BISSG Past Meetings

Business Process Management is far too important a topic to leave in the hands of IT. It works, but only just. Its ancestor, workflow automation, sucks – failed to deliver and failed to become mainstream. The fact that BPM is positioned by some platform vendors as a system-to-system/SOA thing causes some confusion among business users. They do not see their processes as “integration centric” or “human centric” or, indeed any other centric you might care to name. Business sees a process for what it is – a process; a way of getting things done and achieving a specific objective. Enter BPM 2.0: process-based technology that understands the needs of people and supports the inherent spontaneity of the human mind as well as ensuring that the business and the IT community are able to work together to deliver innovation and flexibility to the business. This presentation will attempt to clarify BPM, explore the impact of Web 2.0 on processes and expand upon what could be the next logical step for BPM – Case and Human Interaction management.

Jon has over 30 years’ experience in the field of software development. During his career he has worked for a number of software and hardware companies as well as user organisations. Jon has written and published a number of articles on the subject of Office Automation, BPM and Workflow Technology. More recently, Jon has co-authored a book covering both the technical and business aspects of BPM called “Mastering Your Organization’s Processes” (Cambridge University Press). Jon is a frequent speaker at international events and he is regularly quoted in the national and industry press. Jon has excellent relationships with the industry analyst community and senior figures in the computer industry. Jon co-founded and is the Chair of the Workflow Management Coalition. He is an AiiM Laureate for Workflow – and was awarded the Marvin Manheim award for Excellence in Workflow in 2003. A recent article concluded: “Jon Pyke is one of the most influential figures in the BPM sector … he can truly claim to be one of the founders of BPM as a means to implement a process improvement culture in business. He was personally responsible for defining many of the key software metaphors that enable BPM to work and, as Chair of the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), he has also overseen the development of standards. As one of BPM’s great thinkers, he has written many books and articles on how business can adopt a process strategy.

13/02/2008

How the Programme Support Office adapts to the ever changing needs of Business

Paul Allen, Senior Planning Manger, Yell Group

Download Presentation (PDF)

Despite the fact that project management tools are aimed at the project managers, it is invariably the Programme Support Office (PSO) that develops the system, maintains the services, provides support and provides governance. The PSO will find throughout the year that it objectives can change with demands from different areas of the business. These changes need to be managed, prioritised and standardised. How have we gone about it in Yell and what advice can we give?

Paul Allen has been working for Yell for 23 years, having had various roles in Customer Account Management, UAT Testing and for the last 8 years, project support. In 2000, Paul set up Yell's Project Support Office, introducing project planning and timesheets. In 2005, he expanded the role of the PSO into Programme Support. This increased the usage base within the business, providing consultancy and support to large business programmes. His current responsibilities include the management of the planning toolset, application management and future development. Programme support responsibilities cover planning, resourcing, budget, risk/issue management, change request process and acceptance criteria. Paul has advanced qualifications in PPSO management and is currently Vice President of the UK Clarity User Group.

12/03/2008

Business IT Law - Current Trends

Scott Singer, Partner, DentonWildeSapte

This session will look at some of the most important recent developments in IT legal practice, highlighting areas of risk and possible solutions. The session will then lead into an open forum workshop style discussion and Q&A session for people to share their experiences and concerns and raise questions they want answered. The key themes explored during the talk will be:

Data protection: What has all the fuss been about over the loss of child benefit data, and the recent fines imposed on banks by the FSA for breach of security?

Off-shoring: How is this dealt with in contracts? How are the risks, and benefits shared?

Performance Frameworks: How is steady-state performance measured? How can it be incentivised, and what measures are employed for sub-standard performance?

Intellectual Property: How is the ownership of software and data dealt with in contracts? Can customers legitimately expect to be owner of intellectual property in work they create?

Benchmarking: What are the issues? Can it work?

Open Source Code: What are the legal risks involved in working with Open Source code? How can they be covered?

Scott is a partner in the Technology, Media and Telecoms department at Denton Wilde Sapte, specialising in technology, intellectual property, data privacy and outsourcing law. Scott has many years' experience advising on IT and outsourcing transactions, software law, and the exploitation of databases and acts for a large number of leading IT users and suppliers. Scott is also an expert in intellectual property law, where he has advised leading rights owners on the exploitation, maintenance and protection of brands and industrial property rights and on the protection of new ideas, as well as advising some of the world's largest rights users on the spectrum of rights licensing and acquisition issues. He also regularly advises on all aspects of data privacy law. Scott has an LLM in IT law, and in the 1980s worked as a computer programmer.

9/04/2008

Business Systems 'R Us

Everybody has their favourite business software tools broadly in the 'personal productivity' area - those key pieces of software you could not do without. The list of candidates is extensive - workaday office applications, mind mapping tools, desktop search engines, PDF engines, personal database software, and there are many more:

You may be familiar with short cuts and advanced features that enable you to get more out of this type of software than the average user. Did you know that, in MS Office applications, F4 repeats the last action performed? This can be surprisingly useful if you have to do a lot of repeat editing on a document.
You may have discovered a way of overcoming generally-experienced problems with the software. Have you cracked the challenge which is MS Word’s handling of styles?
Are you using a routine business tool in an innovative way?
Do you have an idea for a 'Dream Tool' - a new incarnation of business software for the future? It could turn out that your dream tool already exists, it's just that you are not aware of it.

We are working on the format for the event but it will probably be based on a number of small, informal discussion groups with the results fed into a consolidation session towards the end of the evening. Committee members would act as the group leaders.

As we have many members that are not able to attend due to geography, you could submit your input via email and a committee member will then feed your contribution into the group sessions. We will make sure that the everything gets summarised and the document posted on the web site after the event.

14/05/2008 at 18:00

AGM - before the meeting below...

Please attend our short and sharp AGM; we will be reviewing the year, including summarising our financial status. We also need to elect our Committee and would welcome some fresh blood.

This is also an excellent opportunity for you to raise topics that you would like discussed in our next season. If you can recommend an excellent speaker, please let us know.

