I’m here just to inform you about my new blog address. Take a look at http://mvmendes.com/blog and thanks for your visit 
Bye
“You must kill one lion a day”. This statement is very common in Brazil. It’s true for me right now. I am begining a new career : Civil Engineer – yes, from now I’m going to work and serve at another area! I have a little experience as Engineer, but now I need grow up and learn very much. I’m very happy with this new job.
Of course the things aren’t only roses in the garden. As I spent much time in the IT area (+20 years), I need learn how to be a good Civil Engineer; so I am going to kill many lions as Engineer, every day
I am very happy and so grateful for God blessed me with this job. Also many thanks to my wife, family, friends and my boss for believe that I can be useful at my new company; I will; certainly.
I am sure I can be very good Engineer, like I was as IT professional. I am working with projects’ revision (with railroads) and I am dealing with many great professionals at our company.
As always, God is blessing me
In the last few days, many landslides occurred at Rio de Janeiro. 215+ lives were lost and now, thousand of people are without their houses, furniture, food and even particular objects and documents. The geography and geology of Rio de Janeiro, specially nearest of capital, is wonderful … and dangerous. So we need to be careful when we are building houses in slopes. And our government needs to be careful too!
I don’t intend make nasty remarks, but It seems our government were (and actually are), at least, negligent and incompetent in administration of power, money and public resources – this is my opinion or interpretation. If no, let’s see.
Our Government are acting as “laissez-faire” when many citizens have chosen (are there any alternative to them?) live at slopes. Even more, our Government incentives these people to live and build houses in these areas, since he have installed water systems, electrical resources and our streets are paved – again, in these areas. So, we can think: why not live in these areas? There is no care about life, good terms or environments to live, good services to deliver and … about people education. We don’t have any instructions about where (and how) build these houses at slopes. Besides this, we don’t have a culture of both sewage treatment and garbage deployment; in this case, there were a lot houses built on to mountains of sewage and garbage! Yes, incredible.
By the way, what would we say about our many communications vehicles? Are they announced some instructions to our people? Are they contributing with some type of education programs, in order to avoid situation like that? Sorry, I suspect no. I worked about 7 years in one of the most important newspaper of Brazil and I’ve never seen any mass campaign about do not throw something way on the streets, for example!
Our communications vehicles do nothing about that. They don’t care about this! Specially TVs, are concerned to make programs like BBB (Big Brother Brasil), many soaps during the day – we export soaps! – comedy series (we’re laughing about ourself), eroticism, bad musics (sorry, some kind of songs teach nothing to our teens and it’ll be very good if we use music to teach something to our young people), infinity cases of murderers, theology prosperity, carnival party (the most famous party in Brazil) and so on! I think they should make programs and spend money in order to educate our people! But, they aren’t concerned about educations programs! The ROI (return of investment) is short or insignificant.
Our communications vehicles work very hard to communicate and teach our poor people to get more money instead more culture and education! All programs that deals with questions about educations, universities’ programs and good practices, for a example, are transmited, normally, at Saturday or Sunday morning – about 5 or 8 am (most of us are sleeping at this time!). But, for some reason, they prefer transmit bad programs at the noble schedule.
And what about us? How many hours we spend in front of TV, watching programs like that?
Cheers and maybe God have mercy on us.
Finally we’ve finished our ERP Project. In fact, right now, we finished and launched 2 projects. Although we spent more money in this project than we expected, we’re sure the company will gain with this new system.
From now on, all internal processes will be more accurate and secure. Besides this, these many processes are well documented, integrated and standardized. According to Jeanne W. Ross – Enterprise Architecture as Strategy (very good book), these two last benefits are the main features of all business process. Any organization must decide which level of process integration and standardization the organization will adopt. That definition describes the “operating model” of company.
We’re sure we have done a very good job, although some internal professionals does not agree yet (in the next few months they will see), but who is unanimity? Leadership is often difficult; no problem! If we need step back and consider all benefits of our work, we will recognize that the work wasn’t in vain.
By delivering this big project – paradoxically – we need to start again in order to get other job. Yes, I’m restarting …
Let’s go on! We can’t stop.
Although the importance and popularity of IT is increasing (specially in these last years), many organizations still lead their strategy without IT participation at begining, sorry, together and at the begining. We are acting as in the past.
Many years ago, my grandfather had a little shop in the country of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He used to sell rice, beans, corns etc and one day, he thought: it’s time to modernize. Good, very good! So he called a Remington typewriter reseller (did you remenber of Remington?) and bought one machine, because there was no more space on the table. Few months later, my grandfather decided invest a little more and bought one more machine. Good again! But his intention, with his second acquisition, was continue write his letters (balance, sheets…) at the same manner – same type etc) as he was doing with Remington; but the new machine did not have compatibility with Remington (the good and old Remington)! The result was: for years later, the shop wrote different sheets, cards and so on! Besides this, my grandfather lost money – his clients did not like many differents types of documents. He did not have a Strategy; he did not discuss the Strategy with Remington’s Consultant.
Nowadays, many persons has the same thought: “IT is just more computer! Put them to talk!” Of course, they are wrong but don’t want hear anyone. Penalty!
