The hardest part about blogging is coming up with something interesting to say that will generate discussion without becoming just another blogosphere blowhard. The second-hardest thing about blogging is being able to reveal enough about yourself as the author that your readers can put your writing into some sort of context without turning your blog into a Web-based peep-show or tell-all.
My first forray into blogging was with a LiveJournal account, and at the risk of stating the obvious (if you know anything about LiveJournal) I was guilty of both the aforementioned blogging sins. I cancelled the account after a year and took a break, excluding the occassional Yahoo! Message Board tirade, from posting online.
About the same time that that happened, my division manager at work asked everyone in my department to write a vision statement that would establish where our department would be in three years (early 2008). I am very passionate about my career and the industry I work in, and I am more than a little proud of the organization I work for. Although I hadn't quite made it to my second-year anniversary at the time, I felt that I had proved myself as an employee sufficiently to say what was really on my mind. I worked on my submission for about a week, and when I was done with it I realized that I had something worthwhile to blog about: the role of information systems in improving the healthcare industry and the lives of those it serves.
This is what I wrote:
[DEPARTMENT] 2008
The mission statement of [DEPARTMENT] is posted clearly on the homepage of its intranet site:
The [DEPARTMENT] strives to support and extend existing business applications and bring new technology to bear for our internal customers through our collective intelligence, experience, education, expertise, and dedication to excellence. [DEPARTMENT] will continuously endeavor to promote an innovative and supportive environment in which to serve our internal and external customers.
In my opinion, there are three major forces that will decide whether and how [DEPARTMENT] achieves those stated goals: emerging software trends, IS policies, and [DEPARTMENT]’ “team spirit.”
[DEPARTMENT] already has a good team dynamic, so I don’t need to address that issue. However, the other two topics are intertwined, so I’ll be addressing both. I hope that my comments about IS policies are taken as concerned observations and not as criticism.
Back to the Future
To get a handle on where the software industry is going, it’s useful to take a short trip back in time to better understand how we got where we are today.
Before the late 1980s and the birth of the personal computer, computers in the business world were largely “green screen” terminals attached to a central mainframe or stand-alone hardware that performed a limited set of business functions (for example, a combination word processor/printer).
The PC architecture created by IBM and Microsoft’s ability to field the first commercially successful graphical user interface changed all of that. Processing power moved from a central location and was dispersed throughout the network (where there was one) or to individual desktop computers connected by the “sneaker net” (where there wasn’t). Computers became versatile and so did their operators. Secretarial pools gave way to Word Perfect, Quatro Pro, and Harvard Graphics being installed on the machines of smaller groups of administrative assistants, who in turn were displaced by the Microsoft Office suite and “Clippy” on the machines of their customers.
Then came the World Wide Web, the ultimate graphical interface overlaying the part of the Internet driven by the hypertext transfer protocol. Between 1995 and the present, the Web became so ubiquitous that, in the minds of most people, it is the Internet. Oddly enough, none of the companies you’d expect saw the Web coming, at least not in the form and function it has assumed today.
Microsoft didn’t. IBM didn’t. Sun Microsystems, the company that created Java specifically for use over computerized networks, didn’t.
Even companies that saw the Web for what it is often failed to capitalize on it. As an end-user during the early days of the Web, you were either on AOL or you weren’t. If you weren’t, then Netscape had a virtual monopoly on the Web, but they didn’t understand it well enough to create a viable business model for either their Web browser or their Web portal, both of which they pioneered. Nor has AOL been able to maintain its dominance as high-speed connections from regional cable companies replace telephone lines for Internet connectivity.
Emerging Software Trends
At this point, you’re probably asking yourself so what? The answer is simple: while the Web is still relatively young, it is understood well enough that we can make some reasonably safe assumptions about it and operate proactively rather than reactively to it. Between now and 2008, I’d stake my job on a single emerging trend:
Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures
Sun Microsystems said it first: the network is the computer. The opposite is also true: the computer is the network. And in both instances, the network referred to is increasingly becoming the Internet. The computing paradigm for the foreseeable future is the Internet-enabled application, especially Web-centric ones.
XML is the undisputed langua franca of business and technology, as it not only allows different companies to “talk” with one another over the Internet, but allows different technologies to communicate as well.
Microsoft has staked its future on Web paradigm computing and is developing all their product lines around it, from .Net to their next-generation operating system to their most recent iteration of Microsoft Office to the Xbox game console. Ditto IBM, Oracle, SAP, and their respective products.
The entire telecommunications industry is moving away from analog technology towards Voice of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and is converging with high-bandwidth ISPs who are allowing their customers to make telephone calls of the Web.
Because all data can now be accessed, manipulated, and transferred over the Internet via XML, the whole approach to application development is also changing. Development efforts are increasingly inter-departmental and platform agnostic, resulting in increasingly modular software development.
