doug.wilson's blog

Motivating your board of directors

Submitted by doug.wilson on Fri, 06/25/2010 - 09:55

Many of our association and nonprofit clients struggle with board-related issues. Board communication, lack of board involvement, reactionary or docile boards can all be things that we have dealt with in one way or another. It can get particularly hairy as we try and move strategic initiatives through the board, ensuring appropriate governance while retaining some freedom for operation and effective implementation. The Harvard Business Review posted a nice short on this and I hope it will help some of our clients and readers of this blog.

Drupal Camp Chicago is Here!

Submitted by doug.wilson on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 17:52

This weekend is the DrupalCamp Chicago! Breakthrough is sponsoring the event with some other fantastic Chicago development organizations. Check them out here. Unfortunately, we have already sold out with 200 registrations, so if you haven't signed up yet, you'll have to wait until next year or check out the content on the web after the fact.

I warned you that it was an exciting platform...

Innovative Item Development at ATP

Submitted by doug.wilson on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 15:24

Just lefta couple of great sessions at ATP 2010 this morning. I was able to attend the Innovative Item Type Development panel with some looks as to what some cutting-edge performance-based programs are doing (AICPA, ARDMS, and the NBME) as well as some lessons from practioners on a process for correctly executing an innovative item type program.

Met lots of folks who were very interested in these topics. I had a few thoughts along the way...

1. The state of the art is pretty dated. I have worked firsthand with some of Craig Mills' great people at the AICPA. The items they showed from their current testing program delivered under Prometric have a number of usability issues that this team had bumped into and resolved years ago. It is obvious that they are struggling under the limitations of their current exam delivery platform and it is certainly a governor on their ability to deliver innovative content to their community.

2. The NBME showed where the trend is headed - away from recall questions and towards items that can assess dimensions of ability that are not easily factored into MCQs. These dimensions include judgement, research, synthesis, analysis and a dozen others. Utilizing cinical simulators is certainly a trend we'll be seeing more of in the future.

3. Innovative item development is not just presenting and scoring an item. It was obvious from a mature innovative program like the AICPA that they have had to turn their attentions and pocketbooks towards solving secondary innovatiion problems. They have developed and maintain a proprietary CMS called CCMS - Complex Content Management System. They use this as an environment for managing the innovative item types they support, creating and publishing new items and sample items, and probably accessing the rather customized packets of result data that their testing vendors provide. We at Breakthrough believe that we will all see real innovation in the extension of these tools and proceses as they are stretched to accommodate innovative item types.

4. Also the consulting duo of Cynthia Parshall and Lynn Webb presented a six-step framework that is a must-read for anyone considering venturing off down the non-MCQ path.

Anyway, some great sessions today, looking forward to more tonight and tomorrow.

We're off to ATP!

Submitted by doug.wilson on Sat, 02/06/2010 - 00:00

Brian Ryback, the ever-resourceful Breakthrough Business Development Manager and I are off to Orlando this weekend to the ATP Conference. This annual event is one of the top shows for the year where professionals in the assessment industry can compare notes, learn about the latest and greatest innovations, and figure out their strategy for the future.

This year's topic is Innovations in Testing, and I can't wait to hear about what everyone has been up to and share some of the successes that Breakthrough has had in the last 6 months. For those of you tweeters out there, you can follow some of the action at #atpconference.

More later from the show.

2009: A Tough Year for Software Projects

Submitted by doug.wilson on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 16:00

The Standish Group's just-released report, "CHAOS Summary 2009," "This year's results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding which are delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions" says Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group, "44% were challenged which are late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions and 24% failed which are cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used."

"These numbers represent a downtick in the success rates from the previous study, as well as a significant increase in the number of failures", says Jim Crear, Standish Group CIO, "They are low point in the last five study periods. This year's results represent the highest failure rate in over a decade"

I thought it was just me, but it looks as though some statistics are bearing up the notion that software success became more difficult over the past 12 months. What are the reasons for the change? In our markets, we see a growing gap between what the business needs to be successful and the requirements that are translated to the development staff. Oftentimes we expect agile processes or tools to try and fill in the gaps, but what is critical is the ability to effectively design around the critical success factors of the project.

The state of Indiana just spent over $300MM with IBM learning that sometimes you do get fired for hiring IBM. IBM's improved workflow solution designed to create efficient welfare claims processing and case management simply gummed up the works of an elaborate, highly customizable case management communication process.

Sometimes less is more. Figuring out your key drivers to success, protytping aggressively and failing early all could have saved the State of Indiana, by our estimates, around $30MM.

How much can you save?