities.
•Select the right solution to implement.
Organizations are embracing the need to support teams with enterprise collaboration solutions.
[Business Strategy] DevOps Implementation Failure. Save It Before You Fail It!Ajeet Singh
We are halfway through 2018, and at the epicenter of a gargantuan digital transformation. Customer experience and superior delivery is the crux of all businesses. Hence, all the businesses are looking forward to efficient methods of breaking down the silos between development and operations. To accomplish this tedious task, a majority of the businesses are calling for DevOps. A strong focus lays on DevOps implementation and end-to-end automation proclaiming: you build it; you run it” approach.
This presentation guides you on how to implement DevOps successfully. Don't miss it.
Mainframe DevOps—the development challenge
Embracing change can be easier to say than do for mainframe organizations. Resource priority on the mainframe is given to production rather than dev and test. Current tooling, processes and practices may be cumbersome, linear, iterative and slow—but they will also be long-established.
New efficiencies from mainframe environments
By embracing modern development tooling and contemporary testing capability, organizations can achieve DevOps levels of efficiencies and see new returns on mainframe investments. Working collaboratively, teams can deliver more releases faster—and in parallel.
Efficiency, collaboration and flexibility—the pillars of mainframe DevOps
Adopting a DevOps culture and modern tooling can remove bottlenecks and enable parallel development at scale while preserving quality and process integrity and managing mainframe cost.
Maximizing Value and Consistency of Experiences with Design Systems - Centerl...Centerline Digital
A convergence of design and marketing has become a necessary means for managing a brand and its offering to consumers. It takes a combined effort to continually provide quality output while also delivering responsiveness at scale at a time when channels, screens, and constant interaction demand more from us as teams. By looking at the convergence through a systematic lens you can expose potential in your efforts, both creatively and organizationally. This presentation explores how a design system can benefit you, and where to get started in building your own design system.
Learn more at http://www.centerline.net
Things to check in an enterprise grade grants managementArpitGautam20
Here are a few important things that you should check out before finalizing a grants management solution for your small or large organization. https://natifi.ai/things-to-check-in-an-enterprise-grade-grants-management-solution/
By combining Agile principles with a three-phase methodology, organizations can reduce the complexity and increase the speed of their global manufacturing execution system implementations.
The primary goal of most companies is to successfully grow and one notable challenge facing companies seeking to expand their business is often managing the growth of their IT infrastructure. The 5 tips listed in this guide provide a comprehensive set of measures for organising and structuring your IT infrastructure to support your company’s growth.
6 Steps to Confirm Successful Workday DeploymentZaranTech LLC
Workday HCM Training & Certification provided Online from USA industry expert trainers with real time project experience
Workday HCM Tutorial for Beginners | Learn Workday HCM Online | Workday HCM training - This is a video recording of a Live Webinar presentation by our Sr. SAP Solution Architect and trainer who is also a Manager in handling SAP Implementation projects.
Get More Free Videos - Subscribe ➜ https://goo.gl/5ZqDML
COURSE PAGE: https://www.zarantech.com/workday-hcm-training/
REGISTER FOR FREE LIVE DEMO: http://promo.zarantech.com/free-webinar-workday-hcm/
CONTACT: +1 (515) 309-7846 (or) Email - info@zarantech.com
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Reviews / Testimonials from past trainees are saying: https://goo.gl/ZVfnE4
Refer your friends to ZaranTech - http://www.zarantech.com/be-a-friend-tell-a-friend.
Your Challenge
As the market evolves, capabilities that were once cutting edge become default and new functionality becomes differentiating.
Vendors use a lot of marketing jargon, buzzwords, and statistics to sell their solutions, making objective evaluation rather difficult.
The endpoint protection (EPP) market is overcrowded and fragmented, resulting in information overload and consequently, a difficult vendor assessment.
Disparate product solutions are being bundled into one-off solutions or suites, often resulting in less efficient solutions than the more niche players.
Imminent obsolescence is an issue. Previous EPP solutions have not adapted with the rapidly evolving threat landscape and are no longer relevant, resulting in breaches or vulnerabilities.
Critical Insight
Don’t let vendors and market reports define your endpoint protection needs. Identify the use cases and corresponding feature sets that best align with your risk profile before evaluating the vendor marketspace.
Your security controls are diminishing in value (if they haven’t already). Develop a strategy that accounts for the rapid evolution and imminent obsolescence of your endpoint controls. Plan for future needs when making purchasing decisions today.
Endpoint protection is a matter of defense in depth and risk modelling, there is no silver bullet protection and mitigation solution. As end-client-technology providers release regular product/software updates, security tools will become outdated. Multiyear endpoint protection commitments will leave you playing a constant game of catch up.
Impact and Result
The solution is a holistic internal security assessment that not only identifies, but satisfies, your desired endpoint protection feature set with the corresponding endpoint protection suite and a comprehensive implementation strategy.
Use this blueprint to walk through the steps of selecting and implementing an endpoint protection solution that best aligns with your organizational needs.
Your Challenge
Companies understand the importance of business process improvement (BPI) and recognize the touted benefits: cost savings, waste elimination, and process efficiency.
With this said, 70% of companies that embark on process improvement initiatives fail.
The high probability of failure is attributed to a number of factors, including lack of continuous improvement and failing to define measurable outcomes.
Our Advice
Adopt a forward-facing outlook. Don’t focus solely on the current state, set improvement targets upfront to drive the initiative.
Break problems down into root-cause variables. Don’t look at the symptom, dive deeper and alleviate the root cause.
Empower business analysts. Create a practical process improvement methodology that your analysts can follow.
Impact and Result
Kick off process improvement by identifying the goals and defining the improvement targets.
Start by referring to the operating model and identifying level 1, 2, and 3 processes. Once the team understands the relationship between processes, they can begin to map a level 3 process using a standard mapping notation.
Use qualitative and quantitative techniques for analyzing the root cause rather than the symptoms.
Ensure the design is aligned with the initial improvement targets. Focus on value-added activities.
Consistently monitor the process and assess the root-cause variables to gauge the success of the process improvements.
Your Challenge
Internal stakeholders usually have different – and often conflicting – needs and expectations that require careful facilitation and management.
Vendors have well-honed negotiating strategies. Without understanding your own position and leverage points, it’s difficult to withstand their persuasive – and sometimes pushy – tactics.
Software – and software licensing – is constantly changing, making it difficult to acquire and retain subject matter expertise.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Conservatively, it’s possible to save 5% of the overall IT budget through comprehensive software contract review.
Focus on the terms and conditions, not just the price.
Learning to negotiate is crucial.
Impact and Result
Look at your contract holistically to find cost savings.
Guide communication between vendors and your organization for the duration of contract negotiations.
Redline the terms and conditions of your software contract.
Prioritize crucial terms and conditions to negotiate.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure, by focusing on the reliability, availability, and serviceability of existing platforms, is perceived as a cost center rather than a business enabler.
Business stakeholders look to external vendors, rather than Infrastructure, to exploit emerging technologies. This leads to duplication of effort, inconsistent standards, and ineffective IT governance.
Infrastructure directors are unable to draw a line showing how their activities directly support the overall business goals.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Think of the roadmap as a service, not a product. Its value is inversely proportional to the time since its last update.
Alignment perception issues can be addressed by having the infrastructure practice formally engage and communicate with business stakeholders.
Shadow IT can provide business-ready initiatives that need only to be tweaked to align with Infrastructure’s internal goals.
Impact and Result
This blueprint will help you build:
A formal channel and way of communicating value bottom-up and top-down between IT and the executive team.
A methodology to prioritize and create projects that generate business value.
A tool that can produce multiple outputs of value for different audiences using the same data.
An ongoing roadmap process, rather than a static document, that is able to adjust and react to evolving business circumstances.
Your Challenge
Risk is an unavoidable part of IT. And what you don't know, can hurt you. The question is, do you tackle risk head-on or leave it to chance?
Get a handle on risk management quickly using Info-Tech's methodology and reduce unfortunate IT surprises.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
1. IT risk is business risk.
Every IT risk has business implications. Create an IT risk management program that shares risk accountability with the business.
2. Risk is money.
It’s impossible to make intelligent decisions about risks without knowing what they’re worth.
