What are you Waiting for, it’s Time to Get an iPad, or...um...a tablet...

Hopefully, you haven’t been waiting around, you already have an iPad and you also understand why everyone else should have one, but there are some who were scared away by the naysayers calling it an overgrown iPod Touch, that they couldn’t work on it, that it wasn’t a real computer, or that it’s just a gimmick, so they haven’t come back yet. They’re missing out!

*Disclaimer – I use iPad like I use the word Kleenex, meaning I don’t say, “Can you hand me a Puffs or tissue?” So go ahead and substitute the word tablet for iPad if you like.

**Disclaimer 2 – I’ve been using an iPad for over a year, I’m on my second iPhone, and I’ve had iPods since the early 2000’s. It’s safe to say that I’ve got a mild case of Apple Fanboy, and therefore highly recommend an iPad over other tablets. More specifically, I would wait until the next iPad is released...maybe March, and get that.

The iPad is definitely not a gimmick. It has been around for almost 2 years, shows no sign of slowing down, and everyone else out there is trying to get into the market. Looking at the graph below shows how the iPad might even be a possible cause for decreasing computing market shares among the PC companies.

Before I had an iPad, I had a netbook. After the initial new gadget coolness wore off, so did the frequency with which I turned it on. The netbook became exactly what it is, a smaller, worse performing laptop. Sure, it was more portable and easier to maneuver on the train, but it had the same software and operating system as my laptop and I almost always wished that I just had my laptop, instead. I know that the iPad isn’t going to replace my laptop, well, not yet, anyway, so I use it to complement my laptop and I’ll reach for either for different things. Accept that fact, that the iPad is not a laptop replacement, and you’ll be very happy with it. To overly simplify, I reach for my laptop for work or when I’ll be doing a lot of typing, and I grab my iPad for just about everything else. I use my iPad multiple times a day, still.

I’m also always looking for ways to incorporate the iPad into my work more often, which I expect to be easier to do in the coming months and years as more and more businesses continue or start to enable their workforces to go mobile and to better use these tools at work. Gartner’s Top Predictions for 2012 and Beyond specifically predicts two items that would make working with an iPad a reality, and a good one at that:

1) By 2016, at least 50 percent of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client
2) By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1

If you’re on the fence about whether to splurge on a new iPad, or have never been convinced that owning one will help you out at all, think about how far it has come in just under two years and how much further it could go in the next 2!

UPDATE: Just saw these and thought they add more fuel to the fire: Apple to sell at least 48 million iPads this year - analyst and Apple's iOS, BlackBerry tops among Business Users

Have a Question? Make a Statement! - A Project Management (General Life, too!) Tip

If you have ever worked on a project, or just worked at all, there’s no doubt that at some point you’ve asked a question and haven’t received an answer. You’re stuck waiting for a decision to be made so you know how to proceed. This can be a real issue when managing a project and various teams, or people, get blocked from moving forward by not having an answer or key decision made. Is your project on schedule? We’ll see...

So what do you do when you asked the question or requested an approval and you still don’t have the answer or approval? If you’re like most people, you probably ask again, right? OK, but now what do you do if you still don’t get a response to your email, voicemail, or conversation? Maybe resend with “ACTION NEEDED” in the subject or you put a disclaimer in the message along the lines of, “if I don’t hear back from you by some date/time, I’ll assume that you are fine with this proposal/change/decision/etc.”?

Even if you have the key stakeholder/s in a meeting and ask the question, often times the answer isn’t an answer at all, it’s a delay or a response that says we need to talk about it some more at a later time or with some different people. Then you leave the meeting and you’re still stuck. What do you do then? You repeat the above steps in the second paragraph!

Well, at that point, you just can’t wait anymore! You need an answer, so I have a better idea. Unfortunately, it involves having to get another meeting with the necessary decision makers, but if they’ve been dancing around your questions or reluctant to make decisions, it just has to be done. When you have that meeting, try this little trick and turn your questions into statements:

• “Do you want to have donuts at the Friday team meeting and is it in the budget?” becomes “We’re serving donuts at the Friday breakfast meeting.”
• "Do you like the navigation menu on the left or on the top?" No, now it’s, “The navigation menu is on top.”
• “What’s your favorite color?” changes into “The best color in the world is orange.”

