More on the Primavera User Conference

                   Disruptive Technology Panel Observations

 

 

I participated in a panel discussion on disruptive technologies in the PSA/PPM space while at this conference. Moderating the panel was Jim Alexander (of Alexander Consulting and the author of several books on the services space). Panelists included the CTO of Primavera, Mike Sicilia, their chief technologist and EVP, Dick Farris, and me.

I jotted down some of the subjects we discussed as well as questions/comments that arose from the audience. Here they are in no particular priority:

-          Web 2.0 differences between commercial and consumer users of same  - We talked about how the free-wheeling “everyone can publish” world works in many settings. Consumers/personal users of public wiki data, product reviews and other information may not require perfect data but businesses need to have more discipline over the published content and/or need data to possess a higher degree of accuracy. This, of course, led to a discussion as to the appropriateness of wikis vs. intranets. Ease of setup and administration was pitted against the need to keep certain matters controlled.

-          We talked about the need to introduce more predictive capabilities into application software. It’s great that everyone’s got a BI/Analytics tool on top of a SOA platform, but, when are we going to see something new besides prettier versions of existing transaction data?

-          Audience members were quite vocal in stating how vendors should provide more tools that assess how well users are actually utilizing the software. In the PPM world, are users setting up new projects in the system correctly? Could project success rates be improved if the software did more to educate user management how far off their users are from acceptable/best practices?

-          New capabilities for applications were discussed in the context of:

o       Need to improve US GDP – What else can vendors do to improve the revenue/employee ratio in US businesses today?

o       How can professional services firms better retain the newest generation of workers entering today’s workforce?

o       Are the techniques embedded into today’s applications reminiscent of obsolete/aging management disciplines? Are these relevant in the business world today? Are we businesses evolving faster than technology vendors understand?