14/05/2008

Business Information Exploitation - Turning BI Assets into Business Value

Steve Whitby, Managing Director, Whitby Partners

Whitby Partners have developed a BI Exploitation Best Practice and BI Exploitation Benchmark which have opened the door to the board room for a number of BI teams in major banks, retailers, and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies. The session will explore the application of these approaches in practice.

Steve has over 25 years experience in IT including: consulting, sales, project and product management. Previously he has held senior positions at SAP, NCR Teradata and Digital. At SAP UK, as Head of Business Intelligence, he oversaw the growth of Business Warehouse from 10 to over 300 sites. Four years ago he established Whitby Partners, an independent BI consultancy that focuses on helping customers drive value from BI. His most recent assignments have been:

Advising the Board and direct reports of a leading media company on their BI Exploitation Strategy
Benchmarking BI Exploitation at one of the UK’s leading retailers
Benchmarking BI Exploitation at a leading global energy company
Coaching and supporting the IT management team in a leading bank in how to better engage the business clients of their BI programme
Improving the governance of BI Assets at a global CPG company

11/07/2008

EvoGrid Experiment: Bruce Damer

Evolutionary Computing on Supercomputers: Justin Lyon

EvoGrid Experiment: Bruce Damer will talk about the history, viability, desirability, and consequences of a successful EvoGrid experiment. Artificial life programs are where we have first seen a form of autonomous evolution, but these programs are limited because they tend to run in isolation. He will explain how the EvoGrid aims to overcome this limitation by engaging a community of developers to link their platforms into a single larger simulation. Imagine simulated ants moving across the Internet into an L-system garden world and interacting with plants, or a digital soup with a number of small and larger symbio-organisms swimming between servers.

Evolutionary Computing on Supercomputers: As a complement to the idea of using it on grids, Justin Lyon will present a short introduction to the concepts of using evolutionary computation on supercomputers such as Cell/BE and BG/P. He will expand on theme at the next meeting of Grey Thumb London. Justin Lyon is the founder of GTL and a member of The Future 500.

For further details on the subject matter and the speakers, please access: http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.19192

The location will be the BCS London office, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA. Timing is 17:45 for 18:15 until 20:30.

This is a free event open to the public and pre-registration is essential. To register please email Mandy Bauer at mandy.bauer@hq.bcs.org.uk or telephone 01793 417 417.

2006/2007

11/10/2006

Software as a Service

Howard Smith,
CTO Computer Sciences Corporation,
author of 'Business Process Management: The Third Wave'

Software as a Service (SaaS) is the IT industry's new term for what used to be called the rental model of software via Application Service Providers (ASP). A sea of services has opened on what some call Web 2.0. Has anything really changed, or is SaaS going the same way as ASP?

Powerful SaaS application providers, such as Salesforce.com, are gaining ground against on-premise software packages. SaaS does appear to be more than a new way of billing the customer. It's about using smart infrastructure and processes to give customers what they want, as early as possible, even before they have thought of it. CIOs worldwide are adopting SaaS and in-sourcing new capabilities to complement their existing IT infrastructures.

Yet things are not all plain sailing, and by looking under the hood, there are challenges yet before software can truly be bought as simply as turning on a service - even if that really is what the end users are asking for.

Howard Smith, CTO of Computer Sciences Corporation European Group, and who publishes a well known blog on SaaS (http://saassightings.blogspot.com) led a discussion about the future of IT service delivery.

7/11/2006

Geospatial Information Is Everywhere - But where are the benefits of integration with your IT?

Dan Rickman, Independent Consultant

A joint event with Geospatial Specialist Group

Integrating Geospatial Information (GI) with your existing information systems is increasingly straightforward - this talk addressed the factors which you need to consider when deciding when to do this and some of the issues which you will encounter when doing so.

Almost all organisations have geospatial information (GI), about customers, assets, distribution, logistics and infrastructure. Geographic Information Systems have been around for over 20 years yet they are still seen by many senior executives and CIOs as 'silo' applications, for example specialised engineering systems, rather than systems which can be at the heart of key business processes alongside and integrated with CRM and ERP. This view is now beginning to change and the shift is being driven by a number of key business and technology drivers. Major players such as Google and Microsoft are investing heavily in geospatial information and systems and system integrators are now discovering that customers are expecting them to provide GI-related skills.

The business drivers relate to better understanding and integration of geography within their business process, which will enable improved customer service and reduce operating costs through better design, and use of, key infrastructure. Furthermore, whilst the 'traditional' users of GI systems have been local authorities and utilities, there is a significant potential in a wide range of other areas. As GI moves into the mainstream, the wider IT industry will gain significant benefits through being able to provide better integrated and more effective information management to the wider organisation. The presentation will explain the benefits, drivers and issues related to GI systems.

Dan Rickman is vice-chair of the BCS Geospatial Specialist Group. He has over 20 years experience of Geospatial Information Systems and as strategist, technical consultant, project manager, business analyst, systems analyst and systems developer. A significant proportion of this work has involved establishing the business case for Geospatial and related systems through identifying the key business drivers for GI. He has undertaken GIS-related assignments for a wide range of public and private sector organisations including utilities, local and central government. He has produced guides to GI systems and standards for the NCC, Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Office for Government Computing (CCTA). He is a member of the Ordnance Survey sponsored Digital National Framework Expert and Technical Groups. Dan has presented papers on Geospatial issues at a range of events including the BCS Data Management Specialist Group, AGI and European conferences and published articles on a range of GI-related issues.

13/12/2006

The Development of Business Imperatives for Electronic Publishing

David Penfold, Edgerton Publishing Services

with Electronic Publishing Specialist Group

It is only within the last few years that electronic publishing has been profitable. And, even now, there are areas in which the business case is hard to determine. This talk looked briefly at the history of electronic and digital publishing and then at its growth from an academic tool into a commercial necessity. This included a brief look at CDs and DVDs, with the main focus on the Internet, the World Wide Web and content management, both within the commercial publishing industry and within a much wider business context. The talk ended with a look into the future at the Semantic Web and at what is described as Web 2.0.

