Reorganizing An Application Service Delivery Model – an update

 enterprise architecture, it governance, management  No Responses »
Aug 022011
 

I wrote a post titled How Would You Reorganize an Application Service Delivery Model? in March 2010 and thought it was time to update you on the changes we made to our Application team.

At that time, my team was structured by role:  DBAs, Developers, Application Administrators, Email Administrators, etc.  Over that time, we had some successes with the structure and some challenges.

Some challenges with the role based structure included:

  • separation of developers and DBAs – resulted in delays, rework when developers did not meet coding standards expected by DBAs, and disconnected teams
  • separation of services that had tight integration like our portal environment from the ERP platform
  • mixture of platform skills that caused service support issues when service recovery work crossed team boundaries
  • challenges in providing minimum staffing coverage and training when support spanned team boundaries such as Identity Management, Project Management and Business Analysis work

In September 2010, we had an opportunity to reorganize our team.  After consulting with our team members and team leaders, we changed the structure to suit the two main architectures that our team supports – Microsoft and Oracle.  Essentially, we moved the developers to the platforms they predominately worked in and realigned the services that required tight integration.

Comparison of Role Based Structure to Platform Based Structure for Application Services

Role Based Structure Platform Based Structure
Support Team Oracle DBA Oracle Team Oracle DBA
Document Management Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence Document Management
Project Management Enterprise Portal
Business Analysis ERP Administration
Identity Management Java/Web Services Developers
Oracle Developers
Email and Collaboration Team Email Administration Identity Management
Calendaring Business Analysis
Instant Messaging Project Management
Collaboration Platforms Microsoft Team
SQL Server DBA Email Administration
Microsoft Applications Calendaring
Enterprise Portal Instant Messaging
Collaboration Platforms
Developer Team Java/Web Services Developers SQL Server DBA
Microsoft Developers Lotus Domino Developers
Oracle Developers Microsoft Applications
Microsoft Developers
Identity Management
Business Analysis
Project Management

We have been running with the structure for almost a year now and are seeing the benefits of aligning our Application Services team with our main support platforms.  I will revisit this structure annually to ensure that our team is organized to best serve our client community.

Focus on Your Commitments – A New Way to Work

 management, personal  7 Responses »
Jul 092011
 

Do you start the day opening your email and looking at the hundreds or thousands of messages in your Inbox?  How does that make you feel? Overwhelmed, stressed and feeling like you are always behind on your commitments?

Do you have days where you know you worked very hard but somehow have nothing to show what you accomplished?  How does that make you feel? Unproductive, overworked and stressed?

Do you feel that everyday you are at the beck and call of everyone else and do not have any control of what new crisis will hit you next? How does that make you feel?  Dis-empowered, helpless and always wondering what the next crisis is?

These three symptoms typified my work life since I became a manager almost four years ago.  I often said to my fellow managers:

“I am working really hard but it is not sustainable to do 10 and 12 hour days.  I have to find a way to work smart so that my hard work really pays off!”

I attended a training course on using Outlook 2010 in May that has fundamentally changed how I approach my work.  The course was offered by Priority Management Systems Inc and called Working Sm@rt with Microsoft Outlook.   The course focused on using Outlook as a real productivity tool instead of using it just for email and calendaring. The instructor calls this “using Outlook with a business planning approach”.

The premise of the course is that in order to be productive, you need to focus on your commitments.  To do this, you have to stop using your email Inbox as your To Do list.  Face it, who puts things in your Inbox?  You or other people.

As long as you start your day working in your Inbox, you will always be reactive in your efforts and working to someone else’s agenda.

To change this approach, the instructor helped us configure out Outlook client to open in our calendar and task list view.  This is revolutionary for me.  Previous to this, I used my Inbox, a paper based Day Timer journal, a Notepad document, a OneNote page and an Excel spreadsheet to try to keep To Do lists.  None actually suited how I worked and I always found that I missed something or got distracted by conflicting priorities due to using multiple lists.  Read more...

Thinking about Your Career Path

 education, leadership, management  No Responses »
Jun 152011
 

I have the privilege of leading a great group of IT professionals at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Part of my role is to help my team members think about and plan for their careers. I wrote about an approach using Personal Learning Plans that contributes to my thinking about this topic.  I also added my thoughts to something Chris Lockhart (@chrisonea) wrote called The Right Stuff in a post called Building on the Right Stuff.

I had two sessions over the past weeks helping intermediate systems analysts think about where they should focus their efforts in their learning plans and about their future career paths.  I introduced both people to our thinking about the types of people that are needed in every organization (in our case in IT organizations).

We started by talking about some of these continuum that influence careers:

  • Individual vs Team
  • Follower vs Leader
  • Technical vs Functional
  • Departmental vs Enterprise
  • Specialist vs Generalist

I firmly believe you need to know yourself before you can determine the paths you will take.  I suggested to both team members to take the Myers-Briggs tests to get a clearer sense of themselves.  Taking this approach also allows us to have a common vocabulary when talking about personality attributes.  Take a look at my blog post Being a Teacher Works for Me.  I suggest you take the test and see if it matches your perception of yourself.   I will write another post that builds on the next step of our discussion by looking at what attributes we should work on.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries

Switch to our mobile site