In For Bloomberg, Waste Mars Another Digital Project (September 23, 2011) David M. Halbfinger looks back on the New York City Automated Personnel System (NYCAPS) project started a decade or more ago, adding up the costs incurred so far, describing the individual systems delivered to date, and assessing the benefits accrued from deployment. In March 2000, PeopleSoft had been selected as the platform upon which the new system would be built.

Nine years later, his administration has already spent $363 million — and the work is far from done.

The administration has pressed ahead despite repeated warnings that the project is deeply troubled, according to a review of thousands of pages of city records, as well as dozens of interviews with officials and private contractors.

The article mentions that reviews from internal monitors were not favorable. In May 19, 2005 the New York City Comptroller’s office completed a public audit with the long title of: Audit Report On The Development And Implementation Of The City Automated Personnel System By The Department Of Citywide Administrative Services. The first sentence in the “Audit Findings and Conclusions” section reads: ”Despite spending more than $50 million on its development and nearing its estimated completion date, NYCAPS is not complete.”

There is a certain wisdom to be gleaned from dueling. America’s history is filled with many famous duels, a slow stepping off of paces, usually ten but sometimes more and sometimes less, an eventual turning to face the other’s weapon, and a finale leaving one or the other, or both, in let us say, a distressed state. To be sure this duel between Larry Page, Google CEO, and Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, will not end on such a deadly note, being that it is a judge ordered face-to-face mediation concerning JAVA usage on the remote Android platform, not a personal affront to anyone’s honor, honesty, or ancestors.

Personal dueling was outlawed long ago but there is still an important lesson that can be learned from this antiquated rite; even when events are brought to a head wiser heads can prevail. Three of the four presidents carved into Mount Rushmore were challenged to duels and each found a sensible path to resolution, without dishonor, without capitulating, and without the shedding a drop of blood.

In August of 1754 George Washington was dropped to his knees by a blow from William Payne, a clash covered at the time by the Alexandria Gazette:

”When Washington, in command of the Virginia Rangers was waiting at Alexandria the arrival of Braddock’s forces, an exciting election contest occurred between Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Payne for the House of Hurgesses. Washington supported Fairfax with much zeal: and, high words passing between him and Payne in the market square, Payne struck Washington a blow which brought him to the earth. The troops rushed from the barracks, and would have made short work of Payne, had not Washington pacified them, assuring them that he knew the proper course to take in the premises. Duels were not then under the ban of public opinion. All supposed that a fight was imminent. Next morning, however, Washington sent for Payne, and when the latter entered the room he saw on the table, not pistols, but a decanter of wine and two glasses. ‘Mr. Payne,’ said Washington, ‘to err is human. I was wrong yesterday, but if you have had sufficient satisfaction, let us be friends’. Weems relates that from that day Washington was Payne’s idea of true manhood.”

In September of 1842 Abraham Lincoln was challenged to duel by James Shields, the State Auditor of Illinois. Being the challenged party Lincoln was given the choice of location and weapons.

“Lincoln stated that the weapons he wished to use would be ‘Cavalry Broadswords of the largest size’. He figured that he could easily disarm Shields using the swords, whereas pistols would most likely lead to one of their deaths, if not both. He also added that he wanted the duel to be carried out in a pit 10 feet wide by 12 feet deep with a large wooden plank dividing the square in which no man was allowed to step foot over.”

When Shields saw the much taller Lincoln reaching high to chop the branches a certain willingness to negotiate arose and the dispute was settled amicably.

In September of 1885 Theodore Roosevelt received a note from the Marquis de Mores – a staunch competitor in the development of the Dakota territories – with the following last sentence.

”…If you are my enemy I want to know it. I am always on hand as you know, and between gentlemen it is easy to settle matters of that sort directly.”

Being of poor sight but hardy constitution Teddy planned to duel, if absolutely necessary, using Winchester rifles at 12 paces, as sure a route to mutual suicide as could be devised in those times. Having prepared he wrote:

”..I too, as you know, am always on hand, and ever ready to hold myself accountable in any way for anything I have said or done.”

Yours very truly,
Theodore Roosevelt. ”

No duel ever happened.

In Oracle has Fusion but PeopleSoft Lives On Doug Henschen of Information Week comments on Oracle’s PeopleSoft release strategy, citing evidence that more frequent feature-pack releases may be on the way, a concrete sign that Oracle is continuing to listen respectfully to its customer base. There is little doubt that Oracle is cognizant of the increased choices in the marketplace – think SaaS – and does not want existing customers walking unencumbered into the open arms of other vendors.

