CPO Blog

For those of us old enough to have worked in the mainframe days of MVS, much of the buzz of SOA seems awfully familiar.

See in the olden days, there was a mainframe which contained all the data and programs. It provide “services”, such as data storage services, memory services, printing services, display services, communication services, backup services ….

MVS was the grandfather of all SOA.  The divorcing from the mainframe and movement to client server and eventually internet architectures caused all the built in services that came with the mainframe to go away.  Strike the sheppard, scatter the flock, so to say.

In the world of client server SOA or replication of the MVS model was nearly impossible.  Thus when we moved to toward a more centralized internet (thin client) model over the past few years, the yearning for the past (even for those who it was not part of their past) crept in.  Thus the birth of SOA.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying today’s SOA is as archaic as MVS (remember, there is a IBM 360 in the Smithsonian), but let’s learn from some of the good points of the grandfather of SOA.

• Services were predictable
• Services were tracked and charged
• Services were scalable (if you had the money!)
• Services were application driven
• Services were standard from company to company (MVS at your company was the same as MVS at mine)

Some pretty good things for today’s SOA to take as principals, right?

After recently meeting with a client, they shared with me their view of an executive dashboard.  Looking very much like a partial balanced scorecard, it got me thinking about the terminology mismatch we are seeing in the industry.  Whether it is a dashboard or a scorecard seems to be dependent on a couple of variables.

• Has the organization embraced a Balanced Scorecard?
• Does the organization use any built in Dashboards in their ERP, CRM or other applications?
• What BI platform do they subscribe to?

For a consultant coming in to a different situation for each client, I have found it best to check the terminology at the door.  If an organization is calling a dashboard a scorecard and a scorecard a dashboard, who cares as long as it is used properly by the business.

This need to nomenclature tolerance is a missing skill in so many IT folks.  We get hung up on the terminology in order to put the solution in box to solve, that we miss the business solution.

My advice, check the buzzwords at the door and concentrate on the business problem.

The industry likes to break various disciplines apart.  Many times this is along the lines of what software vendors are offering what wares.

In an upcoming article in BI Review, I discuss the high affinity between CPM and MDM.  Basically, we want the metrics people to talk to the master data people, since they are both needed to deliver the answers to business questions with high affinity and confidence of quality.

What is a New Year’s Resolution?  Well, you usually make some far reaching goal and commit to make it happen in the next year.  And as we all know, you have gone against your resolution by the first week in January.

My thought are that CPM is much like a New Year’s resolution gone GOOD.

The Commitment

In CPM you are committing to improving your corporate performance through some kind of measurement.  This is akin to “I will lose 20 pounds this year.”

Monitoring 

In CPM you actively measure against that expected performance using tools such as scorecards, dashboards and BI.  This is akin to stepping on the scale everyday to measure your weight.

Adjust

In CPM, you adjust your plan as the reality of business sets in.  This is best done through scenario-based planning and integrating actuals with plans and latest best estimates (LBE).  This is akin to seeing you are not losing enough weight and will cut down on your calories.

The Real Similarities

The sad part is that the way that New Year’s Resolutions are similar to CPM in today’s business world is that they are both promises not kept.  Companies go through planning and budgeting in Q3/Q4 and as soon as the new year hits, those budgets are out of date. Like most companies, the budgets are never updated and the resolution is broken.