David Penfold has worked in publishing for over 35 years. Since 1989 he has had his own consultancy, Edgerton Publishing Services, and projects have included project management of the SuperJANET demonstration project on electronic journals in 1993, moving Macmillan's journals to SGML, the Hutchinson Encyclopedia on the Web, a study of electronic journals and participation in the European study 'Multimedia Rights Clearance Systems'. He has been a reviewer and evaluator for the European Commission and has written several books (including part of the BCS series on ECDL) and many articles. He was Chair of the BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group until earlier this year and is a member of the BCS Learned Society and Knowledge Services Board, chairing the working party on web content in 2002. He is now a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication (formerly the London College of Printing), part of the University of the Arts London, teaching mainly on the MA in Publishing and supervising several Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.

10/01/2007

Wireless Cities and Digital Communities

Stuart Pass

The digital community vision is becoming a reality with a number of key wireless city deployments in place and many more planned for 2007, and benefits for local authorities, citizens and businesses alike. The key foundation to providing true mobility is a comprehensive broadband wireless infrastructure, delivered on standards-based technologies. There are many challenges to providing this infrastructure, and choosing the correct deployment model for the business need is crucial, along with considerations for operational support and security. Stuart Pass gave an update on Intel digital communities work in the UK and how technologies such as WiMAX are delivering a foundation for providing new and exciting services.

Stuart Pass, Senior Consulting Engineer for Intel Solution Services, delivers network solutions for wireless and mobility projects, helps to align the division's solutions with the broader Intel strategy for mobile solutions, and runs the UK Intel Solutions Center labs and infrastructure.

With 15 years of industry experience, Stuart joined Intel from Oracle Corporation where he was a Network Technician responsible for designing and implementing IT network solutions and providing third-level support. Stuart holds an HNC Qualification in Electronic Engineering and is a Cisco Certified Network Professional.

12/02/2007

Business IT Law

Scott Singer, Partner, DentonWildeSapte

Current market practice has increasingly moved towards lengthy IT contracts for anything but the most minor projects. However, numerous traps for the unwary lie buried in them. This talk was aimed both at users and suppliers of IT, and highlighted key issues for both to beware of.

Project implementation: How is delivery of projects on time incentivised?

Off-shoring: How is this dealt with in contracts? How are the risks, and benefits shared?

Performance frameworks: How is steady-state performance measured? How can it be incentivised, and what measures are employed for sub-standard performance?

Data Protection: What is it? What sort of contracts will it be relevant to?

Warranties: What sort of warranties can be expected?

Benchmarking: What are the issues? Can it work?

Termination: What rights to the parties have to bring the project to an end?

14/03/2007

Experiences with Project & Portfolio Management Systems

Adrian Pyne, Secretary of ProgM

Portfolio Management systems are fast becoming to organisations what fingerprint and DNA databases are to CSI (forensic) units in the USA and UK. But their purchase, implementation and use are as much under scrutiny as forensic expert systems. They have the ability to provide organisations with major benefits, but also the ability to cause chaos, anger, frustration…and career damage. So join me in “CSI London”, to discuss with me lessons I have learned from the procurement, design, configuration and operation of such systems over a number of years.

Adrian Pyne is secretary of ProgM, the UK’s Special Interest Group for Programme Management. He has more than 15 years’ experience of running programmes, and the design, build and operation of enterprise and other programme offices. Adrian is also co-author of the Gower Handbook of Programme Management.

11/04/2007

Wit nor Wisdom – Business Process Modelling

Jon Holt, Director of Brass Bullet Ltd

Process modelling is one of those subjects that is often mis-understood. Consider the analogy of a magician performing a card trick - the process is easy to follow but impossible to replicate from the audience's point of view. To replicate such a magic trick it is necessary to understand several different views of the trick, rather than simply looking at it from the audience's point of view. A full understanding will require some degree of domain knowledge concerning magic and sleight-of-hand, and insight into the hidden complexities behind the trick and a knowledge of the mis-communication devices employed by magicians. The challenge, therefore, is in creating an accurate and concise model of a process - a task that is plagued with complexity and difficulty in understanding the often-buried processes and communication trails that exist. This lecture introduces a framework of views that are considered essential in order to fully understand any process. The approach discussed here has been used in industry and has been adopted by the BSI (British Standards Institution) for process modelling.

Jon Holt is the founder-director of Brass Bullet Ltd, a software and systems engineering consultancy company based in Swansea, South Wales, and is a Fellow of both The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and BCS. Jon has been working in the field of process modelling, in particular using the Unified Modelling Language (UML), since the mid-1990's. He has worked with many organizations including: professional bodies such as the IET, the BSI and BCS; major industry, in the fields of defence, aerospace, rail, automotive, and communications; and academic institutions such as UCL and the University of Wales; as well as a number of government organizations and other non-engineering related groups. His other interests include card magic and Tae Kwon Do.

9/05/2007 at 17:30

AGM - before the meeting below...

Please attend our short and sharp AGM; we will be reviewing the year, including summarising our financial status. We also need to elect our Committee and would welcome some fresh blood.

This is also an excellent opportunity for you to raise topics that you would like discussed in our next season. If you can recommend an excellent speaker, please let us know.

9/05/2007

Virtually There

BRUCE DAMER – Virtual Worlds expert & author of “Avatars”

Download Presentation (PDF) -
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

IAN HUGHES – Metaverse Evangelist, IBM
Dr. JIM PURBRICK, Software Engineer, Linden Lab

A special event to mark the 50th anniversary of the BCS

In collaboration with the London Regional Branches and coordinated by the BISSG and the BCS North London Branch.

Do you know that there’s an increasing range of Avatar-based virtual worlds (graphical worlds featuring 2D and 3D representations of people) that allow users to assume multiple identities and roles, and also to design and build their own landscapes and environments?

Their fast-growing virtual populations involve participants from all over the ‘real-world’. As well as social interactions, virtual worlds now facilitate advertising and business opportunities and are attracting major media coverage plus the attention of business leaders, e.g. at the January 2007 World Economics Summit in Davos.