Obviously, I’ve cartooned the examples, but what it does is provoke a reaction. It’s very difficult for a person to sit there, especially a senior manager or key decision maker, and not voice their disagreement with a statement you make at that point. “We’re going to push back the release date 4 weeks so that we can work on so and so.” If the project sponsor isn’t ok with that statement, they’re going to say so right then.

This little tip works well at home, too. Instead of saying, “Hey Jean, want to go to the Sox game on 8/18?” and getting an answer like, “Yeah, maybe” or “We’ll see”, I’ll say, “Jean, I’m buying tickets for us to the Sox game on 8/18.” Without fail, I’ll know whether or not I’m going to the Sox game right then!

RBAC – Quick Thoughts from some Time in the Trenches

I’ve been working on a Role Based Access Control implementation at a large global bank for the past couple of years. In that time, I’ve experienced, first hand, the motivations for moving to a RBAC system, the pain involved, and have seen the benefits that are provided.

The biggest reasons for implementing RBAC were to improve access certifications/reviews and to reduce the amount of time that employees spent on those reviews and in requesting specific systems and applications access. The thought being that if we could “simplify” user access into predefined functional roles around the access needed to perform a particular job, we could then simplify the request for all that access from many requests down to one request. In addition, a person certifying access wouldn’t necessarily need to know what every access entitlement needed to perform the job was, they would just need to know that the role correlated with the job and certify that the user is in the correct role. The responsibility for ensuring that the proper access was contained within the role was given to the new concept of role owners.

On the surface, the reasons for wanting RBAC seem pretty logical and straight forward. Let’s reduce time “wasted” outside of performing our real jobs. Let’s make it easier for the managers tasked with certifying their employees’ access. Nobody is going to argue that those are bad ideas. Go ahead and implement RBAC! However, nothing worthwhile comes easy…or so I’ve been told.

The difficulty in implementation, to get those benefits, came in a few ways, none of which were insurmountable, but I just think they’re worth pointing out. You know, full disclosure and all. So, first, in order to simplify thousands of entitlements, we needed to catalog them and understand them. To do that, we had to talk with people (some more cooperative than others) across many teams and business units to get that information. Once we had all of that entitlement information collected and aggregated in our role management software, we needed to build efficient, purposeful roles that applied to each of the specific job functions throughout the organization. That required collaboration with most managers to identify groups of people performing similar jobs, where they would more or less need the same access to perform their day to day jobs. The hardest thing about this step was the time involved and getting the cooperation from the many business users needed to manage the roles. We required some back and forth communication, had to run reports on the many groups of people to identify all of their current access, and then had to build the foundation of the role that would apply to that group. At that point, it was up to the role owner to whittle the role down from the group’s total collection of access to what was determined to be required to perform the job. Finally, we had the makings of a role that we could build within the role management tool and assign to users.

What does any of this mean? Ultimately, I think that using RBAC is still a very good idea, it really does simplify things once all the constructs are in place. Future enhancements involve having HR systems changes automatically trigger role assignments and removals for employees, eliminating any time spent by employees requesting access. Just don’t be taken by surprise when you realize how many layers you have to peel back to get things built right, and how much time that takes. I’ve thought about it a lot and as far as I can see it, the only way to speed things up would have been to do it worse or add more people to the team. Neither of those were options we were willing to, or could, take!

Quick Social Media Marketing for your Business

Even if you’ve been living under an isolated rock in Siberia, you’re probably familiar with Facebook and Twitter. Besides seeing pictures of friends and family, finding out that Joe just had dinner, and that Mary is going to see a movie, did you ever think about the broad reach and marketing potential of these social media sites? Have you thought about how you could use that power to promote yourself and your business, make new contacts, and create new business relationships?

Building a professional online presence is essential in today’s business world. It gives prospective clients, employers, employees, etc. a controlled view of you and your business. It also provides valuable credibility. How do you view a business without a website, or just a lousy, annoying one? Additionally, your professional presence shouldn’t be limited to just LinkedIn, you need to show up on Facebook, Twitter, and it wouldn’t hurt to blog, either. Why? Because that’s where 500 million users are spending their time, and that’s how you can generate new leads and new business from sources you never could have reached as easily, before.

I’m not going to suggest what content you should be creating and promoting because that will vary wildly depending on your line of business and the size of your company, but keeping your content updated and fresh is very important. The more links and updates that you have going to your website, the better it looks to Google and other search engines. That’s search engine optimization. Why does that matter? Because if your website ends up on the first page of search results, then you’re more likely to get a call from an interested, potential customer.

