Posts By Brian K Seitz

Structure in Threes: Budgeting and Planning -observations and muses

The beatings will continue until moral improves, or so goes the typical planning cycle each year. Although being an observer of the process in many enterprises for 30 years and a unwilling participant at times, I would classify these activities as anything but planning. These are more like the High School Senior Prom with allRead… Read more »

Working Insights: Process Analysis presentation creation and the movies

Finished my presentation deck for Wednesday’s Business Architect call, sent it out to my manager & colleague, and other friends for comments. The topic is business process analysis methods. Its a short 20 minute presentation on the benefits and some methods of value for analyzing processes. During developing I rediscovered what I already knew: DifficultRead… Read more »

Structure in Threes: Service DesignService Quality

This morning I started some R&D prototyping on measuring Services Quality. Started with SERVQUAL model by Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry. Put together a simple spreadsheet model for GAP #1. The approach is similar in format to Peter Marks’ [Design Insight] measurement of customer perception of product desirability. Since Services are purchased and experienced similar toRead… Read more »

Technical Support Hell

Have spend most of today in Microsoft Tech Support Hell. After my Outlook Client stop sending/receiving after Tuesday’s Windows Update. I’ve been spending too much time being bounced around between various Support Desks, no fewer than six times. Each time repeating the same information; having the Support staff unable to open the case number documentationRead… Read more »

Structure in Threes: Process Value

About two decades ago I was fortunate enough to collaborate with several brilliant people in IBM working in manufacturing research. One of them Dr. Arno Schmachpfeffer had coauthored a paper in the IBM Journal of Research call Integrated Manufacturing Modeling System. One of the key aspects of the paper was a taxonomy of activities inRead… Read more »

Structure in Threes: Tools Development

Organizational Design Tools Need Completion Continuing to build out Enterprise Analysis and Design tools this morning along with a workflow to integrate the Modern IT Portfolio Management methodology. After finishing the Org Design Tool, the next steps will be to finish off the Portfolio Management Tool and then document the workflow for possible automation. DigitalRead… Read more »

Structure in Threes: Positioning and Lessons not Learned

Had great discussion last night at Starbucks on Mercer Island with some former Microsoft Alumni. One is at a Microsoft competitor now working at developing a competitive service to our mutual former employer’s. The change in strategy at Microsoft has yielded a large shift in the Architecture domain enabling competitors to move in and eventuallyRead… Read more »

IT Portfolio Management: Asset Classes and Portfolios

Multi-order Interconnections of Assets Comments from yesterday’s post regarding the difference between IT Assets and Traditional Investment Assets I had a tendency to agree with in the past. However, since the changes in law and the economy the independence between assets no longer exists as once was believed. As the most recent financial meltdown theRead… Read more »

Modern IT Portfolio Management: Investment Profiles

Last night I reviewed of my notes interviewing investment brokers, portfolio managers the past few months and delved deeper into my growing collection of Wiley Finance Series of books. This morning I scanned through ”The Art of Asset Allocation” by David M. Darst searching for the next analogs in financial portfolio management to pair upRead… Read more »