Oracle came up with this feature-pack upgrade approach as a way to deliver smaller, incremental upgrades with less disruption — and to respond to the rapid upgrade capabilities supported by software as a service (SaaS) competitors, like Workday and SuccessFactors, according to Gartner analyst Jim Holincheck. Oracle PeopleSoft 9.1, the application’s last major release, came out back in 2009.

Is PeopleSoft forever? Forever does seem like a really, really long timeframe so whether PeopleSoft will stay alive and kicking for evermore is open to question. Recent events, though, leave no doubt that PeopleSoft, a well seasoned and improving Enterprise system will remain a strong industry competitor for a long, long time. If you have strong PeopleSoft skills your employment prospects are firm now and solid in the future. If you have weak PeopleSoft skills it is worth improving them. If you have no PeopleSoft skills it may well be worth putting in the time to acquire some because, who knows, PeopleSoft may well go on forever, and ever, and ever, and ever…

The primary focus of the new Certain Wisdom site will remain the same: emphasizing the importance of highly experienced and well seasoned people, successful veterans who have built their considerable expertise by studying intensely, working smartly, and leading complex and difficult undertakings. In other words, it is about a Certain Wisdom, a confident state of knowledge, insight, and accomplishment; how to achieve it, how to recognize it, how to use it to understand problems, how to apply in finding reasoned, real world solutions.

Postings specific to the PeopleSoft realm can now be found at the new People Soft Wisdom, a special category within a more expansive column of news, insights, and commentary entitled: Wise Moves.

Check out Certain Wisdom and let me know what you think.

As I walked by the construction site this weekend I noticed a large stack of new lumber. Being curious I approached to take a closer look. Someone was working and that someone turned out to be one of the people who framed our home. Up until the great recession hit he had worked steadily for many years as an experienced framer. I asked about the pile of lumber in front of us. He proceeded to tell his story.

His framing group had originally bid on the job but the owners in an effort to “save money” had gone with a “cheaper” alternative. The resulting structure could not pass inspection. In fact, as our framer tells it, even the most basic engineering rules had been ignored. For instance, no brick ledges had been created on the foundation. He and I glanced quickly over to the pallet of brick that had already been delivered. No brick ledge. No brick. He said the owners were heartbroken. Stucco is not what they had in mind. Not only that, but stucco was actually going to be more expensive than the original brick.

“The whole thing is going to be more expensive, take longer, and they are not going get exactly what they want”

What was the new stack of lumber for? Critical parts of the existing frame must be torn down. New and stronger structures will be built in their place. The experienced framer is working in partnership with an experienced engineer to save this project.

Do not make this mistake. Do not let this happen to you. Seek competent and experienced help. Do it early. Do not wait until it is too expensive. Do not wait until it is too late.

There is not enough room here to list in detail all the technical tasks required for a successful upgrade. Nevertheless, getting the large things right can make it a lot easier to get the small things right. So here goes. I have reviewed all the technical checklists from my prior upgrade experiences and gleaned my top ten items. I will try to be short and sweet.

Being as yet an imperfect human being I may have left some items out or included some items with which you may take issue. Feel free to suggest additional items or criticize those I have listed:

