QuickArrow has made a great library of 35 must read PS whitepapers available on their site. The collection includes some papers from TPSA director Thomas Lah, PSVillage advisory board member Jeanne Urich, Charles Green from Trusted Advisor Associates, and more.
There are great papers on The Changing PS Model, services marketing, services maturity, and KPIs/metrics. Thanks to QuickArrow for providing such a great resource, and to PSVillage for bringing it to my attention.
I spent the morning today documenting the practice development activities for Acquia services. I started out working in Project X which I decided to try after seeing the icon in Andrew’s dock. It turned out to be a terrible time to try a new tool, since the ideas were coming too fast and I was handicapped by the learning curve. I thought of switching back to OmniPlan, which I’ve been using since it came out.
As I started down that path, it hit me that it wasn’t learning a new application that was the problem (though I’m sure it didn’t help). It was the structure I was working in. The ideas weren’t coming to be in a hierarchy, but I was trying to record them that way. Jumping around a Gantt chart or even the Network View in Project X just wasn’t working out. I needed to move back a level and get all the ideas down, then start putting them into a more formal structure. Time for a Mind Map!
I fired up NovaMind and started mapping.
Joining Acquia not only marks the earliest stage that I’ve joined a company, but also the first time I’ve joined a commercial Open Source company. This was one of the main reasons I chose to join the company. Managing a services business at an Open Source software company creates some interesting challenges compared to my past experience in traditional software and consulting businesses.
There’s more than one culture to adapt to. When you join an Open Source company, you not only need to adjust to your company’s culture, but you need to become an active member of the Open Source community. At an early stage, the cultures are likely to be quite similar—but its not guaranteed. Even with compatible cultures, you’re still dealing with two sets of personalities and the politics that come any time you get people together.
The software already exists. This is a big benefit but also a risk when putting your team together. If you’re building your capabilities along with the software, your company will be able to put the right team in place to stay ahead of the curve as use and acceptance of your software grows.
One of my responsibilities at Acquia is overseeing the development of our certification program. We’re creating this program to establish baseline credentials for working with our commercially supported distribution of Drupal (codenamed Carbon) and our Spokes and Caliper network services. Since Carbon is a distribution of Drupal core and a selection of modules, Acquia certification will judge facility to work with Drupal independent of our distribution.
I was not surprised that the Drupal community is suggesting caution when it comes to our effort and the value of certification in general. I’ve been a certification skeptic since I first started working with Certified™ technical staff. There are too many “paper” certifications in the IT community, and I’m not interested in adding another to the pile.
I’ve owned the domain name “chuckdantonio.com” for a couple of years now, but the time for tool selection, installation, and keeping up a quality blog always eluded me. Now that I’ve joined Acquia, I’m able to make the time to launch the site with Drupal. I started to get acquainted with Drupal during the interview process, then gulped from the firehose during two days at Drupalcon Boston and haven’t stopped gulping on my first few days on the job.
Over the last ten years, I’ve been consulting on a variety of technologies—most recently SOA Governance for Systinet and its successor companies. Before Systinet, I worked on web applications and content management for eFORCE and Context Integration. Consulting most excites when watching clients develop and “get it”. I joined Systinet to move formally into management get this excitement everyday working with my team.
Chuck D'Antonio lives in Medford, MA with his wife Angela, children Lila, 4, and Trey, 1, and their black lab Floyd. He currently leads the professional services team at Acquia, commercial Open Source vendor based on the Drupal content management system.
