Often the smaller team I was part of exhibited a different culture to the rest of the organisation (so times for the better sometimes not).  And I can also remember times when a new member of the team joined and the culture changed (again sometimes for the better sometimes not).

I have been slightly fixated on trying to guide OptimalBI to have a culture that represented a company I have always wanted to work for.

When Vic joined OptimalBI a few years ago, we decided that if we weren't having fun we were doing something wrong.  Not to say we wanted to play all day and do no work, being unemployed with no money is not fun, so OptimalBI still needed to deliver value to our customers and be paid for that value we delivered.

When we did one of our first planning session we were lucky to have stumbled across Valves Employee Handbook.  The style and sentiments of that handbook embodied a lot of what kin of company I wanted to work at (hell I spent so many hours finding a desk with wheels we could buy so we could move them around the office when we felt like it like Valve).

Lately I have found a couple of other companies who's style and culture are similar to what we are striving for at OptimalBI.

One of those is Hubspot and their CultureDeck.

In researching company manifesto's and culture decks, I found a lot of articles with a positive opinion of Hubspots culture deck (and the Netflix one that they based the idea on).  Plus a few that were a little less complimentary.

Here are links to the articles in case you feel like having a read.

• http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130320171133-658789-culture-code-building-a-company-you-love?
• http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/97200/Does-HubSpot-Walk-The-Talk-On-Its-Culture-Code.aspx
• http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
• http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3450-when-culture-turns-into-policy
• http://blog.prettylittlestatemachine.com/blog/2013/02/20/what-your-culture-really-says/

Yes we have done lots of small developments in that period and even done some semi-agile (id say it was iterative) developments where we went from inception to production in 3 months on a platform that was already production and stable.

But in this case we were talking about starting from nada and going live with data and some reports in 3 months.

It has been a wild ride and we have had some successes and some failures.  We sure as nuts learnt a lot for when we do it again next time (and im happy that we will).

So im am going to post a series of short blogs on what I learnt, what I would do the same next time and what I wouldn't (as I find time and in no particular order!)

Lesson #1 - Change your business owners engagement frequency

So the first lesson for me was the needed to change the engagement timeframe with the business owners.

Typically you might have monthly steering committee meetings and weekly team meetings.  But with a 3 month window this only allows for 3 steering committee meetings and by the time you get to them its to late.

Now one of the things about steering committees is they shouldnt be a route for escalation of issues or decisions on how things are done.  They should be there solely to make sure the project is on time, on budget, delivering the scope that has been agreed and managing any risks acceptably.  It's a health check process not a management/decision process. Of course we all know that's not how it normally goes.

So my suggestion is drop the steering committee meetings to fortnightly.  Ideally these health checks will happen in line with the fortnightly development sprints you are doing, so they can get transparency of what is being delivered on time and what isn't.

Interestingly I think you will see your steering committee makeup change slightly as a result of the call on key people's time to attend fortnightly meetings.

The second suggestion is to have direct access to the key business owner on a daily basis for escalation of any issues.  We all know every project gets a myriad of roadblock's that often escalate into "magic roundabouts".  So you need access to the key business owner so they can ask, beg, plead, yell, demand, shout and threaten whenever you need them to remove these roadblocks.  Remember a week's delay in a dependency will kill your project delivery timeframe.

• Efficiency
  You provide something faster or cheaper than the customer doing it themselves.
• Experience
  You have done something a number of times before and its better value or lower risk for a customer to get you to do it, than it is for them to learn to do it themselves.
• Expertise
  The customer is attempting something that hasn't been done before (or no experience of its exists in the local market) but your Experience in similar areas means its lower risk if you do it compared to them.

When looking at Innovative ideas it's often a good approach to see which classification the Innovation is likely to deliver value under:

• Changing a process to achieve efficiency gains
• Packaging up a solution to deliver lower risk
• Inventing something completely new that is a game changer

In the area of credit card payments we are seeing some Innovation occurring within certain retailers.  You may not have noticed but at McDonalds if you pay by credit card and the purchase amount is under $30, you no longer need to enter a pin number.