At this fascinating event we learned more about:

the history of 2D and 3D graphical worlds, starting with the first avatars in Maze War in the mid-1970s
Second Life (created by Linden Lab), the leading example of the current evolution of virtual worlds.
how leading global organisations are using virtual worlds to collaborate internally,and market externally.

2005/2006

12/10/2005

Invisible Architectures

Jenny Ure, Research Fellow in Management of Technology

"Our Just In Time manufacturing system works well in Germany. Why not in Brazil? It’s the same technology - so what’s the difference?"

CEO, German automotive manufacturing company

Invisible Architecture addresses 'socio-technical systems' and uses practical examples to highlight the potential for harnessing 'soft' factors to competitive advantage, and the pitfalls of ignoring them. A range of cases were presented to illustrate how the alignment (or misalignment) of people, processes and technology can impact on system performance. Many managers stress the lack of training on 'soft' issues, despite the fact that much of their day is spent dealing with them. The session included case studies of e-business portals, supply chains and other networks to highlight the recurring socio-technical problems that CEOs and managers face, and some of the generic solutions which are emerging. As part of the session, there was an opportunity to break out into groups and try to find solutions to some of the typical socio-technical problems the management and the technical team had to address when designing and rolling out an Intranet in a large UK company.

Jenny is a psychologist by training and co-wrote the book Invisible Architecture while a Research Fellow in the management of technology at Edinburgh University Management School. She was recently a Visiting Research Fellow at Curtin University of Technology, and has worked in a range of Universities in the UK and abroad researching, developing and evaluating collaborative, networked systems in education and business. Her current research looks at knowledge management in the design and management of complex 'socio-technical' networks such as portals, intranets and supply chains in the financial services, software design, and the oil and gas sectors. She has a particular interest in strategies for the design and management of systems which align social, technical and organisational architectures to competitive advantage – 'building the technology around the social process.'

9/11/2005

Getting your head round your Business Processes

Martyn Ould, Independent Consultant

Yet the traditional methods and notations at our disposal are simply not up to the job of helping us get our arms and heads around the big, complex, distributed, collaborative, mobile, and highly concurrent processes that we operate.

The Brave New World of Business Process Management Systems has brought this into sharp focus. BCS Fellow Martyn Ould has recently published a new approach to business process management that gets to grips with these challenges and he will be outlining the approach in this session.

Martyn Ould read Maths at Cambridge but was never going to be a 'real' mathematician. Spurning a lifetime in accountancy, he threw himself into computing and worked his way through ICL, Logica, Praxis (where he was Technical & Quality Director), and Deloitte, finally throwing in the towel of Organisation Man and going freelance in 1998. He is now having fun again. His interest in 'process' started in 1986 and that interest culminated in the publication by the BCS of his book 'Business Process Management – A Rigorous Approach' early in 2005.

14/12/2005

Successful Outsourcing - Getting the Process Right

Elizabeth Sparrow, Author & Consultant

Often controversial and unpopular, outsourcing has never been easy to get right. Recent decisions by Prudential, JP Morgan Chase and Sainsbury's to cancel outsourcing deals and move operations back in-house have led some to declare that outsourcing is finished. But this is not supported by market developments. Outsourcing continues to be big business, even if it is growing rather more slowly today.

We can learn much from the experience of IT outsourcing over several decades. There are well tested processes for determining what to outsource, selecting a service provider, devising a service level agreement and negotiating contracts. All too often however, programme management of these processes is poor.

The key to successful outsourcing is building a relationship with your service provider that works in the longer term, not a quick fix economy drive. This relationship needs to be developed from the outset - it is a critical success factor.

Companies outsourcing hope not only to derive savings but also to get added value from outsourcing deals. Different stakeholders have different perspectives on what this means and how to achieve it. Incentives can play a part. Disincentives or penalties used to discourage poor performance do little actively to encourage service
excellence.

Elizabeth Sparrow is an author and consultant, specializing in outsourcing relationships and change management programmes. In 2004 she chaired the British Computer Society working party on offshoring, which examined the impact of offshoring on the UK’s IT profession. The group’s report was published in November 2004.

Prior to her freelance career, Elizabeth was a senior IT leader in the public sector and has over 20 years experience of managing multi-million pound outsourcing relationships with a number of different service providers. As IT Director at the Home Office she led a major infrastructure upgrade project and launched an innovative private finance initiative. While at the Crown Prosecution Service, Elizabeth coordinated a substantial change programme involving not only the CPS but also the police service and courts.

Elizabeth’s first book, Successful IT Outsourcing, was published in 2003. Her new book, A Guide to Global Sourcing: Offshore outsourcing and other global delivery models, has recently been published by the British Computer Society.

10/01/2006

A Pragmatic Guide to Business Process Modelling

Jon Holt, Director of Brass Bullet Ltd

The talk introduced the three evils of life, in the form of complexity, lack of understanding and communication problems. It was then be demonstrated that these three evils exist in all systems - the business process being one such process.

The importance of understanding processes, regardless of whether they are formal or informal, high level or low level, was discussed, and some interactive simple examples were used to illustrate some of the problems with processes.

The requirements needed to specify a process with any degree of confidence were discussed. The concept of the 'process meta-model', a way of capturing best and current practice in an organization and using this as basis for a structured approach to process modelling was introduced. The focus was the importance of different views of the same process model and the consistency of the model, not only within itself, but also with other, external processes.

The approach described in the talk is an industrially-proven approach that uses open standards for modelling and that can be applied to: business processes, technical & management processes, standards, procedures, work instructions and even tacit process knowledge inside people's heads.

Jon Holt is the founder-director of Brass Bullet Ltd, a software and systems engineering consultancy company. He is a Visiting Professor at Penn State University, USA, and a Fellow of the BCS and The Institute of Electrical Engineers. Jon works in the field of process modelling, in particular using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and has applied these techniques to many organizations ranging from small to medium sized enterprises (SME's) to large multinationals in many different sectors.

