Providence Technology Group

If you look out of the window today, it may be a bit overcast, but in a few months, the sun will be bearing down on the Sacramento region with promises to scorch the valley.  We know those 100-degree days are not too far off.  Solar technology seems to innovate regularly.   Sacramento would seem to be an ideal place to capitalize on solar power, so why don’t we see more solar panels installed on our neighbor’s roofs, much less our own roofs? Google’s Project Sunroof can help you determine if solar is a good option for your wallet and home.  Depending on your current electricity rates, solar power may not be a cost-effective strategy for you.  When we ran the Project Sunroof calculator for our own homes, it gave us 17-year payback periods – that’s a long time to wait for your investment to ...[Read More]

After all, it’s an uber-competitive job market, as every Sacramento IT consultant knows. Here are the stats: The average job opening attracts 250 résumés. (Glassdoor) Only 2% of applicants will be called for an interview for the average job opening. (Glassdoor) It’s so tempting to pad your résumé. You could probably fake your way through an interview, you probably won’t be found out, you won’t go to jail, so why not? After all, everybody does it at one time or another. (Or do they? Actually, most people are actually honest on their résumés, according to Michael Klazema at Brazen Careerist.) First, let’s define our terms. What do we mean by “padding”? Creative title inflation (you call yourself a senior programmer, but you have only 5 years’ experience) Exaggerating responsibilities (you pr...[Read More]

Two short summers ago, Rio de Janeiro hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics when Russia won the duet and team Synchronized Swimming events.  This year during the opening ceremony, Korean snowboarders expertly rode down the slope in choreographed synchronization.  Ask any Olympian – synchronization is harder than it looks, and its not just for the Olympic competitors any more. This year an Intel team, based in Folsom, wowed the world with synchronized drones during the Opening Ceremony.  More than 1200 Intel Shooting StarTM drones delighted a billion people with their synchronized dance creating the Olympic Rings above the venue.  It was inspiring.  If you happened to be in Folsom last November, you might have seen Intel testing these drones in preparation for the Olympics.  Kudos to the Intel te...[Read More]

Application Development See the Difference Optimization Makes! – Step 2 Your Challenge Projects experience cost and budget overruns and fail to meet key requirements. Process bottlenecks slow down development unnecessarily. New technologies significantly challenge existing processes, contributing to process breakdown. QA is focused on the wrong bugs. Issues that should have been solved during development are added to the QA workload. Software requirements continually change and developers can’t keep pace. Communication between the business and IT is infrequent and unclear.   Our Advice – Step 2 Design Detailed Solution Components   Step 2 breakdown: 2.1 Design the Business Rules 2.2 Design the User Interface 2.3 Design the System Flow and Integrations 2.4 Bring the Design Togethe...[Read More]

Clearly, there’s a lot of buzz about blockchain and its best-known implementation, bitcoin. Newsflash January 15, 2018:  Blockchain in the Boardroom: Toward Enterprise Deployment Newsflash January 15, 2018:  BLJ: Is Blockchain the future or simply ‘witchcraft’ Newsflash January 11, 2018:  MoneyGram Signs Deal to Work With Currency Startup Ripple Financial analysts have been watching in cautious amazement as bitcoin captures the attention of Wall Street.  Did you know that you can purchase your own bitcoin at an ATM in the Galleria Mall, at many gas stations and liquor stores, too? But what is a blockchain?  According to the Harvard Business Review, a blockchain is “an open distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties in a verifiable and permanent way.”  A blockchain ...[Read More]

See the Difference Optimization Makes – Step 1  Your Challenge: Projects experience cost and budget overruns and fail to meet key requirements. Process bottlenecks slow down development unnecessarily. New technologies significantly challenge existing processes, contributing to process breakdown. QA is focused on the wrong bugs. Issues that should have been solved during development are added to the QA workload. Software requirements continually change and developers can’t keep pace. Communication between the business and IT is infrequent and unclear. Our Advice – Step 1 Design High Level Solutions Step 1 breakdown: 1.1 Get the right people involved 1.2 Establish a High Level Design Specification 1.3 Optimize for Business and Regulatory Compliance 1.4 Obtain Stakeholder Approval  ...[Read More]

Build a Business-Driven Application Roadmap Using an Agile Approach Support your ongoing business objectives with a rationalized application portfolio while remaining aligned with your current and future technology needs. Your Challenge Due to application sprawl, many of today’s organizations have reached a point where they are supporting many applications that offer minimal to no business value. Application roadmap projects are often shelved due to the complexity of scale. Organizations are looking for ways to align their business priorities to current and future decisions for applications. Our  Advice Complication Application leaders do not have an excellent understanding of their application portfolio because they lack the processes required to gather accurate and applicable information...[Read More]

You’re a consultant.  It’s Day One of your new engagement.  Not too many people are smiling during this first meeting of stakeholders.  In front of you is a 1” binder half full of unorganized paperwork on the project.  You need to deliver something in 6 weeks.  People don’t seem to be talking to each other – yelling maybe, but not talking.  What have you gotten yourself into?  Isn’t that why you became a consultant in the first place – so you could get away from office politics. When asked how they dealt with office politics, here is how some fellow consultants answered: First off, as a consultant, you are probably at this new engagement because the client needs something changed.  Change can be hard.  Listen.  Listen to your supporters and detractors.  Communicate.  Pull out (or develop) ...[Read More]

Thinking of switching careers?  What about rounding out your current skill sets?  Making yourself more marketable? What do Business Analysts do? According to the International Institute of Business Analysis, “a business analyst works as a liaison among stakeholders in order to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems.”  The business analyst (BA) understands specific business issues and can recommend solutions that help the organization reach their goal.  BA’s can work in a number of roles including: Eliciting requirements Documentation Process re-engineering Systems Analysis What types of skill sets do Business Analysts need? General Business Skills.  A good BA should have an analytical approach to problem so...[Read More]

Providence Technology Group Business Intelligence (BI) services are designed to provide the strategic advantages our clients need to convert data into consistent, actionable information. Our advice: The CIO is responsible and accountable for providing the business with accurate information. All it takes is just one bad business decision to begin preparing for your not too distant job search. Involve the Head of BI in developing a BI tool strategy. BI 2.0 (advanced) capabilities (predictive, real-time, social and big data analytics) are being used more than ever. Organizations are adopting them as they provide significant opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. If the business isn’t demanding these capabilities now, they will soon. Plan for BI 2.0 capabilities now before the organizati...[Read More]

Last time I checked, the sun was shining.  Actually, it has been shining pretty much every day since April, and even when it isn’t shining, there is still enough light to grow plenty of grass (and weeds).  Even if the sun was shining (and I needed to mow the grass), I still had to work on a deliverable for a client.  My wireless mouse died – actually the batteries died.  So, I drove my 30 mpg car to the large club warehouse store (kind of rhymes with Moscow) to pick up a megapack of AAA batteries.  I use each battery once and then drop them in the Hazardous Waste container in the garage.  In a few months, I’ll have enough to drive them over to the County’s Hazardous Waste Drop-Off Center. That’s a lot of batteries – to buy, use once and turn into hazardous waste. Well, there’s a simple cha...[Read More]