This may sound like a big headache to coordinate the content and updates to multiple sites, then aggregate all of those updates back for inclusion onto your business website. However, the beauty of it is that with a little bit of coding on your website, and the use of a free cloud based mashup utility like Yahoo Pipes to configure your content feeds, the whole process can be automated and hands free. Write a new blog, boom, it’s not only on blogger, or another free blog site, but it’s also on your company site automatically. Relevant posting to Facebook or Twitter, tag it and it can also be automatically fed to your website.

Once you get your social media marketing framework setup, all that’s left to do is to get your employees and co-workers actively engaged in creating some content. Schedule that production and you’ll have a constant stream of fresh ideas and updates hitting your website, then it will come back on the first page of a search in no time!

Don't Put a Dumb App on a Smartphone

Smartphones, iPhones, Droids, Blackberries, apps, and app stores... They’re all the rage right now and everyone is jumping onboard. That’s great news for new product development, but only if it’s done with the right mindset and not just for the sake of having something for mobile.

First and foremost, a mobile app has to be useful, fast, and easy. Additionally, even more so than standard software, it needs to be especially observant to the situation in which it is most likely to be used, as well. What value can the mobile app add to that particular situation?

Generally, a user opens a mobile app when they don’t have access to a computer, or the laptop is powered off in their backpack as they’re walking through the city, riding the train, etc. They want to find out where something is, make a reservation for the restaurant they just decided to go to across town, pay a bill they just remembered is due and forgot to take care of before they left, record a show at home on their DVR a friend just suggested, find out what time a place is open until, and so on. You get the idea. These are all things that are very relevant now, or in the immediate future, to the user.

In most cases, a mobile app has to be more than a one trick pony. Remember, the user has to have had a reason to already have the app installed. If they just want to know what time the restaurant is open until, they aren’t going to have, or want, a mobile app for that restaurant. The user will just go to their mobile web browser and find out, or better yet, go to an app like Urbanspoon or Yelp!. However, if the mobile app for that restaurant also allows mobile ordering ahead, reservations, menus, nearest location, and so forth, it might be worth having the app installed, i.e the Chipotle app...if you like burritos.

A mobile app needs to be quick, easy, and intuitive. Mostly, because I might be using it when I’m at a red light, probably shouldn’t be using it then, but let’s be real, it happens. Now is the time for fantasy football and I was stuck having to run an errand when I realized that one of my drafts was about to start. Luckily, ESPN had built a mobile draft app into their mobile website, even one without Flash for us iPhone folks. Granted, it didn’t provide all the info the regular draft center did, but it was quick and intuitive to use. I didn’t miss a pick, and was still able to mess up my draft perfectly!

How do you know what might be the most useful or of greatest interest to your users? If you already have a website up, monitor traffic to the various features and functions to see which are the most popular? Think about those functions from a mobile perspective, somewhat described earlier, to see if they make sense that way. If so, start to formulate a mobile app based around those features.

Get into the mobile, on the go, mindset when creating your next mobile app and you’ll add more value to your user’s situation right there, right then, on their smartphone!

The Mobile Apps You Should be Creating Now

Run a couple of quick Google searches and you’ll see that the incredibly fast pace of mobile app development now provides us with over 200,000 apps in the iTunes store and over 100,000 Android Apps. That’s a lot of apps to sort through, learn about, and to decide whether or not you want to buy, or invest any of your time in. Is there an app for that??? How are you going to create a mobile app that provides value to your user? How are you going to build a mobile app that can generate positive buzz in the blogosphere?

Here are some thoughts about the two most important things to keep in mind when you’re dreaming up your next app, and hopefully, these ideas will help you on your way to answering the questions above.

The Device:

It seems so obvious, but you need to remember the hardware that your app will be running on and realize the things it can and can’t do. There are a ton of apps out there that try to mimic desktop applications, which I think is the wrong approach most of the time. Do you really want to run Excel on your phone? You should be looking at ways to take advantage of all the things a mobile device can do differently than your traditional computer and incorporate those into your app.

How can you use the camera/s or video camera? The new Chase iPhone banking app that lets you take a picture of a check that you want to deposit, transmits that photo to Chase, and then the check is deposited into your account is awesome. That’s the type of innovation and usefulness that separates mobile apps. More importantly, that’s the type of mobile app that seriously has me thinking that I’ll leave Citibank for Chase... On a side note, this is why your business needs to pay attention to mobile product offerings, because the rest of the banks out there better get to work on similar functionality fast! What could be done with the GPS or the compass? How about the accelerometers? Does the device have a radio tuner?