Web-Enabled Applications: Microsoft Office
The next time [COMPANY] upgrades its office productivity suite it will, in all probability, be purchasing Microsoft Office 2006 (the most recent version on the market today is Office 2003). I won’t speculate about the features of a product that’s still in development, but if [COMPANY] were to move to full installations of Office 2003 today, collaborative functionality would be available to [DEPARTMENT] that would allow us to immediately improve our own productivity and could be rolled out to our customers to help them improve theirs (descriptions taken directly from Microsoft’s Office 2003 Web site). This list excludes functions provided by Microsoft Outlook that, although extremely robust, is not likely to be implemented here at [COMPANY].
Document Workspaces
Document Workspaces are centralized sites where team members can access files, see lists of tasks, find helpful links, and collaborate.
Shared attachments
Simplify the process of working with others to co-author, edit, and review files. When you send a file as a shared attachment with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, you can create a Document Workspace.
Shared Workspace Task Pane
Check for updated versions of files, see if team members are online, see lists of related links and files, and view file properties. The Shared Workspace task pane is available from Microsoft Office Excel 2003 spreadsheets, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentations, and Microsoft Office Word 2003 documents.
How does all this work? Three letters: X-M-L.
XML not only lets employees collaborate on Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents from remote locations, it also exposes the entire Microsoft Office 2003 suite to the real-time data that’s available on back-end systems inside of a company (like [APPLICATION]), as well as the information that’s on the larger World Wide Web. Consider the possibilities:
- [DEPARTMENT HEAD] closes a deal with a large commercial group. Using a notebook computer with no Internet access, information on the group’s size, composition, renewal dates, and rates are stored in an Office 2003 Word document. Later, after she returns to her office and connects the laptop to the network, that same Word document “feeds” [APPLICATION] this same information
- [DEPARTMENT HEAD] would like to review the longest call in queue, abandonment rate per hour, and the number of calls in queue at his discretion. Unfortunately, the reader boards are all on the second floor of Corporate, and he’s on the fifth floor. Fortunately, he has an Office 2003 Excel Workbook that uses XML to pull this information – in real time – from the reader board application. Moreover, the security system that monitors employee access to the building has also been XML-enabled. [DEPARTMENT HEAD] knows by looking at the spreadsheet that there’s a backlog of calls in queue and that a quarter of the call center employees apparently never entered the building that day. In other words, he knows there’s a problem and can make a reasonable guess as to what it’s cause is – all from his office.
- [DEPARTMENT HEAD] spent a lot of time gathering rate information on competing products offered by other healthcare providers in the area and entering them into an Access database that allows him to calculate how much more or less expensive their products are compared to [COMPANY]’s. Fortunately for [DEPARTMENT HEAD], all of this data was “tagged” in XML from a variety of internal and external sources. Rather than reinvent the wheel every year, [DEPARTMENT HEAD] simply refreshes the database content – on demand – and can see exactly how [COMPANY] stacks-up against its competition.
The most important point here is not that Microsoft has XML-enabled their ubiquitous Office suite; it’s that everyone else is going to also. Whether [COMPANY] continues to purchase Microsoft Office or not, the competitive advantage this sort of technology provides to its users is going to force competing product vendors to do the same.
Development efforts for this kind of software is going to center on providing Internet-enabled applications with consumable services that offer themselves up through XML feeds or some other standards-based protocol.
Voice Over Internet Protocol
Voice Over Internet Protocol converts the sound of your voice (analog data) into digital packets that can be XML-tagged and passed back-and-forth across the Internet. Such calls require a high-speed Internet connection and can be made and received either through a VOIP-equipped telephone or through a properly equipped PC (one with speakers and a microphone).
Because VOIP transforms speech into digital data, telephone conversations can be automated in much the same way that simple text communication is. Coupled with XML, VOIP enables manipulation of data in all the ways mentioned above and beyond.
Voice Recognition
Voice recognition systems refer to the technology that allows a person to speak to a computer and the computer to be able to respond appropriately. The computer doesn’t actually understand what’s being said, but is programmed to react as though it does.
The nuts-and-bolts of voice recognition systems are generally proprietary, much like the Windows OS. However, standards-based technologies not only exist, but are rapidly becoming the norm, for programming and manipulating these proprietary systems. Of these, VoiceXML is the most important and the most accessible.
VoiceXML
VoiceXML, sometimes abbreviated VXML, is the language that enables the possibilities of a VOIP infrastructure and a voice recognition system to come to fruition. From the Webopedia:
Instead of a traditional browser that relies on a combination of HTML and keyboard and mouse, VXML relies on a voice browser and/or the telephone. Using VXML, the user interacts with voice browser by listening to audio output that is either pre-recorded or computer-synthesized and submitting audio input through the user's natural speaking voice or through a keypad, such as a telephone.
IS Policies
Process Enablement
Because the emphasis has shifted from end-to-end “vertical” solutions towards interoperable software components that can be assembled into inter-departmental (and even inter-organizational) applications on an as-needed basis, it will be necessary for software developers and IT support staff to be as well versed in business processes as they currently are in technology.
