Yellerdog

Last night  I attended my local IIBA chapter's May meeting. This meeting was formatted as a 'lightning round' information exchange workshop. The room had five tables, each with three discussion questions on a topic relevant to BA work. We each rotated around the room in 10-minute sessions and, during each session, discussed the questions at each table. Ground rules similar to a brainstorming session (safe environment, respect privacy, everyone is allowed to speak, etc.) created an environment encouraging honesty and openness.
 
Topics included scope management, requirements elicitation, managing stakeholders, tools, and career management. Some questions were obvious ("what is your favorite tool for BA work? " ), while some evidenced a good understanding of the challenges of BA work ("how do you manage a stakeholder who dominates a brainstorming session? " ).

I learned a few things about myself and my area.

1. There are a surprising number of BA's in my area. Disney, Wyndham, Marriott, credit unions, banks, they're all employing significant numbers of BAs.
2. With 15 years of consulting experience I am one of the more experienced analysts at the table. I'm not used to that, as most of the team I work with has tons of experience.

I also learned some things about the software marketplace.

1. Just about everyone uses Word, but most users aren't happy with it. The chief complaints seem to be the complexity and, over time, the messed-up file format. There's a real opportunity for Lotus Symphony, this tells me.
2. Just about everyone struggles with document and information management. There's a real need for a lightweight, cost-effective document management system for departments and the SMB space. I can see a stripped-down version of Lotus Domino Document Manager filling this space quite nicely.
3. SharePoint is starting to get to the place that Lotus Notes has been in for years -- if you don't assign plan and resource your deployment adequately, you get a lousy implementation and the product does not perform as advertised. My employer is a big SharePoint shop, so I think I see an opportunity to sell our SharePoint expertise.

OK, I will be the last to jump on this meme, describing how I came to be involved in Lotus Notes.

I started my career as a technical writer, working for companies such as System One and Blockbustrer Video (I wrote their store operations manual). Having done that for a few years, I observed that most managers were (and are) not especially competent. I also saw that my chosen profession had a glas ceiling when it came to salaries and promotions. So, looking for a career without a glass ceiling, I decided to get into management. The golden gateway to management is an MBA, so I got one in 1994.

However, I had always been a tech geek. I had job offers from Arthur Anderson and some other companies, but they required me to move. I did not want to for personal reasons, so without experience, a business plan, or cash, I started my own consulting company. I struggled by for a while, then finally closed up shop in 1996 and took a job at a medical services company as an MS Access developer. in mid 1996 I got a call from a grad school friend. His employer was opening a branch in my town and wanted to add some staff. I'd have to learn this Lotus Notes thing and get certified. Grumbling about how this weird product was not relational, I took the job anyway - they 60% pay raise helped a lot.

We had a Novell Netware network in the office. Our main Notes server (R4) ran on OS/2 Warp and replicated four times a day with the home office via dial-up. I went about getting certified as a developer and admin on R4, then on 4.5 when it came out in 1996. Our clients included Olive Garden, Siemens, and AT&T. LotusScript was easy -- a lot like MS Access BASIC. Formulas were not too bad, as they reminde4d me of my old 1-2-3 days. Admin - now that was hard. But I still managed to get certified on every version from 4.5 to 7 on both Admin and Dev, and have been a LotusScript pCLP since R5.

I've been involved with Notes in some way or another ever since. I've done work for manufacturers, retailers, hospitals, government agencies, telecom companies, banks, restauranteurs, and shippers. I've spoken at conferences, published artciles in The View, met some great people, and attended at least three Lotuspheres. Plus I run our famil e-mail and web server using a Domino box that sits under my desk at home. After over 8 years of service, and upgrades from 5.0.8 all the way to 8.0.1, it is time to retire that box. The new box will, of course, run Domino.

Ironicaly, I am no longer professionally involved in Lotus; I just do it as a hobby. So why am I in the middle of a three-part series of Ajax articles for The View? Well, because I can, I guess.

I am currently in the process of converting my family from a Windows environment to a Mac environment. We have two Macs in the house, my Macbook ('Platon') and my wife's Mac Mini ('Vesta').

My wife, for the time being, is getting all of her mail via Mac mail (mail.app). She connects via IMAP to our home Domino server, and she seems to be pretty happy with it. Here are some observations.

1. There is no way to tell mail.app which folder to use for junk mail. It just goes ahead and creates one when you establish the connection and turn on junk mail filtering. So now Pam's mail DB has more than one junk mail folder.
2. Ditto for Sent. Dumb.
3. The LDAP directory settings don't seem to be working. I think this has more to do with my Domino server than anything else.
4. The Mac client does an excellent job of rendering e-mail regardless of format - rich text, plain text, HTML. Wish I could say the same thing for Lotus Notes.
5. We have a Logitech trackball attached to the Mini (and all of our other PC's in fact). Pam finds the use of the right mouse button to be pretty straightforward. It blows my mind that Apple stubbornly stuck with a 1-button mouse for years. Sure, Jobs is brilliant, but when he is wrong, he is wrong.

I'll have some observations on the Mac 8.5 beta client later.