Category: Business

I’ve been trying in last few months to reduce the level of interruption I get while working. When I really get focused on doing things, I can achieve level a of productivity that sometimes is difficult to get.

Somethings I’ve done include turning off Outlook email notifications, not entering twitter and avoiding as much as possible using Instant Messaging while totally focused. The findings have been great. It turns out not all email needs to be answered immediately (it’s even better if you wait as you can think of a better response). Also twitter can wait, I can answer messages using the same system as with email.

Although I’ve diminish to the most these kind of interruptions, there are some that have been impossible for me to achieve, or even block, and those are software updates.

It’s unbelievable the amount of popups I get asking to install updates for this and updates for that. For example:

1. Windows: Every week there’s something new that needs to be updated. Some security patch or software update or component. The great thing about these updates is that the computer needs to be restarted. There’s no single or small update that doesn’t. Since I start hearing the hard drive screaming and I notice the update icon on the clock bar, I start sweating right way. I start planning to stop what I’m doing, or what  if I get up to take a glass a water and find Windows has already restarted the computer for me (thank you) when I comeback and I’ve lost whatever I was doing.
2. Adobe Reader: Really? Adobe Reader needs that much updating? Last week I had it and went to their site to check what was being updated. Like 70% of the list is made of security updates. Yes, security updates. Is Adobe Reader that hackable?
3. Apple: Yes, I have to generalize here. This little Apple window opens up every time one of their products needs an update. I’ve manage myself to meeting some of the Apple product line up by this update window. I have installed some Apple products I didn’t even know of, and yes, all of them requires me to restart my computer.
4. McAfee antivirus: I know, this needs to be updated to refresh the virus list, but the core software? In the last couple of months I received like 3 major updates to the core and if I don’t restart the computer it starts pooping out messages that I might be at risk. I turned off the whole thing and still keeps popping out messages of risks and restarting. Come on!

In conclusion, keep in mind when developing software to:

• Be gentle when asking to upgrade.
• Try to make it at least once a month (if possible once every quarter).
• Avoid restarting the machine once updates are installed. This is an architecture issue, it’s possible to do it.
• If a restart is needed, just ask me once. I know how to read.

PS. Windows updates have asked me thee times to restart the thing while writing this post. So long, I have to restart.

What software update annoys you the most?

As you’ve already know from my last post, we’ve launched a new site that gives an overview of the Santo Domingo public transportation system. It’s the first time we launch a service like this and we’re excited on watching the results. We’re aiming at least in covering the hosting costs.

The site basically shows a Google Map with the principal Santo Domingo buses routes in the city in combination of the Santo Domingo metro (subway). For now, the subway only has one line (the red line in the map). This forms the official Santo Domingo Transportation system of the city and is a great resource for tourist but also to local users.

For the moment, the only income we can get from the site is the AdSense ads from Google, although we are brainstorming some other ideas.

For marketing, we are using SEO techniques and placing some special keywords that get us in front of search engines. We’ve create a Facebook fan page where users can joined if they liked the service.

It’s really a different service, but we’re excited in trying these new things and we’ll be updating ahead how everything evolves.

Productivity has been key factor of growth of companies now days. When
organizations can’t reduce more costs and you have others rising, in which you
cannot have a direct influence, the only way to increase profits is getting into
productivity.

When people ask me to define productivity, I respond a four word sentence: do
more with less. That’s it. Process more insurance claims without increasing
personnel, find company documents and information more easily without wasting
time, automate processes and relocate employees to perform value added
activities in the business, handle more loans without increasing officials, find
new channels of delivering your product without investing lots of money.

Technology has been playing a huge role in productivity, especially
information technology. Today organizations have a portfolio of software
products available online that can automate almost any part of your company.
Identify your needs, look for manual routines that employees do and think how
you can improve that part of the business and which software can help you
achieve your objectives. A small increase in productivity can yield into high
profit values.

When creating a workflow, one of most common activities in them are tasks.
These tasks must be approved or completed during the execution of the process.
Someone in the organization is in charge of completing the task.

For this to happen, tasks must be assign to users or employees inside the
organization. They must then complete it according to their criteria. For
example, in a bank application for creating a new account, the officer will
generally have a task for checking if the person opening the account is already
a customer of the bank, maybe using their social security number (going one step
further this can be automated using a web service that makes a query to the
backend system and returning true if the person is a customer). After the
officer has completed the check, then he can complete the task.

Assigning a task to a person can be made directly or indirectly. In
Procx, you can do it
any way you want. Directly means assigning a task to an employee, a user. For
example, the task described in the previous example can be assign to Jack, an
officer in our Timbuktu branch. You can even get the user from a variable (for
example a user selected in a list on a form). The disadvantage of using this way
is that if Jack is transferred to the Honolulu branch, then you must edit the
process and change the assignment to the new user.

Assigning a task indirectly means not attaching a task to a user, but instead
to a role. A role belongs to an organizational chart and is occupied by a user.
In the previous example, instead of assigning the task to Jack, you can assign
it to the loan officer located in the organizational chart of the Timbuktu
branch. When Jack gets the sad notice that he’s been transferred to Honolulu,
then the only thing to be done is change the user assigned to the loan officer
role in the organizational chart. No other changes are needed in the process and
everything continues to run smoothly.

This is why assigning tasks to roles is the preferred practice when building
workflows generally and one that is totally supported in Procx.

Organizations are composed of processes. Not only organizations, but anything
that surround us, that has some type of function, can be described as a series
of steps followed to achieve some desired goal. For me, I think the perfect
machine, with perfect processes, is the human body. Every function is delimited,
has a series of steps, and evolution has made of these processes an art, making
them perfect. Every single one of them.

The same thing happens in our businesses. There’s a workflow to be followed
for almost any function. The only difference, with our bodies for example, is
that they are not perfect. In the majority of businesses we don’t event know the
steps of processes because they are not documented, making it more difficult to
correct errors.

When you want to make processes in an organization better, you need to
correct errors, eliminate steps, maybe automate others, etc. But there’s always
some tweaking to do until you reach an acceptable level of performance. That’s
why business process management is an every day task. It’s not a project that
finished today.

From

this article: “Both BPM and SOA could be thought of as a way of thinking
about how the business and governance model should be designed and a way of
delivering the technology and applications to support that design,” Miers says.
“Both concepts involve a journey, not a destination. At their core, both employ
an iterative approach to business performance improvement.”

New processes appear every day. They come from new campaigns, new product or
services offering and also from changing directions of companies. Also actual
workflows change due to market needs.
BPM and workflow
solutions will give the flexibility businesses needs for adjusting and
creating these processes allowing them to face competition and increase their
performance in an ongoing basis.