At some level its as if we need to go on a resources diet based on a season or two of overindulgence.  This is a cycle that seems to repeat across all industries and throughout history.  We never seem to learn from our past – even with its record being so clear.  A couple of examples come to mind that will illustrate the poorly planned cutting taking shape within two distinctly different industries.

The first example is within the banking industry.  One of the nations leading banks is making some dramatic adjustments to its allocation of internal resources (in the form of staff reductions) where the role and function of this staff is directed squarely at the quality of the banks communications.  That is to say, in the spirit of increasing the potential for more profit, the bank is going to reduce the clarity of its customer communications.  Now this is the sort of stuff that typically does not make headlines and it certainly would not be a candidate for communications to the customers of the bank – ironically because those individuals will no longer be there to write this correspondence.  Some would argue that smart people in the bank’s workforce will just add corporate communications to their list of existing tasks, but when was the last time you considered that your bank’s correspondence was not long enough – too short a narrative to really matter.  The well known objective of writing the short letter requires work – no matter what the profession.  So the customers of this bank can soon expect to see some longer letters, or if the letter is short, it may lack some clarity in its intended purpose.

Another example of misplaced economic choices is within the collective set of campuses that comprise the University of California system.  Once considered an incredible value, now each dollar spent on a UC education is increasingly consumed by layers of administration that seek to assure that the delivery of education meets all of the criteria set by another group of administrators.  Gone are the days when the educational dollar paid for faculty, facilities, and supplies.  We now live at a time when the layer upon layer of politically correct bureaucracy takes priority to that service for which the bureaucracy is subordinate.  Its not the quality of what we teach and the value of that instruction in relationship to a persons skills and value to an employer upon graduation – but rather the more important priority is that we have internal reviewers, compliance administrators, and a significant percentage of the university budget directed toward being compliant to a way of delivering education.  This overhead raises educational expenses and take the attention away from learning.  So students get less value and it costs them more. Where is the sound economics in that prioritization?  And could sound economics even be possible within an educational institution where the administrative component setting the priorities would need to diminish itself to achieve a more effective solution.

Other businesses are going through similar difficulties.  Many organizations will make strange choices when confronted with reducing budgets and increasing operational costs.  Will R&D be sacrificed because its benefits are not immediate?  Will processes be restructured in a way that diminishes a connection between the provider and the customer of the product or service?  Will we rely too heavily on technologies like social media to establish and maintain a connection where other options should be given priority?  Keep your eyes on the choices taking shape in your workplace and speak up if things seem to be drifting away from basic common sense.  Everybody has potential to offer perspective on the more viable solution that follows sound economics.

Today, there are a number of considerations that should be thoughtfully weighed as a startup business or existing small business seeks to setup or modernize their online services.  Its not the web site design emphasis of the 1990s nor is it a heavy weighting on the “platform” that became a major focus in the mid 2000s.  Today the focus on modern ecommerce is a balance across several elements:

1. The content management aspects to the business enterprise
2. The relationship of the business with its “social graph” ecosystem
3. An understanding of the security around data collected and managed
4. Content design that properly reflects the brand identity of the business
5. Off-premise management of infrastructure – (data and applications in the cloud)
6. Choice of platform(s) to support business needs in the most cost-effective format
7. Outsourcing skills for design and sustainment tasks for business operations

This is a far cry from the days of setting up a simple website and its clearly more to think about than in the days of a simple shopping-cart site.  While there are clear places for both of those examples, businesses today are seeking to differentiate services within an increasingly network-connected ecosystem that requires more planning and thought toward business operations.  Each business has its unique needs and preferences.  Approaching the elements of a modern e-commerce business enterprise seeks to balance cost and performance that make the best sense for the business, its near-term and long-term prospects.

At the center of any modern eCommerce solution are several core components and one of them is a CMS or content management system.  The CMS takes responsibility for managing all of the digital content assets that are used within the eCommerce system.  Most modern CMS solutions have been rapidly advancing to take on the functionality of a portal and a social platform.

