SOA filling the Gaps

One of the posts in the Customers Typology series was titled: Customers Typology: The Captive . I described The Captive as: "The Captive Customer's opinion is that someone else is the Oracle . He will do whatever the Oracle will say". Frequently the Oracle is a Software and/or Hardware vendor. Another post was titled: Customers Typology: The Customer who Knows Everything . I described customer of that type as: "This Customer type is sure that he knows more than anyone else. He is also sure that his understanding is better than any body's understanding". Would you imagine that there is another customer type combining both types?  You probably hardly believe that this type is not a fiction story. If he is a Captive, he will do exactly what his Captor will recommend.    If he Knows Everything, he will follow only his opinion. The best way to describe this type is by example. The example is of a long time ago Case Study . IT Consulting Assignment ...

In previous posts I described Customers Types such as: The Customer Who Knows Everything , The Self-Deprecating , The Captive , The  Paralyzed Analyzer ,  The Good , The Bad and  The Ugly . In this post I am going to describe The Social Customer. The Social Customer is not necessarily a heavy user of Facebook , Twitter or Linkedin . He is deeply involved in the Professional Community.  He knows exactly what his colleagues are doing.  His decisions are based on popularity: He will do exactly what the majority of his Professional Community members do. His decision is based on localization of the saying: "One Billion Chinese People Can't be Wrong". For example, if he will have to select a Software Product, he will select the one which the biggest number of organizations decided to buy and implement. What are the advantages of Social Customer Approach? 1. Sometimes not only billion Chinese are not wrong. Million Israelis or ten millions Americans...

This post is the last of trilogy of posts named after Sergo Leone 's movie The Good The Bad and The Ugly . In previous posts I described The Good Customer and The Bad Customer I start by describing the challenges of a Freelance Consultant, before dwelling on The Ugly Customer. You will soon discover that the two topics are related.  The World of a Freelance Consultant I refer to a Consultant with no Long Term full time employing customer. Unlike a Salaried Employee, he has to take care of many administrative tasks such as paying VAT , paying Income Tax and Paying National Insurance fees. One of his challenges is income instability and the number of work hours instability.  Sometimes his working hours are similar to working hours of typical salaried employee. During these periods his income is reasonable or good. Periods of too much work to do Periods of too much potential assignments are relatively easy to take care of: The Freelance Consultant could pick ...

 Image source: Wikipedia The first part of the trilogy was about the Good Customer . This post is about the Bad Customer. No, the Bad Customer does not shoot the Consultant like Lee Van Cleef  in the picture appearing in the beginning of the post.  The Bad Customer could be The Customer who Knows Everything  or The Self-deprecating Customer  or The Captive  or The Paralyzed Analyzer . What differentiate The Bad from other Customers? Usually,  The Bad Customer does not know what he want to achieve and how he would achieve it. He is not able to define the Consultant's products. The Bad Customer could ask Strategic Consultant to code programs . He may ask a Consultant who is a DBA or an Application Programmer to build an Enterprise Architecture , Infrastructure Architecture or even Business Architecture . He could as well, ask for Strategic consultancy from an ERP Consultant.  The Bad may change the Consultant's assignments, ...

Source: Wikipedia One of my favorite movies is Sergio Leone 's The Good The Bad and The Ugly .  No Moral considerations are included in The Good's , and the other two's considerations.  Many use this film name as titles to articles. They classify products or people to three categories: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. For example, about 15 years ago, when Object Oriented was not yet a mainstream methodology , I read an article about Object Oriented programming languages . It was written by PARC , a SmallTalk vendor. According to the Article The Good is Smalltalk, The Bad is COBOL and the Ugly is C++ .  In reality not always the Good survives. Ja va replaced SmallTalk due to its enhanced Scalability and better marketing. C++ and COBOL survived.  The Good The Good Customer, unlike the Customer who Knows Everything , knows that he does not know everything. He is able to estimate his knowledge boundaries: he knows what he knows and knows what he doe...

The Paralyzed Customer is not like the Customer who Knows Everything . He is very different from The Captive . The Paralyzed Customer is engaged in Analysis, so the process is: Analyze-Paralyze. The Paralyzed Customer reacts to the Consultant's papers and recommendations, with no biases. The main problem is the endless loop of analysis in order to ensure no error included in the Consultant's product. No error is 100% error free product (not even the slightest error). For example, if the product is a Request For Proposals (RFP) , the Paralyzed Customer will initiate an endless evaluation process, even if the Consultant built the RFP together with the best customer's employees. In a large number of long meetings, he will investigate the RFP. The following questions are only examples: Do the requirements conform to the Business Strategy?  Are the requirements in accord with the IT Strategy, Policy etc.?  What are the expected costs for the implementation in ...

picture source: Wikipedia The word Captive in this context, is not about someone caught by enemy's forces.  It is about a customer, whose conception about the Consultant's topic are dictated by an expert or someone pretending to be an expert.  In a previous post you can find an example. The post titled:  Vendor Survival Guide: Supermarket, Grocery and Kiosk .  An example depicted in that post was Data Sorting   Software product selection process. The Captive Customer selected a product of Servers and Operating Systems vendor (The vendor is an analogy to a Supermarket). I recommended, a superior product of a small company. Sorting Software was the only product the company developed and marketed (Kiosk). The "Supermarket" does not care, if you buy chewing gum , as long as you buy meat , fish , bread  and milk (Servers, Storage , Operating Systems etc.). The kiosk's existence depends on chewing gum (Sorting Software). The "kiosk" will try...

image source: Wikipedia The Self -deprecating Customer is exactly the opposite type of The Customer who Knows Everything . He automatically accepts the Consultant advice, without any questions or hesitations. Probably, you will not believe that the first example of a  Self -deprecating Customer I think of, is the CIA . It is about a project named Triangle. Triangle was an Information Technology project of Legacy Modernization and systems expansion after September 11 attacks .  After  completing the Development phase, the CIA begun the Implementation phase. However, someone who was a Senior Manager, thought that it will be a good idea to rethink if the project fulfills its goals. A committee of 100 leading academic and IT industry experts, investigated the project. The main recommendation in  the  committee' s detailed report was: stop implementation and fix the errors in the systems. Afterwards the systems could be implemented again. It shou...