8/02/2006

IT in the NHS

Jean Roberts, Chair of the BCS Health Informatics Forum Policy Task Force

The domain of health in England is in constant flux, through strategic and management changes to the NHS and through a major innovative informatics programme (NPfIT) called 'Connecting for Health'. In parallel to this the BCS Health Informatics Forum, along with partners, recognized that informatics in support of health had a significant role to play, and there was a need to recognize the fitness to practice of professionals working both in and for the NHS in this environment. BCSHIF is instrumental in spreading the word about health informatics, professionalism and as a channel for constructive criticism of ongoing initiatives. Many of the hot topics in the IT industry per se apply to the health domain, perhaps with a different spin – offshoring, change management, standards, benefits realization, end user enablement and privacy issues. Jean highlighted the progress made so far, outline the lessons learned and commented on how these initiatives contribute synergistically.

Jean has been working in the health domain for over thirty years, nationally and internationally with eclectic experience in strategic health initiatives, knowledge exchange, management of complex programmes and projects, in informatics and ehealth business areas, in addition to academic contributions, marketing, communication and promotion of informatics to support care delivery and management. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, is Policy lead for BCSHIF and a Founder Council Member of the UK Council of Health Informatics Professions. Her current activity includes informatics consultancy and academic roles in research and teaching in the Lancashire School of Health and Post-Graduate Medicine.

8/03/2006

Process Innovation: BPM and modern TRIZ

Howard Smith,
CTO Computer Sciences Corporation,
author of 'Business Process Management: The Third Wave'

book

Business Process Management Systems (BPMS), from companies such as Intalio, ActionTech, Metastorm, Lombardi and others, and emerging from Oracle and Microsoft and other industry giants, provide a new way to develop IT applications based on business process models. This approach has many benefits, including a much reduced 'process design to production time and resource cost', as well as closer alignment between the business and IT organizations.

However, a BPM solution does nothing to help business or IT achitects dream up new processes (other than to provide the operational dashboard from which we can judge current performance.) So now that BPM solutions give us a fast-track to new IT-enabled processes (an improvement over 're-engineering') we also need methods to help re-design and re-invent existing processes. New methods, including Modern TRIZ, and P-TRIZ can help.

In this presentation, Howard Smith, author of the best-selling book, 'Business Process Management: The Third Wave', will give an overview of the BPM space and an introduction to TRIZ methods applied to Business Processes. A practical tool demonstration will be available on the day.

12/04/2006

How clinical care processes can be supported by IT

Dr Glyn M Hayes, Chair of the BCS Health Informatics Committee

Clinical care has become more complex, more sophisticated and more risk prone as medicine has developed. It is now much more of a team effort rather than just one doctor doing everything. It is also much more evidence based but no clinician can keep up with the increasing knowledge base. Medico legal issues dominate much of the practice of medicine and patient expectation is at an all-time high. In this changing world, IT is the only way in which modern care can be delivered. Many think of IT as just supporting the administrative and management aspects of health. While these are important, the improvement in individual patient care that IT can bring is the most valuable aspect of health informatics. The current National Programme for IT is based on this premise. Billions of pounds are being spent trying to achieve it. The talk will outline the possibilities for IT supporting clinical care but also the risks to such investment if the basic principles of business processes and the human aspects of the use of IT are not considered.

Dr Hayes, Fellow of the BCS, became a principal in general practice in 1973. He developed an active interest in computers in 1978 when he installed one of the world's first full consulting room systems into his practice. He was a founder member of the Primary Health Care Specialist Group of the British Computer Society, becoming Chair in 1985 and currently President. Dr Hayes has been involved in medical computing at all levels, his particular interests being the structure of electronic medical records, the use of computers during the clinician patient encounter and how to ensure medical computer systems improve individual patient care. He has been a member of most of the national bodies concerned with primary care computing and now has a vested interest in how IT affects direct patient care. He lectures internationally having been chair of the International Medical Informatics Association, Working Group on Primary Care. He has also published widely on medical computing, medical legal issues and the structure of the Electronic Medical Record. He is currently the chair of the Health Informatics Committee of the British Computer Society.

10/05/2006

Getting your head round your Business Processes; Riva - Part 2

Martyn Ould, Independent Consultant

We have plenty of reasons for getting a real understanding of how our organisations work: quality management, process improvement, designing and changing processes as our organisation changes, and formalising our processes before we commit them to 'process enactment systems'. Yet the traditional methods and notations at our disposal are simply not up to the job of helping us get our arms and heads around the big, complex, distributed, collaborative, mobile, and highly concurrent processes that we operate.

The Brave New World of Business Process Management Systems has brought this into sharp focus. BCS Fellow Martyn Ould has recently published a new approach to business process management – the Riva method – that gets to grips with these challenges. He introduced the approach at the November session and expanded on its application to real-world situations in this follow-up session.

2004/2005

13/10/2004

Implementing IT Governance using Control Objectives for IT (CobiT)

Dr John Mitchell, LHS Business Control

When two or more CIOs are gathered together the conversation invariable revolves around two topics: how well are they doing in comparison to their peers and how can they prove to their CEOs that they are providing value for money whilst balancing risk against opportunity? The answer to both these questions sits at the centre of the IT Governance debate. The theme of this session was to outline what IT Governance is and then provide a framework for its implementation based on an international open standard.

Dr John Mitchell is the Director of LHS Business Control which is an independent consultancy, founded in 1989, which specialises in corporate governance, business control and fraud investigation. Dr Mitchell is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Chartered Information Technology Professional (CITP), a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). He is also a fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) and a fellow of the Institute of Internal Auditors (FIIA). He holds an MBA from Middlesex University where he majored in Financial Control. Prior to forming LHS, he was Deputy Chief Internal Auditor at British Telecom and before that he was Computer Audit Manager at British Gas. With his qualifications and experience, he is highly accomplished in corporate governance, business control, computer security, system development, capital expenditure control, dispute resolution and the business implications of safety critical systems.