3. You don’t know what you don’t know.
And what you don’t know can hurt you – so find out. To find hidden risks, you need a structured approach.
Impact and Result
Stop leaving IT risk to chance. Transform your ad hoc IT risk management processes into a formalized, ongoing program and increase risk management success by 53%.
Take a proactive stance against IT threats and vulnerabilities by identifying and assessing IT’s greatest risks before they happen.
Involve key stakeholders including the business senior management team to gain buy-in and to focus on IT risks that matter most to the organization.
Share accountability for IT risk with business stakeholders and have them weigh-in on prioritizing investments in risk response activities.
Your Challenge
Service desk managers with immature service desk processes struggle with:
Low business satisfaction.
High cost to resolve incidents and implement requests.
Confused and unhappy end users.
High ticket volumes and a lack of root-cause analysis to reduce recurring issues.
Wasted IT time and wages resolving the same issues time and again.
Ineffective demand planning.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Don’t be fooled by a tool that’s new. A new service desk tool alone won’t solve the problem. Service desk maturity improvements depend on putting in place the right people and processes to support the technology.
Service desk improvement is an exercise in organizational change. Engage specialists across the IT organization in building the solution, and emphasize how everyone stands to benefit from the initiative.
Organizations are sometimes tempted to track their work under a single ticket type. Unfortunately, the practice obscures the fact that incidents, requests, and projects require radically different amounts of time and resources, and can create the impression that IT is underperforming. Distinguish between incidents, requests, and projects, and design specific processes to support and track the performance of each activity.
Remember, the value of any IT service management (ITSM) tool is a function of the processes it supports and the adoption of those processes. The ITSM tool with the best functionality is worth little if you do not build the right processes, configure the tool to support them, and work to improve tool adoption in your organization.
Impact and Result
Increase business satisfaction.
Reduce recurring issues and ticket volumes.
Reduce average incident resolution time and average request implementation time.
Increase efficiency and lower operating costs.
Enhance demand planning.
Your Challenge
Companies are approving more projects than they can deliver. Most organizations say they have too many projects on the go and an unmanageable and ever-growing backlog of things to get to.
While organizations want to achieve a high throughput of approved projects, many are unable or unwilling to allocate an appropriate level of IT resourcing to adequately match the number of approved initiatives.
Portfolio management practices must find a way to accommodate stakeholder needs without sacrificing the portfolio to low-value initiatives that do not align with business goals.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Failure to align projects with strategic goals and resource capacity are the most common causes of portfolio waste across organizations. Intake, approval, and prioritization represent the best opportunities to ensure this alignment.
More time spent with stakeholders during the ideation phase to help set realistic expectations for stakeholders and enhance visibility into IT’s capacity and processes is key to both project and organizational success.
Too much intake red tape will lead to an underground economy of projects that escape portfolio oversight, while too little intake formality will lead to a wild west of approvals that could overwhelm the PMO. Finding the right balance of intake formality for your organization is the key to establishing a PMO that has the ability to focus on the right things.
Impact and Result
Eliminate off-the-grid initiatives by establishing a centralized intake process that funnels requests into a single channel.
Improve the throughput of projects through the portfolio by incorporating the constraint of resource capacity to cap the amount of project approvals to that which is realistic.
Silence squeaky wheels and overbearing stakeholders by establishing a progressive approval and prioritization process that gives primacy to the highest value requests.
Read this Executive Brief to understand why your team should make the case to modernize your communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Understand why it's time to move forward with modernizing your communications infrastructure.
Discover the productivity and efficiency gains you can achieve.
Redefine how you think about communications.
Learn how to build a strategy that addresses both unified communications and collaboration.
Understand Info-Tech's methodology and approach to modernizing communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Your Challenge
Organizations have to adapt to a growing number of trends, putting increased pressure on IT to move at the same speed as the business.
The business, seeing that IT is slower to react, looks to external solutions to address its challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
IT and business leaders don’t have a clear and unified understanding or definition of an operating model.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The IT operating model is not a static entity and should evolve according to changing business needs.
However, business needs are diverse, and the IT organization must recognize that the business includes groups that consume technology in different patterns. The IT operating model needs to support and enable multiple groups, while continuously adapting to changing business conditions.
Impact and Result
Determine how each technology consumer group interacts with IT. Use consumer experience maps to determine what kind of services consumer groups use and if there are opportunities to improve the delivery of those services.
Identify how changing business conditions will affect the consumption of technology services. Classify your consumers based on business uncertainty and reliance on IT to plan for the future delivery of services.
Optimize the IT operating model. Create a target IT operating model based on the gathered information about technology service consumers. Select different implementations of common operating model elements: governance, sourcing, process, and structure.
Info-Tech is the most innovative firm in the industry, and we pride ourselves on delivering better research than anyone.
Become a member and unlock a range of data-driven tools and resources to drive systematic IT improvement.
Your Challenge
It is difficult to start the project, engage the right people, and find the necessary requirements to drive the value of an enterprise architecture operating model.
It is challenging to navigate the common enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks and right-size them for your organization.
The EA practice may struggle to effectively collaborate with the business when making decisions, resulting in outcomes that fail to engage stakeholders.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The benefits of an EA program are only realized when all components of the operating model enable the achievement of the program goals and objectives. Many times organizations overplay the governance card while ignoring the motivational aspects that can be addressed through the organization's structure or stakeholder relations.
Info-Tech’s methodology ensures that all components of an EA operating model are considered to optimize the performance of the EA program.
Impact and Result
Place and structure your EA team to address the needs of stakeholders and deliver on the previously created strategy.
Create an engagement model by understanding each relevant process of COBIT 5 and make stakeholder interaction cards to initiate conversations.
Recognize the need for governance and formulate the appropriate boards while considering various policies, principles, and compliance.
Develop a unique architecture development framework based on best-practice approaches with an understanding of the various architectural views to ensure the creation of a successful process.
Build a communication plan and roadmap to efficiently navigate through enterprise change and involve the necessary stakeholders.
Your Challenge
Business transformations are happening, but CIOs are often involved only when it comes time to implement change. This makes it difficult for the CIO to be perceived as an organizational leader.
CIOs find it difficult to juggle operational activities, strategic initiatives, and involvement in business transformation.
CIOs don’t always have the IT organization structured and mobilized in a manner that facilitates the identification of transformation opportunities, and the planning for and the implementation of organization-wide change.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Don’t take an ad hoc approach to transformation.
You’re not in it alone.
Your legacy matters
Impact and Result
Elevate your stature as a business leader.
Empower the IT organization to act with a business mind first, and technology second.
Create a high-powered IT organization that is focused on driving lasting change, improving client experiences, and encouraging collaboration across the entire enterprise.
Generate opportunities for organizational growth, as manifested through revenue growth, profit growth, new market entry, new product development, etc.
Craft an End-to-End Data Center Consolidation Strategy to Maximize BenefitsInfo-Tech Research Group
Your Challenge
Data center operating costs continue to escalate as organizations struggle with data center sprawl.
While data center consolidation is an attractive option to reduce cost and sprawl, the complexity of these projects makes them extremely difficulty to execute.
The status quo is also not an option, as budget constraints and the challenges with managing multiple data centers continues to increase.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Despite consolidation being an effective way of addressing sprawl, it is often difficult to secure buy-in and funding from the business.
Many consolidation projects suffer cost overruns due to unforeseen requirements and hidden interdependencies which could have been mitigated during the planning phase.
Organizations that avoid consolidation projects due to their complexity are just deferring the challenge, while costs and inefficiencies continue to increase.
Impact and Result
Successful data center consolidation will have an immediate impact on reducing data center sprawl. Maximize your chances of success by securing buy-in from the business.
Avoid cost overruns and unforeseen requirements by engaging with the business at the start of the process. Clearly define business requirements and establish common expectations.
While cost improvements often drive data center consolidation, successful projects will also improve scalability, operational efficiency, and data center redundancy.
Your Challenge
Organizations are struggling to keep up with today’s evolving threat landscape.
From technology sophistication and business adoption to the proliferation of hacking techniques and the expansion of hacking motivations, organizations are facing major security risks.
Every organization needs some kind of information security program to protect their systems and assets.
