business process

I often think both IT and managers don't reevaluate their business processes enough. The TechRepublic has a great article in reminding us that this economy presents a great opportunity to implement 10 best practices for business process measurement.

Lean times often present opportunities for analyzing, fine-tuning, and improving business processes. In fact, the economic survival of some organizations may depend on such improvements. Here are some pointers to help you build a successful process measurement program.

I particulary like #9: Don't forget about IT metrics.

You know you're getting old when...

...younger people discover the benefits of paper.

The printed pages were better then just looking at the digital versions, since we could code on our laptops while looking at the printouts, compare different pages, sit around pages and discuss and have all this goodness at our fingertips.

My respects to Drupal developer Gábor Hojtsy for his good reminder on the benefits of non-technology in the things that we do.  I'm hoping this post leads to some Friday fun here in the comments and also on Twitter.

You know you're getting old when...

John Newton, Alfresco, posted a well written article on the business changes Web 2.0 will continue to the enterprise.  I especially not liked what he had to say about the strength of social publishing tools for knowledge sharing within a company, but also Web 2.0's strength to blend required knowledge available both inside and outside the organization.

These web sites will set further expectations on the internal systems you use and a requirement to integrate internal information with these external sources of information. Web 2.0 has an answer for this as well with an integration technique known as "mash up", the ability mix information from multiple sources using the web browser itself as the point of integration. These external sources of information also provide something that our internal information systems could never provide, a critical mass of opinion utilizing the Wisdom of the Crowds. We will ultimately need to combine external opinion with our internal opinion to get more accurate predictive decision making with our own unique insights inside the enterprise.

When I read what John has written, I can't help but think of our previous discussions on the strength of weak ties.  Companies that are willing to seek out knowledge internally and externally of their control boundaries are likely to have a greater business advantage over those companies that prevent their workers from taking the discussion beyond the office walls.  What a boring life that would be to only be able to talk to colleagues that wear only the same company logo you are wearing?  Companies need to accept the changes that are about to take place as their youngest workers will likely want and need to collaborate with more than just their fellow employees.  The world via social publishing offers their workers more than what most single companies can provide alone.