This progression further simplifies the architectural specification for a modern eCommerce solution.  The assets managed by a CMS range from blocks of text to images to videos.  Modern CMS solutions also address the presentation of the collected content using visual templates and guides.  And the interaction with that same content is generally facilitated through highly-focused programs which are integrated into the CMS using plug-in and widget frameworks so that a highly tailored eCommerce solution can be built with the unique functionality required by the business.

While there are numerous CMS solutions, a small number stand out as compelling approaches toward a cost-effective formulation supporting an eCommerce need. Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Liferay, Alfresco are five open-source content management systems that have commanded attention through significant use across the marketplace and each has specific advantages.

Drupal

Official site: http://drupal.org/  –  Drupal was formed in 2001

Notable Features:

• Multiple sites can be managed with Drupal and across multiple languages.
• Utility ranges from a blogging site, corporate site, personal site, gallery, or full eCommerce site.
• Site users can be managed using standard registration, including OpenID support.
• There are multiple access controls to help manage the activity of site users.
• A custom menu system, template customization, advanced search, RSS feed aggregator

Joomla

Official site: http://www.joomla.org/  –  Initiated as an offshoot of the Mambo CMS in 2005.

Some Notable Features:

• Supports control of multiple sites and in multiple languages natively.
• Utility ranges from a blogging site, corporate site, personal site, gallery, or full eCommerce site
• Site users can be managed using standard registration, including OpenID support.
• Full support for Access Control Lists.
• Page cashing for increased performance.
• Network asset linking does accomodate moderately descriptive URLs
• Many Extensions: Over 6,000 free and commercial plugins available

WordPress

Official site: http://wordpress.org/  –  first released in 2003

Notable Features:

•     Highly optimized for blogging.
•     Custom and easy to switch themes.
•     Users can re-arrange widgets without editing PHP or HTML code.
•     Support for tagging. Advanced search by tags.
•     Highly intuitive UI (User Interface).

Native applications exist for Android, iPhone/iPod Touch, and BlackBerry which provide access to some of the features in the WordPress Admin panel and work with WordPress.com and many WordPress.org blogs.

Liferay

Official site: http://www.liferay.com/

Notable Features:

•     Can tag and categorize contents.
•     Document Library Manager, Recent Documents.
•     Alfresco, Documentum, and other document library integration.
•     User management based on various roles and groups (ACL).
•     WebDAV Integration (which allows edit and management from remote web servers).
•     LDAP Integration
•     Microsoft Office Integration
•     Calendar/Chat/Mail/Message Boards/Polls
•     Wiki (supports Creole as well as MediaWiki syntax)

Alfresco

Official site: http://www.alfresco.com/  –  Introduced in 2005

Notable Features:

•     Document Management.
•     Web Content Management (including full webapp & session virtualization).
•     Multi-language support.
•     Officially runs on Windows, Linux and Solaris.
•     Desktop integration with Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org.
•     Pluggable authentication: NTLM, LDAP, Kerberos, CAS.

For businesses seeking to leverage the social graph concept as a core function of the business, it has become relatively easy to integrate with existing services like Facebook that are offering an expanding social graph. Some integrations look like the tightly coupled Zynga games that operate in close connection to the Facebook platform. Close coupling with Facebook allows the social network of friends to be a click away in an application that has a friends and family network component.

So having a social graph integration strategy is important for network based businesses.  As platforms like Facebook and Twitter expand their social graphs around the world, it becomes less likely that a business will want to make the investment re-create that same information.  While this increases the near monopoly that companies like Facebook have in this space, it also makes it easy to decide what to integrate with.