10/11/2004

Six Sigma Warts & All

Stephen Jarman, Catalyst Consulting Ltd

The discussion gave a balanced picture of the application of Six Sigma, where it has worked well and why - as well as where and why when is hasn't. Although the speaker believed passionately that Six Sigma is the 'best show in town' when it comes to process improvement, there are also some examples of where the philosophy 'it'll be alright on the night' has come unstuck.

In particular we considered:

How and why Six Sigma has been so successful at companies like GE
How it differs from other approaches and why that makes Six Sigma so successful in many organisations (the 'management technology of Six Sigma')
Some varied examples of success
The essential pre-requisites for success
Examples of problem cases

inadequate measurement systems
senior management impatience for results
insufficient resources & funding

Examples of new learning

Re-invigorating 'Workout'
'virtual' Six Sigma
Simplified Design for Six Sigma

Steve has over 20yrs experience in the Quality field in hi-tech organizations and manufacturing. His special expertise includes Quality Management Systems, Six Sigma and Problem Solving.

He recently joined Catalyst Consulting following a successful period as a Six Sigma Black-Belt with Sun Microsystem’s Computer Server Development Team near Camberley. In that role Steve led the application of Design for Six Sigma throughout Development organizations within Europe. He was also the Six Sigma Black Belt for a number of key problem-resolution activities, including rescuing a delayed key product-release through the application of DMAIC methodologies.

Steve has a Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering is a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers.

8/12/2004

Iterative Project Management: A Scalable Approach to Managing Software Development Projects

Ian Spence, Principal Consultant, Reqtrix Limited

Iterative software development methodologies offer many benefits for modern software development projects but are often pigeon holed as only being suitable for certain kinds of small-to-medium sized projects that are prepared to adopt a very technologically focussed, informal, hands-off management approach. Based on many years of experience working with project managers on iterative software development projects, this presentation presented a scalable iterative project management approach - based upon the Unified Process project lifecycle - that allows iterative software development practices to be successfully applied to all sizes of software development projects. It focused on how to apply iterative project management practices to different sizes of project, how to scale the project management practices to meet the needs of the organisation (including their adoption within a PRINCE2 environment) and how to get started in their application.

The Principal Consultant of Reqtrix Limited, Ian Spence has over 19 years experience in the software industry, covering the complete development lifecycle; including project management, requirements capture, architecture, analysis, design and implementation. He has over 10 years experience of iterative project management and with Kurt Bittner wrote the book Use Case Modeling (Addison-Wesley 2003). Ian and Kurt are currently working on a follow up book, provisionally titled 'Managing Iterative Software Development', from which this presentation is extracted.

12/01/2005

Committee Meeting only

9/02/2005

Six Sigma: The DMAIC Process - Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control

Stephen Jarman, Catalyst Consulting Ltd

The session in November 2004 provided an introduction to the nature and scope of Six Sigma. In this follow-up session, Steve looked at some of the Six Sigma tools and techniques and discussed their use in an IT world.

Steve recently joined Catalyst Consulting following a successful period as a Six Sigma Black-Belt with Sun Microsystem's Computer Server Development Team near Camberley. In that role Steve led the application of Design for Six Sigma throughout Development organisations within
Europe. He was also the Six Sigma Black Belt for a number of key problem-resolution activities, including rescuing a delayed key product-release through the application of DMAIC methodologies. Steve has a Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering and is a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers.

9/03/2005

Benefits Realisation

Adrian Leach, Parity

This talk provided a thorough overview of a benefits realisation framework. It discussed some problems with benefits realisation and how an IT project can be migrated to a business/service change programme. Adrian also discussed the factors influencing the achievement of benefits – organisation, people and procedures, programmes of interdependent projects and services and how to evaluate business change initiatives. He outlined roles and responsibilities for achieving benefits – business sponsor, service manager, programme manager and project manager.

Adrian has an ICT background of almost 36 years. He has worked in over 30 countries with almost 300 different organisations. He has been involved in, consulted on, or been responsible for all aspects of the IS Applications and Service Delivery lifecycle including Programme, Application, Project, Relationship and Service Management through to Information and Operational Systems Auditing.

He is the Parity Training Principal Consultant for Business IT Alignment products which cover:

IS Strategy Management
Performance, Quality, Governance and Readiness Management
Applications and Transition Management
Business Process and Business Change Management
Integrity, Continuity and Security Management
Value Management
Consultancy Relationships and Advisory Management
Business and IT Architectures management
Centres of Excellence

13/04/2005

Introduction to Agile Systems Development

Brian Swan, Exoftware

The introduction gave attendees a basic understanding of what Agile software development is and how it is developing within the software development community. The presentation focused on a real case example to show exactly how Agile software development works.

When discussing Agile it is sometimes difficult to explain how a requirement is tracked from initial requirements through to implementation. Using a real user story from a current Exoftware development project, Brian gave the story of a story - from initial user story presentation, estimation, scheduling, delivery of acceptance tests, and implementation through Test Driven Development.

Brian Swan is an Agile mentor with Exoftware. Brian has extensive experience in both the technical and management aspects of Agile. He has successfully led a variety of teams transitioning to Agile as well as trained both developers and managers in Agile thinking and practice.

Brian also has a depth of technical experience specifically in sectors such as financial services and telecoms. His work with Exoftware and Agile has taken him to a variety of companies, where he has consistently and positively impacted development teams. Brian's previous experience
includes lecturing at Napier University in software development and human and computer interaction. To contact Brian, email him at bswan@exoftware.com

11/05/2005

Machiavelli and Change Management - A Personal Case Study

Anthony Butler

It is now some 500 years since Nicolo Machiavelli composed his immortal treatise on politics entitled 'The Prince', which was first published in 1515. His famous comment on change: "There is nothing so dangerous or doubtful of success than to initiate a new order of things." needs to be taken to heart by any aspiring project manager.

This talk demonstrated the aptness of Machiavelli's views to modern Business/IT project management by charting the implementation path of a web project. The aim of this ground-breaking project, now successfully achieved, was to create a 'Kent Business Passport' across a range of business support websites in Kent.