Organizations today face pressure from regulatory or legal obligations, customer requirement, and now, senior management expectations.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Performing an accurate assessment of your current security operations and maturity levels can be extremely hard when you don’t know what to assess or how to assess it.
Alignment can be a difficult area for security to get right when it’s trying to balance both regular IT and the business.
Communication is needed between the business leaders, IT leaders, and the security team for an effective security strategy to be in place.
Impact and Result
Info-Tech has analyzed and integrated regulatory and industry best practice frameworks, combining COBIT 5, PCI DSS, ISO 27000, NIST SP800-53, and SANS to ensure an exhaustive approach to security.
Through this process, a comprehensive current state assessment, gap analysis, and initiative generation ensures that nothing is left off the table.
This project will elevate the perception of the security team from being a hindrance to the organization to an enabler.
Your Challenge
Even though organizations are now planning for Application Integration (AI) in their projects, very few have developed a holistic approach to their integration problems resulting in each project deploying different tactical solutions.
Point-to-point and ad hoc integration solutions won’t cut it anymore: the cloud, big data, mobile, social, and new regulations require more sophisticated integration tooling.
Loosely defined AI strategies result in point solutions, overlaps in technology capabilities, and increased maintenance costs; the correlation between business drivers and technical solutions is lost.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Involving the business in strategy development will keep them engaged and align business drivers with technical initiatives.
An architectural approach to AI strategy is critical to making appropriate technology decisions and promoting consistency across AI solutions through the use of common patterns.
Get control of your AI environment with an appropriate architecture, including policies and procedures, before end users start adding bring-your-own-integration (BYOI) capabilities to the office.
Your Challenge:
As Portfolio Manager, you’re responsible for communicating portfolio results and future capacity to your steering committee.
Business and IT leaders need more accurate information on project status and resource availability to decide when to start and stop projects.
You need to better understand the needs of the PMO and assess the costs and benefits associated with different tools and approaches to PPM.
Our Advice - Critical Insight:
PPM is a practice, not a tool. Before succeeding with a commercial tool, you need to establish discipline and trust around reporting processes, which can be done using spreadsheets and other simple tools.
Portfolio management is separate from project management. Think of it as the accounting department for time. Project managers report into the portfolio and are held accountable to it, but it isn’t simply an extension of project management.
Our Advice - Impact and Result:
Decrease the wasted portfolio budget by reducing the number of cancelled projects and other sources of efficiency.
Establish the portfolio as the “one source of truth” for project reporting by increasing rigor around project status updating and reporting.
Align project intake with resource capacity to improve throughput, quality of estimates, and stakeholder satisfaction.
Your Challenge:
Implementing a shared services model is a difficult process to undertake, and is comprised of many different components. Becoming a shared services provider is comparable to becoming a vendor and most IT groups don’t have the capabilities to easily make the transition.
Most companies look to achieve cost reductions through offering a shared services model. Adopting a shared services model doesn’t always result in these intended cost reductions. Simply combining the operations of two IT organizations doesn’t necessarily result in economies of scale and cost efficiencies. Before leaping forward with your shared services implementation, determine if the project will deliver value to your organization.
Our Advice - Critical Insight:
Implementing a shared services model needs to be viewed as more than simply extending a current service to other sites. The organization providing services essentially turns into a vendor. As a vendor, think of the IT service you’re offering as the “product.”
Remember that there are people, process, and technology capability pre-requisites to successfully becoming a shared services provider. These capabilities are not typical for the average IT shop, and need to be taken into consideration when you look to transition to a shared services model.
Our Advice - Impact and Result:
Before jumping into the implementation of your shared services project, assess your customer requirements and your current people, process, and technology capabilities to assess whether your organization is ready to implement a shared services model.
Understand the financial implications of moving to a shared services model prior to implementing. Make sure there is a strong case for implementation.
Your Challenge:
Situation
Enterprise Architecture increases the organization’s ability to provide consistent services, accessible information, scalable infrastructure, and flexible technology integration on demand. It helps bridge the gap between business and IT and creates a shared enterprise vision.
Complication
EA programs that are run without the required EA capability level are prone to failure.
EA capability optimization and EA operating model design skills are not common, as they are not everyday tasks.
Our Advice:
Critical Insight
Using this research while assessing and optimizing your EA capability will help you:
Architect the EA capability by applying four architectural perspectives: Contextual, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical. Develop an EA Operating Model starting at the contextual level, and proceeding through to the physical.
Develop a sponsored mandate for EA capability. Identify and engage EA capability stakeholders. Determine organizational scope, i.e. responsibility and authority of EA. Identify business drivers for optimizing an EA capability. Analyze organizational context. Secure executive support and authorization to execute.
Establish EA capability purpose and strategic direction. Write EA capability vision statement. Craft EA capability mission statement. Define EA capability goals and measures. Create EA principles. Assess current and determine target EA capability level.
Document EA management process. Define EA management practices. Define interactions between EA management and other processes. Define EA capability performance and value measurement approach.
Design EA organization and roles. Design EA organization structure. Define EA roles. Define required skills and proficiency levels for EA roles. Determine required EA staff capacity.
Standardize EA tools and work products. Establish an EA repository. Decide on EA tools to be used. Define EA artifacts and work products.
Develop an EA capability improvement plan. Consolidate and refine steps required to roll out the target EA operating model and improve EA capability. Draw an EA capability improvement roadmap.
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
Communications Mining Series - Zero to Hero - Session 1DianaGray10
This session provides introduction to UiPath Communication Mining, importance and platform overview. You will acquire a good understand of the phases in Communication Mining as we go over the platform with you. Topics covered:
• Communication Mining Overview
• Why is it important?
• How can it help today’s business and the benefits
• Phases in Communication Mining
• Demo on Platform overview
• Q/A
GraphSummit Singapore | The Art of the Possible with Graph - Q2 2024Neo4j
Neha Bajwa, Vice President of Product Marketing, Neo4j
Join us as we explore breakthrough innovations enabled by interconnected data and AI. Discover firsthand how organizations use relationships in data to uncover contextual insights and solve our most pressing challenges – from optimizing supply chains, detecting fraud, and improving customer experiences to accelerating drug discoveries.
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
GraphSummit Singapore | The Future of Agility: Supercharging Digital Transfor...Neo4j
Leonard Jayamohan, Partner & Generative AI Lead, Deloitte
This keynote will reveal how Deloitte leverages Neo4j’s graph power for groundbreaking digital twin solutions, achieving a staggering 100x performance boost. Discover the essential role knowledge graphs play in successful generative AI implementations. Plus, get an exclusive look at an innovative Neo4j + Generative AI solution Deloitte is developing in-house.
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
Unlocking Productivity: Leveraging the Potential of Copilot in Microsoft 365, a presentation by Christoforos Vlachos, Senior Solutions Manager – Modern Workplace, Uni Systems
Pushing the limits of ePRTC: 100ns holdover for 100 daysAdtran
At WSTS 2024, Alon Stern explored the topic of parametric holdover and explained how recent research findings can be implemented in real-world PNT networks to achieve 100 nanoseconds of accuracy for up to 100 days.
Threats to mobile devices are more prevalent and increasing in scope and complexity. Users of mobile devices desire to take full advantage of the features
available on those devices, but many of the features provide convenience and capability but sacrifice security. This best practices guide outlines steps the users can take to better protect personal devices and information.
Sudheer Mechineni, Head of Application Frameworks, Standard Chartered Bank
Discover how Standard Chartered Bank harnessed the power of Neo4j to transform complex data access challenges into a dynamic, scalable graph database solution. This keynote will cover their journey from initial adoption to deploying a fully automated, enterprise-grade causal cluster, highlighting key strategies for modelling organisational changes and ensuring robust disaster recovery. Learn how these innovations have not only enhanced Standard Chartered Bank’s data infrastructure but also positioned them as pioneers in the banking sector’s adoption of graph technology.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Generative AI Deep Dive: Advancing from Proof of Concept to ProductionAggregage
Join Maher Hanafi, VP of Engineering at Betterworks, in this new session where he'll share a practical framework to transform Gen AI prototypes into impactful products! He'll delve into the complexities of data collection and management, model selection and optimization, and ensuring security, scalability, and responsible use.
