Brian Robinson - 20+ years Bridging Business to I.T. (Applications)

This is not intended as a CV and must not be used as such. Please do not copy any or all of this text as it is copyright© Brian Robinson. The following is contrary to a CV style in that it shows the evolution of an I.T. professional as opposed to focussing on the latest hype in the I.T. industry.

• After 3 years at Leeds University (Control Eng'g) Brian joined a little known American company called IBM. Apart from the 26 weeks of training in the first 18 months the I.T. projects ranged from a stock control system for a metal-bashing manufacturer to a system for managing patients cash at what were then call "Special" hospitals (Broadmoor, Rampton etc.). That taught me never to make jokes about losing your keys!.

  Skills/experience: All the basics - primarily as a programmer but having to understand how to manage data files and records!.

  Languages/DataBases/Operating Systems scores: 4 , 3 , 3

• Conversions of systems from other manufacturers then became very popular - not surprisingly you may never have heard of Burroughs, Univac and ICL (hope you do!).

  Skills/experience: Batch programs in any language are a "piece of cake" compared to anything to do with end-users and online systems!. Worse still - online systems needed even more documentation than batch!. However, on-line systems created a massive opportunity to create new ways of managing the interactions between users and data and even more ways to do it badly - not that I ...

  Languages/DataBases/Operating Systems scores: 8 , 6 , 7

• My first design project - one of the worlds first online "credit" card systems! Leading and Managing a small team to a deadline too.

  Skills/experience: Directors of (even big) companies are human!, they also don't know what they want until they have seen it done!. Taking business processes and translating them into an on-line system which was fast and efficient enough (in those days!) to use while having a customer on the 'phone! was "challenging". The worst part was hassle within IBM (accountants!) but the end-result - my design running the whole Credit Card operations was "something special".

• My first serious ($30m+) Project Management role - such a success that it was a non-event!. Rumour has it that this was the first major project that had ever happened on time, on budget and worked well from the first day!.

  Skills/experience: When surrounded by lots of important people in the customer remember they work for the person that is paying for you! Project Managers don't fix problems - they tell sponsors who the people are that need to be "fixed"!.

• Various roles in (Business) Application Development consultancy followed with gaps filled by the development of a system to support the consultancy community within IBM. At its peak a thousand users would have been concurrently using a variety of functions.

  Languages/DataBases/Operating Systems scores: 15 , 8 , 10

  Skills/experience: Various Techniques and methods for analysing and documenting business requirements in ways that could then be translated into business systems, logic and data by others. Systems were getting so large in scope that to implement them needed a small (or bigger!) army of staff to implement them!. The in-house development taught me about how impossible it is to train very large populations of end-users (such as we have on the Web today) and the importance of simplicity, clarity and consistency of page layout, dialogues and conceptual model of any system.

• Became accredited as a qualified IBM Systems Design Consultant (1992-ish) when IBM started to become serious about selling Consultancy Services.
• Anyone who "does" applications also needs to understand "Infrastructure"!. As an Infrastructure consultant to a "local" chemical company I helped them extensively through the maze of sustainable technology deployment across their worldwide presence (140 countries). The high point was the deployment of a 20,000 user office system with many additional features and applications.

  Skills/experience: Infrastructure has to be the enabler of applications but the conflicts between the two will persist forever. Predicting the future accurately would be perfect but recognising which are the important decisions and having appropriate ways to mitigate alternate directions is the best that mortals can hope to achieve. Also managed to persuade IBM to provide some training at the Manchester Business School

• Back to technology and how businesses can use it wisely - or not!. Although very much against my instincts - customers were adamant that they wanted to have distributed computers and even "business" logic and data on their desktops.

  Skills/experience: Getting computers to communicate effectively with human beings is tough but getting them to talk to each other! - virtually impossible to manage in a sustainable manner.

  Languages/DataBases/Operating Systems scores: 20 , 10 , 12

• Back to the future - or in fact my past - the Internet caught the imagination of the I.T. vendors as a new "hype" they could latch onto. At least this was a reversion to what made sense to me - centralised servers with the business logic and data and the desktop was told to do what it did best - display the dialogues to the end-user in a pleasing, responsive, graphical manner.

  Skills/experience: For once IBM was at the leading edge of the wave and I was in the middle of it. A lifetime of learning crammed into 3-4 years on topics as far apart as Marketing through Channel Management and running a major event and that was just the non-technical "stuff". Technology unfortunately dominated many debates both inside IBM and with "customers" - too many were too far away from commercial reality. This of course was the "Internet Bubble" in full swing. Despite a wide range of customer engagements at a senior level I kept my feet firmly on the floor with the occasional development project that I used to keep my Internet-related skills (Business relevance through to Technology) fresh and relevant.

• Customer Relationship Management - or how to make large companies "think" like small ones!... As the European practise leader for the IBM Software Group I was focussed on the way the business opportunity (CRM for short) translated into I.T. at the executive level. This role also spilled over into a related one in the European Software group where I was focussed on the Business to Business market which naturally extends the CRM proposition (bilaterally if you think about it).

  Skills/experience: It was apparent within six months that IBM was not regarded as a "leader" in the CRM market because its partnership with Siebel Systems naturally took Siebel to the IBM prospects in that role. Both the CRM and B2B initiatives "collapsed" within 12-18 months and that coincided with the downturn in worldwide stockmarkets, trade, travel etc. etc. that gave me the "opportunity" to leave in 2002.

Although the last item took me away from "doing" the consultancy role which I had performed in previous years it was a useful lesson in understanding the issues and complexities of trying to get multiple companies to work together in some kind of partnership while the individuals at the "front line" are not necessarily motivated to do so!.

I hope that wasn't too much of a personalised history of IT (and life in IBM!) but...

You now know where I am "coming from" - back to the future sounds about right!. And luckily - I have been there before! and looking forward to doing "IT" again...

Brian Robinson

Note - FYI - I will not be working as an employee of Net Business Goals and can be contacted directly at e-Mail BR:
from 6th April 2003.