The talk also detailed the technical strategy adopted, commented on experiences with Open Source software, and showed some excerpts from the system in operation.

Anthony Butler is a business and IT professional with wide experience in the public and financial services sectors, including over twenty years experience in securities and life assurance. He is particularly interested in the impact of technology on business, and in the strategic planning and management control of IT. He initiated and chaired the DTI-sponsored expert systems work in insurance (Aries at City), assisted in the founding of several UK computer performance groups, and managed the development of the Laurel Online web system for assisting companies in gaining Investors in People Recognition.

Currently he is eBusiness Manager with Business Link Kent at West Malling, responsible for all Internet and website matters. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered Information Systems Engineer.

2003/2004

08/10/2003

Getting Value for Money from IT

Roger Lee, KPMG IT Performance Advisory Services

Download Presentation: [Note: 2.6Mb]

Nobody would disagree that to achieve value for money from IT is a goal for most organisations. However, experience is that few people try to measure value or even define it. Most of the focus recently has been on reducing IT cost. To achieve value for money from IT, the business and IT have to work together. The presentation looked at a framework for designing and assessing value for money and applying it in practice.

Roger Lee leads KPMG's IT Performance Advisory Services in the UK and he has worked with many international blue chip companies to help them provide greater value for money from IT.

12/11/2003

Naked Objects - An Open Source Framework for Building OO Business Systems

Richard Pawson and Dan Haywood

Naked Objects is a radical approach to business systems design and development, supported by an open source framework. Core business objects such as Customer, Product and Order are exposed directly and to the user instead of being masked behinds the constructs of a conventional user interface. Coupling Naked Objects with a set of customisations to Together Control Center benefits both the development process and the developed product:

the 'naked' objects form a common language between users and developers
the development cycle is dramatically reduced
the resulting systems treat the end-user as a problem solver (not a process follower)
the resulting systems are easy to enhance, making them a good fit for agile development methods.

In this talk they showed Naked Objects and Together Control Center in action, and contrasted the result with more conventional systems built following the contemporary dominant design.

Richard Pawson is the inventor of the naked objects concept, and with Robert Matthews co-authored 'Naked Objects' (2002) and founded www.nakedobjects.org. He has worked in IT since 1977, since 1990 focusing on research into agile software development and object-oriented design in particular. He has spoken at conferences and events in 21 different countries, and acted as retained advisor to senior IT management of large corporations and government organisations.

Dan Haywood has worked on large and small software development projects since 1989, for Accenture and Sybase UK. Since 1998 he has been an independent consultant, trainer and technical writer in Java, J2EE, UML and RDBMSs. He is also an expert on Together Control Center having co-authored with Andy Carmichael 'Better Software Faster' (2001), addressing the effective use and customization of Together Control Center.

10/12/2003

Project Management in a RUP Environment - Iterative Development With Use Cases

Ian Spence, Rational

Download Presentation: [Note: 3.1Mb]

Joint session with PROM-SG.

The IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP) is one of the world's leading software development processes. It is currently being adopted as a standard by many organisations in order to reduce the time-to-market for software development, increase the productivity of the software development teams and increase the quality of the software delivered. RUP is characterised by its use-case driven, architecture-centric, iterative approach to software development, characteristics that impact upon the management of the project as well as the more technical software development disciplines. This presentation explored how to plan a project based on RUP using a use-case based approach. Patterns for planning iteration in each phase were presented, providing attendees with a simple and practical approach to organising the project work. The application of RUP within a PRINCE2 environment was also discussed.

The speaker, Ian Spence, is a Senior Consultant in Rational UK's IT Business Change Practice, where he assists organisations in the creation and execution of change programmes to improve their software development capability. Ian has been at Rational for 6 years where he has specialised in the large-scale adoption of the Rational Unified Process and the iterative, use-case driven, architecture-centric approach that it recommends. Ian has over 18 years' experience in the software industry, covering the complete development lifecycle, including requirements capture, architecture, analysis, design, implementation and project management.

14/01/2004

Web Services: Emerging Standards and Management Implications

Joost Koedijk, KPMG

Unfortunately this was cancelled due to illness.

11/02/2004

The 'British Clippers' Project Management Case Study

Stephen Carver, ALS Consultants and Cranfield Business School

Because of the file size, and because it's "in the way he tells them", there is no download for this talk.

This was a cautionary tale of how two swashbuckling heroes - Sir Richard Branson and Sir Chay Blyth - learnt the difference between Project Management and Enthusiasm Management. The idea was brilliant. The Americans love everything British and they love Tall Ships. Why not combine the two and create a floating Harrods and take it over to the U.S! The concept was brilliant, the enthusiasm was overwhelming, the teamwork was magnificent - however, the planning was negligible. A lovely tale of how even good ideas can fail if you call in the Project Manager too late!

Stephen has enthralled and entertained audiences worldwide with his marvellous stories of how real organisations sometimes get their projects wonderfully right - but more usually hideously wrong! The key to Stephen’s captivating style is his ability to show how the lessons learned from these riveting stories can be put into everyday practical use within organisations. Not only is he a successful Masters qualified Project Manager in his own right but he is also used to speaking to some of the most demanding audiences as a lecturer in Project Management at Cranfield, one of Europe’s top business schools.

10/03/2004

IT Vendors and Suppliers - Are they destined to hold the whip hand forever?

David Roberts, Chief Executive, The Corporate IT Forum

Supply is driven by demand in all market sectors - except IT, where demand is driven by supply and, sometimes, the withdrawal of supply. It is unique in that business-critical decisions about procurement and deployment are weighted by deliberately-curtailed product lifecycles, and made in the boardrooms of the suppliers, not the purchasers. So what action should the IT user community take to redress the balance of power?

David Roberts founded The Corporate IT Forum in 1996 and, as its Chief Executive, is responsible for identifying and meeting subscribers' needs, and ensuring that all Forum activities are topical and relevant. His role includes presenting the collective industry voice of computing infrastructure to vendors, governments and businesses.