Interface – Building an interface that makes sense is a concept that has emerged with the consumerization of information technology. It’s hard to believe that in 1997 the company called Apple computer had a stock value of about $3.50 per share and was on the verge of bankruptcy. In just a few short years a steady march of products would begin to turn the fortunes of that company and introduce to the world the very definition of consumer-friendly information technology. From iPhones to iPods to iPads to the new iCloud, Apple’s innovations in consumer information technology have educated the world and have set the bar on what people expect in their user interfaces (whether on mobile devices or via their computer web browser). Today Apple’s value is over 100 times that of the company that almost did not survive in 1997. The interface of most consumer information technology has been influenced heavily by “iDevices” and this creates expectations in the design of new products and services on the Internet.

eCom – In the early days of Internet eCommerce, some different companies emerged early with differentiated offerings. Having an ability to remain adaptive and agile to customer needs while staying ahead of the competition was the formula for several early offerings like Yahoo Stores. The eCommerce systems of this early stage were custom built solutions that were largely oriented to providing “shopping cart” services to web-based merchants selling online. The eCom solutions of today are much more sophisticated. They allow much more flexibility in integrating transactional processing to take money in many different forms for services rendered.

Social – Social computing is a key part of many business strategies and operational models and it is segment that integrates crowd-sourcing, network effects, and friend relationships into the business model. The social component is how many web business achieve their scale and market capacity. It will become increasingly unique to see web-based businesses that have strong consumer-relationship ties expand to large market shares without a well-planned social strategy.

CMS — Whatever the business, there is unique “content” that must be managed. This content could be pictures, videos, text, audio files or any combination of interesting digital assets. Its the content that is unique to your business that needs to be managed and at a level above the traditional database service. That is where the “CMS” or content management system comes into action. The purpose of a CMS is to make the management of the businesses online digital assets much easier. It addresses the presentation, arrangement, and permissions associated with these assets. As the business grows, keeping the expanding collection of digital assets under control is where the CMS really earns its value.

Tuesday Opening at the Digital Tech Fest…

D9TuesdayIntro.mp3 Listen on Posterous

http://forio.com/simulate/resources/swf/sim-frame.swf?userPath=mbean&simPath=death-probability-calculator

So what is system dynamics and how can you define its approach?

• Defining problems dynamically, in terms of graphs over time.
• Striving for an endogenous, behavioral view of the significant dynamics of a system, a focus inward on the characteristics of a system that themselves generate or exacerbate the perceived problem.
• Thinking of all concepts in the real system as continuous quantities interconnected in loops of information feedback and circular causality.
• Identifying independent stocks or accumulations (levels) in the system and their inflows and outflows (rates).
• Formulating a behavioral model capable of reproducing, by itself, the dynamic problem of concern. The model is usually a computer simulation model expressed in nonlinear equations, but is occasionally left unquantified as a diagram capturing the stock-and-flow/causal feedback structure of the system.
• Deriving understandings and applicable policy insights from the resulting model.
• Implementing changes resulting from model-based understandings and insights.

Mathematically, the basic structure of a formal system dynamics computer simulation model is a system of coupled, nonlinear, first-order differential (or integral) equations.  Simulation of such systems is easily accomplished by partitioning simulated time into discrete intervals and stepping the system through time one interval  at a time.  Each state variable is computed from its previous value and its net rate of change.

The simulation tools for System Dynamics have evolved considerably and today there are several different simulation tools that can be acquired to perform research and analysis based on system dynamics methods.

The Feedback Loop is the Key

Conceptually, the feedback concept is at the heart of the system dynamics approach.  Diagrams of loops of information feedback and circular causality are tools for conceptualizing the structure of a complex system and for communicating model-based insights.  Intuitively, a feedback loop exists when information resulting from some action travels through a system and eventually returns in some form to its point of origin, potentially influencing future action.  If the tendency in the loop is to reinforce the initial action, the loop is called a positive or reinforcing feedback loop;  if the tendency is to oppose the initial action, the loop is called a negative or balancing feedback loop.  The sign of the loop is called its polarity. Balancing loops can be variously characterized as goal-seeking, equilibrating, or stabilizing processes.  They can sometimes generate oscillations, as when a pendulum seeking its equilibrium goal gathers momentum and overshoots it.  Reinforcing loops are sources of growth or accelerating collapse;  they are disequilibrating and destabilizing.  Combined, reinforcing and balancing circular causal feedback processes can generate all manner of dynamic patterns.

