Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

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Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

Pirmin Bercher

33 episodes

2 weeks ago

Watch it till the end, and next time when you have breakfast, think of the complexity # 33 Give me what I want not what I asked for The typical problem is that the requirements are not clearly defined which leads to a different solution. Make sure that the persons involved in the requirements definition understand the business case, understand to communicate this requirement to different stakeholders and to abstract their problem from the direct use case. Developers think different than func...

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Watch it till the end, and next time when you have breakfast, think of the complexity # 33 Give me what I want not what I asked for The typical problem is that the requirements are not clearly defined which leads to a different solution. Make sure that the persons involved in the requirements definition understand the business case, understand to communicate this requirement to different stakeholders and to abstract their problem from the direct use case. Developers think different than func...

Show more...

Episodes (20/33)

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

33 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 33 Give me what I want not what I asked for

Watch it till the end, and next time when you have breakfast, think of the complexity # 33 Give me what I want not what I asked for The typical problem is that the requirements are not clearly defined which leads to a different solution. Make sure that the persons involved in the requirements definition understand the business case, understand to communicate this requirement to different stakeholders and to abstract their problem from the direct use case. Developers think different than func...

2 weeks ago

6 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

32 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 32 Systems should make work easier

# 32 Systems should make work easier Always keep in mind that you need to generate value with your solutions. Sounds too obvious. Not because having a fancy thing makes it a good thing. People like easy and fail proof things that don’t need too much thinking. Often, we tend to forget what the customer wants and deliver a technical solu-tion. Today there is a little mistake in it, do you find it? The first who pings me, mail via my website www.pibeco.com or here, gets a free paper copy...

1 month ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

30-31 Pirmins Podcast Thought #30 Excel is Heaven and #31 Excel is Hell

Double episode ! There's no (Excel) Heaven without (Excel) Hell # 30 Excel is heaven In many companies, Excel is the wonder tool! When you look around the things that can be done by Excel, it’s sometimes amazing that there are other tools in the world. As often read, Excel is not an ERP ;). But you should not underestimate what can be done by an Excel expert. But also be sure that you are the expert or have the expert(s). # 31 Excel is hell As said before, Excel is heaven i...

1 month ago

6 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

29 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 29 Don‘t waste time in technology

# 29 Don‘t waste time in technology This is the opposite of „let technology do the job“. Sometimes we tend to make everything automated or system driven. There are cases where you need to think about it. Does it make sense to spend 2 days in preparing a data upload, testing when you only have to upload 10 records and can type this in in 1 h? Is the data cleansing more time consuming to prepare an upload file than training a human to do the job? It’s like always a fully unscript...

1 month ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

28 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 28 Let technology do the (dumb) job

# 28 Let technology do the (dumb) job If you work on a complex project or complex technology, try to make the machine do the dumb jobs. There are many things that can easily be automated, trained to tools and applications. The more of the simple tasks you transfer to these little help-ers, the more time you have for the complex things. It’s like always a fully unscripted recording ! Happy to get your feedbacks! If you liked .. spread the news ! If you can’t wait for next w...

1 month ago

3 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

27 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 27 Multi sources for messaging create confusion

# 27 Multi sources for messaging create confusion If you use reminders / messages generated by workflow or systems, try to keep them to a needed minimum as they will sooner or later be ignored. Try also to avoid to have these mes-saged from multiple sources / different communication ways. They all look different, requesting different actions. The more you have different ones, the more likely is that a user oversees them or interpret them as a possibly unwanted message. This applies especially...

2 months ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

26 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 26 Be careful with workflows and reminders

# 26 Be careful with workflows and remindersWorkflows can be a great tool to steer and control the execution of a business process where multiple people are involved. One great thing about workflows is, that the workflow engine can send messages to the persons who are in charge of the execution of the next step. Just like the „be careful with standard messages“, be careful with these. If the workflow sends a reminder to the whole finance department, maybe 10 people, to execute an invoic...

2 months ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

25 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 25 Be careful with standard messages popping up

# 25 Be careful with standard messages popping up We all love to make sure that we did all correct. So often, we have the desire to have a reminder popping up asking us, “Are you sure that XXX is correct?” The intention is good, keeping the user awake and potentially reduce errors, but on the other hand, the more we have these questions and we answer them with “yes/click ok,” the less we look at them. So, they lose their meaning as we just click to continue! It’s like always a fully ...

2 months ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

24 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 24 Don’t over guide

# 24 Don’t over guide Typically “assistants” or user guided processes are needed in early phases of a project. Just like a step-by-step workflow, asking you questions, guiding you or offer pre-filled values. Most of these guided processes then include drop down lists to select something and then “click ok” go to next screen. In most cases, these assistants will have a lot of explanatory infor-mation. All this is good, if a process is either executed very few times or generally, the user is no...

2 months ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

23 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 23 Digital s**t does not smell… That’s all

# 23 Digital s**t does not smell… That’s all What is the difference between analog s**t and digital s**t? The analog one sticks at your shoes and smells... on the other hand, the digital one sticks on you but doesn’t smell. If you don’t do your homework and check what goes wrong in your old way of working and seek to understand why it’s going wrong, you will just implement the old/analog way. This ap-proach is not going to solve your problem. Generations of ERPs have been implemented to impro...