20240605 QFM017 Machine Intelligence Reading List May 2024
Implement collaboration platform
1. Implement a Collaboration Platform Implementation doesn’t end with platform deployment: build ongoing collaboration solutions.
2. Successfully implementing a collaboration platform involves two steps: the initial platform deployment and the ongoing solution design. Stopping after platform deployment will lead to a failure of collaboration strategies. This set will help you create an action plan that addresses both steps of the implementation. Introduction This Research Is Designed For: IT project managers responsible for implementing a collaboration platform. IT staff who are responsible for carrying out the initial deployment of a collaboration platform (for example, gathering integration requirements and building the necessary infrastructure). IT Architects and Business Analysts who build ongoing collaboration solutions upon existing platforms. Business managers who are interested in the impact of a collaboration platform on team productivity and business process efficiency. This Research Will Help You: Separate the implementation project into initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design. Establish a persistent platform of collaboration technology services and permanently integrate with other enterprise systems. Establish a catalog of common enterprise collaboration patterns and design solutions by mapping collaboration technologies to these patterns. Prioritize different combinations of collaboration solutions based on their value to the enterprise.
3. Executive Summary Implementing a collaboration platform is a challenging project that requires a two-step approach: organizations must plan for the initial platform deployment and ongoing collaboration solution design. Budgeting only for the initial deployment is a sure-fire way to experience long-term cost overruns. Before implementation can commence, outline an overarching collaboration strategy, then select a collaboration platform vendor. The initial deployment should begin with outlining solutions for permanent teams (i.e. departments or business units), then moving into designing the front-end, back-end, and maintenance models. A pilot project with a tight feedback loop from end users is essential to getting it right when it comes to rolling out the platform to the entire enterprise. Ongoing solution design focuses on creating specific collaboration solutions for permanent and ad-hoc teams. Solution design rests heavily on collaboration pattern matching: pairing the right collaboration tools with the appropriate collaboration patterns. The tools that are matched to each pattern should be the ones that meet business requirements in the most effective and efficient way possible. A collaboration business analyst can be invaluable in assisting the business with ongoing solution design. Optimization of the collaboration environment should be undertaken to squeeze the most business value out of the platform. End-user adoption is a necessity – train users so that they are comfortable with the platform, and assign collaboration evangelists who can help champion the solution among their peers. Bring senior management on board to increase the visibility and profile of the solution with users. Conduct an annual audit of the collaboration platform to identify and correct deficiencies.
4.
5. A sound strategy begins with evaluating the business costs and benefits. Managers must develop an understanding of how traditional collaboration tools can be paired with social (i.e. peer-to-peer) tools to create collaboration solutions.
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7. There are a number of prominent offerings on the market: Microsoft’s SharePoint is the incumbent collaboration heavyweight, but other vendors such as Open Text and ECM provide robust solutions as well.
8.
9. Platform deployment is similar to other IT-centric rollouts (e.g. CRM or ERP), but ongoing solution design should involve a designated individual who can translate business collaboration requirements into specific solutions built on the platform.This solution set addresses collaboration implementation. Collaboration Implementation
15. Allows employees to efficiently communicate whenever/wherever/ however makes the most sense.
16. Business value derived from reduced impediments to communication.Enterprise Collaboration and Unified Communications strategies are complementary, not mutually exclusive. Implementation strategies for one impacts the other. For more aboutUnified Communications implementation and optimization, see Info-Tech’s solution set, Develop a UC Strategy.
17. Do NOT just plan your implementation around initial deployment – also plan for ongoing solution design Collaboration platforms do not automate existing business processes with transactional services that support interactions between people and systems. This process automation is typical of CRM and ERP packages… but not collaboration platforms. Collaboration platforms do enable technology services and tools that can integrate with business process execution to support interactions between people and teams. It’s a common misconception among IT that implementing a collaboration platform should be restricted to the initial platform deployment, just like a typical transactional system. While this is an important step, it is not sufficient for collaboration success. After the platform is deployed, IT must permanently partner with the business to help design ongoing collaboration solutions for ad-hoc teams, departments and business units.. IT A successful project plan for implementing a collaboration platform includes traditional platform deployment, but also establishes a persistent framework for designing collaborative business solutions around the platform’s technology services and business collaboration patterns. Business Units Don’t start celebrating the deployment of your collaboration platform when the business units are lined up with specific solution requests in-hand!
18. The costs of an implementation misfire are substantial: create a complete roadmap for the implementation, or risk failure A failed implementation wastes time and money, and will not create business value. The implementation of a new collaboration platform is not a trivial exercise. Insufficient planning for both initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design engenders considerable risk to both IT and the business. Cost overruns and value proposition failure are common for botched implementations… and IT managers who fail to deliver will lose credibility with the business on future projects. Don’t fall into the same pitfalls that others have encountered… learn from their mistakes. The Situation The Mistakes The Disaster A mid-sized professional services firm needed to boost the knowledge sharing and productivity of its employees. The organization settled on SharePoint 2010 Enterprise as its solution. IT was tasked with executing the actual implementation of the platform. IT focused solely on getting the platform deployed as soon as possible, with no attention paid to initial or ongoing solution design. Virtually no points-of-integration were established with other applications, and the platform went live to the whole enterprise with no testing or piloting phase. After deployment, IT did not provide training or assist the business with ongoing solution design. The platform failed spectacularly. End user uptake was almost non-existent due to insufficient familiarity with the platform. Teams that requested specific solutions were unable to receive help from IT with ongoing solution design. The platform did not enhance knowledge sharing or productivity. Management estimates the failure wasted over $80,000.
19. Section 1: Build a Strategy for Collaboration Implementation Build a Strategy for Collaboration Implementation Deploy a Collaboration Platform Create Ongoing Collaboration Solutions Optimize the Collaboration Environment Sections: What’s in this Section: Defining an overall collaboration strategy and selecting the right platform are critical steps for enabling employee-to-employee collaboration. See our related solution steps for in-depth advice on collaboration strategy and selection Separate the implementation project into two phases: the initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design. Initial platform deployment involves robust implementation requirements analysis and a well-designed pilot project. Ongoing solution design involves matching the right tools to the right collaboration business pattern
20.
21. Enabling employees and teams to form direct (peer-to-peer) connections to other employees and teams, based upon knowledge and expertise, shortens cycle times, improves knowledge reuse and builds long-lasting relationships between employees across organizational boundaries.
22. Organizational hierarchies are valuable for resource management but are not sufficient as a framework for E2E interaction. Leverage knowledge networks instead.
23.
24. Review the current collaboration product market to make sound upgrade and/or procurement decisions from among the options of collaboration platform vendors, especially MS SharePoint 2010; pure-play social collaboration vendors; and enterprise application vendors (CRM, ERP, etc.).For more information on this stage, refer to Build an Enterprise Social Collaboration Strategy
25.
26. Don’t eliminate the niche vendors out of the gate – many of them built their platforms with specific collaboration goals in mind and may provide an improved experience over the more established vendors (like SharePoint).
27. Start with your requirements to weed out any unnecessary functionalities.
28. Weigh integration with existing tools as high in order to boost usage. The more points-of-integration the platform natively supports, the better.
29. Usage of collaboration tools is lacking in many of the organizations that have deployed them; do not expect the infrastructure to grow organically.For more information on this stage, refer to Select the Right Collaboration Platform.
30.
31. A successful platform deployment is necessary but not sufficient to ensure success. IT needs to break out of the mindset that once the platform deployment is complete, their job is over.
32. Ongoing solution design involves creating specific solutions by matching business collaboration patterns with the specific tools that are best for the job. IT must work with the business to prepare tools to meet the needs of teams and business units.
33. Ongoing solution design requires a high degree of cooperation between different stakeholders. Having a collaboration business analyst is highly recommended.A common failure point is handing off the platform to the business immediately following rollout. Incorporate ongoing solution design into your implementation project in order to maximize success.
