I have just found this video on boingboing.net and this really is how teaching should be. Enjoy half an hour of witty interesting knowledge about the uniqueiest of the primates by Robert Sapolsky renowned professor of neurology, neurological sciences, neurosurgery and biological sciences at Standford.

Now that Germany has a new Government which is not composed of the two larger blocks (CDU & SPD), I would have hoped for an increase in momentum of political progress. unfortunately Chancellor Merkel and Vice Westerwelle continue their old faults in believing their voters to be extremely dumb.

They have a firm majority and have a strong backing for implementing change due to the current economical downturn and what do they do? They promise to reduce tax rates in the believe that the increases in debt will be paid back by increased incomes which would increase total tax turnout. All real estimations on this effect will tell you, that it will not return the full 100%, but will basically stop at approx. 60% of the loss. So we happily increase our national debt, which has just been hit extremely hard by the financial crisis. And for what? For reducing taxes, which is not at the heart of our problems.

So what would my proposal be? Boost productivity by setting hard to reach missions that a whole country (of even a continent) could rally behind. The current innovations (internet, eco-tech, bio-tech and nano-tech) should allow a country like Germany to produce a turnaround. One of the projects to improve on would be about money. Why do we still have these small printed papers (easily reproduced by modern technology) and strange round pieces of metal? These are too hard to transfer, keeping transaction costs way to high.

So Germany (along with the european economic and monetary union) should create the e-Euro. The e-Euro (e€) should allow the following:

• Quick transaction with marginal transaction costs (less than 1%) for businesses
• No base fee for transactions, enabling small transactions (transfer 2 cents would cost no more than 0,02 cents)
• Free transaction between individuals (when I give you a 10 € bill, there are no transaction costs)
• Allowing anonymous online transactions up to a defined limit (a limit will be necessary for law enforcement requirements, cashing large sums at a bank will also trigger inquiries these days).
• Make sure that the required infrastructure is in the hands of the european central bank (normal banks should not control cash, nor should they be able to track its usage)

The provision of a monetary system is one of the core tasks of a country. So it should provide a modern version of it. If micro payments can be made affordable, many new business models become viable. For example you would allow news to again become a paid for resource. News right now is expected to be available for free, along with some advertising. Many of us would pay a small fee for more in-depth news, either per article (1 article = 5 cent) or per time frame (e.g. 1 hour = 50 cent). With all current payment models available, this is not a suitable payment option due to the high transaction costs.

The ask a question sites could be a source of income for people, when a small sum could be paid for a proper answer to a question. Bands would be able to host their own music download website if you could easily transfer money to them. Charities would not have to rely on an overly expensive, un-democratic and often unfair payment system (like paypal) but could accept money directly from their donators.

My mission will probably not generate the same passion as

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth.

did, but maybe it could jumpstart our society into a more productive and innovative culture.

aRTessen auction flyer

Our Round Table (Table 26 in Essen) is organizing our third art auction for charity. We again support the project “Sicherer Start” (secure start) for kids and their mothers in hardship. We sponsor additional aids to recent mothers by prolonging the time mid wifes support them. This helps keeping them connected to the society and avoids starting the vicous circle of neglect.

From every piece of art you buy, we donate 50% to the project, so join us on November 22nd and get yourself some interesting art! More information at http://www.aRTessen.de (sorry, only in German).

Do you know the following type of issue? When a process receives broken input it usually produces a broken output. But one of the most commonly observed approaches is to require the process to fix it’s output, even if it’s input continues to be invalid.

Some call this the “shit-in-shit-out” principle, but I try to explain this a little bit differently:

When the gas stations started selling petrol (gas) and diesel they found out that many people put diesel into their petrol / gas cars. This ruins your car and requires the engine to be cleaned. So there were two solutions available:

• Make the hoses in different sizes, so that you can not fill diesel into a petrol car or
• setup a “diesel-removal-station” immediatly behind the pump.

What would your choice be?

One of the most important things in changeing peoples work environment is to get the people that are affected to be the people that are involved. Some people just don’t grasp the difference. This is where I usually use the following metaphore:

In the making of a ham and eggs sandwich the chicken is involved, while the pig is affected.

Most people tend to remember the difference from that point on.

I know the story is used by many people (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig) but I swear I developed it independantly and I have never heard of scrum before.

The party model is a method of generalization of relational data modelling (not explicitly named, but some information found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_data_model#Generic_patterns). It defines a generic table (or object) called PARTY, which represents all types of persons, organizations, employees, regions and so on as well as a relationship table, which defines the relations between these parties. Sound familiar?