3 months ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

22 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 22 Don‘t make all your processes bullet proof

# 22 Don‘t make all your processes bullet proof Don’t try to make all your processes and exceptions bullet-proof. This will only increase the complexity of the implemen-tation and complexity is the enemy of stability, budget and success. Make your few core processes tank-cannon proof! If your employees can rely that a defined standard process is working stable and predictable, they can handle the exceptions. If you also try to make your exception process bulletproof, be sure to have the resou...

3 months ago

6 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

21 Pirmins Podcast Thought # 21 Don’t try to reach everything in one run

# 21 Don’t try to reach everything in one run When you start your project, the ambitions and motivation to change and go for the best are high. Even if aiming for the stars is needed to achieve best results, you need to be realistic enough to focus on what is needed. You will not reach any perfect result in one shot! Create something that is working. Give the team a success. Start with a minimum viable prod-uct/project. This makes failure less likely. Be sure some people will be disappo...

3 months ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

20 Pirmins Podcast Thought #20 Don’t change / widen your scope

# 20 Don’t change / widen your scope Even though you should be open to increase the functionality, integration or usability of a solution, don’t change the scope once the project is started! Everybody tends to change or in-crease the project scope during the implementation phase as we all are learning and seeing that what we originally defined is not sufficient. Changing / adjusting the scope should only be done if there is an immediate and massive business value in-crease which over rules t...

3 months ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

19 Pirmins Podcast Thought #19 Aim for the stars

# 19 Aim for the stars As your business vision is a vision and may never be achieved, your project vision must be open and wide. Don’t exclude ideas or solutions at the beginning. Think about all the integra-tion possibilities or features that would be great to use. As long as you stay realistic and know that aiming for the stars may result in landing on the moon, all is good. If you block yourself too early, you may even not reach a lift off. It’s like always a fully unscripted recor...

9 months ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

18 Pirmins Podcast Thought #18 Coca Cola is not Pepsi

#18Coca Cola is not Pepsi One difficult thing for people is to imagine similarity or mak-ing abstractions. A Cola beverage is mainly water, sugar (or substitute), color, flavor, CO2. (Some details missing ... don’t hate me for that). If you now discuss at Pepsi a software im-plementation where you use the (perfect) slides you made for a Coca Cola project, the audience will in 90 % of the cases complain that „We are not Coca Cola and all is different“. They can’t abstract that maki...

10 months ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

17 Pirmins Podcast Thought #17 A partner is a partner

# 17 A partner is a partner If you choose to implement a larger software project, you should consider the role of external persons / your implementa-tion partner. Complex software implementations need a deep understanding in your business and a deep trust from you in your partners. You should consider your implementation part-ner as partner not as a vendor/contractor! Same applies for other involved persons like freelancers, developers, sub-contractors. If you integrate them in your tea...

1 year ago

6 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

16 Pirmins Podcast Thought #16 Stay with your methods

#16 Stay with your methods Once you start implementing a major software solution you will choose an implementation method, agile, scrum, waterfall, a special method from your partner, data first, logic first or what else is on the market and you think suits your business case best. All of these methods have shown that they work, at least for the business case they were developed. Make sure you have a suitable method and approach for your project. You should avoid mixing methods because ...

1 year ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

15 Pirmins Podcast Thought #15 If a plan will fail, why should I plan?

# 15 If a plan will fail, why should I plan? Good question. Like a famous quote in military lessons „No plan will survive the first contact with the enemy“ (attributed as quote to many historical military persons). This has been proven by many battle plans in history, but military does not stop making plans. Are they stupid? Wasting time with plans? No they are highly intelligent! (However you can generally question if any kind of military action is intelligent). By play-ing / making the plan...

1 year ago

4 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

14 Pirmins Podcast Thought #14 If plan “A” fails, the alphabet has 25 other letters

# 14 If plan “A” fails, the alphabet has 25 other letters As mentioned in „A Plan is a Plan“, things can go wrong and will go wrong. (Remember Murphy’s laws) Most likely failure will happen the moment where it’s either completely unex-pected or most critical. A good thing to anticipate that, is to have a draft version of a backup / failure plan. This does not mean to have a detailed version of it, but having this in mind or drafted will help you to focus again if there is a major change...

1 year ago

5 minutes

Pirmin's Podcast : IT - ERP - Projects 33 years of experience - 99 thoughts, a weekly podcast

13 Pirmins Podcast Though #13 A plan is a plan

#13 A plan is a plan When you handle complex projects, making a plan how to execute the different steps, identifying the critical path, defin-ing the resources and working on different scenarios is crucial-ly important. But life / your project will not follow your plan! The moment you signed off the plan, started to work on it, things will diverge from the plan. Now comes the situation everyone fears, the plan does not match the reality anymore and needs to be adjusted. The magic is about, ho...

1 year ago

6 minutes