Agile Information Management

Generally on a topic so important I would spend the time to write about this in a more palatable manner - but as time is limited I am going to give you the information without couching it in a example. For that please read Dr. Kevin C. Desouza's book - "Agile Information Systems: Conceptualization, Construction, and Management" which was very helpful to me when I had already reached the same conclusions during a very high visability consulting gig. His book allowed me to defend my position definatively and objectively. (http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Information-Systems-Conceptualization-Construction/dp/0750682353)

Don't wait until you are working on a project that matters to you (read: "=$$$") to understand that we may live in a world once inhabited by dinosaurs but using old clumsy methods are not an effective way to create and scope new software projects or manage information effectively. Here's the straight dope --

Agile development models include just in time information gathering processes. Agile information gathering processes include rapid collection of content and the clear appearance of the resulting documents. Collecting technical business requirements and immediately folding them into the client template is an agile information management method in planning software requirements.



Business Analyst Teams need to capture requirements as they are clarified. This is especially important when:
1. The deliverable is the requirement document first and foremost
2. The outline for documenting incoming requirements already exists
3. Tight deadlines exists and there is any risk of delays in documentation, or in overlapping out-of-date information being presented to the client–
4. Or if the document control tool, which is commonly used for working together interactively, is flakey and as a result document versions may become dated

It is not an agile process to wait to add known requirements. For example having project management, or development directing a business analyst to wait until later to add or modify incoming requirements prior to a document presentation. It makes sense to put the correct and current requirements into the current document. It is more logical to keep found things found by categorizing them immediately. (It's a little like keeping the kitchen clean - do it right away).

1. It is a waste of time and money, searching when editing the same document repeatedly, or by different individuals, when the requirement should be added on the fly
2. It is frustrating for the BA trying to keep track of multiple versions of the same requirements, it is frustrating for the client when they read out of date requirements
3. It creates unnecessary control issues
4. It runs counter to the clients' actual needs and requests
5. It isn't agile any more, it is an outdated technique!

Presentation of business requirements is 50% of the job of development consulting, that is, what a document actually looks like really matters to governance and business people.

1. Because governance and business people spend all their time in documents, generally they want them to look familiar and be formatted correctly, so it makes sense to use their existing templates
2. They care about documentation, and delivering documentation is your value to them, in other phases they may care about the actual software project delivery or user interface
3. Your clients will never have your depth of knowledge regarding technology, which means you will have to explain your processes and reasons if you do it any other way (slowing the process down) besides using their processes and procedures
4. The business and governance or project management office people will participate in decision making about actually building the project, or not, and you want them to want to work with you, by showing that you will work with them!

When things go south in a project managed and maintained by old, confusing, out of date, clumsy methods - at least YOU will know why. And if you get really great at sniffing out these kinds of information management control issues, perhaps you can head them off at the pass, and get your posse working together effectively to collect the information you need and turn it into the requirements you need right now.

The Report: China is a likely winner of the information age supply chain through ecommerce by sticking with its successful strategies

The Report
China is a likely winner of the information age supply chain through ecommerce by sticking with its successful strategy of continued steady growth, coupled with continuing (the appearance of) a transparent society (where currently major decisions are made by top government and business officials behind closed doors) which manipulate and manage economies at large.

In order to be considered a great global leader China should maintain peace and respect for corporate property rights. They need to immediately focus on their serious environmental pollution problems to survive. Politically China needs to resolve the long-standing repression of the Tibetan people; it is too expensive in terms of public relations.

Caption: "The sign that says you're welcome in Shanghai" - Johnny Vulkan http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnnyvulkan/1856903750/

The evidence is clear: China has McDonalds restaurants, and with extensive factories they make Dell and other computers. Bill Gates is eagerly pursuing business with China, and the Chinese government has given Microsoft the right to grant post-doctorial fellowships. Key companies invested in technology are willing to go to court to keep the most important Chinese corporate leaders. Kai-Fu Lee, once a vice-president at Microsoft is now Google's manager in China. Mr. Lee was the person at the center of twin lawsuits (suit and countersuit), a battle over which of the two companies would win him to work for them - he may be the ultimate in 'intellectual property.'

Caption ”On the Shanghai subway, rather than advertising computers for sale, Dell promotes job openings.” Danburg Murmur http://www.flickr.com/photos/danburgmurmur/247299162/

What is at issue are personably identifiable information (PII) and intellectual property rights (patents and copyrights) which are legislated and widely respected in the West.

