Thoughts on Enterprise Architecture and Project Management

Markets over Technology

Steve Jones attended JavaOne recently and hears arguments about Web 2.0, SaaS, cloud computing, and social networking that ring true to those made circa-2000 by long-cold .com corpses. He writes of the "buzz" at the conference:

"Now in 2008 I got exactly the same feeling I had back then "umm really?", what I saw then and now was some potentially useful technologies and a few great business ideas applying the technologies but lots of crap business ideas based purely on the technology.  Web 2.0, SaaS and Cloud Computing are all things that could be useful and there will be some business models that come out of them but lots of the current ideas are just hype and nonsense."

A wise old sage from my past, an astute businessman as well as a technologist, advised me back then that business success largely stems from embracing markets, not products or technologies looking for a market. A market exists or appears, and firms develop and compete to meet those needs. Developing the product or the technology first, and then hoping that a market shows up on your doorstep begging to buy, is more than risky, it is often no more than dreaming. Too bad a lot of otherwise competent dreamers erroneously use that as a business model.

Steve goes on to say: "I'm not saying that Web 2.0, SaaS and cloud computing aren't decent changes in the way IT works, what I'm saying is that this isn't an over-throw of the old world order and it is hard to see the numbers living up to the hype."

Here's an interesting bit of data that reinforces his comment: craigslist.org, the classified ad/community website, is estimated to take in $150 Million USD per year with 24 (that's right, 24) employees.  That's approximately $6.25 M USD per employee, per year from a website that has been described as "having the visual appeal of a pipe wrench."

Now, lets look at one of the poster children of Web 2.0, whiz-bang interface technology: Facebook. TechCrunch reported early in 2008 that Facebook's 2007 revenue is estimated at $150 M, but it has over 150 employees, and counting (the employees, that is).

Craigslist might have the "visual appeal of a pipewrench," but it is difficult to argue with the above math. What they did successfully at Craigslist was to offer a viable alternative to local newspaper classified advertising. Competing in, and in a way, redefining, an established market - that for short-term locally-based advertising by individuals or small businesses. Not only is that market established, but it is sustainable long-term. Technology by itself, focused on a narrow niche, is always replaced by something else, and nowadays, usually very quickly.

I agree that, as Steve relates, Web 2.0/SaaS/etc. are great technologies, but aren't sustainable markets in and of themselves. The real test of that statement aren't abused metrics such as "eyeballs" and click-thru rates on ads. Rather, as boring as it may appear, it's cash flow and profit based on servicing markets sustainable longer than a few years.

If you're going to be seduced, get seduced by markets, then apply the technology to serve those markets, not the other way around.

Carnival of Enterprise Architecture #5 - April 23, 2007

Welcome to the April 23, 2007 edition of Carnival of Enterprise Architecture.

business process mangement

Pushpa Sathish presents Doing Business in India: 20 Cultural Norms You Need to Know posted at Business Intelligence Lowdown.

Pushpa Sathish presents Top 25 Gadgets and Gizmos Every Manager Needs posted at Project Management Source.

Sagar Satapathy presents Leadership 101: How to Command Respect through Body Language posted at CRM Lowdown.

enterprise architecture

Craig Borysowich presents What's in a Title? LOTS! posted at Tech Architect, saying, "Addressing the challenges of Operationalizing EA and IT Strategy"

Pankaj Arora presents CIO/CTO Office and Enterprise Architecture posted at Enterprise Architecture : Continuous Process.

other

Ashish Gupta presents I want my desktop and my front page. posted at Ashish on technology and social media.

SOA

Pankaj Arora presents SOA Repository posted at Enterprise Architecture : Continuous Process.

system architecture

Pankaj Arora presents Shelf life of Software Project posted at Enterprise Architecture : Continuous Process.

That concludes this edition.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Enterprise Architecture using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: Carnival of Enterprise Architecture, blog carnival.

Blog Worthiness & The Value of Metrics

The day where blogs are treated like real estate has arrived! Click here to find out how much your blog is 'worth' monetarily.

We all knew it had to come to this eventually, as blogging is now so mainstream that connections to money, power, and perhaps fame are inevitably made. However, when I showed it to my old-school banker buddy Teddy, he unequivocally stated that he would not loan anyone a dime with a blog as collateral. Call my man Ted very conservative, but he always has a knack for determining when people are overreaching.

Now to my real point: the site referenced at the beginning of this piece uses the Technorati API and something called the 'link-to-dollar' ratio. As a metric, that makes this one immediately suspect because Technorati, while a great resource, has had some problems of late with computing rankings and other calculations of "authority" - they keep changing all the time, for starters. It is difficult to use such metrics when the definition of them changes too often.

Which can make derived metrics, and the assumptions and conclusions we arrive at from them, equally suspect. Another example is Google Trends. Fine tool (thus far). Great concept. But not ready for prime time yet. A fairly-well-known Web 2.0 pundit (who shall go nameless) used it about a year ago to justify how Web 2.0 was taking over the internet and computing by looking at search trends on various Web 2.0-related acronyms and buzzwords. Issue #1: He was basing his assertions on what people searched for on Google, not what they actually had or did. Issue #2: Google Trends is not yet sophisticated enough to discern the difference between something like SOAP, the acronym, and soap as in detergent and cleaning agents. I ran his Google Trends analysis as he had it and with things like "soap, detergent" and a number of name brands of soaps/detergent. Guess what? Same results as his Web 2.0 version. Why is that not surprising? So, we have a context problem with the data and parameterization. That didn't stop this guy from making some very bold assertions from his 'work.'

In our business, we have things like "pick-your-nines" uptime and other calculations that while useful on the surface, mean little if erroneously computed or derived - including agreement on how such measures are arrived at. Relevance also plays a role here in addition to correctness.