While existing IS policies don’t appear to directly address this topic one way or another, the organizational structure of the IS area concentrates process management expertise in a single group. While the other IS groups are all capable and adhere to generally accepted project management methodology standards, there doesn’t appear to be a procedural mechanism for routinely tapping the expertise of the project management team. Also, [COMPANY] itself doesn’t consistently document or evaluate business processes across the organization as a whole.
With application development being geared increasingly towards process automation, this is problematic in a number of ways:
- Overall development efforts take longer because existing business processes are not effectively documented or maintained by all departments that [DEPARTMENT] services.
- The IS team most capable of evaluating a given area’s business processes or helping capture and document them, while authoritative and helpful, is often preoccupied with their own work.
- When processes are documented and used as a guide for application development, there is an increased likelihood that the application created is simply making the execution of a poor process happen more quickly and more often, rather than automating an efficient process.
- When it’s realized that #3 is what’s going on, the entire process starts over.
As much as this is a problem for IS, it’s even worse throughout those parts of the organization that have no process or project management competency. Again this is not the fault of any one person, but a result of not understanding one’s own business processes and being able to relate them to support personnel in any meaningful way.
Eliminating Informational and Functional Silos
Because applications are becoming increasingly Internet-aware and platform agnostic, the legitimate organizational needs that are met by segregating IS departments around technologies and/or business functions are increasingly becoming a barrier to getting real work done.
To its credit, IS management appears to recognize this and has put some mechanisms in place to try to alleviate the bottlenecks that result. The weekly CMR meeting is one example, the weekly [APPLICATION] team meeting that [DEPARTMENT] was invited to last year is another. However, there doesn’t appear to be an evaluation mechanism for determining the effectiveness of these meetings. It’s also been observed by various attendees to both meetings that they’re pretty much dominated by one or two groups, minimizing the value of the meeting for the rest of its attendees.
As IT moves deeper into Internet-enabled, service-oriented architectures, there is going to be a need for more effective communication between IS departments and a greater willingness throughout IS to share responsibility for the maintenance, development, and evaluation of applications.
[DEPARTMENT] does an excellent job of this with [APPLICATION], which is already used throughout the company. However, the reality is that by 2008 every application is going to be as relevant to the company as a whole as [APPLICATION] is today. Departments that are responsible for a given application cannot continue to view them as “pets.”
Reevaluating Custom Application Development
While the current prohibition against custom application development is understandable given the existing toolsets at [COMPANY]’s disposal (Microsoft Visual Basic 6, PowerBuilder, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Frontpage, Oracle Forms), it will need to be reevaluated and refined by 2008. What constitutes custom application development today may very well be the norm in the not-too-distant future.
As software vendors increasingly Web-enable their applications, they’re doing so with the intent of opening them up to customization – either by knowledgeable end-users, third-party experts, or their own (extremely well paid) consultants. As recent experiences have shown, off-the-shelf software often requires customization. Given that customization is going to occur, it could be argued that someone at [COMPANY] needs to develop a relevant programming competency. It could also be argued that the time and money being spent on customizing off-the-shelf software exceeds what would have been spent building, documenting, and maintaining a custom tool to begin with.
Another aspect to consider is the generally poor state of the software industry when it comes to applications that support [COMPANY]’s business model and practices. The reality is that there simply isn’t that many mature applications on the market that support our business. A largely blanket prohibition on custom application development may be doing [COMPANY] more harm than good.
Finally, information technology has barely penetrated our industry. Not only are there few commercial applications for us to choose from, there are only a handful of people in the industry that would be able to authoritatively evaluate such products even if there were.
Platform Agnosticism
Because the entire software industry is moving towards standards-based solutions, it will be important for [COMPANY] to distinguish between distaste for a vendor and distaste for their technology.
Novell’s Project Mono, for example, has ported Microsoft’s .Net platform and a similar IDE to Linux. JNBridge is software that allows interoperability between Java and .Net, and inheritance between their classes and namespaces, respecitvely. Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are currently integrating their single sign-on technology. Finally, the current Linux-based [APPLICATION] platform allows the processing of Microsoft Active Server Pages.
Generally speaking, “vendor lock-in” is increasingly becoming a thing of the past; “vendor lock-out” should be, too.
Conclusion
By 2008, [DEPARTMENT] will be one of many teams of professional systems analysts within [COMPANY]’s IS group. Each member of the team will have a solid grasp of general project management practices, business process evaluation methodologies, and standards-based technologies that allow the dissemination of information over the Internet and similarly configured networks.
The team will work collaboratively with other IS groups in accordance with company-wide standards for process design and evaluation, and general project management. [DEPARTMENT], along with its sister organizations, will help [COMPANY] leverage information technology to effectively deliver innovative healthcare products and services that are cost effective and of high quality to its customers.
[DEPARTMENT] will have a thorough understanding of both our internal and ultimate customers’ needs and expectations. We will use this familiarity and our technical acumen to support commercial applications if available – and develop custom applications if necessary – that differentiate [COMPANY] from its competitors.