For understanding, system dynamics practitioners strive for an endogenous point of view.  The effort is to uncover the sources of system behavior that exist within the structure of the system itself.

System structure

These ideas are captured in Forrester’s (1969) organizing framework for system structure:

• Closed boundary
  • Feedback loops
    • Levels
    • Rates
      • Goal
      • Observed condition
      • Discrepancy
      • Desired action

The closed boundary signals the endogenous point of view.  The word closed here does not refer to open and closed systems in the general system sense, but rather refers to the effort to view a system as causally closed.  The modeler’s goal is to assemble a formal structure that can, by itself, without exogenous explanations, reproduce the essential characteristics of a dynamic problem.

The causally closed system boundary at the head of this organizing framework identifies the endogenous point of view as the feedback view pressed to an extreme.  Feedback thinking can be seen as a consequence of the effort to capture dynamics within a closed causal boundary.  Without causal loops, all variables must trace the sources of their variation ultimately outside a system.  Assuming instead that the causes of all significant behavior in the system are contained within some closed causal boundary forces causal influences to feed back upon themselves, forming causal loops.  Feedback loops enable the endogenous point of view and give it structure.

* References taken from “What is System Dynamics” authored at: http://www.systemdynamics.org/what_is_system_dynamics.html

Additional References

Ford, A. 2009. Modeling the Environment. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Forrester, J.W. 1961.  Industrial Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.  Reprinted by Pegasus
Communications, Waltham, MA.
Forrester, J.W. 1969.  Urban Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.  Reprinted by Pegasus Communications,
Waltham, MA.
Maani, K. E. and R. Y. Cavana. 2007.  Systems Thinking, System Dynamics: Understanding Change and Complexity.
Aukland: Printice Hall.
Morecroft, J. D. W. 2007.  Strategic Modeling and Business Dynamics: a Feedback Systems Approach. Chichester:
Wiley.
Morecroft, J. D. W. and J. D. Sterman, Eds. 1994. Modeling for Learning Organizations. System Dynamics Series.
Cambridge, MA:  Pegasus Communications.
Richardson, G.P.  1991/1999.  Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press; reprinted by Pegasus Communications, Waltham, MA.
Richardson, G.P., Ed. 1996.  Modelling for Management:  Simulation in Support of Systems Thinking.  International
Library of Management.  Aldershot, UK:  Dartmouth Publishing Company.
Richardson, G.P. and D. F. Andersen. 2010. Systems Thinking, Mapping, and Modeling for Group Decision and
Negotiation, Handbook for Group Decision and Negotiation, C Eden and DN Kilgour, eds.  Dordrecht:
Springer, 2010, pp. 313-324.
Richardson, G.P. and A.L. Pugh III. 1981. Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling with DYNAMO. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press.  Reprinted by Pegasus Communications, Waltham, MA.
Roberts, E.B. 1978, ed.  Managerial Applications of System Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.  Reprinted
by Pegasus Communications, Waltham, MA.
Senge, P.M.  The Fifth Discipline:  The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York:
Doubleday/Currency.
Sterman, J.D. 2000.  Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World.  Boston: Irwin
McGraw-Hill.
System Dynamics Review. 1985-present.  Chichester, U.K.:  Wiley-Blackwell, Ltd.
Vennix, J. A. M. 1996. Group Model Building: Facilitating Team Learning Using System Dynamics. Chichester:
Wiley.
Wolstenholme, E.F. 1990.  System Enquiry:  a System Dynamics Approach.  Chichester, U.K.:  John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd.

What the current crop of “suite” approaches in the social software / social media / social computing arena are pointed at is the gold mine of enterprise event streams. Getting the population off their further entrenched addiction to mobile email and out into open aggregated communications channels where these communications in combination with their enterprise activities (events) are also recorded and routed into event channels is the new frontier.

Placing these event aggregation tools in the path of work is essential. It allows us to more efficiently share expertise and to discover expertise when needed. As the push and pull toward these event networks becomes more commonplace, then our collective efficiency may further improve quality and performance in wiring the right information to the right person at the right time for the right reasons.