One of my favorite mobile apps is iHandy Level which uses the accelerometers, once calibrated, to act as a level. It might not be the best level, but I know where to find it whenever I’m hanging a picture!

The Audience:

This can be thought of in two ways. First, you should have a target audience, be it a certain demographic, or users of specific types of products/services, etc. That’s just a sound idea in any product development cycle. However, the other way to view your audience is as fleeting, in that they’re generally not going to be using your app for long periods of time on a mobile device. You need to stay focused on providing information, usefulness, or entertainment in quick chunks. Mobile apps are the Sportscenter soundbytes of applications, booyah! Keep it quick, keep it simple, and keep it fun and/or useful. Remember to plan out app entry and exits, as they could be abrupt when the user gets a phone call, for instance. If they were in the middle of something with your app, ideally it brings them back to the same place when they’re done with the call, or if it’s a sensitive/secure app, financial for example, it needs to log the user out if it can recognize the call has ended and the user hasn’t resumed their spot in your app.

Mobile apps are an exciting opportunity to reach people in different and more creative ways. Avoid thinking about them as any other software development project and you might have the next hit featured in an iPhone television ad!

RBAC – Bringing it to the People; Some Thoughts on Creating their Roles

Obviously, Role Based Access Control is all about the roles that people will be assigned to for their system and application access, but there’s so much more involved in a successful RBAC implementation. Often times it seems like we start to lose sight of the main ingredient!

You’ve got a role management system purchased or custom developed. The application environments are up and available. The software is loaded and operational. You’re receiving access data feeds from all of the system and application teams within your enterprise, or you have built automated connectors to source systems to retrieve that data on your own (ideal situation). The role management solution is synched up with the HR system for all of your identity information. Provisioning data for every access entitlement is stored and accessible by your provisioning engine. It’s time to fuel up with the main reason for all of this effort and create the roles that people are going to be referencing and using in the business, so that they have the appropriate access they need to do their jobs.

Roles, Roles, Roles...

As much as I’d like to say there is one perfect way to create the functional, or business, roles that the users will be assigned to, I can’t. What I’ve learned is that you have to inspect and adapt (subtle Agile reference…) to the business you’re working with to include as many people in the most efficient roles as possible. Some organizations are already going to have HR roles assigned to people that may or may not translate accordingly into the type of functional roles we want to base access around. Furthermore, employees might be in specific departments or divisions which would seem like good candidates to build roles around, but again, it’s not always meant to be when it comes to access. What am I getting at? Those roles were created for reasons other than giving people the access they need to do their jobs, so you have to approach the creation of functional roles for RBAC as a unique, focused activity.

Top Down Approach - The Overhaul:

If your company is like most, you won’t be able to hitch your functional roles to pre-existing corporate roles; you’ll need to create them on your own. The job title can be a good place to start, however, access for people with the same job title can vary wildly from department to department, be mindful of that. Some businesses will take a top down approach and decide that there are really x number of job roles being performed, so we’re going to categorize the people and their access into those roles. This is what I’ll call the overhaul method. The pros with this tactic are that it’s faster and easier to implement since you’ll get your role definitions from one person or committee. Another positive is that most likely the number of roles created will be less than with other approaches, so role management will be simplified. The cons with this are that the roles are going to be more generalized for a larger population, meaning that more people are more likely to have more access than they require. Without paying special attention to that, you could be increasing risk instead of decreasing it!

Bottom Up Approach:

Other organizations won’t be able to even begin thinking about doing it that way because their job roles are so differentiated. They will need to follow more of a bottom up approach, where you’ll pick small groups of individuals who are designated as requiring similar access for their jobs and then analyze the access those people already have to form roles. This step will need to be repeated many times as you work your way through the organization. The plus side of this approach is that the roles you create will be specifically tailored to the people assigned to them. The negative side of this approach is that it’s more time consuming and requires many points of contact as you move through the business. You’re also likely to create separate roles for different subsets of employees that have very similar access. However, you won’t know it until you get into role management lifecycles and role comparisons where you’ll want to try and combine those roles if possible.

To sum it up quickly, there isn’t a silver bullet approach that will magically create your perfect roles fast and easy, you’ll need to explore the business functions within your organization to determine what type of approach is needed, top down or bottom up within your functional roles. The good news is that there’s always plenty of time to polish the roles over time and with user feedback!