34. The first step in collaboration implementation is to deploy the platform itself – a familiar process for many IT managers Deploying a collaboration platform is similar to many other deployment projects that IT managers have faced, although it does entail unique challenges and opportunities The Collaboration Platform Deployment Road Map The first step in initial platform deployment is to outline collaboration solutions for persistent teams(i.e. departments or business units). The next steps are to design the front end, the support model and the back-end of the collaboration platform. Following design steps, the appropriate policies must be put in place. The final step in the initial deployment is to launch a pilot project to a select group and gather feedback, then deploy the platform to the entire organization The initial deployment is vital to the platform’s long-term success. Assemble a team of IT managers, architects and developers with a proven track record in platform deployment to assist with the initial rollout.
35.
36.
37. Three of the most common high-level E2E collaboration patterns are meetings, content creation, and content consumption.
38. Patterns can be synchronous or asynchronous.Pattern matchingis the process of orchestrating collaboration patterns with collaboration tools to produce a specific collaboration solution. Pattern matching forms the foundation of ongoing solution design. More on this later in Section 3.
39. Don’t just budget for initial platform deployment, or the costs of ongoing solution design will create overruns Organizations need to have an understanding of the costs involved with both initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design. Failure to appreciate both sides of the equation will result in inadequate resources for ongoing solution design. Investments made during the initial deployment will include hardware (for on-premise platforms), software (the platform itself), and other indirect costs such as the allocated time of the IT deployment team. A typical deployment of a popular on-premise collaboration platform like SharePoint typically involves purchasing the server software as well as licenses for end-user clients. For SMEs, software costs can range between $5000 and $100 000 for the complete solution. Costs involved in ongoing solution design involve the salary of a full-time collaboration BA (or the FTE equivalent when the role is assigned on a part-time basis to someone else in the organization). Bandwidth costs will also be incurred for certain collaboration tools like web and video conferencing. There will also be costs associated with optimizing people and processes (i.e. end user training). Use Info-Tech’s Collaboration Implementation Budgeting Tool to help build a 6-year TCO for initial deployment and ongoing solution design: An example of a collaboration implementation is presented in the Info-Tech Collaboration Budgeting Tool. Leverage this tool to create your own budget for collaboration implementation.
40.
41. Section 2: Deploy a Collaboration Platform What’s in this Section: Sections: Build a Strategy for Collaboration Implementation Deploy a Collaboration Platform Create Ongoing Collaboration Solutions Optimize the Collaboration Environment Initial platform deployment is the critical first step for implementing a collaboration solution. Deploying a collaboration platform involves gathering business, infrastructure and development requirements, then translating those requirements into specific design points. Establish a persistent platform of collaboration technology services and permanently integrate with other enterprise systems.
42. Initial platform deployment must be an IT-centric activity Outline Collaboration Solutions for Persistent Teams The first phase of collaboration implementation is the initial platform deployment. IT must lead the charge during this phase of the implementation. The implementation can be broken down into several discrete steps: outlining solutions for persistent teams, designing the front end, the support model and the back end, developing standards, carrying out pilot projects, and finally widespread enterprise deployment. Develop Policies & Standards Access & Ownership Information Architecture 1 2 3 4 5 Design the Front End Security Considerations Maintenance Implement Pilot Projects & Leverage “Collaboration Evangelists” Design the Support Model Design the Back End Storage Planning Points-of-Integration Custom Development 6 Enterprise-Wide Platform Launch
43. Use Info-Tech’s Platform Deployment Checklist to help guide the steps that should be taken for initial deployment of the collaboration platform. Project Template: Platform Deployment Checklist The Collaboration Platform Deployment Checklisttool provides IT leaders with a framework for organizing the initial deployment of their collaboration platform. This tool contains the necessary steps that should be taken by IT leaders when moving forward with the initial platform deployment. The tool also provides a structure for project management by specifying start dates, end dates, task ownership and completion status. Project steps can be added or deleted based on the organization’s specific needs and collaboration requirements.
44.
45. A collaboration solution is created by matching the right collaboration tools with the appropriate collaboration patterns. For example, a collaboration solution for team meetings might involve pairing a synchronous tool like video conferencing with a pattern like a daily scrum meeting where most of the team members are working off-site.
46. Create a cross-functional team consisting of IT and the business to build a solution library for persistent teams. Use these solution outlines to guide deployment decisions (for example, around design points like information architecture and security). Use some of these solution designs for pilot projects, and roll the rest out immediately following deployment.Business Units Initial Deployment Departments Ad-Hoc Teams Creating examples of collaboration solutions that will be required post-deployment is an excellent way to get the implementation team thinking about business requirements. Creating solutions for persistent teams is a great way to kick-start the platform following deployment, and sets the stage for ongoing solution design. Ongoing Solution Design Project Teams Org. Communities Design collaboration solutions for persistent teams (business units and departments) during initial deployment, then handle requests from ad-hoc teams during ongoing solution design.
47.
48. Structuring information in a clean, logical manner is important for encouraging user uptake and knowledge transfer. Design your information architecture around the end user – folders and team sites should be laid out in an orderly fashion that makes pinpointing relevant information as easy as possible.
53. Content creation templates – will users have easy-to-use templates that relate to common team processes?Design collaboration IA from the top down. Mapping out information architecture is necessary for ensuring that information exists in a structured, logically consistent manner. Do not dive in to the implementation with no regard for how data will be structured… doing so will lead to significant rework and governance headaches in the future. Start by creating an enterprise portal. From here, create portals for business units, departments, teams and projects. Each level should only contain information that’s relevant to the entire subsection.
54. Establish access privileges that safeguard confidential information while allowing knowledge sharing IT needs to set up user access privileges and assign ownership for department and team-specific portals. The deployment team must work with relevant business stakeholders to determine who should have access to what material. There is an inherent trade-off in assigning user access privileges between the need to safeguard sensitive information and the need to make the collaboration platform as porous as possible to permit cross-functional knowledge sharing. Avoid creating “walled gardens” unless there is a specific justification for doing so. Closing off large portions of the platform restricts the availability of knowledge for future reuse. Material that is ‘in production’ (incomplete) should be available only to pertinent team members, but published material should be available to the entire organization unless it is of a sensitive nature. Administrative controls should also be restricted… don’t give users the ability to alter the underlying information architecture of the platform unless they know what they’re doing. In-Production Content Sensitive Materials Administrative Controls Completed, Team-Generated Content You never know how information might be useful across different business units and project teams, so make it available to as many people as possible (unless it falls under one of the three exclusion categories). The majority of content in the platform should be viewable (and searchable) by most users.
55. Keep the platform running smoothly by creating a support model that delineates responsibility for platform maintenance During implementation, IT and the business must develop a support model that addresses ongoing platform maintenance. IT will need to be involved in aspects of infrastructure and technical maintenance of the platform – for example, diagnosing and correcting malfunctions. If the organization has a Help Desk, these staff should be trained on how to troubleshoot problems with the collaboration platform. Responsibility for maintaining content should rest with designated individuals in business teams – it’s up to teams to decide which content should be kept and which content should be pruned. Teams should be encouraged not to delete content solely for the sake of deleting content. It’s inadvisable to turn on “auto-pruning” features (if the platform has them). Of course, retaining large volumes of content will also impact storage requirements – take this into account when planning the storage model. Collaboration Maintenance Framework: Maintenance of the platform is distinct from ongoing solution design. The former refers to basic upkeep of the underlying platform, while the latter is the creation of specific solutions that meet the needs of different departments, teams and projects. Periodic maintenance is required to keep the platform “on the tracks”.
59. Industry-specific compliance restrictions (i.e. patient records in the healthcare industry)Keep a roster of active, authorized users: when an employee leaves the company, promptly remove their credentials from the system. Integration with directory services can speed this up. On-premise collaboration environments should also be secured from external threats. Ensure that the software is up-to-date with the most current patches and hotfixes at all times. For more information on security strategy, see Info-Tech’s research storyboard, Build a Security Architecture & Roadmap. Collaboration platforms often contain confidential and proprietary information. Be cognizant of information in the platform that should not be available to all users, and implement the necessary access restrictions. On-premise collaboration platforms should be secured behind the firewall in order to reduce the platform’s vulnerability to external threats. Cloud-based solutions must meet necessary compliance requirements. Collaboration Security
60.
61. If yes, estimate future demand and use storage hardware to support it.
71. If not, turn off to save space.On-premise solutions are typically more expensive in their need for storage capacity (as they often require a share of existing storage space or new investments in infrastructure). Forecast storage requirements by multiplying the expected size of each user’s “content portfolio” by the number of end users.
