BISSG Programme 2007/2008

When are the meetings?

Our meetings are monthly from October to May. We meet from 18:00; the session starts at 18:30 and finishes at 20:30.

 Refreshments are available from 18:00 to 18:30.

The Business Benefits of Agile

Oli Lafontan, MD Agile Enablement Services for Exoftware

We do projects for a very specific reason: Business Value! As such in Agile, as we measure IT delivery progress by the amount of finished working software, but the real measure of progress for a project should be the Amount of Released Value - that is, realised Value.

Using the first three principles supporting the Agile Manifesto, this talk demonstrated the positive financial impact of Agile in organisations. We looked at how Agile can get us from initial concept to cash faster then traditional methods. We also looked at how Agile can reduce overall costs including project cycle costs, testing costs and support costs.

Olivier Lafontan is Managing Director Agile Enablement Services for Exoftware www.exoftware.com. Oli has over 10 years experience in programme and project management in both Agile and non-Agile environments: he is now a fervent partisan of 'agility' in all areas of business. As well as heading Exoftware's Agile Enablement Services, Oli is also involved as a hands on Business Transformation coach with large Financial Services, Manufacturing and Telecoms clients. Coming from a business education background rather than technical, Olivier now focuses on spreading and applying Agile thinking outside technical functions of organisations: his work on Agile Analysis has generated a lot of interest from peers and clients since it was published in 2004.

Why is EPM key to a successful PPSO?

David Dunning, Consulting Director of Corporate Project Solutions

NB: The originally scheduled event “How the Programme Support Office adapts to the ever changing needs of Business” will now be re-scheduled for a date in 2008.  The Project Management Specialist Group (PROMS-G) has kindly opened up their PPM-related event to BISSG members:

Corporate Project Solutions is the leading Microsoft EPM implementation consultancy. David Dunning, consulting director at CPS has been implementing project and programme management for 18 years. He will contribute a session that makes the case for PPSOs of all descriptions caring for all their project data in a single repository while at the same time delivering a step change in project and programme management processes and behaviour. The Microsoft Project Server tools will be briefly demonstrated as a complete Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management solution, seeking to dispel some of the myths that still linger in the minds of project professionals who still remember the Project 2000 / Project Central solution. Talking about and demonstrating the "art of the possible", David will give real food for thought to attendees

David Dunning is Consulting Director of Corporate Project Solutions with 14 years’ experience implementing project, programme and resource management solutions. CPS is a foremost provider of ‘Total Project Management Solutions’. From project office initiation and support, project management analysis and benchmarking, system development and implementation, procedure design (based on Prince2 or PMBOK), to training and the recruitment of personnel, CPS is able to support all phases of the project lifecycle. CPS business involves the industry standard planning software - Microsoft Project and Project Server and CPS has built its own toolsets for implementation projects.

BPM: Solving the big issue of the last 30 years

Jon Pyke, MBCS, CITP

Download Presentation (PDF)

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.

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

Paul Allen, Senior Planning Manger, Yell Group

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.

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.

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.

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.

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