Personal information is the feeder fish at the bottom of the information age food chain. China does not believe people have a right to privacy because of how communism is structured; this is true of members of their society until that person is wealthy and thus powerful enough to opt out of it, and even then the appearance of opting in must be kept.

Even in the West Intellectual property rights are eroding, which is as it should be, as it is not the same as owning a house, and can be damaging to others on a massive scale such as medical patents for aids, cancer, and other life saving drugs.

The Chinese style of governance comes with a 5 thousand year old administrative history of ordering a society consisting of large numbers of people. Because most people in American and the West do not speak their language nor write it, much of China remains a society closed to the English speaking countries. Due to communication barriers the West does not have the very healthy level of respect for China that it should.

The Chinese written language may give China advantages with online screens unknown in the West with their thousands of dense glyphs, pictographs, and phonetic parts. Currently it is estimated more than 1 billion people use some form of Chinese as their native language.

It can be said that he who owns the resources wins; especially true when supply chains are consistent and reliable. This applies to personally identifiable information in the information age as it relates to sales, because personal information is a building block in the information supply chain. Creating mass marketing campaigns targeting not just individuals but large groups of people is based on creating desire, an example is Steve Jobs and the Apple iPod. This is in addition to knowing what people want, not just what they need.

Meeting the needs of all people in the world is still a goal some people are working towards, while many more others try to capture wealth only for themselves and their investors. From the point of view that in the long run we’re all dead, many investors do not view themselves as breaking any moral,ethical, or other rules, just trying to get ahead, or make a profit on their investment, which they want right now. This uninformed short sighted view is killing people, and eroding the middle class of nations. Any country that has a middle class will miss it when it is gone; most countries are trying to build their middle class.

Business to Business (B2B) resource supply chains control wealth. Only the wealthy have a reason to protect privacy of information, because the poor and the very poor have much more immediate concerns. Hopefully the Chinese will learn as other countries like Malaysia did, that including diverse ethnic types is not just a ethical ideal, it is a strategy for long term success.

This lesson continues to be a painful and costly lesson to the US, which in many ways is exclusionary. Viewing the poor as beggars while subsidizing production with huge remedies is one of the inadequacies that may be overturned as international growth is managed at a global level because it can not be justified as anything other than corrupt practices. By all accounts I read, generosity in international relationships is mythical and with the digital age has only grown worse . Does it matter what you wear while you ask for money or how well educated you are? Apparently it does.

One size fits all privacy will never suit everyone because it has a biological basis and the need increases with education, and its cousin, wealth. Increasingly to have the opt out choice in terms of privacy you need wealth. That too will change subtly because as ecommerce becomes pervasive, some system or sets of systems will always knows that someone is there in some detectable way.

The patent and copyright systems can be damaging to others on a global scale by shutting down creativity, and unfairly favoring their protection even against life, due to medical patents for aids, cancer, and other life saving drugs being so expensive to produce or purchase that people are allowed to die as a result. Calls to action for multinational drug companies to reduce these costs, have changed little or nothing in the developing world. This has been featured so well in the headlines and news stories lately that it can hardly be a surprise to anyone that it is a problem – youth know because Digital Rights Management (DRM) is dead.

Ecommerce is a tool and can be used in many ways. Trading is already a cold transaction and to remove it from human context makes it even more so. In accounting they discuss "arms length transactions" - with ecommerce those arms get pretty long.

So we can expect that the human repercussions of global ecommerce, driven by the integration of B2B procurement systems, could stabilize and destabilize entire populations unless the planning is very good. That means everyone must hold the keys in some way, and be open to transparency at some level which runs counter to special interest groups . Transparency in action does exactly what it need to do, but which, for example, is not a match for the existing Chinese culture.

Real transparency in global governance with a goal to meet the basic needs of all people living sounds like a science fiction plot, but that is what makes it exciting. Transparent governance may only become possible due to radically unexpected causes, like education, religious idealism, or a shared social solution of the young through organizations such as http://www.one.org/. Oddly enough one of the religions which may benefit China is Tibetan Buddhism.

Ecommerce will not cause peace in the world, educated people working with strong idealism in transparent cultures will. Still my conclusion remains that China is a likely winner of the information age supply chain through ecommerce. We should invest in China.

Readings:
Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas Friedman

The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman

The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner