I am working on an essay about IT complexity at the moment, and one thing that sprung into my mind while thinking about this, is the fact that many of my clients seem to think I am some sort of SQL Server guru.

There are two sad realities inferred by this.

Firstly, I am far from a SQL Server god. Yes I have experience with it, but the only reason people think I’m any good at it stems from the general lack of knowledge that they have about the product. Often all I have to do is waltz in with my Michael Buble like smooth charm and recommend a maintenance plan be set up and I am instantly the guy to talk to in all things SQL.

The truth of the matter is that I’m not fit to lick the boots of a skilled DBA. But like all former system administrators/infrastructure managers who have had to deal with the pressure and consequences of downtime, irrespective of the product, I developed a reflex to learn what I need to to cover my butt. Often I didn’t care less how a product operated from the end-user perspective. All I cared about was how it hung together so I could recover it when it inevitably failed in some way.

Continue reading “SQL God? No… I just know how to do a maintenance plan”

A while back I tried to make records and collaborative document management an interesting blog topic by using death metal music to get my point across. Today I have another SharePoint related bone to pick with the world. Hmm, how to make it interesting?

Aha! … Kung fu baby!

(Apologies to all you people who’s work access blocks youtube – read this article at home).

(Back in the late eighties and early nineties, I used to go to the only Chinese movie theatre in town. Jet Li and Jackie Chan left me in awe, and I couldn’t understand why the western world didn’t get it. Such a pity that it took crap movies like Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon 4  to show the world what they were missing).

But, where was I? That’s right – SharePoint and company readiness.

Continue reading “"You’re not ready" – SharePoint kung fu”

Welcome to the fifth article in my series on fostering mutual love and respect between those know-it-all smartarse technical geeks and the guys who do their taxes!  This is the final SharePoint scenario that I will cover in this series, but there will be some more articles coming later, as we further look at the financial side of things.

To recap, the first article introduced the financial concept of discount cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return. Next, we discussed how I came up with the three scenarios and the assumptions and methodology behind valuing the scenarios, which placed a specific emphasis on costing the holistic view of governance. The last two articles, here and here, covered the first two scenarios, where we showed the circumstances where the project had a good outcome, and a not so good outcome.

So, for the last time around, we are going to take on a difficult SharePoint scenario. This is the scenario where SharePoint is used as the platform to build a custom web application.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO: Web Application Scenario – Part 5”

Welcome to the fourth article in my series that attempts to bridge the cultural divide between nerds and accountants. Unfortunately there are more differences to these two strange species than just fashion sense and whether a pocket calculator is in their possession. But despite being poles apart about what pushes their buttons, at the end of the day they are both trying to achieve a positive result.

The first article introduced the financial concept of discount cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return. Next, we discussed how I came up with the three scenarios and the assumptions and methodology behind valuing the scenarios, which placed a specific emphasis on costing the holistic view of governance. .

The previous article to this one was the first of these three identified scenarios, internal corporate collaboration. This time, we are going to take on a popular SharePoint scenario centered around web content management (WCM).

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO: WCM scenario – Part 4”

Hi. This is the third article in a series that attempts to explain some financial analysis techniques to non financial oriented IT people. My first two articles in this series were theory and background and this is the first of three scenarios that illustrates an example.

This first scenario is an example of SharePoint as a collaborative solution. It also happens to be the scenario that for my money, carries with it the most risk. But at the same time, SharePoint is well suited to this sort of solution if you follow my branding and document management wisdom 🙂

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO : Collaboration scenario – Part 3”

Hi, there.

It’s been a while since my last post but the whole issue of having a life and earning money kind of got in the way. In addition I have been procrastinating a little, because writing about technical and programming type issues for me are a lot easier to write, compared to governance, strategy and financial matters.

To recap on my last post, I wrote about a common technique used to assess the value of an investment. I discussed the time effect on money, the concept discount cash-flow and some of the related calculations like Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). If you have not read that article, I strongly suggest that you do so before continuing.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO in their language – Part 2”

Nerds and CFO’s. If there is ever a group of people who don’t know how to talk to each other, it would be those two. Perhaps, I should write a book and call it “Nerds are From Mars, CFO’s are from Venus” (ok for those of you who did not get that little joke go here).

Now, not so long ago, I was a serious nerd. Not in a ‘have the latest gadget and bash Microsoft ‘cos it’s cool’ sense, but I got very deeply involved in the guts of the technology. I was heavy into infrastructure and security. Got a few certs to make my business cards and CV look good, etc. In addition, I *thought* that I understood business. I wrote reports and memos that used all the right ‘business sounding’ cliches. In my security work I wrote lovely risk assessments, good security policies, etc. I wrote technical architectures in loving detail, outlining the technical vision and strategy for the company going forward.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO in their language – Part 1”

Well, here we are! After delving into dark arts where everybody but metrosexual web designers fear to tread (HTML and CSS), we then delved into the areas that metrosexual web designers truly fear to tread (packaging, deployment and even some c# code!). Finally, we get to the area where everybody is interested until it happens to get in their way! (Ooh, I am a cynical old sod tonight).

That is Governance!

Continue reading “SharePoint Branding Part 7 -The ‘governance’ of it all..”

There has been a bit of a gap in this series between part 5 and 6 – and fortunately for the both of us, I think this is the penultimate post in my series on SharePoint branding. While it has been an interesting exercise for me, I must confess each successive article is getting harder to write as my interest is shifting 🙂  So many sub-disciplines within MOSS – I think I might delve into WCM soon :-).

Continue reading “SharePoint Branding Part 6 – A "solution" to all issues?”