As much by writing

A request recently came into CIS that I think can serve as a model for how our IT development process should operate. While the issue, from initial request to final solution, was handled completely through various one-on-one discussions (which is not how I’d like to see our development cycle run), the discussions and topics mirrored that which we have been trying to implement.

I find it very reassuring (even exciting) that the staff, intuitively and professionally, moved through all of the right steps (storytelling, use cases to define functional requirements) and collaborated openly regarding technical issues until a solution could be found. And most importantly came to a solution that provided only for those requirements: an incremental extension of existing services.

It is clear to me that we can implement an Agile Project Management approach, but our challenge is to formalize it. I would like to outline the specific example referred to above, try to highlight the activities that took place, how they correspond to Agile methods, and how they can be formalized through the Development Cycle…

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First I would like to make some overall observations: I was totally unprepared for this to be a conference of nearly 1600 attendees from around the world. I thought Agile was a small niche. The 29 vendors clearly think they have a serious market. Another 19 were listed as sponsors even though they didn’t exhibit.  The conference drew attendees from 39 countries. I talked with Agilistas from as far away as New Zealand. Found similarities with Swedes and Netherlanders. Talked environmental issues with Norwegians. The sharing was invaluable.

“Expanding Agile Horizons” might have been an apt title, but I found most of the interest in software development. Few attendees were reflecting our use of Agile in the enterprise. The conference had 400 speakers and up to 39 simultaneous sessions organized into stages. The stages were wrapped around common issues: Tools for Agility, Distributed Agile, Research, Questioning Agile, etc.. Many sessions were divided into three 30 minute blocks and I found myself suffering from Chinese Menu Syndrome. I wanted to pick from within each of the blocks, but it just wasn’t practical to try to switch sessions mid-way through. The times weren’t synchronized and the movement distractive to other attendees and speakers.  I focused primarily on the “Agile and Organizational Culture Stage,” the “Customer and Business Value Stage” and the “Leadership and Teams Stage.”

Read about the individual sessions . . . 

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I am spending the week at Campus Technology Magazine’s Next-Gen Conference. Over the week I thought it would be interesting to post the sessions I have attended in order to not only share some of the ideas presented, but hopefully foster a little discussion. I will be adding to this post, rather than adding multiple posts, so check back here to this post to see the updates.

You can find out more about the conference at the Campus Technology 2008 site, as well as an attendee generated site that includes other blog posts, twitter comments, etc. at http://sites.google.com/site/camptech08/

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Once politicians have officially embraced Web 2.0, does that make it officially mainstream? Übermainstream? An article in the New York Times, entitled, “The Wiki-Way to the Nomination,” by NOAM COHEN, published June 8, 2008, mentioned “collaborative, decentralized principles behind Net projects like Wikipedia and the “free and open-source software” movement” and their uses in political campaigns of today. Further, it mentions Linux, Firefox, collective decision making, etc. No matter your political persuasion, this article is worth a read just to see the ways recent advances in popular technology are enhancing and facilitating dialog and community.

The SUNY Delhi Culinary Team is off to Las Vegas for the National Championships and SUNY Delhi V.P of Business and Finance and CFO, Brian Hutzley, has started up a blog to document their travels and, hopefully, triumphs.

To me this is fantastic, obviously from a perspective of campus pride it will highlight the success of our Culinary Team, however it also serves to highlight not only the adoption of technology, but also new modes for supporting technology. Traditionally IT departments have driven technical advancements (maybe some don’t think they are advancements?). This is not to say, that the local IT department alone determined when to implement/upgrade, often the local IT department was pushed by an external provider, think Microsoft from Windows 98, to XP, to Vista. Whatever the driver, the end-user’s resources (those tools that they use to get their work done), was determined and delivered through some technology work-flow, process or cycle. Ideally, the end-users contributed to the deployment schedule, defining optimal times for training, migration, etc., but, they really had minimal say in what the migration would be, and really no say in if it would happen at all.

However look at this example, a senior, cabinet-level administrator–on his own, without the assistance, approval or resources of the IT department–has identified a system to provide a service to the campus.

The business model and practice of technology support has clearly changed.