Relationships can be typed, the involved parties are typed, relationships may form hierarchies and other interesting things. If you replace PARTY with CI you have almost half of a CMDB. Is anyone knowledgeable about the party datamodel? Let’s discuss using this as a base for a “better CMDB”.

In my recent consulting works, I found out that quite a few people working on ITIL® process definitions are not sure how to proceed with their definitions. Especially after they have defined (or copied) a rough process diagram along with some responsible roles they are unsure how to continue.

I recommend using the following 10 steps to get to a defined process.

1. Identify the main stake holders
   Find out who sponsors your process, who should participate, who triggers it and who benefits from the results. Also identify the main supporters and your main opposition. Make sure you select the opinion leaders of the participating teams.
2. Define and agree the goals, high level roles and basic rules of the process
   Do this with the most important stake holders. Make sure your goals are exact, measurable and complete and that your rules are simple, verifiable and realistic. Remember the rules are subject to change based on your further findings. Name the most important contributor’s roles for the process.
3. Define the main process activities or phases
   If you are redesigning an existing process, take the view of the current process participants into account. Also use frameworks and other information to define your basic process steps. Do not overcomplicate things and stay away from complete process diagrams (incl. events, decisions and other things). Best is to use a simple tool like powerpoint to represent the flow.
4. Define the target and roles (RACI) of each of the phases
   Focus on responsible and accountable roles and make sure that you can define the real target for each step. Again let targets be exact, measurable and complete. The summary of all individual targets should result in the overall process goals.
5. Detail the individual steps back to front
   Start with the last step of your process and talk to the people targeted for the responsible & accountable roles. Define the output, input and trigger(s) of the step, add required consulted or informed roles and, if necessary, detail the step into subtasks. These subtasks are modeled in greater detail as the containing process. Build a list of required inputs while travelling backwards through the process. Try to match the required inputs with the outputs a step can (or should) provide.
6. Repeat the steps 4 & 5 for the detailed subtasks
   All your subtasks have to be detailed and defined based on responsibility, input, output and trigger. If needed you can add another layer of detail beneath this and continue the detailing process until all tasks/activities or steps are defined.
7. Match remaining input requirements with sources outside of your process and define interfaces to them
   All required input has to be provided from somewhere. So either the inputs are provided by the overall process trigger or other processes provide the required information. In that case you need to define an interface and agree on the method of delivery.
8. Produce an information model
   Based on the input & output information define your information or data model. Combine individual information requirements into the fitting objects and document them. This will be the basis for the realization of a process flow within a tool.
9. Combine the detailed subtasks into a complete process chart along with the inputs and outputs
   Include the original activities as phases within the detailed process flow chart. This helps to identify where each detail activity is located and improves the overall overview.
10. Review, finalize and agree with all participants
    Take your process documentation and your information model and discuss this with all participants. For each role prepare RACI chart based on the information gathered in the previous steps.

The most important advice is to work your way up from the end of your process. This ensures that you focus on your deliverables and do not have to ask the people “What do you do in the step x?” but you may say “What do you need to do and know to produce this output?”.

During all the steps you should communicate openly through your enterprise and align your findings with tools used to realize your process. These steps help you to achieve an implemented and accepted process.

Well, I’ve done it. I have bridged my v2 service manager qualification to the new ITIL(r) v3 Expert. Besides the not appropriate name this still feels as a downgrade, though. For my service manager certificate I sat down for 5 hours and wrote 16 pages worth of IT service management know-how (which still hurt my fingers more than my brain). Now all I had to do was answer 20 multiple choice questions (only one answer is correct) and get 16 of them right.

But it was not easy, because of the way the questions were defined. I doubt that I can find the right answer for the 4 questions I failed on, even using all the material available. 

Additionally the german exam had one error. All the answers had to be marked on a seperate paper showing A, B, C & D as possible answers. One of the questions did not have A-D but 1-4 as answers. This whould have been not a big deal (not such hard code to break) if there weren’t other questions where the initial 4 point numbered 1-4 where then combined into groups in the answer (e.g. A – 1&2 are correct, B – 2-4 are correct, C – all are correct, D – none). This left some ambiguity.

All in all, the world has another “Expert”

You can now also follow me on twitter, if you prefer doing so.

Follow me!

I have been following the Iranian election and its aftermath since Saturday and I suggest everybody to keep an eye on twitter  #IranElection. Previously governments controlled what comes out of a crisis situation (they even perfected it during the invasion of Iraq with embedded journalists), but now we can see what an open communication platform can do.

I hope sincerly that the people of Iran will find a good end to the current unrest. When that comes we all have to start thinking about what more we can do to give this power of communication to all people in the world.