Equip Our Team with Operating Capability (Not Just Latest Technology)

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime – Chinese Proverb

 

 

 

Similar to the proverb above, we all know that give a man a fast boat or an expensive fishing rod wouldn’t help if teaching him to fish is not part of the package. Yet this conventional wisdom is oftentimes being ignored in technology implementations. As a result of that, many good projects were subsequently abandoned because lacked of funding allocation for continuous maintenance and training.

Sounds familiar? While future proofing our technology equipment is important but we wouldn’t able to benefit much without continuous human resource development.  Although many current practices put Transfer of Technology (ToT) in initial project implementation but this one-off initiative oftentimes become the hairline crack that eventually sink the mightiest ship. The results: we often realized too late, spearheading human operating capability is still very much an on-going battle, long after acquiring the greatest technologies.

Among the reasons that warrant this on-going efforts by setting aside annual training budget are:-

• People movement due to job transfer, retirement or new team members on-board
• New technology versions/releases might cause previous workflow to be obsolete or irrelevant
• New innovations/inventions that can be embedded to enhance efficiency and save time/cost
• Take full advantage of latest configuration/integration capabilities

Formula to ensure continuous success of GIS implementation is to ensure both technology and operating capability is updated/maintained persistently. Equipping our team with the right operating capabilities deserved constant attention of all senior executives that want to make a difference.

When I was leading Esri Malaysia team, continuously equipping my team with relevant capabilities and guide them to excel in whatever they do is one of the most rewarding effort that propelled the company into spectacles growth trajectory. A trained and competent team is always more motivated, confident and committed to undertake new challenges. I suggest all senior executives shall put utmost emphasis on up-keeping operating capability for their team in order to fully leverage and maximize their ROI on technology investments.

This writer hopes to see more organizations will allocate annual training budget to equip their team with relevant operating capabilities. How about an acid test for all: “How much have we set aside our budget for operating capability training this year?”

Cost Component of GIS Implementation

GIS project is costly and involve lot of resources. However, if implemented successfully it will bring you many folds of benefits in making the right decision and even saving lives. Unfortunately many GIS project started without proper budget planning. Ends up the projects are either stranded half way or being compromised by substandard implementation due to insufficient funding.

There are many reasons that might fail a GIS project. From budgeting perspective, under estimating the budget amount is one of the most common mistakes made by GIS implementation team.

Hence, let’s spare a moment to dissect the cost structure of a typical project and make sure you have at least taken the following into consideration when doing your next GIS project budgeting. Similar to any project budgeting, it is imperative to understand the basic components/ ingredients needed to start a GIS project, namely:-

• Software – GIS, RDBSM, Operating Systems
• Hardware – Workstation/Server/Storage/Backup/Plotter/Mobile devices
• Services – Application development, system architecture design, database design
• Training – Important for proper transfer of technology and knowledge (ToTK)
• Data Acquisition, Data Conversion & QAQC – Raster to vector, vector to vector
• Maintenance for Software, Hardware & Data – Else your solution will not be upgraded
• Infrastructure – Site preparation, cabling and networking (if involving new office unit)

These cost components are equally important, inter-related and inter-connected. To some extend it is almost impossible to cut budget at certain specific scope, without impacting the overall performance of the GIS system.

I’m sure you have heard a lot of the following scenarios:-

• Project A is not well accepted because the overall system is slow and the users are frustrated. While the software normally gets the blame, but in reality most of the speed performance issues are related to under estimating the hardware specification.

• Project B purchased the most sophisticated software and hardware but did not budget effort for implementation services. Worst still, the in-house staff are not yet trained to handle the new system. Ends up the hardware and software remain unwrap and become a white elephant project.

• Project C started off and finished well within project timeline, budget and quality expectation. However without the maintenance budget the system becomes out-dated due to constant advancement in hardware and software. After 12 – 18 months, the commissioned system is at least 1 version behind the latest technology release cycle and not able to maximize all the improvements and new features that come with the latest release. Eventually the system becomes obsolete due to lack of maintenance/upgrade.

There are many more similar cases that you’ve experienced before. It is sufficed to mention a few to elaborate my points. Hope this will help you to plan ahead better. Wish you all the best in your GIS implementation journey.

New GIS Deployment Pattern Requires GIS Engineer and Web Programmer

I was from GIS old school that spent most of my previous GIS career on desktop-based GIS environment. While I’m pretty comfortable with desktop-based GIS, I have to acknowledge the new emerging trend in web, cloud/device GIS deployment pattern. Web and cloud GIS offer both a fascinating and whole new world to me. In order to play catch up and bring myself up to speed with the latest technology trend, I do spend a lot of time reading and asking – especially by leveraging on many smart people around me.