While I've found the monetization calculations of blogs suspect at this point, they do have some value as entertainment, amusement, and for daydreaming purposes. Herewith are the 'monetary' values of this blog, some selections from my blogroll, and others:

   

    This Blog: $20,323.44            Chris Petrilli: $24,839.76        Nick Carr: $989,292.60
    Nick Malik: $4516.32             Sandy Kemsley: $47,421.36     Todd Biske: $80,164.38
    Tim Johnson: $41,775.96      Stowe Boyd: $287,915.40        James McGovern: $9032.64
    David Maister: $18,629.82   Seth Godin: $4.04 million         Techcrunch: $9.63 million

Looks like we have some A-listers with multi-million-dollar blogs, and a couple that blog frequently who couldn't use it as collateral for a used car. Anything wrong with this picture, folks?

Apply such skepticism liberally and consistently until satisfied with the measurement and process, not just the results.

UPDATE: Per Sandy's comment, removing the 'default.aspx' from Nick Malik's URL moves his blog's 'value' from $4516.32 to $23,146.14. Adding the 'ea' Typepad filename to mine lowers my 'value' to $13,548.96 from $20,323.44. Adding a '/' to James McGovern's URL changes his value from $9032.64 to $110,649.84. Looks like the guy propagating this has a lot of work to do....

UPDATE #2: The values shown in the original list above were calculated by giving the tool the URL as it appears in the referenced links. In every case presented above, manipulating the URL as described in the first update changes the value - up or down - depending on the weather, it appears. A pity it won't work on my NCAA basketball tournament brackets...:)

Carnival of Enterprise Architecture #2

I'm pleased to annouce the second Carnival of Enterprise Architecture that I'm hosting through Blog Carnival. If you have an EA- or IT-related post that you'd like featured through the carnival, you can submit the Permalink URL here.

The deadline for submissions is January 13, 2007, and the carnival will be published on January 15, 2007. I look forward to your contributions!

I'm pleased to annouce the second Carnival of Enterprise Architecture that I'm hosting through Blog Carnival. If you have an EA- or IT-related post that you'd like featured through the carnival, you can submit the Permalink URL here.

The deadline for submissions is January 13, 2007, and the carnival will be published on January 15, 2007. I look forward to your contributions!

Still Time Left to Submit Posts to the Carnival of EA

There's still a few days left (until Nov 6th) to contribute posts to the Carnival of Enterprise Architecture #1 that I'm hosting at Blog Carnival. Submission is easy, and BC and I take care of the rest. You can submit your works here with my thanks in advance.

The Cut & Paste Generation

I was directed to Patrick Ross' blog via Nick Carr today and Patrick describes his 11-year-old daughter's methodology in producing a school paper on Jesse Owens, the African-American track-and-field star who won Olympic gold medals in the 1936 Games in front of Adolph Hitler.

A few months ago my 11-year-old daughter was researching a paper on Jesse Owens for social studies. She didn't go to the library, pull down reference books and fill up 3x5 index cards. She went onto Google. She found plenty of materials. But when I asked to read her completed paper, it was nothing but a cut-and-paste job from various web sites on Owens; she even included, quite randomly, part of a press release about some recent celebration in his honor.

My daughter's work ethic may not always be what I'd like it to be, but she's bright and can write more than sufficiently for a 5th grade social studies class. Yet she seemed flat-out baffled when I explained to her that the paper wasn't acceptable. "Is the information wrong?" she asked. "Did I leave something out?" No to both. But she hadn't written her own paper, and more importantly, she hadn't learned anything, as was clear when I began to quiz her about the content in her own "paper." Hard to transfer knowledge in the two seconds it takes to select and move.

His story reminded me of my own childhood in the 1960s, and in particular a paper I wrote about Native Americans in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I spent a great amount of time scouring books and writing passages from them longhand onto lined tablet paper. As I recall, it took me a long time not just for the research, but to craft a 'paper' longhand to turn in for my assignment. And yes, most of my prose was lifted directly from the texts I had researched, and I was quite proud of my supposed diligent and scholarly research and insights on the subject.

I recall being surprised and miffed at the same time when our teacher returned our graded papers to us and I received a 'C' for my work. After class, my teacher very patiently and kindly explained to me that I had to present my findings in my own voice and insights, and not to directly lift (plagiarize is/was a bit much for a 3rd grader to understand, at least back then) most of the work from the texts of others. She also stated that she could have given me a failing mark, but she appreciated the time and diligence I spent researching the topic. I never wrote any paper like that again, either in school, university, or afterwords in my professional career.

What's the difference between what Patrick's daughter did and what I did back in the Sixties? There is only one that I can think of: in order to copy the material longhand, I had to read and comprehend the texts before I wrote the paper. In essence, I still learned something even though I'd plagiarized most of the content. And I learned a much more valuable lesson from my teacher, Mrs. Johnson, in the process. Perhaps that's why I got a 'C' on the assignment rather than an 'F.'

Patrick doesn't tell us how his daughter's assignment eventually turned out, but had I been him, I would have let her turn in that assignment and hope (and perhaps pray) that her teacher would have bounced it back at her with an average or failing mark for precisely the reasons he cites in his post. If he made her do it over after quizzing her, that's fine too, but there is no greater motivation than having the teacher or judge say the things to our children in these cases that we would say. My folks could have intercepted my work and made me do it over, but I learned far more from Mrs. Johnson's 'C" on that paper than I'll wager she even realized at the time.

Of course, this assumes that our educational establishment comes down as hard on work presented in this fashion as it did back then, but somehow, I'm not that optimistic about it, and even less so when Google-ized cut-and-paste children, teenagers, and young adults ascend to positions of responsibility in society.

Such as schoolteachers and college professors.