I am now pushing on with this series and have just about got to the magic 50 so we are nearly there.
The next 6 things are numbers 37-42 and again they are not necessarily in any order of importance. As always please feedback things that I have missed or just let me know your thoughts.

37. Succession planning
No matter how good you are at looking after your staff people will leave and it is important that you think about who would take over. Sometimes you just have to go external to bring in the right experience but that shouldn’t be the plan. You should plan to have somebody moving towards the ability to take over a position if the current incumbent leaves. Yes there is a danger that you train people and then they leave because the position isn’t available when they feel ready for the next career move but that is better than having no people coming up within the organisation.

38. Production environment
Keep it safe. Build the moat! Make sure your production environment is separated from the test environment and protect it well with technology and process. Also protect it from attack both deliberate and accidental.

39. Testing
Test, test and test again. Testing is the key to a successful implementation. There is a whole career to be made in testing and it is a vast subject with tiers of testing types from ‘unit’ to full ‘integration’ testing and also lots of software to automate the process. Some people will see it as overkill but ignore them and insist on a test plan that is rigorously followed. It will pay off.

40. Innovate
Keep ahead of the game (and the competition). Encourage new ideas from the business and from IT. Create an Ideas bank so it is easy for people to define their thoughts. Link it from the Intranet. Develop a new product development process to make sure that ideas get reviewed and there is feedback to the contributor. Also it is important to identify the need and the value of the idea. Try to get some Research and Development funds in the budget.

41.Push for Data Management
Data is the lifeblood of many organisations but it is not often looked after very well.
Define the data owners and push for the physical stewardship of data to ensure its coherence, availability and accuracy.
Give them the tools to audit and manage the data. Get them involved in system change, data migration, system modifications and the data impact of those events. Build the validation at the gateways and try to keep the rubbish out!

42. Organisational awareness
This is a bit more sophisticated than item 17 where we talked about the customer touch points. That was more specific to the IT service.
Organisational awareness is a bit fluffier but is essential to the well being of what is achieved in IT.
This is about understanding the culture of the organisation so you can swim with the tide. It is about being politically aware of who are the real decision makers and influencers; it is about networking with those people. Create yourself a stakeholder map of the business and use it to your advantage. You and your organisation will be stronger for it.

After the success in substantially accelerating the project’s build time in Visual C++, I tried the same method on the Linux build using gcc. Unfortunately using the same header file that I used with Visual Studio and the same ‘force include’ technique as suggested by Paolo Bonzini, it appears that the build is actually slower rather than faster. Digging through the GCC documentation so far hasn’t yielded any explanations and I’m still a bit perplexed by the result. Same speed or faster I would have expected but slower?

Anyway, I’ll keep digging a bit more tomorrow and hopefully will find out what the problem is…

Last year I attended the UKOUG 2007 which was a good opportunity to catch up on what’s happening in the Oracle World. At the Applications Keynote presentation given by Jesper Andersen I first heard about Oracle Mix, one of the initiatives Oracle has undertaken to bring Enterprises into the Web 2.0 space, a concept now dubbed Enterprise 2.0

Oracle Mix was built by Oracle AppsLab in collaboration with ThoughtWorks. I see it as one of Oracle’s first attempts at a FaceBook or MySpace equivalent for its customers, partners, developers and employees. The Oracle Mix strapline is Our Business is all about you, our Customers. Its purpose is stated as giving everyone a voice to help shape the future of Oracle together. Here’s what Oracle says you can do with Mix: -

Share Ideas.

Let us know how we can improve our products or how we do business. See an idea you like, vote on it or add your comments.

Join Groups.

Get together with others around products, industries, or more. Can’t find a group you like? Start one!

Network.

Connect with other customers and get to know Oracle experts in your product area or industry.

Get Answers.

Got a tough question, ask it. Feeling bright? Help someone and answer a question.

Share and Learn.

Learn about best practices for your product and check out new ideas being discussed by the community. Share your experiences with others through posting ideas or answering questions.

I have to say I like the way Oracle is starting to embrace Web 2.0. When I first started blogging several years ago, there were very few Oracle Bloggers around and the community was fairly fragmented and disorganised. Now it seems that with all of the collaboration and social networking tools around I’m able to interact more effectively with my Oracle peers. Apart from Oracle building effective web applications for the Oracle Community they’re also demonstrating Enterprise 2.0 leadership by building services into their applications that have Web 2.0 features and characteristics. I look forward to seeing how the community and applications grow and metamorphasise in the future.

enterprise2.0,

mix,

oracle,

web2.0,

… you should buy them the fastest machines available.

That’s actually not only my opinion, but were the exact words that my Comp Sci prof at university said, well, let’s just say it was a long time back. It’s strange how this statement holds, despite the fact that back then we were proud of an Intel 386/25 and that was considered to be a fast machine. But as usual, the size of the systems we build have grown faster the power of the hardware, especially if you’re not buying new machines every five minutes. Add to that the usual necessities like virus scanners, spyware scanners and god-knows-what scanners that have to be installed on your average corporate Windows machine these days.

And the second best way? Learn how to touch type. No, I’m not kidding – I didn’t believe that either until a change of my circumstances dicated that I needed to use a Kinesis Ergo keyboard and was forced to learn how to type properly. Believe me, it does make a massive difference.