Open source software has eliminated licensing issues, increasing the distribution of new applications. Web Services (WS*), open standards, and distributed computing has led to new business models: Application Service Providers (ASP’s), Software as a Service (SaaS), etc. And finally, new service expectations driven by Web2.0, mash-ups, collaboration, openness/transparency, access, integration, etc., allows anyone to quickly identify and adopt new systems, from the most basic needs, a blog (Wordpress) to document your Culinary team, to those often deemed “mission critical;” office productivity, the LMS, e-mail and even the desktop (i.e. Google Apps, Moodlerooms, Zimbra–have you seen YouOS?).

Considering this new environment raises several questions for me, both as someone responsible for technology and as a user as well. Those interested in the evolving role of IT should check out. “The Organization of the Organization.”

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This was a post on Penn State’s Terra Incognita. I think it speaks to the previous post…

Learning4Content - Wiki Skills and OER
June 15th, 2008 by Ken Udas

It is great to see something work as it should. You know the whole thing about “walking the talk,” “eating your own dog food,” etc. With this in mind, I want to point you to Learning4Content, which I think is an interesting (and brilliant) project that speaks directly to the notion of an “OER ecosystem” needed for sustainability, which is occasionally mentioned in this and other forums.

Through this project, WikiEducator offers a free series of online and face-to-face workshops on wiki skills. The workshops are made available to teachers, learning designers, students, educators, etc. (which is pretty cool), but the best part is that during the workshops participants develop and donate one free content resource back to the WikiEducator community (which is pretty brilliant).

The next online workshop starts on June 23, 2008. If you are interested, check out the L4C Registration page. There is a learning contract and some expectations for participants to engage in OER community. You can Learn about the expectations, funding, and L4C schedule at the project site on WikiEducator.

I actually found this video while checking out an online psychology course created by one of our Delhi instructors. It made me laugh. No wait, it made me cackle. Go team, go! Teamwork is awesome!

HigherEdJobs.com has released the results of the 2007-08 Salary Survey, conducted by The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). In total, you will find median salaries for over 500 academic and administrative job categories.

• Senior-Level Administrator Median Salaries : View median salaries of 272 senior-level administrative positions.
• Mid-Level Administrator Median Salaries : View the median salaries of 206 mid-level administrative positions.
• Faculty Median Salaries : View the median salaries of 32 academic disciplines.

Virtualization seems to be a growing trend right now; expanding in its uses and applications. I think most people look at virtualization as something that is done on servers as a means of saving resources. TechRepublic says it like this: “Today’s use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to automatically manage the resources of the physical server to efficiently support multiple operating systems, each supporting different applications.” http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=47831880-888424b3d30f9d71c6558bff5a2cf89d-bf&brand=TECHREPUBLIC&s=5

Virtualization is so much more than this when you bring it to your pc as well. Virtualizing allows your desktop operating system to host additional operating systems (the same OS as the host or something completely different). This allows a user to experience multiple operating systems on one computer and can be especially helpful when applications have compatibility issues. At SUNY Delhi we have been using this type of virtualization for a few years for the testing and development of software. There are many virtualization packages that are available that will work for this type of use, 3 of which are reviewed by Peter Varhol in ‘Virtualization Hits the Desktop’ http://virtualizationreview.com/features/article.aspx?editorialsid=2449 . (Microsoft’s’ Virtual PC 2007 is available as a free download and gets a decent review as does Parallels Workstation 2.2; however, VMware Workstation 6.0.2 is still the leader in this technology.

So where does this technology go if we push it one more step? Keith Ward in ‘Helping Kids do more – a Lot More’ http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/weblog.aspx?blog=2121 discusses an elementary school that has reduced the cost of hardware by virtualizing pc’s in the classroom. This school is literally turning 1 standard (or even low end) desktop with only 512MB of RAM into a system that 3 students can use simultaneously. This particular school is using nComputing, who claims that “The Average person uses less than 10% of the capacity of their pc.” They claim that their solution helps you get the most out of your pc’s by allowing multiple users to simultaneously use the same pc; running different applications with “their own files, settings and preferences”. (http://ncomputing.com/home.aspx) This sounds an awful lot like a dumb terminal, a thin client…haven’t we been here before? Are we headed back to where we have already been? Where will the technology go next?

Virtualization is still an emerging technology that has many directions it could go and a long way to go before it hits its peak. Virtualization can relate to a wide range of technologies from hardware to applications to management, engulfing servers and desktops with all of its uses. How you use virtualization and where you take it is largely up to each organization and user!