72. Make use of in-platform customization whenever possible: move to extension and custom development only if necessary There are three pillars of collaboration platform development: customization, extension and custom development. Customization refers to carrying out in-platform tweaks in order to meet business requirements. This usually involves making changes to platform control panels. Most platforms give administrators the ability to make a large number of customizations natively: take advantage of easy-to-use customization by training team leads to make their own tweaks. Extension uses 3rd party software to augment the capabilities of the collaboration platform: for example, SharePoint plug-ins. Custom development involves writing specialized code to enable required platform functionality. Custom development can be used to permit special integration between the platform and applications that do not have a native (or 3rd party) integration bridge. Custom development is expensive and labor-intensive: use it only as a last resort when required functionality can’t be achieved via customization or extension. Overview of development options: Avoid custom development whenever possible. If the required functionality can be achieved in-platform, custom development is a waste of time and money. For more information on SharePoint-specific deployments, see Info-Tech’s solution set, Manage a SharePoint Customization & Development Team.
73. Defining points of integration between the collaboration platform and other applications drives adoption and success Collaboration platforms offer powerful tools, but organizations that integrate them with other technology services and applications are likely to realize better end user adoption, more efficient workflows, and superior realization of business value. Points-of-integrationare the junctions between the collaboration platform and other enterprise applications or platforms. Many popular collaboration platforms offer native points-of-integration with popular enterprise software, while other points-of-integration may need to be enabled through 3rd party add-ons or custom development. There are three categories that should be considered for integration with the collaboration platform: Client integration Mobile integration Directory services integration Usage improves by 3% for each point of integration High (80%) Collaboration Usage Establishing and enabling points-of-integration will drive business value by enhancing both the effectiveness and the efficiency of the collaboration platform. Organizations must prioritize points-of-integration by targeting applications/platforms that are most commonly used in project workflows. Low (40%) Source: Info-Tech Research Group, N = 79 Number of Points of Integration
74. The collaboration platform should be integrated with e-mail, browsers, and common enterprise productivity applications Collaboration platforms must be integrated with common enterprise applications – particularly those that are used “in the flow” (as part of capturing knowledge during project workflows). Client integration encompasses applications like browsers, e-mail, instant messaging and office productivity suites. End users should have one-click functionality for sending content in an application into the collaboration platform. Some platforms permit e-mail integration by providing an address that all project-related material can be CC’d on. Most collaboration vendors also permit in-platform integration with productivity suites like Microsoft Office. Common in-platform integration permits library version control within productivity applications. Enable this integration to save team members time and effort. Web Browser E-Mail Point-of-integration Point-of-integration Example of Client Integration: SharePoint 2010 offers native integration with Microsoft Outlook. Information such as contact lists, calendars and tasks can be synchronized between the two: See this SP resource. Collaboration Platform Point-of-integration Point-of-integration Client integration enables contextual collaboration for ad-hoc purposes. Knowledge workers should be able to easily synchronize content created in productivity applications with the information contained in collaboration platforms, as well as quickly send content from e-mail and the web into the platform. Instant Messaging Productivity Software
75. Directory services integration is where users meet withaccess control restrictions Directory services integration is a key requirement in the selection of a collaboration platform. Without it, you have no way to apply access controls to sites or content. Directory services groups must be defined to correspond to collaboration user groups used in solution design. Permanent groups like departments or teams are a given. But other directory groups may be needed for project teams. Advanced integration directory services can support the use of digital signatures and/or user-level encryption of content in collaboration solutions. Directory services integration with collaboration platforms is not just an IT implementation task. Business analysts must consider directory services implications during collaboration solution design and initiate change requests as needed to support collaboration solutions.
76. Mobile is huge: integrate your collaboration platform with mobile devices to meet the needs of the “on-the-go” worker Integrating your collaboration platform with mobile devices is a necessity in today’s wireless world. Many knowledge workers expect to receive on-demand mobile access to collaboration resources. During vendor selection, priority should be given to those platforms that offer native mobile access (i.e. via a dedicated app). Integration with mobile devices will vary depending on the mobile platform involved. Integration is typically easier for organizations that have standardized on a single mobile operating system (i.e. Blackberry or iOS). If the collaboration platform does not offer a native application for your mobile OS of choice, it may still be possible to access collaboration resources through a mobile browser like Safari. Cloud-based platforms can usually be accessed directly via the mobile browser. For on-premise platforms that are behind the corporate firewall, employees’ smartphones may need to be configured to use a VPN to access collaboration portals and team sites. Paths to mobile integration: Collaboration Platform: Cloud-Based On-Premise VPN Mobile integration isn’t just about initial deployment of collaboration systems to mobile devices for content consumption. Smartphones and tablets with photo/video capabilities will enable mobile devices to contribute content to collaboration systems. Keep this in mind when designing collaboration solutions. Mobile Browser Mobile Application End Users
86. Identify business unit power users & bring them on-board to serve as collaboration evangelists in order to drive adoption End user adoption of the collaboration platform is critical for realizing business value. During the pilot project(s) and initial rollout, identify and train power users who can serve as collaboration evangelists. These users should be knowledge workers who are comfortable with collaboration technologies and demonstrate fluency with newer, social tools. The ideal collaboration evangelists are influential team leads who can get their persistent teams excited about the collaboration platform. Users with a track record of exerting peer-influence also make good candidates. End users who assisted with the solution design process for persistent teams should be “called back” to gauge their interest in being collaboration evangelists. These individuals should be rewarded in some fashion (i.e. small bonus) for being on-board. Collaboration evangelists must drive user adoption by proving business value of collaboration solutions and by providing peer-to-peer training. It is very important to find champions in each department. [IT] can really turn a lot of people off because we’re always the people trying to push new things, and they think of it like extra work. If you can get someone else to actually use [the collaboration solution], get them to be the champion, and you just support them, it’s a much easier integration. - Paula Habas, Manager, IS, Professional Engineers Ontario Gathering a group of evangelists, ideally one in each department, will help significantly with all stages of collaboration implementation - from initial training, to ad hoc problem solving, to promoting usage. However, do not force anyone to help in this capacity, ensure it is voluntary, or you’ll send the wrong message.
87. Finally, roll out the platform to knowledge workers across the enterprise & begin the process of ongoing solution design After pilot projects have been wrapped up and iterative changes made to the platform, the final step in the initial deployment is to officially roll the platform out across the enterprise. Two elements should comprise the enterprise rollout: deployment of “my sites” (employee profile pages and activity feed aggregators, as well as other social tools like employee microblogs) and the solutions for persistent teams (some of these solutions were probably piloted… now is the time to roll out the rest). Don’t be shy… the enterprise platform rollout should be accompanied by a great deal of fanfare. Hold staggered department meetings to introduce end users to the platform – this should include a statement of purpose, preliminary training on basic functionality and highlighting some of the ways the platform will make users’ lives easier. With the enterprise-wide rollout, initial deployment is complete – but IT’s job does not end here – prepare to assist the business with ongoing solution design. Proceed to Ongoing Solution Design
88. Section 3: Create Ongoing Collaboration Solutions Build a Strategy for Collaboration Implementation Deploy a Collaboration Platform Create Ongoing Collaboration Solutions Optimize the Collaboration Environment After the platform has been deployed, organizations need to create ongoing collaboration solutions that meet the needs of persistent and ad-hoc teams. Collaboration solutions are created by pattern matching: aligning the right tools with specific collaboration patterns. Organizations should have a full-time role assigned to ongoing solution design, for example, a collaboration business analyst. Build a library of patterns for common and repeatable collaboration solutions.
