The holidays are all about giving. If I were the Chief IT Elf, I'd tell my department to give you LESS. About 60% less. Before you think me a Grinch or a Scrooge, let me explain why, in this case, less is actually more.
In most organizations today it is quite common that 80% of the data-manipulation and assembly work is done by IT and 20% is done by the business unit (typically in Excel). If you want a BI report, you put your report request in to the IT and if all goes well, you get your report back some time in the future. And, if you are lucky, you can adjust a few parameters in a dashboard or portal and maybe get a more 'personalized' version of that report. But you, as the business folk, remain a 'consumer' of the data and the majority of the work is done by the IT team. Anything you request has a good chance of ending up in the IT backlog folder.
If there is one goal for enterprise mashups, it would be to flip the 80/20 workload and have IT do 20% of the work (mostly the heavy lifting) and the business unit (users and business developers) do the other 80%. At risk of scaring everyone (IT and business alike), another way to say this is have the business "self serve." If you follow the analysts, you know they're all talking about "self serve" (such as Anthony Bradley at Gartner). I like the Wikipedia description for general purpose self-service:
"Self-Service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when purchasing items. Common examples include many gas stations, where the customer pumps their own gas rather than have an attendant do it (self-service gas pumping is illegal in New Jersey & Oregon); Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) in the banking world have also revolutionized how people withdraw and deposit funds; most American stores, where the customer uses a shopping cart in the store, placing the items they want to buy into the cart and then proceeding to the checkout counter/aisles; or at buffet-style restaurants, where the customer serves their own plate of food from a large, central selection."
Basically, people do things for themselves. And in the world of software, our 'non-technical' business folks are getting more technical all the time. I see the business unit doing things that are akin to Excel macros and Facebook sharing. In other words, self-service is viable when it's intuitive work done using intuitive tools. I definitely know very few people have read a how-to Facebook manual before "friending" (I don't even think there is Facebook documentation). And while you may be saying Facebook is a consumer website and the enterprise is different, I'd ask you to think about Salesforce.com. I suspect a majority of SalesForce.com users just figured 'it' out without any training or manuals. To go a step further, I doubt Salesforce.com would be wildly successful if it required IT.
Unfortunately, I think we sometimes view self-service as an all or nothing principle. It isn't. Let me give you an example. If I go to a self-service yogurt shop, I put the yogurt in a cup, put on the cover, get a spoon, napkin and head to the cashier. The cashier swipes my credit card, puts the yogurt in a bag and I'm done. Notice that I'm not working the cash register, the cashier is. It's still self-serve but not 100% and that's the point. When we talk about self serve, we're not saying the business does everything, but we are saying they do a lot more than they have in the past.
And your favorite yogurt store isn't alone. Self-Service has become a core part of your grocery experience as well. Decades ago, you'd order your food at the counter and had it collected for you. Today we pick our own food but complete the transaction with the cashier. And now many grocery stores have self-service checkout lines. At the checkout, you scan each item then put it on the belt. The systems are smart enough to track the scans with the items moving on the belt. Once you're done, you swipe your credit card and bag the items. But the entire 'self-service' process is established by the grocery store IT folks. You only get 'self-service' because of their hard work.
Enterprise Mashups are a great example of the self-service principle in the world of data. How does this work, exactly? If you think of the lifecycle of a piece of information, it usually starts at the 'I need...' stage and hopefully ends with 'I have and want to share...'. Mashups can apply to every step in this lifecycle but enable a large shift in the primary owners of many of the steps. Here's a quick outline how Enterprise Mashup work is often organized between IT and the Business:
Main IT Tasks (the '20%')
1. Install, configure, setup security and governance
2. Publish 'core' data sources (such as Webservices)
3. Assign roles and permissions for functions and core sources
4. Create 'complex' mashups, widgets and mashup dashboards, when required
Main Business Unit Tasks (the '80%')
1. Publish 'personal' data sources (from Excel, news feeds, etc.)
2. Visually create mashups, mashup widgets and mashup dashboards
3. Share mashups, mashup widgets and mashup dashboards with others
4.Rate, use, and personalize mashups, mashup widgets and mashup dashboards from others
As you can see, IT does the 'infrastructure' work such as setup, configuration and security/governance, publishing the high value or 'core' data sources and the creation of the complex mashups. This becomes the core infrastructure on which the non-technical folks do their self-service, much like the folks who build/install the self-service checkout register at the grocery store. This infrastructure is absolutely critical to enterprise mashups. Without it, you might have 'self-service' but it would be chaotic, not secure, scalable, governed and sharable self-service.
Let's resolve to make 20/80 the new 80/20 for 2010. Have a Happy Holidays.
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