A similar capability is now available at Countdown if you have a OneCard Visa.  Any purchase under $80 with this card no longer requires a pin number.  And in fact they go one step further and provide tap-to-go that means you no longer have to insert your card and select credit card, you just tap the machine and your away.

This Innovation is definitely aimed at the Efficiency E.

If you think about the time-saving achieved by this capability, you are probably going to save all of a minute in the process.  Not much of an efficiency for you.

But if you take an example of 60 people going through the checkout at McDonalds or at Countdown, then we are talking about a one hour saving.  This increased efficiency in the checkout process will result in increased throughput, and in turn will result in shorter queues.

I don't know about you but queue size is definitely one of the sub-conscious measures I know my brain uses to determine my level of happiness when going to a fast food outlet or a supermarket.

As an aside I am amazed that fast food outlets don't seem to use any sort of optimisation process to work out the level of staffing they need at peak times.  I  was at Burger King the other day during the lunchtime rush, they had two people on counter and one manager assisting them (no idea how many people out back).  Both queues had over 10 people in line, as the poor counter people struggled to take orders and then fulfil them.  Even without a statistically significant optimisation or forecasting model, let alone a social media based sentiment analysis, you could tell it was't working or giving customers a happy ending.

The other thing I noticed was there was no culture of achievement being displayed.  The team were up against the odds and they were no doubt going to have to deal with grumpy customers, but they were just wombling around filling orders.  If they had provided a sense of they were working as a team to try and "knock the bstdr off" then I think customers would have cit them a bit more slack.

Anyway next time you toying with an Innovative idea, have a go trying to work out which E it falls under.

We have had heads up on some of the major changes in SAS 9.4 for a while, but as none of it was official (and I don't seem to have the time to gossip as much as I used to) we haven't blogged about most of it.

One of the major changes in SAS 9.4 is the replacement of the Mid Tier options.  Jboss, Websphere and Weblogic are no longer supported and the only option is a new SAS developed Mid Tier server.

Reading the paper here says it all http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings13/476-2013.pdf

The following extract says it all:

"Beginning with the release of SAS 9.4, SAS will include an embedded middle-tier server called SAS Web Application Server and will no longer require nor support external third-party application servers. SAS has licensed and included a commercial software suite of middle-tier technologies beginning with SAS 9.4. The SAS 9.4 middle-tier components have been integrated and optimized for SAS middle-tier deployment, configuration, and execution. These  components are being branded and delivered in the SAS offerings and referred to as the SAS Web Application  Server, SAS Web Server, and SAS® Environment Manager.  

The SAS Web Application Server is an enterprise-class web application server optimized to deliver the robust level of capabilities required to optimally support the SAS 9.4 web applications deployed through traditional on-premises physical hardware, virtualized environments, or in the cloud. By focusing on a single embedded middle tier, SAS has been able to perform extensive integration to deliver a more highly available, resilient, and manageable deployment. Additionally, SAS provides first- and second-line support for the complete set of integrated components.

The container within the SAS Web Application Server providing the serving of the web applications is Tomcat"

So if you are a new customer then not really a problem (apart from it being release 0.1) in fact you have probably saved yourself a fortune in third party mid tier software licenses.

If you are a current SAS 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 customer well then I hope you have had your Weblogic or Webssphere licenses for a while and that they are fully depreciated.

Mind you remembering the saga with Tabs in WRS in SAS 9.2/9.3, we could aways see the return of Elvis (Websphere / Weblogic) in a future maintenance release.

Ps. Tomcat?  Reminds me of my SAS 9.1 days.

Pps. As #weareSASVAexperts I do believe SAS Visual Analytics 6.2 wil be released in June 2013 and based on SAS 9.4

Unfortunately I can't make it to San Fran SASGF13 to sit through the SAS VA sessions, but we are rapidly executing on our goal of being SAS VA experts in Australasia so we have some of the answers.

The first ones to cover off are the interfaces.

Tricia listed all web-based interface components:

• Visual Data Builder It’s how you prepare the data for display.
• Visual Analytics Explorer allows you to interact with the data.
• Visual Analytics Designer allows you to create reports or dashboards
• Visual Analytics Viewer allows users to view the report or dashboards on a Web browser.
• Visual Analytics Administrator allows you to manage the environment.

