Umbraco Gold Partner: Open Source just died »

Yesterday one of the weirdest messages I have had in recent years came flying into my mailbox. Umbraco - the popular open source CMS software - was announcing the Gold Partner status. Being one of the most certified (Dutch) companies this was good news. Having experience with being a Microsoft Partner, that program really adds to your status and helps your developers work with the tools they promote.

But this time, my reaction was different. I could not believe my eyes…

Usually the status ‘Gold’ means really good, excellent and experienced development. You need extra competencies to reach that level and not every company can be ‘that good’. Here, it said the only difference was that a partner puts down a ridicoulous amount of money each year. I was flabbergasted.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting the Umbraco crew, in fact I am in favour of this. But the amount of money stated was like nothing I have ever seen before. Not even Microsoft would dare to ask this for their Gold Partner program. Next to that, it would not add anything to the reliability of the Partner, as the company could have less skills than a normal partner.

With the Microsoft Partner program you will get support FROM Microsoft to promote their products and use them as your basic tools. It is a win-win with both the vendor and the partner teaming up in developing all tools and making solutions from them. It isn’t used to pay Microsoft to develop their products.

We are building a huge package at the moment which would be a major add-on for the member section. As Umbraco is open-source our intention was to give it to the community, as we think this would really add to the product and would help out others who helped us with their packages. This is not your regular package, what we are building is huge. Yesterday’s message may have pursuaded me to commercialize on this product, so we can pay the Gold status from that. This is not what we want, we want to share, but if our competitors are stated as Gold we may be forced to. In my opinion, this move can kill the open-source thought which has made the Umbraco community strong.

Now, dear Umbraco, I know you guys are great at coding. You are great at functionality. You have built up a great community over the years… but your marketing still sucks. Please hire someone to do this properly, or if you did hire someone to invent this Gold Partner status, please fire him. There is only one profession that tells you how good you are when you put down money and you don’t deserve to be associated with that. Please fix this mistake.

Related subjects: umbraco partnership marketing software cms

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When Time is Up »

As an entrepreneur you will encounter all different stages with your company, but more important also your own. As your company grows you will find yourself with more work and less time at the same moment. That’s not a bad thing, just something you have to cope with and reorganize within your own work process.

The next step you take is usually getting the tools to work faster, know more and be efficient. Your employees register their own hours and are highly self-employed with work as they become more experienced within their jobs as well. Being an engineer scholar I entrusted my people with all operational tasks and project work, restricting myself to being an entrepreneur, project manager and salesperson.

When all operational work is off your desk you will have time to think again. That’s when you notice you’re doing a lot of stuff you’re not supposed to: administration, telephone calls, putting stamps on the invoices and ordering stuff. Next to this - but you don’t miss it when you don’t have it - is accounting, legal and debtors management. Slowly you’re spending more and more time learning about this and - as this is not what you’ve been trained for - getting mediocre stuff off the shelve. This is the time to get yourself a good accountant and legal advisor (doesn’t have to be a lawyer at first).

Fast forward to my situation today, still left with the office work, project management and sales. Now this has become a too big of a job for one person alone. You still try to be smart, manage things differently, try to automate, but all what’s left is human work. Well, better get the ‘dirty work’ off my shoulders now and get an office manager / secretary. This should offload the unstructured phonecalls, arrangement of meetings and putting the stamps on the invoices.

Every step along the way there’s should be a cost/benefit analysis of your situation. There are no predefined steps as each improvement should fit the company, entrepreneur and situation at the same time - you might need a secretary from the start - but there are always ways to increase your playtime and offload you with less important stuff.

There’s always one major factor that can accellerate or limit your company’s growth more than anything else; and that factor is YOU. So when time is up take a break to think straight again… and reorganize.

Related subjects: entrepreneur work management management self-improvement

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Golf is good for business! »

Last week I had an amazing golf experience. With two tournaments lining up on Thursday and Friday, this would be the end of the summer events and one last shot to see how much has been improved in my game this year. Then it happened… due to bad weather both tournaments were cancelled.

This left me back at the office with time to spend, two days in a row. You have to know that is a scary thought, as my schedule usually doesn’t allow me to do much of my own stuff. Well, let’s clean some stuff up I though.

Spending the first day literally throwing everything away made me realize how much junk was in my office. Even stuff from 2002 was in my archive cabinet as printing out was still pretty popular at that time. Seeing all this paper go down the drain made me realize I needed a digital office; no more printing out.

The next it was my laptop and business software’s turn. Clean all up, archive, discard things that aren’t relevant anymore. Spending your day like this will make you realize junk is not restricted to ‘the real world’ alone.

One of the most important changes the cleanup made for me was the realization I do not want to print out documents anymore. I will keep them digital and will make my notes digital. Next to that, I don’t want anymore stuff to move into my office as - at one point - it has to be carried out as well. How much stuff do you really need? When you think of this, a lot of things in your house and office don’t make sense or serve a need at that moment. When you’re done with it, sell it or throw it away, don’t keep large basements.

Wow, I’m really satisfied with my office now. Let’s play a game of golf to celebrate it…

Related subjects: entrepreneur golf

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Second half 2010 a (Google) Wave for IT companies? »

2010 has been an interesting year so far. Recession can still be felt, although some companies - like my own - seem to thrive during this period. Traditional sectors seem to be caught by the distress much worse, which will cause them to cut back personnel and expenses. Next to that, they seem to increase spending on IT for more flexibility and efficiency.