89. The collaboration platform cannot just be handed off to the business: IT must be involved with ongoing solution design The mindset that the collaboration platform is “the business’ problem” after it has been deployed is a dangerous one. Although some solutions will have been rolled out along with the platform (i.e. for persistent teams), ongoing solution design is a necessity to meet the needs of ad-hoc teams (e.g.cross-functional project teams). The business cannot handle ongoing solution design on its own: IT must take an active role in helping with collaboration pattern matching. Info-Tech Insight In order for both groups (the business and IT) to succeed with solution design, everyone needs to be kept in in the loop throughout all steps of the implementation. The business and IT must work in lock-step in a tightly coupled development model. IT can’t simply take the requirements and disappear for a week – communication is critical to ensure solutions meet team needs. There is a certain “give and take” between IT and the business when it comes to ongoing solution design: The business must identify their specific collaboration patterns. If IT becomes the champion, you run the risk of people saying, “it’s just another IT project”. They wonder what the new technology will do for them. I now have five or six people who have been willing to champion areas within different departments... They are doing Webinars and seminars and people are more open to it because IT isn’t promoting it. Now, others are seeing their colleagues becoming efficient in certain areas, and they’re asking about when they can get this technology and training. - Paula Habas, Manager, IS, Professional Engineers Ontario Then, the business needs to go to the IT department to help them match the collaboration pattern with the appropriate tools available in the platform The IT department carries out the implementation.
90. When possible, provide a dedicated resource for solution design – consider hiring a Collaboration Business Analyst Adding 1 FTE improves usage by about 4%. Bridge the gap between the business and IT The Collaboration Business Analyst (CBA) will: Design technology solutions to enable business collaboration requirements and processes. Engage with project managers and project sponsors to develop project scope and vision for all collaboration-related projects. Assist in conducting research on collaboration software and hardware products to meet agreed upon requirements and to support purchasing efforts. Identify and establish scope and parameters of requirements analysis on a project-by-project basis to define project impact, outcome criteria, and metrics. Usage % See slide 38 for a link to the full Collaboration Business Analyst Job Description Dedicated FTE’s Source: Info-Tech Research Group, N = 70 As a business analyst, it’s really best to be cross-trained. You have to be cognizant not only of what’s going on with the IT solution, but also what’s going on across the business and the different pressures they’re being put under. So, it’s really about keeping up with the underbelly of the company, being that ‘elevator staff’ member who is able to go up and down as you need to, at the right level. That’s what a business analyst has to be able to do. - Steven Spencer, Manager, Ardenwood Consultants
91. The CBA will be most successful if they have a strong business background, coupled with IT knowledge Survey respondents were asked to rate the importance of certain CBA skills on a scale of 1 (not important) to 6 (very important). It is clear that while the role resides in IT, there is a heavy weight on business knowledge and understanding of pattern matching; ensure you hire a CBA with these skills. Recognizing that hiring a new FTE may not be feasible for small organizations (or those with a hiring freeze), there are alternative options: Add some CBA responsibilities to anyone serving in a generic IT business analyst role. Hire a contractor to get the solution deployed, and have them train an existing resource on ongoing solution design. Add some CBA responsibilities to individuals in other departments, i.e. Communications, or HR. 87% of respondents said understanding business requirements was 5 or 6. Only 31% of respondents said applications development skills are 5 or 6 on a scale of not important to very important. How much will it cost to hire a full time CBA? Business Analyst salaries range quite drastically depending on skill level and qualifications, however expect to pay anywhere from $50,000 – $70,000 to fulfill the job description on the next slide. Business Analyst, IT Median Salary Range C$51,217 – C$69,615 1 = not important 6 = very important $69,615 $59,975 $51,217 Application Development skills Collaboration Tool Knowledge Mapping appropriate tech services to business patterns Understanding Business Requirements Low Typical High N = 69 Source: Payscale.com
92. Use Info-Tech’s Collaboration Business Analyst Job Description to find the right candidate Click here to access the full Collaboration Business Analyst Job Description. Different organizations function in different ways; sometimes the Collaboration Specialist sits in a different department. Portions of this job descriptions can be used for roles in other departments as well. We didn’t have a Business Analyst available for the intranet project; however, we have an Internal Communications Manager, who is the advocate for internal collaboration. This person sits outside the Information Technology department and is specifically spearheading our intranet project. She is driving it, and we’re essentially responding to what the end user interests are. Though she doesn’t sit in IT, there’s definitely more benefit than challenges. I think that the only challenge is that we really don’t know where she stops and we start. However, I think that will become clear as we continue to develop our intranet. - Brent Maher, VP – Core Infrastructure & Collaboration, Johnson Financial Group Info-Tech has 155 ready-to-use Job Descriptions located on our Website. They can be downloaded and altered to fit your organization.
93. After designating responsibility for ongoing solution design, the next step is to build solutions via pattern matching The Fundamental Collaboration Equation: Collaboration solutions are created by matching the right tool with the appropriate pattern. Collaboration tools: tools are the technology services that enable employee-to-employee collaboration, both directly and around business artifacts like documents. Most collaboration platforms offer a variety of tools, both traditional (i.e. content management) and social (i.e. peer-to-peer). Collaboration patterns:patterns are recurring interactions that dictate how E2E collaboration takes place. There are many patterns, but some are more common than others. Three of the most common high-level employee collaboration patterns are meetings, content creation, and content consumption. Patterns can be synchronousor asynchronous. Pattern matchinginvolves identifying a natural fit between patterns and tools, and then enabling team collaboration by using the applicable tools and technology services. The solution to enabling team collaboration is combining the right collaboration tool with the applicable collaboration pattern. Three Overarching Collaboration Patterns: Ongoing solution design makes use of pattern matching in order to address the requirements of ad-hoc teams and provide a means for contextual collaboration. There are three steps to pattern matching: identifying and understanding tools, identifying and understanding patterns, and execution of the matching. Employee-to-Employee collaboration typically takes place in three contexts: meetings, content creation, and content consumption. We’ll examine each in turn.
94.
95. Collaboration platforms offer a diverse subset of individual tools. These tools can be broadly classified as traditional or social collaboration tools.
96. Traditional tools focus on features that permit real-time communication or content management (library services) .
97. Social tools borrow functionality from consumer social media and apply it to the enterprise – for example, employee activity feeds and microblogs.
98. Match tools with patterns by identifying complimentary aspects between the technology and the collaboration patterns.
115. Vertical industry or compliance requirementsTwo types of meetings: Physical Meeting (i.e. face-to-face) Virtual Meeting (mediated by technology) Web Conferencing Screenshot. Source: Adobe Systems, Inc.
116. The Publishing Pattern: Employee-generated content is king One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is the lowering and removal of barriers to internal content creation. This enables efficient content creation by employees instead of relying on older, centralized content publishing paradigms only. Modern social collaboration tools enable employees and teams to create their own syndication feeds from what they create. Social collaboration tools like blogs, micro-blogs, and wikis make it easy for employees to become internal publishers, ensuring information is fresher and more up to date. Employee generated video is one of the fastest growing forms of employee-generated internal content, enabled by high quality laptop cameras and microphones becoming a commodity hardware feature. Process-driven publishing is not dead, but process is no longer a barrier. Socialtext Signals is a popular microblogging application that employees can use to quickly generate content: Web 2.0 technologies have socialized content by enabling employee-generated content production and publishing. This doesn’t replace process-oriented publishing, but rather enables employees to publish less formal and fresher content updates in shorter time frames. As a result, the time-value of information is greatly increased.
117. The Consumption Pattern: Finding knowledge and expertise is a required activity for every project team Salesforce.com’s Chatter enables subscriptions to employee, document, and CRM activity with content and employee profile search capability. Finding information and expertise within the enterprise that may be useful to other employees and teams used to be painful and less than productive. This inefficient method relied on: Project managers remaining apprised of what each other’s projects were, with or without a formal PMO. Managers remaining apprised of every other activity going on in the department, trying to connect complementary efforts. Gurus and subject matter experts (SMEs) being exposed to the rest of the enterprise as experts in their areas via arcane HR employee profiles which were chronically in need of updating. Intranet search engines that got turned on and never touched afterwards, configured to be everything to everyone and ending up being useless to everyone. Now that common employee and team activities are exposed socially as “feeds,” the same social collaboration tools enable employees to create their own list of which feeds to regularly monitor and enable searching of feeds, and employee profiles (expertise). Source: Salesforce.com
118. After understanding the platform’s tools & identifying the collaboration pattern, match using specific requirements The final stage after identifying tools and patterns is to actually create a match between the two. Collaboration patterns help drive specific requirements – for example, a synchronous, distributed team meeting around content creation may require the ability for all team members to share content from their computers. Based on this requirement, there are several possible tools that could be selected – the tool that should be selected is the one that meets the business requirement in the most efficient manner possible. In the above example, e-mail could be an option – but e-mail is an asynchronous tool (i.e. it is not in real time). Although e-mail might get the job done, there is clearly a mismatch between the asynchronous tool and the synchronous collaboration pattern (i.e. a live team meeting). In this instance, it’s obvious that a synchronous tool such as web conferencing provides a more effective and efficient means for satisfying the business requirements present in the collaboration pattern. Collaboration Tool Selection Business Requirements Collaboration Pattern Collaboration patterns drive specific business requirements, which in turn drive tool selection.