The set back from traditional desktop-based GIS is lacked of ability to provide pervasive access for other users – both GIS and non-GIS people. The new cloud/device pattern provides new user experience by allowing users to access intelligent map on their desktop, internet browser, smartphone, tablet PCs through web services. User is able to query, navigate, edit, and even perform analysis on these intelligent web maps. In other words, you are equipped with ability to provide pervasive access to users and empower them to perform GIS analytic on their preferred devices, without losing your data ownership. (I will write more about this smart way of sharing in my future post)

In this post, I would like to share some of the excerpts from one of the briefing sessions given by my Technical Pre-sales Lead (Firdaus) about the importance of GIS server and Web Server needed to make this new pattern works.

GIS Server is needed to host GIS map data. This is quite straight forward for GIS old-school like me. There is another component that might not be very familiar to GIS specialist is Web Server. Web server or App server is web application front end that interact and display the GIS map data on your internet browser.

Let’s put this into another perspective, if GIS server is a car engine, then Web server is your swift gear, steering wheel, display dashboard and brake pedal that interact and display the engine condition in manner that’s user-friendly and easy to interact.

Even though the engine (maps) can function on its own but it is more comfortable and easier to control the engine through combination of steering control/brake control/gear control (apps), and user can see the condition of the engine much better in terminology understandable by users i.e. engine oil condition, fuel level, speed, gear position, etc (user friendly command & executive dashboard display) without the need to peek at the engine compartment.

Obviously getting these two components to work right requires different skill set and great deal of coordination. Of course it would be nice if you can find these skills within the same person. If you found one, do make them your best friend.

Looking at our university GIS syllabus nowadays, it is not difficult to understand we are producing far more skilled GIS engineers/analysts – someone capable of creating and publishing map services, but lacked of necessary skill in programming i.e. JavaScript, HTML 5, Flex, Silverlight etc to make these GIS map services easier to handle/control by designing practical and nice swift gear, steering, brake and display dashboard.

While GIS engineer might like to get their hand dirty in dealing with engine (map layer, map service), the rest of the users just want to be able to drive (use the map) comfortably. We definitely need more skilled web programming resources to work hand-in-hand with GIS engineer to design a more user-friendly web applications for all.

GIS Implementation Strategy – Lesson from Low Cost Carriers

Low-cost carrier’s (LCC) chief element strategy is to fly large numbers of passengers on high frequency, short hops at bargain fares. LCC is able to serve this low-cost segment in the most efficient and economical way by providing fast turnaround time on the ground, standardize all of its planes to lower the cost of training, maintenance and inventory. LCC also opting for reliable, large aircraft manufacturers that offer range of aircrafts with different seating capacity model without ending up with collection of aircrafts from different manufacturers.

It makes a lot of business sense, else you will have to have different crews/hanger/tools to maintain/ stow/fly different aircrafts, different sets of training facilities, as well as different ground infrastructures needed to stow the aircrafts. Worst of all different aircrafts might have different operating procedures and might not able to integrate with each other.

In GIS implementation it is also important to consider the scalability of the GIS software in your implementation, else you would end up having Fokker/McDonnell Douglas in one department, and Airbus/Boeing in another department when you scale up your GIS implementation i.e. after your GIS application is gaining more popularity. Over the longer run, maintaining different incompatible software systems will make your maintenance cost shooting through the root. Worst of all, these different GIS software might not able to integrate well with each other and you are not able to standardize the workflow to maximize your ROI.

It is quite typical that GIS project started with desktop GIS level by a group of specialists to support a single department’s needs i.e. to support simple mapping application and to perform competitive analysis for marketing department. Soon other departments would like to leverage on the capabilities to perform planned or unplanned maintenance works; to track asset inventory; to extend it to customer care officers so that they are aware of the service availability when dealing with customer inquiry and the field crew would probably like to be able to see the accurate network diagram in the field and update the work order once the job is completed, etc. The desktop GIS that first started at marketing department soon need to be upgraded to enterprise GIS with server GIS and mobile GIS capabilities.

As per lesson learned from low-cost carrier, rightfully the last thing you would want to do is to end up having different software system for desktop, server, field and mobile environment that’s not compatible with each other. If you are the CIO or CTO of your organization that has on-going or about to get started with GIS implementation, you might want to do your stakeholders a favour by asking why on earth we are not following the proven business wisdom from low-cost carrier. It is quite understandable that departmental managers only look after their own needs, but as “C” level executives of an organization, it is our responsibility to look at bigger picture and interest of the company as totality.

If software is only good at desktop level but not scalable to meet your next server, mobile and enterprise GIS requirements, is it worth your on-going investment (which involves software, hardware, data, training, etc.)?

GIS can be a hobby but it will be a very costly hobby if you start to collect different type of non-compatible GIS software in your organization.