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Justifying IT Spend (Ewwww…)

So I spent late this afternoon in a meeting with our AVP, the desktop Build manager, my boss and the desktop product manager. This was the second round of this meeting trying to find justification for MDOP which leads to SA which leads to EA which gives us Windows 7 Enterprise. Let me just be the first to say that I hate dealing with finances. I'm not very good at them (or math in general for that matter) and because of this I'm not in the least bit interested. I automate things (Windows 7, application installs, etc.) because I'm inherently lazy and most technical concepts are easy for me. This eventually leads me down the path of rationalizing to myself (and in this case those around me) that deciding whether or not to spend a couple million dollars should be simple and that we must just be making it too complicated.

I'm pretty sure that's what made my AVP frustrated with me.

I've thought about this most of the afternoon and I think it comes back to the work my boss and I have been doing over the past two years to build and manage the desktop service catalog. First we sat down and tried to list every piece of technology in the desktop space (easy). Then we tried to list out every one of our service offerings (much harder). Basically these are what I call "The Sears and Roebuck Catalog" of things people can order at our drive through window. These things then roll up into higher level services that we offer which are just local groupings of our service offerings. We realized later that these service offerings also roll down into the processes that drive them and the technology that depends on those processes. When we listed out the processes, we realized an awesome thing; that we could then list with each process the type (pay band) of resources required to execute that process.

Tying together the four hard to make (and extremely boring) lists I described in the yuckiness above gives you the ability to do one very cool thing. Automate easily justifying buying (or not buying) that new totally shiny thing that's gonna make the world awesome.

If putting in a new piece of technology affects 7 processes related to two service offerings by making the processes easier to execute or allows new processes that make service offerings better or create new service offerings then you have a pretty good idea of what money the technology is going to same and what kind of value the technology might bring to a particular service offering.

For example, you see an awesome new application compatibility tool that will automatically make a first pass at installing applications in your production source share, interrogate what the application installs is trying to do and centrally store that information and provide reports, etc. You want to buy this thing because you see value but you can't quantify it or explain it to anybody else. You sit down for an hour with your handy, dandy customized business case maker above and do the following: Identify which technology(ies) it might replace, which processes it might affect and how it's going to affect those processes. Is it going to lower the pay band of the resource required to execute that process? Is it going to enable you to increase the volume of transactions for that process thereby allowing you to consolidate FTE? Is it going to allow you to create entirely new service offerings and their associated processes? Is there an expected volume for these new processes? When you reach the end of your hour, you should have the basic figures for business case and an idea of how to articulate value. Realize that I talk about FTE not just because I like firing people (on principal, not actually) but because you're now able to take that FTE and do more different, cool, new things assuming someone wants you to do those things…

I look at it as a rubix cube you can sit down, play with and see if something makes sense before you go building a slide deck. It also gives you an idea of what other groups (within or outside of desktop) you need to work with.

 

I need to finish building the rubix cube on Monday….

 

David---

Testing out blogging from Word…

So I guess I'm trying to resurrect this blog again. We had a couple members of the configmgr product team out from Redmond last week and they asked me if I'd be willing to try Intune with my side business (Simple Technology) specifically for some of my farm and personal support accounts (tech for my Dad). I had never really thought much about Intune before (at least for Nationwide) because of the small business aspect to it. Then, the other night I was reading Manasi's article about Intune and he made mention of an interesting (although as yet unrealized) use case for Intune: Using it to manage the personally owned devices on your corporate network. Wouldn't have the same level of fidelity as configmgr (of course) but I wouldn't really expect it to nor would I want it to be as all-encompassing as SCCM is on your corporate-owned device.

Anyway, I spent the better part of a weekend thinking about it and decided I should probably check to see if my Microsoft partner account was still active. So, I logged into partner.microsoft.com and realized that my Live ID was still associated to CSS (where I used to work). I also realized that I couldn't really use my old Relor partner account since I folded that corporation when I left Akron. So, I set about registering my current business (Simple Technology, LLC.) and that's when I realized that I don't even have a website for this business. Tonight I realized I still have this old blog and I'm not sure what better way there is to prove what I think (because that's what sells stuff) then this blog. So we'll see if this posts right and see if it's worth keeping it up.

Up next is thoughts on Windows image creation best practices….

Fremont Street

Opening Keynote

It's amazing what you can do with a ton of money;-)

David---

Fountain in Lobby

Venetian Lobby

Much better!

A much better view from the 29th floor! Check it out.

My crappy view in Vegas...

This is the third room I've been in at the Venetian since I checked in last
night at 9pm. Called the front desk this morning and they're supposed to
move me after 3pm to a fourth room. I'll take another picture from there
and let you know.

We're out here for the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) this week and the
rest of the week is jam packed. Today's really my only laid back day. I
have two sessions this afternoon and a meeting around lunch with Paul
Thompsen (MS) but other than that. Not much I hope.

Lisa's back home with baby-pants and they went to the chiropractor this
morning to get her neck fixed. He wants her to go get checked for ruemetoid
arthritis because she's in so much constant pain. I hope they find and can
fix something.

Little teen got his hand-me-down John Deere tractor this past weekend from
my parents. They bought it for Caleb when he was about teen's age but he
never really got to use it. Teen's totally in love with the thing. He
hasn't figured out how to pedal it yet but I expect when he does, we're
going to find him down the road at Chuck's. Once he gets really mobile, I
have no idea how we're going to keep track of him. I vote for buying one of
those GPS watches for children.

Enough rambling. I seem to only post updates when I'm bored. I guess
Betsy's right.

David---