Oracle OpenWorld 2011 is now history, a 40,000 person strong testament to the global sweep of Oracle technology. Here is a quite good collection of OOW11 reviews:

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Is that too much to spend on a PeopleSoft based personnel system? The New York Times seems to think so.

In For Bloomberg, Waste Mars Another Digital Project (September 23, 2011) David M. Halbfinger looks back on the New York City Automated Personnel System (NYCAPS) project started a decade or more ago, adding up the costs incurred so far, describing the individual systems delivered to date, and assessing the benefits accrued from deployment. In March 2000, PeopleSoft had been selected as the platform upon which the new system would be built. Read more »

The wisdom of duels: Larry vs. Larry

There is a certain wisdom to be gleaned from dueling. America’s history is filled with many famous duels, a slow stepping off of paces, usually ten but sometimes more and sometimes less, an eventual turning to face the other’s weapon, and a finale leaving one or the other, or both, in let us say, a distressed state. To be sure this duel between Larry Page, Google CEO, and Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, will not end on such a deadly note, being that it is a judge ordered face-to-face mediation concerning JAVA usage on the remote Android platform, not a personal affront to anyone’s honor, honesty, or ancestors. Read more »

A while back some said that PeopleSoft’s days were numbered, on a steady decline to irrelevance, enterprise software soon to be discarded like those old cars you sometimes see as you drive America’s back roads, in the front yard, prominently displayed like yard art, up on blocks, containing more rust than sheet metal. Now it looks like those reports of PeopleSoft’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Read more »

Welcome to Certain Wisdom, your new home. I trust your move was transparent, easy, and painless. This new site uses advanced technology, offers more features, and provides overall a much better user experience. I think you will like it.

The primary focus of the new Certain Wisdom site will remain the same: emphasizing the importance of highly experienced and well seasoned people, successful veterans who have built their considerable expertise by studying intensely, working smartly, and leading complex and difficult undertakings. In other words, it is about a Certain Wisdom, a confident state of knowledge, insight, and accomplishment; how to achieve it, how to recognize it, how to use it to understand problems, how to apply in finding reasoned, real world solutions.

Postings specific to the PeopleSoft realm can now be found at the new People Soft Wisdom, a special category within a more expansive column of news, insights, and commentary entitled: Wise Moves.

Check out Certain Wisdom and let me know what you think.

A house in my neighborhood has been in a partially finished state for a long time. The foundation has been layed. The framing has been done. The windows are installed. The roof has been shingled. The exterior has been wrapped. The workers who did these tasks left months ago.

As I walked by the construction site this weekend I noticed a large stack of new lumber. Being curious I approached to take a closer look. Someone was working and that someone turned out to be one of the people who framed our home. Up until the great recession hit he had worked steadily for many years as an experienced framer. I asked about the pile of lumber in front of us. He proceeded to tell his story.

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As the upgrade season moves into full swing some may get caught up in the momentum, the excitement of new functions and new features, perhaps, leading to considerable changes in how your people do their work. It is fun, even necessary, to visualize the improvements, yet, like a baseball bat made from rotted wood, your dreams could turn into operational nightmares if insufficient attention is paid to the underlying technologies that drive your system.

There is not enough room here to list in detail all the technical tasks required for a successful upgrade. Nevertheless, getting the large things right can make it a lot easier to get the small things right. So here goes. I have reviewed all the technical checklists from my prior upgrade experiences and gleaned my top ten items. I will try to be short and sweet.

Being as yet an imperfect human being I may have left some items out or included some items with which you may take issue. Feel free to suggest additional items or criticize those I have listed:

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Do you feel like when you talk no one is listening? Does it seem like the only time you see your boss is when something goes wrong? When someone, always a person without the power to change anything, asks how you do it, get up each morning, work frantically for hours on end, late nights, bad food, darken cubicles all around you, you often answer that you are “self motivated.”

For many of us “self motivation” may be just a different way of saying – please excuse my English – that nobody praises me for nothing I do, no how, nowhere, no way. Your malady may be genuine, it may be strictly in your mind, or, perhaps, it may be somewhere in between. Regardless, in the brave new world of 2011 IT employment your hard-won skills may well be much more valuable than you think.

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“…What’s the matter with the car I’m driving?
Can’t you tell that it’s out of style?
Should I get a set of white wall tires?
Are you gonna cruise the miracle mile?…”
- “It’s still Rock and Roll to me” by Billy Joel

The world is chock full of newly chic, thoroughly modern project management theories but there is one PM axiom that “is still Rock and Roll to me:” All project work is done by people, men and women who are infinitely variable, unfailingly fallible, skilled in some ways, unskilled in other ways, knowledgeable in some fields, unknowledgable in many areas.

All successful projects, past and current, large and small, significant and insignificant, come down ultimately to people getting work done well, communicating with others, generating ideas, developing designs, completing assignments. How do you get the right people? Picking the ones with the most knowledge may sound like a sure fire winner but this staffing strategy may well turn out to be a big mistake.

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Ah! Some heartening job news just came my way, not necessarily information deserving of a fireworks celebration, not quite an opera moment when the townspeople flock to the square and there is much rejoicing, yet it appears that the job opportunities for PeopleSoft practitioners are now improving, by a lot. Check out this latest report from Dice, the online career hub for tech jobs.

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For some the Holiday season is a magical time, for others depressing and difficult, for still others somewhere in between. Last week I had a small experience, a quick tale that raised my holiday spirit. Here’s my story. Please feel free to comment and share your own if you like.

I started my car very early in the morning, a dark, frosty, cold sunrise, and the tire warning light came on. Being a resourceful, do-it-now project management type I decided to take immediate action, before I showered, before I shaved, before I dressed in business casual. Off I went to my local gas station complex, not a long drive from my house.

I pulled up to the air compressor, a big metal monstrosity built a long time ago, and put in two quarters. Nothing happened. No air. I gave the machine a gentle nudge. Nothing. I gave the machine an open fisted slap up the backside. Nothing again. Defeated, I pressed the coin return and heard my money fall, not, however into the slot from which I needed to retrieve the coins. I peered in and there was my money stuck in the back. Often, projects are won, victory saved from sure defeat, because some people just refuse to be beaten. I would like to think that I am one of those people. I was not going to give up my 50 cents without a fight.

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Oracle recently announced a new name and a new price for the PeopleSoft portal, known to many as the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal and to others as the PeopleSoft Community Portal. The new name is: PeopleSoft Applications Portal, a description that Oracle hopes will clarify this product’s role, unifier of user experience and content, facilitator of user page data and pertinent related content. Oracle thought that having several names for the same functional product was confusing, a “rose by any other name” type of reasoning not withstanding, and has now consolidated its marketing and licensing into a single product.

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