• Chart your production environment- I am a big believer in working backwards. If you don’t know what the final result is supposed to look like it makes very difficult to achieve that result. Where is your new 9.1 application going to reside? (Remember Oracle has only certified 64-bit OS’s) How much space will be required? How many websites will be needed?
• Design your upgrade environment- Where are you going to install, re-develop, and test your upgraded 9.1 applications?
• Prepare to create many new databases- PeopleSoft upgrades require a lot of new databases. Most of these databases will be, it is sad to say, full sized versions of your production database. Here is a typical list.
  • Installed 9.1 demo
  • Updated 9.1 demo (PeopleTools fixes, Application packs, Tax releases, and more)
  • Upgrade database (Upgrade copy target)
  • Development and Testing database (Copy of Upgrade)
  • System testing Database (Product of 1st/2nd Move to Production process)
  • UAT/Parallel Database (Product of 3rd Move to Production process)
  • Production Database (Product of Final Move to Production process)
• Get the horses- You have charted your production environment. You have designed your upgrade and testing environment. You have determined the number and type databases needed. Now you have to ask yourself. Do I have the horsepower to get the job done? If not, it may be time to pony up (just a little bit sorry for the bad pun) the capital and get the hardware and software required for a successful upgrade.
• Create new web addresses- Let’s stay that your current HCM power user web address is http://psft.mycompany.com. There is a lot of technical infrastructure, procedures, and user productivity built around that web address. It is best not to disrupt your production systems until the very last moment possible. I have always pressed for new web addresses as the safest and easiest way to cutover to the new release. It may be useful to try something like this: http://psft91.mycompany.com.
• Respect the new Integration Broker- Get the new SOA IB up and working as soon as you can. The IB is a technically complex entity and may require some significant effort to master. Also, there is lot of important functionality dependent on the IB (e.g.HCM applicant hires) that should be put to bed sooner rather than later.
• Fire up the Change Agent- The Change Agent (CA) is the primary tool for upgrading your system to the new release. It is imperative that someone on your team become an expert in setting up, operating, and validating the CA.
• Consider user security early- A long time ago in a far off land there was an upgrade project team group that left security on the back burner until just prior to cutover weekend. It was at that point that they discovered that userids and passwords are part of the PeopleTools upgrade (done months before in the intial upgrade) and not included in the final move to production.
• Roles, Permission Lists, and the like- Beware. Your security roles and permission lists will probably not transfer well to the new release. You may need to manually re-do much of your security structure. You know. The security structure designed by that guy look ago whose name nobody remembers but who everyone remembers constantly complained about being the one responsible for this despicable job. If so, perhaps, your current security structure is not so good. The good news is that this may be very good start anew and implement the best security struture for your organization.
• Setup system communications- One of the things that PeopleSoft systems most love to do is communicate. Often this communication takes the form of eMails. Most organizations have one and only one email system so it is important to ensure that your upgraded test systems do not get in the habit of sending action messages to everyday workers. It may be a career limiting move if one of your high level managers were to lose access to medical benefits because the “deceased” workflow processes were being tested.

For many of us “self motivation” may be just a different way of saying – please excuse my English – that nobody praises me for nothing I do, no how, nowhere, no way. Your malady may be genuine, it may be strictly in your mind, or, perhaps, it may be somewhere in between. Regardless, in the brave new world of 2011 IT employment your hard-won skills may well be much more valuable than you think.

Want a new IT job? Now’s your chance! is the title of an excellent new article by Ann Bednarz, published in CIO online. She pulls together a comprehensive picture of the current Tech employment environment, quotes and statistics from many sources, Dice.com, Robert Half Technology, CareerBuilder.com, and more. The picture she paints is promising, sincere employer efforts to retain key people, better compensation, improved working conditions, concrete plans to recruitment permanent workers, a 40% increase in IT job postings.

In the article Oracle skills, including PeopleSoft Enterprise I would presume, are expressly recognized as being in the “most valuable” category.

Dice also singled out demand for experienced Oracle (ORCL) pros, which is up 57% year over year

If you are suffering the ill effects of low employment esteem I hope this posting raised your spirits a bit. I have a feeling 2011 could be your year, your best year in a while, possibly, your best year in your career. Why? Because you may just be more valuable than you think.

The world is chock full of newly chic, thoroughly modern project management theories but there is one PM axiom that “is still Rock and Roll to me:” All project work is done by people, men and women who are infinitely variable, unfailingly fallible, skilled in some ways, unskilled in other ways, knowledgeable in some fields, unknowledgable in many areas.

All successful projects, past and current, large and small, significant and insignificant, come down ultimately to people getting work done well, communicating with others, generating ideas, developing designs, completing assignments. How do you get the right people? Picking the ones with the most knowledge may sound like a sure fire winner but this staffing strategy may well turn out to be a big mistake.

The best way to save money on your upgrade is to do things right the first time. Being wrong is expensive. In this posting and in the series to follow I will recommend ways to say money and improve your chances of success at the same time.

I don’t know anything about Time and Labor and I’m not too sure about this assignment, Mr. Diamond (not his real name) said. I know you are not a T&L expert, I replied, but you have so many other great qualities, grand experiences, and remarkable project accomplishments; how bad can a teeny weenie little T&L upgrade be?

Here was a seasoned professional who built an impressive track record of success, working well with users and teammates alike, demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the overall system, proving his reliability, displaying his dependability in a variety of situations, but lacked a specific knowledge. In short, Mr. D is the type of person many project managers would love to have but seem to have trouble finding.

It would have been easy to pass on Mr. D and outsource this T&L role to someone with the right kind of resume but probably not the “right stuff” – a situation all too common in today’s thorny labor market. Instead, Mr. D received a minimal amount of formal training and a small measure of on-the-job coaching from a part-time contractor, a small investment that paid large dividends, on this project and on others to follow.