The IT companies are on a wave right now, but is this good or not? Having to increase the amount of resources will cause investments to be made, while clients knocking at the door will take larger terms to pay the goods. This will bring a lot of IT companies to the ever growing risk of cashflow shortage. Unless you’ve seen the bad times before, chances are young entrepreneurs may not have the reserves and will be caught in a bad spot.

It will be interesting to see how smaller IT companies will cope with this. You can have a healthy company with loads of clients, but when you don’t have cashflow you’re at the mercy of the banks or the tax office. Cashflow shortage is one of the biggest threats of every enterprise. But what will happen to the companies expecting their software? They will suffer yet another loss when the IT company goes broke and will set back their efficiency some months or years. Still, most companies will opt for a slower payment.

Fact is, most clients see their IT companies as a supplies, which in most cases they are. But when their core business processes are automated by that company they will need those experience and skills to survive, whether they will like it or not. When your company is in the last category, better treat your IT company as a partner instead of a supplier. A body can’t move (easily) without its legs and cannot make new things without its arms. IT has become just in the last 10 years.

So what will it be for the second half of 2010? Will it be like riding on a wave, or will it be like Google Wave? I actually think IT companies can choose themselves. There is no shortage of work for the small to midsized ISV’s and when you’re not on the cowmarket (putting peope at the client’s office and expecting money for that, regardless of result) you should be good. It now comes down to the managerial skills of the often young(er) entrepreneurs.

It will be interesting to see who’s going to ride the wave… and who will be under it.

Related subjects: entrepreneur software it management

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Project Management 2010 »

Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future. Being an EPM Live partner we got to see the early scoop of their new 2010 project management solution called WorkEngine.

Sure, you’re a partner you will say, so you have to sell it whether you like it or not. Wrong. As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) we seek to implement the very best 3rd party products for our clients and will not be limited to just one supplier. We do however make a strong selection of the ones which we want to offer in the first place. Being very enthusiastic of what I have seen so far I think it is mandatory for anyone related to project management to take a good look at this product.

Last year, EPM Live was being named the global Microsoft EPM Partner of the year for a fourth year in a row. This year, EPM Live has been introduced into the Gartner PPM Quadrant as one of the 25 best project solutions available. Next to that, the product has had the most new clients of all project solutions in 2009. Now these are some facts that count.

With their new concept of WorkEngine 2010 they have taken the product to a whole new level. The product has been built on top of the new Sharepoint 2010 platform and uses all capabilities, added with some nifty features of their own. With the 2007 version just being the full package, different product levels and solutions are available for the 2010 version so smaller companies can take advantage of the product as well.

WorkEngine 2010 also features the increasingly popular Agile Scrum methodology in one of their solutions, next to the standard waterfall / MS Project methodology. This is good news for software developers seeking to leverage this method to their advantage. A special solution for service calls / helpdesk is available as well and if you want you can tie it all together with shared resources. I suggest you just take a look at www.workengine.com to get a glimpse of the product.

Being the partner for the North European market we can’t wait to implement this product for our own organization. We already run on the 2007 version, but the 2010 version should make us even more efficient and effective. Our 50% projected growth in turnover this year is in no small part also the result of implementing this solution into our organization.

I am sure others will brag about the product in the coming months in high volume as well. Hopefully we have gained an advantage over competition at that point already, catapulting growth even further. Damn, I’m excited!

You can find out more about the product at www.workengine.com or ask me about it directly.

Related subjects: epm live sharepoint workengine 2010 project management scrum development management

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Losing My Virginity »

Book review of the biography of Richard Branson titled ‘Losing My Virginity’.

Everyone knows Richard Branson and his brand Virgin. Sure, he’s a billionaire and writing a book when you’re one makes it easy to become a bestseller. What surprised me about this book was its depth about his thoughts and down-to-earth manner which is was written in.

Taking the first 43 years of the life of Richard Branson into one book creates a wonderful journey which makes much of us wonder what it would be like. Growing up in the 50’s and being a teenager during the sexual revolution of the late 60’s and early 70’s Richard Branson is being very open about his private life at that stage. I think it is great for anyone to see that entrepreneurs grow not only their business, but more so themselves as well. Putting forward his experiences building up Student and later Virgin Music this has been a great example to see someone pushing his own boundaries each day again.

Further down the book, business will get the best of the read and not so much the person of Richard Branson himself. This may be due to the fact that he more or less became his business, where in the first part of his life this role was reversed. The writings are nevertheless as exciting and you can actually ‘feel’ the growth of business and figures while reading. Having not disbanded the little facts of thousand dollar loans in the beginning of the book give you a great sense about the scaling-up that has taken place. Virgin Music expands, business troubles and failures are mentioned, but always success remains. There can be no adventure without failure.

The last part of the book focusses on Virgin Atlantic, the airline. Where the book ends around 1993 much of the British Airways lawsuit and ‘dirty tricks’ campaign is being written about. Although these chapters were a great read and blows the mind of any James Bond loving viewer, I think the total chapters are out of proportion. Feelings are noted, but Richard Branson as a person and what it did to his private life are missing out. Sure, the lawsuit was a gruelling experience, as anyone can understand who once had one. It is the wonder of how he could remain doing business in his ‘fun and positive’ way while going through this process what interests me most.

This book has been a great read and could be a valuable experience when you’re in business. Forget about the billionaire, read about the entrepreneur.

For more of my book reviews visit Amazon.com using the link below. Please vote when you like them!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2HW2Q565EFWZL/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview

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