The Corporate IT Forum is a knowledge pool of 3000 senior corporate IT professionals from the IT functions of 147 organisations - including more than 50% of the largest 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange - representing a combined IT spend of more than £20bn per year. We focus on sharing experiences, knowledge and understanding of the direction, management and practice of IT to solve real IT issues.

14/04/2004

Data Protection after Soham and British Gas - The Role of the Law and IT

Scott Singer, Senior Solicitor, Denton Wilde Sapte

A PDF copy of the presentation may be requested from Scott.

Scott considered:

What should organisations do when law appears to be telling them one thing but common sense suggests another?
What really are organisations' obligations under data privacy law?
Who can organisations share personal information with?
How do computer systems impact the situation?

Scott specialises in data privacy, technology, and intellectual property law. Scott has advised numerous data controllers and data subjects on all aspects of data privacy including global data transfers, data sharing, sale and purchase of databases, subject access rights, employee monitoring and data protection policies. Scott is also experienced in advising on IT transactions, software law, the exploitation of databases. He also advises on intellectual property law, in particular as it applies to the protection of ideas, technology and brands. Scott has a Masters degree with distinction in IT law and has been a tutor on the LL.M in IT law at the University of Strathclyde since 1999.

12/05/2004

Capability Maturity Model - Establishing Good Habits

Colin Brown, Freelance Consultant

All IT organisations are continually under pressure to increase their ability to meet their timescale, scope, budget and quality commitments. The CMM is a proven model that uses a combination of industry-wide and your own existing best practices to achieve and sustain these improvement goals. Although the CMM provides a roadmap for adoption, as with any useful tool, a clear understanding and good judgement are required to formulate an approach that reflects the specific needs and characteristics of your organisation. The session explored the aims and benefits of the model and showed how these can be realised.

Colin Brown is a freelance consultant and PLC Associate and has a wide experience in the financial and retail sectors in implementing the CMM in the UK, Europe and India.

2002/2003

09/10/2002

Resolving Conflict

Dave Liddle, Total Conflict Management

The presentation examined the destructive and constructive nature of conflict. It examined the causes and effects of conflict at six different levels: people, culture, leadership, the environment, power and politics and change.

The presentation introduced participants to a structured definition of mediation and considered the underlying philosophy of the approach. This was followed by an examination of the process of mediation and its many applications. Discussion within the group covered the benefits of mediation to a variety of stakeholders.

13/11/2002

Content Management

Mayank Ladd

Mayank is Chair Elect of the proposed BCS Content Management Specialist Group

Content Management (CM) is the first strategic Information Management investment of the new Millennium, say Strategy Partners (in "Content Management Europe 2001-3"). Studies indicate most organisations hold between 1-10% of structured data e.g. in databases while the remaining 90-99% is content - e.g. text, images and emails. Given that IDC predicts that annual storage requirements will grow at more than 80% per annum, there will be 7.5 times more data to be managed in 2003 than there were in 1999 and over 90% of this data will be unstructured. Content Management is about managing millions of pieces of content - structured or unstructured - whether they are sections of electronic manuals, components for a website, or just general company documentation including e-mails. This is becoming an increasingly difficult and challenging task. Content management tools make this much easier.

Mayank Ladd has spent his entire professional career working across a spectrum of information management, document management and content management roles, from programming image analysis tools to his current role of Electronic Document and Records Management Programme Management for a key UK Government Agency. His extensive project-based experience has included PRINCE2 project management, system selection, systems analysis, scope studies, architecture and functional specification and acceptance testing. He has considerable experience in Document Management, Content Management, Records Management, Workflow, Portal, Imaging and e-Business disciplines gained through working with leading organisations including EDS's Document Management Services Group and Tower Technology, a leading Document Management vendor. More recently, Mayank has set up his own specialist company, CODO, that offers independent and unbiased advice and services in Information Management. Mayank is also an Associate for one of the leading European independent Information, Document and Records Management services company, In-Form Consult (IFC). He has currently applied to be Chair of the new Content Management Specialist Group within the BCS and is actively looking for people to get involved at any level.

11/12/2002

Embedded Workflows and Straight-through Processing

Keith Hales, SODAN

The talk explored the origins and development of workflow and process management, and considered the advantages and disadvantages of embedded workflow and straight through processing, compared with total abstraction of processes from applications.

Keith Hales is the MD of of SODAN, founded in 1991, an independent workflow consultancy. He is also the author of SODAN's annual report, 'Workflow Management Products', and publisher of the monthly newsletter 'e-business Workflow', and 'Business Process Modelling Tool Products' report.

08/01/2003

Programme Planning Meeting

This original session was cancelled but a very productive planning meeting was held instead. Thanks to all who attended.

12/02/2003

Model Driven Architecture: Beyond UML

Allan Kennedy, Kennedy Carter

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is the Object Management Group's architectural framework for all its standards, the most widely known of which are the UML and CORBA. MDA is not revolutionary but rather it consolidates many advances in model driven development within the OMG's standards framework. Key concepts of MDA include: (1) modelling of business processes in the form of "Computation Independent Models"; (2) formalisation of system behaviour in "Platform Independent Models" (PIM's) which can be targeted at multiple middleware platforms; (3) automated derivation of "Platform Specific Models" from PIM's. Allan elaborated on these themes and reported on the current status of MDA at the OMG and on recent work with the OPEN Group to combine MDA with TOGAF - The OPEN Group Architecture Framework. Allan also presented an overview of a successful MDA project - the mission computer for the F16 fighter aircraft.

He recommended a book by David S. Frankel (Model Driven Architecture: Applying MDA to Enterprise Computing).

Allan Kennedy is the Managing Director of Kennedy Carter Ltd, a UK firm that has pioneered the technology of executable modelling and is the originator of the iUML modelling tool. He is co-chair of the Object Reference Model sub-committee of the OMG which is the body responsible for the official definition of MDA.

12/03/2003

Lessons from the Battle of Hastings

Stephen Carver, Cranfield