My fifth recommendation for saving money: Select your project team based on what they can do, not what they know.

Rule number one: Identify project roles and responsibilities. Be accurate. Be reasonable. Don’t assume you will find one person who can do it all. Do assume that there will be gaps, blank spaces requiring people to learn new things, handle unanticipated problems, deal with unknowns competently.

Rule two: Set clear accountability, a task for every name, a name for every task. Make no secret of who is accountable, name the names, take the names, publish the names, criticize by name, praise my name, reward by name.

Rule Three: Be honest about team abilities. There is a great temptation to embellish, sometimes even misrepresent, the knowledge and talents of project team members. Give in to this temptation at your own peril. My recommendation is be to be upfront. It goes something like this: Mr. D does not have T&L experience but he is a great resource and here is our concrete plan for his development and, subsequently, our successful completion of your objectives.

Rule four: Monitor. Act quickly. Act decisively. Monitor some more. The smallest gesture, the slightest action, one soft spoken but pointed criticism, one quick but painful clash would have prevented this disaster. Many a post-mortem has been conducted and the root of the problem traced to someone not knowing what was going on, not wanting to know, or knowing and not wanting to hurt somebody’s feelings, make too many waves, rock the boat, or some other cliché for not having the gumption to speak up.

“…Nowadays you can’t be too sentimental
Your best bet’s a true baby blue Continental.
Hot funk, cool punk, even if it’s old junk
It’s still rock and roll to me.”

P.S. Hey, Mr. Diamond. If you read this I hope you do not mind your starring role in this posting. It is a simple sign of my respect for the great work you did then and, I’m sure, the great work you are doing now.

These skills — along with SAP (+87% to 6,679), PeopleSoft (+98% to 2,147) and telecommunications experience (+97% to 2,959)– highlight that opportunities abound for technology professionals with certain skills.

Now, my math skills may not be what they used to be but I think it means that there are almost twice as many PeopleSoft related job openings as there were last year, definitely not a negative number, substantially better than a normal sounding 10% gain, much more satisfying than being up a mere 150%.

There has been some talk about PeopleSoft being a deprecated skill, the next COBOL, another Betamax, a once sought after expertise somewhat like buggy whip manufacturing. But whoa! Hold your horses. PeopleSoft skills are not unwanted by customers. PeopleSoft skills are not being snubbed by employers. PeopleSoft skills are not being shunned in the IT industry. Organizations are actively looking for good PeopleSoft people. That is very good news indeed.

I started my car very early in the morning, a dark, frosty, cold sunrise, and the tire warning light came on. Being a resourceful, do-it-now project management type I decided to take immediate action, before I showered, before I shaved, before I dressed in business casual. Off I went to my local gas station complex, not a long drive from my house.

I pulled up to the air compressor, a big metal monstrosity built a long time ago, and put in two quarters. Nothing happened. No air. I gave the machine a gentle nudge. Nothing. I gave the machine an open fisted slap up the backside. Nothing again. Defeated, I pressed the coin return and heard my money fall, not, however into the slot from which I needed to retrieve the coins. I peered in and there was my money stuck in the back. Often, projects are won, victory saved from sure defeat, because some people just refuse to be beaten. I would like to think that I am one of those people. I was not going to give up my 50 cents without a fight.

I pulled the car away, making room for the operation to come, and grabbed my all purpose, swiss army-like tool from the glove department. I released the knife blade from the handle and went to work on that machine, prodding, poking, burrowing deeper, my back to the gas station, my attention focused completely on my task, in other words, working my project responsibilities to maximum effectiveness.

“Are you having trouble out here?” she asked, “Are you cold? Would you like to come in and get warm? Honey, do you need a hot cup of coffee?” I looked over my shoulder and there was the woman who worked the counter, her cigarette glowing, her uniform apron slightly stained.

I looked at her and she looked at me and then a few seconds later I realized what she was seeing, an unshowered, unshaven, poorly dressed, middle-aged man digging for quarters in an old beat up machine. There are people in America, too many people, to whom two quarters could mean not going hungry today. And there are people, perhaps too few people, who when faced with such people in these dire straits will offer help. This woman was one of those people, a heartening fact in a world full of too many disheartening realities.

Of course, I explained my true situation. She offered to refund my quarters, a nice gesture, and inform the owners of the machine’s demise. I declined and she wondered back inside. I hope she hadn’t been kind just because it was the holiday season. Somehow I don’t think so.

(Just in case you can’t stand not knowing I was able to retrieve my quarters, a small but satisfying victory.)