This question is old; was treated many times for many IT consultants, I know. But IT is much more than “buy computers”. In fact IT is Information; this explains why IT is strategy. CIO must be part of organization’s planning and strategy.
By the way, the Remington typewriter was good, doesn’t? I learned type with this machine and I’m using the same keyboard today.
I have thinking about the relationship between Freedom and Truth. Is there any relationship between them? I think so. Jesus said at John 3:23 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God”.
In fact, the freedom resides into the truth. When I am transparent, without any kind of mask, I’m free. Right now, I remember a beautiful Paul Mccartney’s song – Freedom: “This is my life … I will fight for the right to live in freedom”. I think our biggest and personal war is against lies and ambiguity. When I lie, I find myself in a prision.
But I think also that we depend on God to be honest, sincere and transparent. Without Your action in our lifes, we can’t win this war.
BPM and BPMS are helping to improve the processes and the organization. From the review and refocusing of the company’s operations, the Process Management creates the conditions for (1) continuous improvement and (2) to obtain sustainable competitive advantage in the medium and long term. (3) From the perspective of IT (with BPMS), the initiative can promote the dream of alignment of IT-Business processes.
By managing processes effectively, your company will be prepared to meet the increasing demands of regulators, could make better use of existing resources, balancing the idle capacity X seasonality, and observe and meet the strategic goals of the business. The following are some steps to get a competitive advantage via BPM, by using a BPMS (intalio, for example) :
1. Map of Current Business Model (AS IS) – Translate business strategies, identifying how the organization operates and figured out where the inefficiencies, bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.
2. Define a new process model (TO BE) – The goal is establish how the organization will operate with flow diagrams, business rules and indicators. Here is the biggest challenge, I think. There are many invisible barriers at our companies! After that, with many meetings with our key-users, and maybe good and big discussions/negociations/reviews, all of them sponsored by main board, we are ready to go forward.
3. Designing (with little coding) processes in BPMN – by OMG.
4. Automating with BPEL – Generate the executable code of the process.
5. Play – Distribute the executable code of the process.
6. Interact – Perform tasks set up by the implementation of the process.
7. Monitor – Control the execution and performance of the implementation process.
8. Analyze – Identify unexpected behaviors, bottlenecks, under-utilized streams, tasks without performance, etc.
9. Optimize – Update the design process and implement improvements on an ongoing basis.
Important to say here : behind of this scene, there is Enterprise Architecture. But, like my mother said, this subject “are other 500″ !
Finally, we have just started one big project at our Company: an ERP Project. It is a great notice for us because this project will improve our business, make better our processes I hope. It’s a historical fact for us! We were waiting (and working) for this since 2007.
Our responsability is also big, but we are ready for this. We have a great team, we know our business, we know our goal (what we want) and we have a great partner: Jesus Christ. Jesus is the biggest strategist I know. We must learn with Him!
Of course, we are dealing with good and experienced professionals: our key-users. Whithout them, we can not be winner. Our deadline is December/2009 and our sponsor (General Director) is helping us a lot with your vision and your support.
I’ll be back with news. Bye
Nowadays, I’m working mainly with two big projects. The first one is just begining: We are starting an ERP Project at my work. We’ll, of course, involve many good professionals in this job. We hope end it at about December of this year. Yes, after about 18 months of intense work with many possiblities and solution’s providers, we chose one of the most important company in Brazil – their ERP system is big. We’ll improve (and maintain) our business besides get precise information about our processes.
The second project, like the first, is big (very big and important for us; represent a core of our business): It is an Academic Project – we’ll develop and implement an Academic System written in Java. In this project we are working with a very good partner, who has a expressive expertise in this business.
Both these projects, represents the crown of my work in this company. I hope be winner and sucessfull with my team! By the way, my team is starting in the use of best practices like ITIL (some processes, not all, for a while). If you could, pray for us; ask God bless us.
I’m a little anxious to start. We’ll begin at March.
See you.
Many differents companies with similar or different job/business are looking for ‘the professional’. In general, this person must:
Have intelligence;
Be proactive;
Be expert;
Have good health;
Be winner;
Be a leader;
Be young (is it necessary?);
Have a good family;
Be beautiful;
Available to work remotely and travel (all the time);
Have many titles, as example, Master or Doctor degree;
Be friendly;
Be smart;
Be confidence;
Have good vision about his future – ‘ he knows what wants’;
Have good vision about ‘the market’;
Be a teamworker;
Have many expertisies and abilities;
… and so on.
Are there any professional with some of these features above? Good.
But there are a great feature they are looking for – Ethic.
We all appreciate this feature too – ethic. But this feature is very difficult in our days, we know. Even into our churches we have a lot of people without ethic – yes it’s true. Yesterday, we had a meeting with many students at our University – there was 2 speakers with us. By the middle of meeting, one prelector said: “At business, in order to get success, we must to do anything, at any cost. On business, there aren’t ethic.” Do you believe? Do you agree? At any cost?
Do you remember the best professional you knew and worked with him? What about your last boss? So do I, of course. But, what the most important characteristic they had? Do you know some person with Ethic? Is there anyone with Ethic into your company?
Where can we find some professionals with ethic?
What about you? What about me? We must think about that and, yet we need to recognize our ambiguity.
But we can’t accept success at any cost.