These are all Flash based interfaces that are available via the web (browser) environment.  (Think eBI Dashboards)

You have to use the Flash/Browser version to build and maintain the content.

There are also two tablet based interfaces.

1. The iOS version you download from the Apple Apps store.  This is a native iOS app, so runs on the ipad/iphone without using Flash and is hunky dory.
2. The Android version, which I havent played with yet, so not sure if its Flash based or not.  One thing to watch out is the Android version only works with SAS VA 5.1, not the latest 6.1 release. So if you not an Apple fan, you will need to wait till SAS VA 6.2 until you get a version that is up to date.  (SAS VA 6.2 is rumoured to be announced at SASGF13, released in June and based on SAS 9.4)

There is also a plugin for SAS Management Console to manage some parts of the environment.

No capability for accessing the VA data from any of the other SAS BI tools (AMO, EG, WRS, OLAP, etc) but then as my view is SAS Visual Analytics is replacing the eBI suite overtime, not surprising.  Although I am expecting AMO to be added to the mix at some stage (all conjecture on my part).

So in summary for all us Apple fans who always worry about the dreaded Flash issue, grab the SAS BI iOS app and sleep easy.

Today we were privileged to celebrate with one of our great customers via a sausage roll-off.

The challenge was to find the best sausage rolls in Wellington.  We got pipped at the post with our Ti Kokua source entry by a delish home made version.

But as a bit of a sausage roll aficionado (and yes I don't constrain myself to just the end of the project I got to a wondering who does make the best Sausage rolls in Wellington?

If you want to add your vote, tweet your choice with the hashtag #bestwellyrolls.

OptimalBI has grown from a small company in 2008 that focussed on delivering Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence consulting services to Wellington customers, via a number of highly skilled contracted resources.  It has morphed into one of Wellington's largest BI consulting services companies, with a unique Innovative style fuelled by coffee and a team that Rocks!

With that success and growth OptimalBI opened it's new HQ offices in July of 2012, fitting out a massive 450 square metre floor in the old Asteron Building at 139 The Terrace,  With a flair for style and fun the two owners of OptimalBI, Shane Gibson and Victoria MacLennan designed an eclectic mix that is part minimalist  part American Diner, part Sci Fi and just a whole lot of cool.

But with a penchant for collecting the pair have managed to fill the office with both people and stuff.  So the next logical step was an overseas office on their journey for world domination.

Victoria Maclennan says "Everyday we would have new employees turn up not to mention 3 to 4 courier deliveries with toys from Mannequins, to metal animals and laser tag guns.  It got so crazy that we had to put a sci fi based door bell in to keep track of the constant foot traffic.  As a result we are out of space and need to expand"

When asked why overseas and why the Cayman Islands Victoria explained "Shane being such an Innovative genius that he is, it is fair to say he is a little noisy .  So we used some of our BI spatial mapping capability to work out the furthest place I could go to get away from the noise, and it turns out the Cayman Islands is multiple flights from NZ and results in a total of 60 hours travel time to get there.  So it was a no brainer really".

OptimalBI plan to open a physical office in the Caymans to mirror the opulence of OptimalHQ (but perhaps not the clutter).  Due to the need for a dual purpose property (and also to have plenty of storage a learning from the OptimalHQ experience) an offer will be being placed shortly on this property.

To help fund this growth Shane Gibson stated that a number of new Optimal branded business will be initiated including:

• OptimalRum
  So good for the tum `mon
• OptimalML (Anti Money Laundering with less focus on the Anti)
  We treat your cash like it was our own
• OptimalCruises
  Lifejackets optional (but recommended we are still innovating the boat design)
• OptimalPhoneBoxes
  So cheap even your business partner will let you buy one
• OptimalConeOfSilence
  Removing the need to relocate half way around the world to get a little piece and quiet.

OptimalBI is a member of the OptimalHQ group of innovative companies and aims To Make Information Visible.  It does this through:

• Making data available
• Making data tell a story
• Making the story visible
• Making shite up on a certain date

Happy Endings!