119. Example: Collaboration Pattern Matching for a meeting at a mid-sized biotech organization Requirements for this meeting: Generic collaboration pattern: meeting. Specific collaboration pattern: department meeting at a mid-sized biotechnology company. Explanation: the research and development department at a biotech company is having its monthly meeting. Although most employees are geographically co-located, there are two branch offices and several remote employees who also need to be kept in the loop. After defining the pattern, it’s important to enumerate the requirements for this meeting. Managers created the list on the right as the minimum requirements needed for the meeting.
120. After requirements have been drafted, match the collaboration technologies to each individual requirement Telephone Wikis Instrument the Pattern with Technology, Requirement by Requirement E-Mail Internal Blogging Content Management Internal Microblogging Requirement: Employees will be located in different places. Discussion Forums Employee Profiles Instant Messaging Employee Activity Feeds Rationale: The best technology to connect employees located in different places is web conferencing. Web conferencing enables application and screen sharing, white boarding, chat, and IP-based voice and video. Web Conferencing Social Tagging Video Conferencing Employee-Generated Videos
121. Pattern matching (continued) Telephone Wikis E-Mail Internal Blogging Content Management Internal Microblogging Requirement: Content will be shared among attendees. Discussion Forums Employee Profiles Instant Messaging Employee Activity Feeds Rationale: Web conferencing is the most effective technology for sharing content live during a meeting. Participants can view shared workspaces and presentations in real time (without having to worry about being on the right slide, as would happen with an e-mailed document). Web Conferencing Social Tagging Video Conferencing Employee-Generated Videos
122. Pattern matching (continued) Telephone Wikis E-Mail Internal Blogging Content Management Internal Microblogging Requirement: Notes, past and present, must be accessible to employees at all times. Discussion Forums Employee Profiles Instant Messaging Rationale: Uploading minutes and documents from past meetings to a content management platform (i.e. SharePoint) allows users rapid access to the files they need. Version control and permissions prevent users from making unauthorized or haphazard changes. Employee Activity Feeds Web Conferencing Social Tagging Video Conferencing Employee-Generated Videos
123. Pattern matching (continued) Telephone Wikis E-Mail Internal Blogging Content Management Internal Microblogging Requirement: Department highlights are shared with other departments. Discussion Forums Employee Profiles Instant Messaging Employee Activity Feeds Rationale: Internal blogging and uploaded video of the meeting allows other departments (i.e. marketing or sales) to learn about developments that occurred during the meeting at their leisure. Video summaries are also popular for inter-department and project updates. Remember, video can be a talking head but it can also be a series of slides or images with a spoken soundtrack. Web Conferencing Social Tagging Video Conferencing Employee-Generated Videos
124. Pattern matching (continued) Telephone Wikis E-Mail Internal Blogging Content Management Internal Microblogging Requirement: Voice communication is required, video is not. Discussion Forums Employee Profiles Instant Messaging Employee Activity Feeds Rationale: Telephony and web-based conferencing both satisfy the requirement for voice communication, through PSTN and VoIP respectively. Depending on the protocol and client, it’s possible that IM could also be used (some instant messaging services also support voice and even video). Web Conferencing Social Tagging Video Conferencing Employee-Generated Videos
125. Put it all together to create the solution Telephone E-Mail Content Management Discussion Forums Instant Messaging Web Conferencing Video Conferencing Collaboration Solution for Department Meetings
126.
127. Pattern matching is an especially useful methodology for IT groups responsible for managing collaboration platforms on a permanent basis, such as MS SharePoint.
128. You can’t just turn end users loose on SharePoint. SharePoint sites require solution design just like any other collaborative applications.
129.
130. Optimize people & processes to gain the maximum return from your collaboration platform In addition to platform deployment and ongoing solution design, organizations must optimize people and processes in order to get the most business value out of employee-to-employee collaboration. Like any enterprise platform, end user adoption is critical for success. Users that are inadequately trained on a platform will be unlikely to use it. Carry out formal training sessions and use collaboration evangelists (power users) to drive familiarity and proficiency with the collaboration platform. Don’t just train users around the platform: also train them on the collaboration solution (how to effectively pair technologies with specific collaboration patterns). Users must be aware of how exactly the collaboration solution fits into team workflows. Optimize processes by carrying out process analysis and identifying points of contextual collaboration where the platform should be utilized. Expanding the number of ways that the platform can be used to enable more efficient knowledge-sharing and team productivity Despite the importance of collaboration, less than a quarter of organizations report high levels of usage. No usage 3% Successful platforms are characterized by high levels of adoption. High Usage 23% Minimal Usage 27% Moderate Usage 48% Source: Info-Tech Research Group, 2011, N = 79
131.
132. Survey users at the beginning, middle and end. See the appendixfor survey questions.
138. Plan for renewal training which shares group best practices with the enterprise
139. Perform periodic audits to discover what features aren’t being utilized and which are being utilized correctlyWe continue to have monthly live training sessions to allow for a refresh as well as to train new associates. Attendance has been consistent, so we continue to do them. We plan to look into features that are under-utilized after the platform has been in use for about 6 months and then train on those features. - Brent Maher, VP, JFG
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141.
142.
143. Have one per department, tailored to that department.Minimum Manuals
159. Utilize the “review” function to leave comments for other team members .
160.
161. Project spaces can be ad hoc or formal, new spaces can be created and removed quickly.
162.
163. keep a micro-blog of recent activities or announcementsEmployee Activity Feed Source: Microsoft
164.
165. Issues and anticipated challenges with collaboration front-end, support model, back-end functionality, and governance policies.
166. Project recommendations and next steps.Developing a collaboration strategy does not end when it is documented. Modify your strategy annually to make sure you’re getting this most from your collaboration solution.
167. Summary Separate the implementation into two phases: initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design. Plan and budget for both – failure to do so will result in cost overruns and a lack of collaboration business value. IT must lead the charge for initial platform deployment. Create solutions for permanent teams, then proceed with designing the front and back ends and establishing a maintenance model. Run one or more pilot projects with the platform before going ahead with an enterprise-wide rollout in order to debug potential problems. Establish “collaboration evangelists” to help drive awareness and familiarity with the platform. Establish a permanent role for a collaboration business analyst. If hiring restrictions are present, diffuse this role across existing staff. The collaboration business analyst serves as a bridge between IT and the business; the analyst assists permanent and ad-hoc teams with ongoing solution design. Pattern matching is the cornerstone of ongoing solution design. Pair the platform’s collaboration tools with the collaboration patterns that are present in the enterprise. Optimize the platform by providing ongoing training to end users. Training should be held on not just the platform, but also the solutions themselves. Secure the support of prominent senior executives – having a champion for collaboration is extremely valuable. Carry out an annual audit on the platform to identify and correct weaknesses, and highlight areas of opportunity.
169. Survey Questions from test with initial users at Johnson Financial Group Please circle your age bracket: 18 – 30 31 – 40 41 – 50 51 – 60+ 2. Please rank the following 3 Microsoft Communicator features (1st Place / 2nd Place / 3rd Place): Instant Messaging ______ Presence ______ Desktop Sharing ______ 3. Please estimate on average how many minutes per DAY that our collaboration platform helps you to save: ______ Examples of time savings might include: receiving an immediate response to a question, alerting an associate without leaving your work area, by knowing when an associate is NOT available, you save time walking to their empty desk and desktop sharing reduces travel to other locations. 4. Do you have prior professional experience with instant messaging? Please circle one. Yes No 5. Please rank the business value this communication tool provides on a scale of 1 (no value) to 5 (excellent value): _______ 6. Please share business uses examples (optional): __________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. Additional feedback (optional): _________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________