this is how buzz words are born...say hello to "synchromesh"

Ever wondered when/where buzz words are born...Recently Ray Ozzie had a keynote speech at the Mix 2008 conference and I was able to spot birth of a new buzzword, "synchromesh"

Ozzie teased the next evolution of his decades-long exploration of synchronization and collaboration, which he referred to as a "seamless mesh"--or what I'll call "syncromesh"--in his Mix '08 keynote in Las Vegas:

Just imagine the possibilities of unified application management across the device mesh, centralized, Web-based deployment of device-based applications. Imagine an app platform that's cognizant of all of your devices. Now, as it so happens, we've had a team at Microsoft working on this specific scenario for some time, starting with the PC and focused on the question of how we might make life so much easier for individuals if we just brought together all your PCs into a seamless mesh, for users, for developers, using the Web as a hub.

Mark my words, if Microsoft is successful in pushing their agenda, then you will be hearing more and more of the word synchromesh until it will be come part of the Oxford dictionary. Just recently I talked at a conference about SaaS and had made a slide that shows the logical progression of technologies. I guess now I must go back to it and add synchromesh :)

Firefox 3 five times faster than IE7...wow!

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is 5x faster than IE7, 3x faster than FF2 by ZDNet's Ed Burnette -- The almost-but-not-quite-final beta of Firefox 3 (FF3 beta 4) is now available for download. The most noticeable improvement is speed. In some tests, it’s three times faster than Firefox 2 (meaning the test completes in 1/3 the time), and a whopping five times faster than IE 7: (Source: Mozilla Links) Other improvements in beta 4 include: Smarter [...]

Project Portfolio Management yields results

I have been involved with PPM domain for quite a few years now. I have seen the very beginnings of the project portfolio management when we had to not only write software that would enable PPM but had to go out and educate customers on the importance of PPM tool. That was the time around 2001-2002 when companies were strapped for cash. Also around the same time, Sarbanes Oaxley was just getting defined and corporate IT folks did not know what changes it really meant for them.

There were just a few players in the PPM domain and many of them simply grew out of their project management, rather than have a vision for top down portfolio management and setting up a PMO practice/processes.

Fast forward to 2008, and finally I am seeing studies that validate the usefulness of a PPM tool. See an in depth article, "ROI study: Product portfolio management yields results" posted to ZDNet.

The entire post on ZDNet is worth reading. But here is the most important section of it,

Key findings from the study include “savings of 6.5% of the average annual IT budget by end of year one and 14% (NPV) over a three year deployment period.” In addition, the PPM software examined:

• Improves the annual average for project timeliness dramatically by 45.2%.
• Reduces IT management time spent on project status reporting by 43.2%, reclaiming 3.8 hours of each manager’s workweek.
• Reduces IT management time spent on IT labor capitalization report by 54.7%, recouping 3.6 hours per report.
• Decreases the time to achieve financial sign-off for new IT projects by 20.4%, or 8.4 days.

Notice that not only it says that PPM tool will give you savings in terms of dollars but it also improves projects delivery by 45%. Sometimes people focus too much on the direct dollar benefits from a PPM tool and they miss out on the benefits such as increasing project timeliness etc.

I am very glad to see such reports coming out which validates my belief in the rigor of having PPM processes and tools in an IT organization.