Federal IT dashboard : a fantastic IT portfolio template.

If you are looking for good portfolio management solutions for your IT projects, I highly recommend you the IT Dashboard website.

Building an  IT projects portfolio is very important for CIOs  in order to :

•  list potential projects, decide which projects to launch
• follow on going projects assing progress and risks
• have a good communication tool.

As stated on the welcome page :

The IT Dashboard is a website enabling federal agencies, industry, the general public and other stakeholders to view details of federal information technology investments.
The purpose of the Dashboard is to provide information on the effectiveness of government IT programs and to support decisions regarding the investment and management of resources. The Dashboard is now being used by the Administration and Congress to make budget and policy decisions.

 

This site presents all US federal IT projects.

The main points I like are :

Transparency

All projects are presented.

The montlhy report by the project manager with the current status and risk analysis is available.

3 simple kpis

Each project is managed using only 3 kpis :

• project cost
• project schedule
• risk assessement by project manager

This set of kpi is simple and easy to understand. A FAQ gives all the definitions.

Nice visual representation

The green/orange/red color code helps to have a very good immediate view

Simple graphs are porposed.

The source code is available

Finally, the source-code of the site is available for free.

I use it as a template since 2 years, based on a sharepoint framework. If you’re interested in sharing, let me know.

Go to cloud : culture change for an IT team

Moving from legacy, on-premise IT systems to cloud based solutions (SaaS or IaaS) involves a cultural change for IT team members.
IT guys need to switch their mind, accept to “loose control” on their hardware.
In order to illustrate it to my own team I’ve written few slides with 3 examples.
These examples are of course carricatures, but the idea is there …

Photo :  Kevin Dooley via Compfight

Cassandra implementation at NetFlix

Cassandra is one on the top NoSQL database.

Cassandra is used for example by twitter, eBay, Netflix.

This presentation  from a Adrian Cockcroft is available on slideshare.

It’s very clear, concrete and pragmatic about Netflix move from inhouse Oracle DB to cloud hosted (at amazon) Cassandra DB.

Infrastructure capacity planning in the cloud…

This slide is from a  presentation by Adrian Cockcroft “Replacing Datacenter Oracle with Global Apache Cassandra on AWS.“.

I love it, I even printed it and put it on the wall in my office !

“All is about passion” – Scott Dunlap (ultra runner)

Scott Dunlap is an ultra runner.
His passion,  his life is about running races longer than a marathon (up to 100 miles,  160 kilometers).
Scott gave a speech at Le Web last week.
The topic was about “internet of things”.
Scott uses devices to monitor his performances : speed,  elevation, calories burnt,…

Running very long discuss is crasy.
It’s a lot of pain.

So why do this ?

Scott answer is very simple : “all is about passion”. I like this statement.
Your content here.One nice device he also uses is a kind of “mood traker”.
Every 30 minutes, Scott press a button to rank his mindset, his mood on a scale from – 4 to +4, i.ie from “please kill me now” to “Euphoric”.
The result is very interesting and is repeatable from race to race : Scott mood go up and down 3 times,  with higher and higher intensity.

The 3 “bad mood” states are called “The wall”, “the pit” and “the Abyss”.

Scott explains that he like running because these difficults phases are followed by good ones ! And especially the last one the Euphoria state.

A very inspiring video.

4 reasons to use mind42 for mind mapping

Today I’ve found a very nice mind mapping application that I’d like to share it with you.

I’m a big fan of mindmapping, I use it quite systematically when I’m brainstorming, thinking, …

Today I’ve given a new try to mind42, and I have to say that I’m very happy of what I saw.

The team did a great work and the application is now very good.

What I prefer is :

it’s simple

In a simple browser, the application is very intuitive, no need to read long tutorial, …

it’s bug free

I did not try it extensively, but for basic usage, in a chrome browser, I did not meet any bug !

it allows me to collaborate with others !

This is for me a must have for mindmap application. Mindmapping is for brainstorming, puting your ideas on paper to sutrcure them but also to share them.

The best is to be able to collaborate on the same piece.

Today, I still miss the wonderful mindmap plugin in google wave !

It seems that mind42 is very good for collaboration : 2 or more people can collaborate real-time on the same document. That’s great !

it’s free !

photo : blmiers2 via Compfight

GTD : Why I switched from Nirvana to Wunderlist ?

I’ve been using Nirvana for a long time as my only tool to support my GTD system.

I like it because it’s nicely done, coherent with GTD, efficient.

By the way 2 weeks ago I’ve switched to Wunderlist.

Why ?

For ONE  reason : MOBILITY.

Wunderlist has an ipad and an  android appplications.

These applications are nicely done and allow me to be 100% sure to access my actions even if I’m not connected to a good network (which is quite often finally).

If I want to have an efficient system it must be accessible on my ipad and or my galaxy tab, everyday, in all locations, online and offline.

For this, a dedicated application is a must.

photo :  Hartwig HKD via Compfight

Only 2 companies are making profit selling phones !

You should read the presentation “The State of the Internet“ from “Business Insider” .

You’ll find in a lot of numbers about internet evolution in last years (audience, advertisement, mobile, …)

For example, today, 95% of mobile profit are going to 2 companies : Apple and Samsung !

Except HTC, all others are losing money.

(source : kelblog)

What is the link between Neil Armstrong and a Google search ?

Power of less : The art of setting limits

The power of less is a book by Leo Babauta. This book is full of good stuff.

Chapter 2 is about “The art of setting limits”.

Chapter  main idea :

Setting limits is mandatory and is a iterative process

If you just take all comes to you, you’ll not be able to achieve it. you’ll have to many actions to do, to many phone call to give, and so on…

If you live without limits, it weaknens you in many ways, it dilutes your power and effectivness.

You can set limits on emails, daily tasks, the amount of time spent on the phone, the number of projects you have on your plate, …

To set the limits, you have to find the good number of items that fit to you.

For this you’ll have to analyse your habit and define a limit, test it for a week, adjust, and adjust again.

Here’s a quote from the book :

1. Analyze your current usage levels (how many times do you do something a day ?) and pick a lower limit based on what you think would be ideal
2. Test it out for about a week, and then analyze whether that’s working for you.
3. If it doesn’t work, adjust to a new level you think might work better, and test that out for about a week.
4. Continue to adjust until you find the right level and until you make it a habit.

 

Leo Babauta

If you want to read the full story, you can buy the paper or kindle version of the book here : Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential