A New Approach

Throughout our discussion of the user communities development there has been an overriding theme of compressing the time necessary from the start of our developments to commercial release. Now that we’ve achieved what we can and defined the process of how we’ll proceed, it’s time for me to admit that I have a serious problem. One that I’ve been working on since the publication of the Preliminary Specification, that I’ve not discussed here or with anyone. People, Ideas & Objects have always claimed to provide a software development capability to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producers. This capability has been defined within our budget as approximately six hundred software developers. That is a lot of people to assemble in a short period of time. Then we’ll need to get them all signing from the same hymn sheets and lastly turn them into the high performing team that they always could be. The high performing team state of the art that they will have to be in order to accomplish the scope and scale of the Preliminary Specification. We don’t have a decade or more in terms of time to do that. If the issue is speed. And at $66 / barrel there doesn’t appear to be much of a sense of urgency today. However when we test the low $30 / barrel range once again, and we will, this issue we see with the North American oil and gas producers guarantees it. Speed will become the issue on everyone’s mind and no one will accept the time for People, Ideas & Objects require to ramp up their software development capabilities. If we could have started building these capabilities when the Preliminary Specification was first published we may have been able to get it done, but too much time has passed and too much damage has been incurred by the oil and gas industry.

Therefore we are configuring People, Ideas & Objects from a research and software development firm. Which is how we described ourselves up until today. To now be a user community and Intellectual Property firm. Specialization and the Division of Labor at its finest. This will allow us to focus on the detailed work necessary to ensure that oil and gas producers achieve the most profitable means of oil and gas operations everywhere and always. Ownership of the software code will be derivative from the work that we do. The only software or code operations that we will be conducting will be compiling and running our application off of GitLabs. The leadership team that had been defined for People, Ideas & Objects, and the leadership team that was defined for the user community will be consolidated. Other than that, and only that, nothing and I repeat nothing has or will change to the configuration of the user community in any way as a result of the new approach we’re taking. If anything we are and will be able to focus our energies on this our primary concern, our user community.

What we will be doing in terms of generating the software needed for this project is issuing contracts. All of the contracts that we will be issuing will be to Oracle Corporation to access their developers. Oracle has 7,000 developers who are in their consulting division conducting spec development of software. They have many more in the area of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Fusion Applications, Java and Database. There isn’t an issue from a technical point of view that we could throw at them that they would not be able to solve, quickly. They have the team functioning now and in a manner that is state of the art. By doing this we can hit the ground running and have the software development capabilities that are necessary to deliver our software, but on a more timely basis than our previous approach. The speed of our developments are potentially hundreds of billions of dollars per year to the oil and gas producers at this time. We must and will do this. From Oracle’s point of view I think they should see this as an opportunity to showcase their technologies, their people and their capabilities. Oracle doesn’t have an oil and gas solution on Oracle ERP Cloud. As a result of this approach they will be a big part of the delivery of the solution that delivers real value to the oil and gas producers.

Our budget is blown, maybe. Shifting the development dollars that were committed internally to now being committed to Oracle may push us over our budget. At this time I’m willing to let People, Ideas & Objects absorb the overrun from our profitability. I see no reason to review our budget unless producers would like me to do so. And I am advising the producers right now they never want me to revise the budget. In terms of the costs paid to Oracle I will not be looking for any discount or special deals from them at any time. I want them to understand from the first day that there will be no excuse for failure. We are paying the full freight for guaranteed success. Oracle will be on the hook for the success of delivering the software that our user community defines.

The reason that I am willing to indemnify the producers on any cost overruns on the change to Oracle based software developments is that there have been some efficiencies and developments in IT, and in the software development methodologies since we first published our budget. We are willing to proceed with this process with the belief that the higher costs associated with using Oracle will be offset by these efficiencies. I am satisfied that given the industries financial resources the Preliminary Specification will provide industry with the upside as defined in our value proposition. That being $25.7 to $45.7 trillion over the next 25 years. And therefore that is the basis and determination of my compensation. I’m not working for an hourly fee.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don’t forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.

Its Our Users

We resume our discussion about those things that we can change. People, Ideas & Objects focus is on our user community. Users are the source of our software quality. It would be futile to approach the problems that we face without the user in full control of the developments of their software. And that is what we are doing with People, Ideas & Objects. Review of our user community vision shows that it is in fact the user community who have the power to build the software that they need to operate the industry. As user community members, you will be the quality of the software and have the power to do what is necessary to make it a fact.

What is it that you as a user member will be doing within the community? Let's assume for a moment that you have been involved in the industry in various aspects around the Material Balance Report for the past ten years. This is one of the key areas of the Preliminary Specification and the foundation of most of the automation that is derived from the production process. Your understanding of these processes and requirements is what has to be captured in the software to ultimately support your work in this area. You know what is important and what is noise. What the critical areas of concern are. Working with other members of the user community you will document what the industries requirements are. Determine ways in which these can be done better with the tools that you have at your disposal. Tools such as the software development capabilities of People, Ideas & Objects. And then design the various processes and interfaces that are necessary to undertake all of the tasks and requirements.

The environment or specification that you will be working in will be within the service providers that you will either own yourself or jointly with other members of the user community. These service providers will replace the administrative and accounting resources of the producers and therefore will be the way in which you design the new processes for this new organizational structure. Your service provider organization might be managing a very small part of the actual Material Balance Report. However, you will be doing it on behalf of the entire industry. Therefore new ways of looking at the data and information contained within that mountain of data will be provided to you. These insights could lead to further process developments of the software as time passes. Specialization, the division of labor and automation are the tools that you will use as the key competitive advantages of your service provider. They will also be what you consider in terms of the overall design of the software as a member of the user community.

In addition to the understanding that the user community members have of the oil and gas industry. People, Ideas & Objects have specified that a strong understanding of the Information Technologies be present. Noting that you should have a strong understanding of Java, relational databases through the relational model and other technologies. Access to the software code will be part of your day to day activities. The access is through a number of IDE’s (Integrated Development Environments). These will be read only. However, you will be making suggestions on code changes and submitting them to the software development team to be committed to the code base. These IDE’s will include NetBeans and JDeveloper. Both are Oracle products, NetBeans being an open source derivative of Sun Microsystems development environment. There are other IDE’s in the market however we will not be using those. Download one and have a look at these tools to get a feel for what the state of art is like in this area. I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed though, they are much simpler than they appear.

You know the oil and gas business. You have a strong aptitude in the IT areas. You're ready to fill the gap between the knowledge of the business of the oil and gas business, and the Information Technology world. This intersection has to be breached in order to fulfill the opportunity that we have in front of us. That comes down to our developers and to our users. If this seems like a thrilling challenge, and it is, then you should join us.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don’t forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

The Product Owner in our Leadership Team Part II

Our second installment of the Product Owner positions series begins to look at the desirable characteristics of the individuals in these roles. I will be quoting heavily from the book “Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love” by Roman Pichler. As Product Owners I want them to be the individuals that are responsible for the success of the module that they work with. That their user community is how they achieve that success and they hold our development team to be accountable to the needs of the user community. In order to achieve the oil and gas industry wide software development capability that I think is necessary. One that identifies and overcomes the industries issues and implements its opportunities on a real time basis. I think this is what will be required on a minimum basis.

I have always classified the world into two types of people. Thinkers and doers. I'm a thinker and thankfully there are few of us. The rest are doers. And the book by Roman Pichler says that the Product Owner needs to be a visionary and a doer. I don't think I've personally met anyone with those qualifications but we'll take his word. He defines the Product Owner as an “entrepreneur, the product owner facilitates creativity; encourages innovation; and is comfortable with change, ambiguity, debate, conflict, playfulness, experimentation, and informed risk taking.” All attributes that everyone would encourage.

The next attributes that are highlighted are “Leader and Team Player” and the author has highlighted a phenomenal quotation that I've quoted below.

The Entrepreneurial Team 

We sometimes focus on an individual as the amazing entrepreneur or the outstanding leader -- thinking of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and other celebrity leaders. In reality, very few innovations are a stroke of genius attained by one person. And even if the product owner is Mrs. or Mr. Innovation, the individual still needs a team to bring the product to life. No entrepreneurial genius can make all the right decisions. In fact, neuroscientific research reveals that even the best qualified person in the right job at the right place can make wrong decisions -- if that person decides alone. Finkelstein and his coauthors attribute this to the way human cognition works (2009). They recommend using at least one other person as a sounding board. A team provides plenty of sparring partners to test ideas and arrive at the right decision. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar (2008, 68), says this: 

… if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works. 

The wisdom of many is preferable to the brilliance of one.

Which says all there really needs to be said about what we are trying to achieve here at People, Ideas & Objects. The user community is the key to the success of the oil and gas industry in terms of its abilities and capabilities. Software defines and supports organizations. The user community defines the software. Therefore a great team positioned in the user community would be the objective that we should all be pursuing to ensure a successful oil and gas industry. And the Product Owner has an interesting view of these events.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.

The Product Owner in our Leadership Team Part I

Something people have to keep in mind about People, Ideas & Objects is that we are currently in development. By focusing on developing the user community, this is a key part of the software development and the software development capability that we will be providing to the industry. It may seem to the casual reader that things are static at this point, however, as this year develops we will see that this development in the user community will bring about many of the desired outcomes that we anticipate. Stay tuned, I promise this will be an interesting year.

One of the things that we are experiencing is that with the Internet and cloud computing our progress is able to move at the speed at which change is happening. We are not being constrained by the traditional resources of a software developer. Everything is virtual at this point and as a result is able to accommodate the needs of the people we are appealing to and the oil and gas industry. We have a lightweight footprint that is unconstrained by the physical world.

One of our objectives is to recruit the user communities leadership team and have them represent the user community to the oil and gas investors. This was to secure the funding necessary to develop the Preliminary Specification and have the user community and service providers developed. I recently changed my mind on this point. We will continue to recruit these positions, however, we are not going to expose any of these individuals to the antics of the bureaucracies vindictive ways. There is no reason that these people need to take on any career risk by being named here. Therefore from the point of view of what will be expressed to the investors, what you currently see, is what you get.

I am therefore going to begin to detail the specific positions that we are looking to fill in the leadership team and what those positions will be doing. The first position I want to discuss is the Product Owner positions of the user community. We expect that there may be upwards of 20 out of the total of 30 leadership team positions being Product Owners. Starting today I want to begin a discussion of that role and what they provide to the user community, the development team and to the software quality.

The quotations that I will be making are from the book, “Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love” by Roman Pichler. What he suggests as the reason that the Product Owner role exists is to solve the issue of having too many cooks spoiling the soup. Having a single individual leading the development of the product from beginning to end provides this solution. Making one person responsible for ensuring its success and ensuring that everyone involved has a shared vision of the product is the Product Owner role in the development. In the broad scope and scale of the Preliminary Specification I am more or less its Product Owner. But each Product Owner in the leadership team will be either responsible for one module of the Preliminary Specification or some element of the technology. For example the data model, the user interface etc. So for example we will have a very senior individual who will be the Product Owner for the Partnership Accounting Module, and they will have the authority and responsibility for that module.

In the book the Product Owner role is defined as,

The Product Owner is the one and only person responsible for the managing the Product Backlog and ensuring the value of the work the team performs. This person maintains the Product Backlog and ensures that it is visible to everyone. 

If we think for a minute we may have 250 to 300 users in the Partnership Accounting module. This being a simple mathematical representation of the total of 3,000 people in the user population. There may be a need for far more people, especially considering the Material Balance Report which is a critical part of the module. The scope of the module is very broad, however it is consistent in terms of the type of work that is being done and therefore can be handled by one leader or Product Owner. Ensuring that the user community has considered the differences present in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. Having adopted those differences in their input and their analysis of what is required in their systems. It is then the responsibility of the Product Owner to ensure that the development team delivers that product to the user community.

The background of the Product Owners for People, Ideas & Objects purposes is from the business domain. Although a key member of the development team, their understanding of the business domain is what is required. Particularly with respect to the manner in which their understanding of these critical oil and gas processes are handled. It can take years, and sometimes decades before people are fully aware of the total scope of the processes under management in modules such as the Partnership Accounting module. A technological focus is not what we need to ensure product quality or to represent the user community. There will be significant developer and user collaborations and interactions throughout the course of product design and development. And the developers will have time to understand the nuances of the particular parts of the module from individual users, however there is the bigger picture that needs to be captured as well. And from a business perspective, that needs to be provided from the Product Owner.

We'll be discussing the Product Owner position in more detail in the next few days. If you have an interest in these positions, or any of our leadership teams positions please contact me.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

Time is What we Have.

Preparation by the user community participant is one of the ways that we are using the time that we have available to us. In our previous post we noted that in the time that we have we are committed to the developments of the user community. That this is our priority and our focus. As opposed to handing off the development and implementation of the software to an accounting firms technology group. And having them go through the motions of getting user group by in. We are developing the user community as one of our key competitive advantages for the long term. During this three year user community development. Of which we are almost through our first full year. We have identified the areas where an interested candidate can invest their time and energy to become a more productive user community participant when we begin our software developments.

User community participants are drawn from all areas of the oil and gas sector. From all of the professions that are involved in the industry. When we begin software developments what we will need is for you to relate your experience and knowledge of how it is you do your job to our software developers. To design and configure the best way in which the systems that you will use will be developed and implemented. In order to do that we are now looking to augment your knowledge and understanding with some understanding of the technologies and software development process that we will be using. This will aid in the communications between the user community and our software developers. It is far easier for the user community to learn the basics of the technologies than it is for the software developers to learn the broad scope of understanding of the “how to” knowledge of the industry and each discipline that are involved in the user community. An otherwise essentially impossible task.

We therefore ask that the user community participant undertake to invest some of their time and energy in understanding the current software development processes. Some of the tools that are used in that process and their capabilities. This includes specifically the IDE’s (Integrated Development Environments) that are available in the marketplace which include Netbeans, Oracle’s JDeveloper and Eclipse. These are free to use and will generally be part of any course that you take in the university programs that we recommend that you also invest your time and energy in. It is those university programs that we suggest will give you the overall understanding of the technologies that will provide you with the ability to see the larger picture of what the technologies can do. We have suggested upwards of 5 to 6 university level technology courses in database and Java technologies will give the user community participant the understanding of the development process, the technologies, the communication skills with the software developers and the understanding of the Preliminary Specification necessary to make the application what it can be.

I would like to point out at this time that our budget assumptions in terms of the charge out rate for the user community participant are $195 / hour. This reflects not only our commitment to the development of the community but our expectation in terms of the outcome from it. We are looking for the senior level input of those in the industry who have the wherewithal to participate in what we think will be a permanent career change. These charge out rates also assume that there would be some elements of specialization and division of labor being applied to the role so that an individual would be able to organize themselves into small groups of specialized user community participant providers. Also, these user community participants are the key elements in the founding of the service providers who are the replacement to the administrative and accounting capabilities of the producers. And are supported by what we estimate to be the $40 to 60 billion in annual G&A expenses currently incurred by the North American oil and gas producers. We therefore feel our expectations are not only in line, but to be minimal in terms of the earnings potential of the user community participant. However, these costs incurred by the user community assume that we continue to keep our value proposition in mind. And that is that we provide the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Our value proposition is how we are able to prosper. Therefore our focus must be appropriately aimed and remain so.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

As a User Community Participant, Where Will You Be?

The question is asked where the members of the user community will be physically located. I guess the best answer I can give at this time is they will be located virtually in the main centres of Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City and Calgary. And there may be others such as Denver and Los Angeles or San Francisco. Or, wherever you are now. Members of the user community may have their own office space dedicated for the sole purpose of being a member of the user community. However, they will most likely be operating out of the office of the service provider that they have established as a result of being a member of the user community. There they are hands on with the issues and opportunities of the producer and can deal with the day to day of the producers, and also see the bigger picture issues of the overall industry.

Accommodations will be made in People, Ideas & Objects development environment for the members of the user community to participate in the developments. These however will not be the primary means in which to communicate between the developers and the user community. This is where the virtual elements of the relationship come into being. The user community is first of all designing what they want in their systems. The only constraints on their design is the budget and the Preliminary Specification. Users may virtually come together from all corners of the continent in order to make this design dynamic, innovative and profitable for the oil and gas producers. Secondly they will document what it is that is necessary for the development of those systems and interpret that for the developers and insure that it is implemented correctly in the software.

This doesn’t need to be conducted side by side with the developers. Developers will work from the documentation that is prepared by the user community. Developers and user community participants will both have access to the information prepared by the user community and the developers. That means that at times when you are discussing issues with a developer, or another user, on line, you may be reviewing some of the software code. It’s not necessary that you're able to write code, but at least be able to follow along in a reasonable manner. As a user, having read-only access to the software code will provide you with a better understanding that the system that you want is the system that you have.

So if you're based in San Francisco and are working mostly for Chevron, and our development environment is located in Houston. You will not be subject to any difficulties as a result of the virtual nature of the relationship with the development team. The development team is housed together in one location which I think is a necessity. However, in most open source development projects the developers are scattered across the globe and they develop excellent software. Having the users and developers separate in this day and age is a non issue with the technologies for web based meetings being readily available.

What is a critical issue is the interaction between the user community and the producers themselves. And we have that in the user community participants being members of the service providers. They are therefore the people on the ground that are dealing with the producers issues and opportunities and are the producers proxy in terms of what they need their systems to do. Here we are getting at the critical nature of the user community participant and the importance of them in the People, Ideas & Objects development. They are for all intents and purposes, the producer.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

Let's be Unreasonable

The last few days we have discussed the completely unreasonable and irrational idea that we could reorganize the oil and gas industry. That the prototypical producer would also be reorganized in a radical fashion. Ideas that were put forward here on this website. The methods put forward in the Preliminary Specification require significant change be implemented within the industry and not one thing, that is person, place or producer would be untouched by the changes put forward in that specification. This certainly makes the Preliminary Specification unique in its scope and scale of change. Its a bold statement to make and one that requires frequent checks on ones sanity. I am however, reminded by the saying from George Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I am certainly an unreasonable man, and I have many people that are willing to attest to that fact. I have also always focused on the value that we are able to provide within our organizations. I have been able to consistently differentiate my work on the basis of the value that is generated through my activities. It is why I went into business for myself back in 1986 so that I could begin to capture some of that value for myself. You have to understand too that you can not build anything of substantial value within a quarter or two. You need to begin with a plan, remain focused and dedicated to stomach the difficulties that will inevitably come your way.

Keeping focused on the plan during the positive and negative distractions that occur are what will keep you on the right track. For example if for some reason we were able to raise our budget tomorrow, a positive distraction, it would not deter us from our focus of developing the user community and then the service providers. The user community is critical to the quality of the software that we will develop. Without them we would only provide another version of what has already been produced. The clear and distinct difference between what we are doing and what has been done in the past is that we are user community ERP based software developments.

Some may think why in the world is that important. What concern does the user have in the world of ERP software. Consider the understanding and knowledge that is contained within what will be the user community. In terms of the work that they do and how they do their job. If it takes on average six months to fully comprehend an individual's role within an organization. And the number of different roles within the industry. Capturing that knowledge and understanding by the developers is a necessity in order to support the user. I think a user community based ERP system should support and provide the tools to the user for the work that is done in the industry. What SAP and other “ERP” systems do is handle the compliance and accounting requirements. And that’s it. Particularly from an oil and gas point of view they do a very poor job. Review the Preliminary Specification to see what I think the users will do and how they need to be supported in an ERP environment. We believe in a strong division of labor between computers and people. Computers should be used to store and process things. People should focus on the leadership, problem solving, decisions, creativity, collaboration, research, idea generation, design and planning amongst other things.

In terms of value we can be responsible for providing trillions of dollars in incremental value from the current base case. Is that justification for making these changes? I think it is. As we will be positioned to be able to provide for additional value as issues and opportunities occur within the industry. People interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects user community should look to build value for themselves and the industry for the long term. We don't plan to begin work until January 2017 and there are many things you can do to prepare before then. If the oil and gas industry is for you, and are disheartened by the bureaucracy what are you going to do about it. I have an idea and it needs you to make it work. Its a little unreasonable but then that is how progress is made.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

Oracle's OpenWorld 2014 Conference and Our User Community

Yesterday saw the opening of Oracle’s annual database, application and Java conference, or Oracle OpenWorld 2014. This annual ritual includes all the news and features that Oracle has to present to the world. This year should be no different, other than there will be no sailing. I highly recommend watching Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s keynote address. These have been as interesting and as game changing as Steve Jobs keynotes at Apple. Another one to watch for is Renee’ James the president of Intel Corporation whose topic I think will appeal to many of the larger producer firms who have a concern with the cloud computing configuration of People, Ideas & Objects. What I am sure you'll find in her discussion is that Oracle, Intel and People, Ideas & Objects are able to provide you with your own hardware and software to operate your application from within your own organization. The one caveat is that the service providers and user community are the ones that will need to continue to provide you with the capabilities under the decentralized production model.

It makes no difference where your application is operated from. Centralizing it within a cloud configuration reduces the burden of managing the Information Technology elements and opens up the opportunities for change within the business model. The only real calls for ensuring that the applications remain within the organizations four walls are coming from the bureaucrats themselves. It might be one of their last ditch strategies to keep them in place for a while longer. So lets be wise.

I have written here on several occasions that the members of the user community and service providers need to have a higher level of Information Technology understanding. Specifically about relational theory, the Oracle database and Java. Defining this as augmenting your formal education with three or four related university courses. This would aid in the communication with the People, Ideas & Objects development team as there is no way that they are going to be able to learn what is contained within the scope of the user communities oil and gas understanding. This knowledge has other benefits in that it will give the user an understanding of the basics of the technology in what appears to be an explosion of technologies. When in fact the principles, innovations and concepts are based on some fairly basic technologies. Once you have those technologies the appearance of magic disappears from the equation and the user understands what is happening within the application. This is the type of service that we need to provide the dynamic, innovative and profitable oil and gas producer.

There are additional benefits on top of those that I just mentioned. When we look at the Oracle Stack that we use in the Preliminary Specification we see a large number of Oracle specific applications. It is critical to understand that these are not set in stone. If anything I would like to think of them as overall possibilities and suggestions to be built upon. These Oracle Fusion Applications are built using Oracle Fusion Middleware. All of the Preliminary Specification developments outside of the Oracle specific applications will also be built by the Oracle Fusion Middleware server. Think of the Oracle Fusion Middleware server as the plumbing supplies, the lumber, hammers and nails that you would use in building a house. Understanding how to use those tools you could then build any house that you would like, as in the Preliminary Specification. And you would be able to modify any house, or renovate a house, such as the Oracle Fusion Applications. If you understood the Oracle Database and Java at the level that is being suggested here you could conceptually form the ideas of how you want the dining room to look, its features and the People, Ideas & Objects developers would understand exactly what you want and then build it for you. This is where I want us to be.

Building this user community is our current objective. We think that this type of user community and the associated service providers are the necessary ingredient in making sure that the oil and gas industry is provided with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

Its Been a Good Week!

We've taken the better part of this week to highlight the power and control that the user community will have in making the oil and gas industry more dynamic, innovative and profitable. It should be clear that the People, Ideas & Objects user community is structured differently than any other user community has ever been structured in the industry before. Participation will provide you with the tools to effectively and efficiently deal with the issues and opportunities that the oil and gas producers face in the years to come. There won't be a bureaucracy, the user community removes and replaces the bureaucracy as the form of organization in the industry. There will only be the participants and their ability to act in the best interests of the oil and gas producers.

Technology is making these changes in every industry today. It may not be as obvious as what People, Ideas & Objects and the user community are doing to the oil and gas industry. But small applications like AirBnB, Uber and Lyft are creating new smaller industries out of old bureaucratic and poorly functioning ones. I guess if we look at the service providers and the app marketplace we are creating our own sub-industries as well. The fact that technology has the power to change the way that industries operate is the trend that will continue for at least the next decade. The bureaucracies are strong and their resistance is effective. However we will succeed in the long term and they will be relegated to the scrapheap of history. Profitability demands it.

The time in which you chose to join the user community is your own decision. There are risks associated with joining People, Ideas & Objects. The bureaucracy will deal with those that they can identify. As we mentioned only those that choose to join the leadership team are asked to have a public profile at this time. User community participants are able to otherwise walk both sides of the street and hide out in the bureaucracy for a few more years. It is important to understand however that although the user community will be rather large. Numbering I think in the area of 2,000 to 3,000 people. That is a small sample of the numbers of people that work within the oil and gas industry.

It is also a very small sample in comparison to the number of people that will be working in the service provider firms. An area where the user community participants will have distinct competitive advantages in which to participate in terms of ownership and operation of. Therefore a balance in terms of the risk of commitment to this project vs the opportunities in the service providers that participation provides.

Our expectation is that we will have one hour of developer time for every hour of user community time. This one to one ratio is high in the development world. The reasons for this are many. The scope of our application is very broad. The change dynamic that we are introducing is strong. There will be significant experimentation within the user community. And lastly the need to determine a consensus throughout the user community will take time. These will add to the burden of the user community in terms of their time and effort.

2,000 man years of user community time is budgeted in the initial development release. This effort will be spread out over a number of years and have at its core 600 to 1,000 user community participants involved in the development at anyone time. The population of user community participants is necessary in order to cover off the broad scope of the understanding involved in the oil and gas industry. It is with this understanding that we provide the user community with the prospect of membership in the community which requires the specific skills in understanding the development process, relational databases and Java. And the fact that these are not full time positions. However they do lead to the prospects that these people are the leaders in the service provider community in terms of ownership and operation of that sub-industry. We will discuss the service providers more next week.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

Where's the Rest of the Plan?

We have been discussing the software development plan of People, Ideas & Objects and the user communities development for the past eight months. During this time we have not discussed the period of time beyond the development of the user community, January 2019, when we are actually into the developments of the software. There are a number of reasons for that which I would like to present today. First of all these details will be determined when the resources of the industry are secured and the user communities leadership team are in place in January 2017. It will be at that time that we will have a better ability to determine some of the key issues and opportunities that will be involved in the final software development.

First of all, as of right now it is somewhat of a moving target to make any estimate of the timing of these developments. The technology industry has gone through a significant maturation of its technologies in the past decade and we are the recipients of the value from this maturation. What we propose to do with People, Ideas & Objects and the user community could only really have been done in the past few years. And with today’s technologies it would be significantly easier and more robust than if we did start several years ago. I think I should thank the bureaucracy for holding us up this long, it really has added significantly to our product quality. Particularly Oracle Corporation is going through some changes that I find very dramatic. Their Oracle Database 12C is a significant leap forward in terms of cloud computing and they are committed to that form of delivery. Their Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Fusion Applications which were a complete, ground-up writing of an ERP system based in Java and other Oracle technologies were released in 2010. They are now becoming robust. And we are the recipients of the value that is generated by them.

Similarly development tools and programming languages have been through revolutionary changes. Java is very robust and we are now able to fully implement our concept of “asynchronous process management” throughout the Preliminary Specification without any difficulty from a programming point of view. This enables us to introduce these concepts that will alleviate many of the timing issues that have traditionally disrupted the accounting processes in oil and gas. Software development teams are also finding different ways in which to operate that provide new levels of productivity, which is good. However the real benefit is the closeness that they can achieve to the user community and the quality in the software product deliverables.

There is also significant stress in the oil and gas industry. It seems every day there is another CEO or CFO that has left their post at their firm. What is the future direction of the oil and gas industry? Who is offering a discussion as to where the direction is headed? I don't see anyone taking up the discussion and nothing but people sitting on their hands trying to survive from quarter to quarter. As good as the oil prices are they can't make up for the costs in the oil business and cover the natural gas losses forever. Projecting this status out past January 2017, let alone to January 2019 for me is very difficult. I can't see what the industry is doing at that time. If I were in industries shoes I would be desperately looking for solutions to this the mother of all muddling along periods.

If the industry wanted to buy some time they could accelerate their forwarding of the financial resources to People, Ideas & Objects from January 2017 to today. That would cut 2 years off our time table. We would be able to recruit the leadership team in a much shorter time period and begin developments much sooner, probably in January 2017. That might be worth a few hundred billion dollars to them. Otherwise we'll stick with the timetable and the plan that we have. To project the software developments out beyond January 2019 and into the future software development realm is into the great unknown. We could be looking at a new generation of applications, programming language features, tools and development methodologies. The productivity and quality of which we could not even imagine today. So we will look forward to that day and stick to our plan and enjoy the scenery, that is the show being played out in the oil and gas industry.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

Industry Specific ERP Systems

Modern miracles like the decentralized production model work because they are developed for the oil and gas industry. Just like SAP’s success in manufacturing is so strong. But don't take SAP’s success in manufacturing as the reason that it will succeed in oil and gas. And don't take the Preliminary Specification and expect it to do anything in the manufacturing sector. ERP applications need to be developed specifically for the industry that they operate in. The one size fits all type of ERP software product that is used to limited success currently. Is no longer capable of providing value to the dynamic, innovative and profitable oil and gas producer.

For Ford and GM there is no choice as to which system you want to operate with. SAP was designed and built for a major tier 1 manufacturer such as they are. What it does is schedule and manage the tier 2 and tier 3 manufacturers to bring their supply chain in line with Ford or GM’s needs. All that Ford or GM have to do is say they want a red truck to be built and the purchase orders for all the parts are distributed to all the manufacturers that build those parts and they are brought to the assembly line exactly when they are needed to build that truck. SAP does this with a precision and ease that make it their business in any manufacturing environment of size and scale. This is where they dominate and are the defacto standard ERP system.

At the same time SAP, which is the standard ERP system in the oil and gas industry, has essentially nothing to do with what happens in the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas is somewhat remotely related to a manufacturing process. Or it could be suggested that might have been the case in the past. And therefore elements of the SAP application might have been able to be retrofitted. With what I assert, the dynamic, innovative and profitable oil and gas producer needs, is the focus on the sciences on a go forward basis. And therefore the ability of SAP to deal with the needs of the oil and gas producers demands in the future are lost due to their focus on the tier 1 manufacturing capabilities.

At the same time it would be inappropriate for People, Ideas & Objects to market the Preliminary Specification or the decentralized production model to the likes of Ford or GM. Systems today have unique attributes that are industry specific and once outside of that industry, those software attributes are counter to the interests of any the other industry.

We may see what People, Ideas & Objects are imputing in their offering coming about in other industries in the next few years. What we are imputing is a homologation of the industry on one ERP system. And in the case of oil and gas that one system is People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification hosted in a cloud computing configuration. With the capital costs of development, the focus necessary to complete the developments, high levels of inter-company interactions and the advantages of standardization. Competition in the ERP systems space will be between industry specific players with intra industry competition being a thing of the past.

Some would disagree with me on the viability of a model based on the ability to compete within an industry as a sole provider. Those that would disagree should be reminded that it is the Intellectual Property of the Preliminary Specification that is the source of competitive advantage that is used by People, Ideas & Objects. The ability and capability to circumvent that IP doesn’t exist in the marketplace. Therefore making the scenario that I have sketched out here the more probable one for the 21st century.

The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

The Rivers are Beginning to Flow

Its an ambitious task that we have set out for ourselves. Removing and replacing the bureaucracy from their comfortable position in the administration of the oil and gas industry. The problem is they won't leave and they're not doing their job. When the opportunity costs for a decade total $705 billion there is something fundamentally wrong with the way things are being done. Look at the natural gas business and you know what that is. They don't talk about it. They don't have a solution for it. And they just continue on like its blue skies and rainbows.

Throwing the bureaucracy down the river is our responsibility. We need to prepare ourselves in a manner that offers an alternative method of organization to the oil and gas producer. The problem is they just aren't leaving without a fight. So its a fight they'll get. I mentioned yesterday that we didn't need to consider any of their needs in the development of our solutions. Did Steve Jobs consider what the record stores wanted and needed when he developed iTunes and the iPod? No, and it will be the same with us. The way things are done today are constraints that do not affect us in any material way. When it comes time to design a process we can chose the clean sheet approach as the most efficient and effective method for the innovative and profitable oil and gas producer. This is not altruistic or idealistic thinking, its a practical approach to the opportunity that is before us.

Members of the user community have this opportunity to make the difference in the oil and gas industry. It is they who can take the Preliminary Specification and make it real. All of the processes and functions that operate within the oil and gas industry are within the domain of the Preliminary Specification. Making this a comprehensive solution that uses today’s technologies and today’s thinking as the starting point of the user communities solution. Is this possible? I see the Preliminary Specification and the user community developments as a more viable solution than continuation of the bureaucracy for the foreseeable future. We have discussed some possible outcomes of the bureaucracy through either their quitting or failing, there’s also the possibility that they just continue on without anyone asking if its working. The status quo, I feel, is becoming more difficult to maintain than starting with the developments that we are discussing here.

If its not us that takes the time and effort to remove the bureaucracy from its position in the industry, who will? And with what? Many industries have been disintermediated by technologies in the past decade. The Internet will do this eventually to every industry that exists today and that includes oil and gas. However, if we fail in this attempt now with the Preliminary Specification the bureaucracy will be relieved that it will be at least a decade before another opportunity will arise to remove them. For that is how long it will take to prepare another solution to get to the position that we are at today. I know it doesn't seem like much but the Preliminary Specification took ten years of research to put together. And that was on the basis of using the Joint Operating Committee.

There is an investment of time and effort in committing to this user community. Not a lot, but there is some. We need to be able to show the oil and gas investor that we have the overall capability in which to compete against the bureaucracy for their business. What that is and what that means, I don't exactly know. The rewards for doing so are down the road. For when we are able to meet their expectations then we can expect that the funding for these developments will begin. And the user communities budget is $333 - $667 million for the initial funding. The service providers, which are derivative of the user community, will be establishing businesses that provide the General & Administrative services to the oil and gas producers. The current General & Administrative expenses of the producers will then be diverted to the service providers as revenues for their services. The annual G&A expenses of the producers total $40 to 60 billion for the North American marketplace. A majority of those would then be diverted to the service providers. So there is substantial opportunity for those who see value in providing the producers with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.

The #User #Community #Vision Part II

Following on the brief introduction of a user community vision. We also need to discuss what types of work the users will be doing. We will be offloading a lot of the work that is currently being done in the industry to the computers. No one would dispute that fact. The time and effort in maintaining disparate databases of the same information, the reliance on paper and multiple layers of bureaucratic red tape will be gone. In addition using the Joint Operating Committee and aligning the compliance and governance frameworks with the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic frameworks eliminates significant redundancies within the producer organization and their interactions between working interest partners. There will also be efficiencies of using the service providers who focus on their process on behalf of the industry, as their client base.

Therefore there will be significantly less paper used in the process. A lot of the jobs that were consumed in that task will be gone, as will many of the jobs that are involved in the inefficiencies today. So what will people be doing? The first thing they will be doing is providing the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. The industry will understand that it is an investment in its people that provides them with the best return in terms of how their money is managed in the oil and gas industry. Secondly, in the short term, they will have an alternative means of organization for the oil and gas industry to rely on for when the bureaucracy either ultimately fails or just quits.

Focusing on the business of the oil and gas business will be what is the mindset of those that are operating in the user community. The Preliminary Specification is an oil and gas ERP system that is designed for its unique character, and particularly the Joint Operating Committee. This user community is being built upon the Preliminary Specification.

Therefore it will be the decisions, the ideas, the collaborations, researching, the creative, and solving of problems that people will be doing. All focused around the oil and gas business. Now those that are in the user community will be working with the developers of People, Ideas & Objects defining what it is they need and want in terms of software to do these things. That is their job. Developers know how to write code and make systems work and need the explicit direction from users in order to develop the appropriate software. When we look at the Preliminary Specification we need the user community to be large and robust in order to capture the needs of the industry. That is the scope and scale of the effort that we are doing here in the user communities development.

It is therefore reasonable to assume that this will be different software from what is available today. And the reason that it will be different is that it depends on the Preliminary Specification which is unique to the industry but more importantly, it will have the user community that will have been developed over the next few years. The user community participants will have had the time to fully understand and appreciate the opportunity that this is. And they will be able to define what the software is, how it is different and what they need and want. The user community will have at their disposal, not just during the initial development period, but always, the software development capabilities of People, Ideas & Objects for the changes and improvements that they want and need.

In terms of portraying a user community vision this helps to show how this important work will be undertaken. I will continue in further posts to try to portray more of how I see what I think the industry needs from this new form of organization.

The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

A Vision of the Beginning of the User Community

Its difficult to lay out a vision of what the network, user community and service providers will look like when they are built. Its an entirely different way of working for pretty much everyone in the oil and gas industry. Instead of showing up one day at an office provided to you by someone else, with a desk provided to you by someone else with a computer provider by them as well. A brief introduction to those that are around you and the stack of papers that you will become more intimate with. You'll be faced with nothing but your toes at the end of the bed.

And that’s a good thing as Martha Stewart would say. You have those degrees, that experience, those skills you worked hard in building. You have the knowledge of the oil and gas industry and how it operates. Your own computer of which you're connected to the @piobiz network. This is sounding a bit better than a few minutes ago and then you'll realize its that specific thing that you have always wanted to do.

Its 2014 and what you need to do to enable yourself to do that thing that you want to do will require some time and effort and organization to put it together. Thankfully the People, Ideas & Objects developments are not scheduled until 2019 so you have some time, and you're going to need it. Thankfully you can drone on in the office we noted above for many more years while you configure this offering for the future. The question would be where do you start.

The first thing everyone needs to do is to read the Preliminary Specification and become familiar with the global scope of the application. And all of the other aspects of the projects. The more you understand the business model the better you will be able to fit within it and configure yourself with others. Then everyone will need to Think, Act and be Patient as first the network, and eventually the user community develops into what they need to be to provide the oil and gas industry with an alternative means of organization.

People will figure out the rest from this point. Collaborations will begin and the self organizing nature of the network should begin to start. That is how this works. No one will control it, no one will tell it what to do. It will exist to provide the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. It will have the software development capability of People, Ideas & Objects to build the software it wants and needs to meet that objective.

Collaborations and participation in this user community will be how the oil and gas industry is operated. The bureaucracy doesn't want to hear such nonsense. But as I noted yesterday they won't be around much longer. They will either quit or continue to fail. Our appeal is to the investors who are of like mind and will need the solutions that we are developing here. Both to replace the bureaucracy and to ensure that they achieve the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

We have time and as more people join, we will gain mindshare. This is the way things will be operated in the future. In other industries as well. Bureaucracies are finished. Networks are taking over. And this is how they get started. With like minded people Thinking, Acting and being Patient.

The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here. 

McKinsey, On Getting IT Spending Right

How do we know when we’re spending the right amount of money on Information Technology. McKinsey have an answer to this difficult question in an article entitled “Getting IT Spending Right This Time”. Written in May 2003 I think this article has a few points that have stood the test of time and are pertinent today.

People, Ideas & Objects unquestionably are a technology company. However we are focused on bringing business solutions to market. Solutions like using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer. We are not selling technology for technology sake. We are selling innovative business solutions. And maybe most importantly, we are solution providers, not change agents. We feel there is a big difference and it appears McKinsey feels the same.

Compounding the challenge is the tendency to view technology, first, as a panacea and, then, after the hype proves unrealistic, as anathema. The experience of the leaders shows that new technology alone won’t boost productivity. Productivity gains come from managerial innovation: fundamental changes in the way companies deliver products or services. Companies generate innovations, in fat years or lean, by deploying new technology along with improved processes and capabilities.

This next quote from McKinsey brings up an important consideration. That the investment in IT in itself will not provide the solution to the problem. There are other investments in the underlying business that need to be considered in order to align the business with the IT investments. What we feel we are doing with the developments at People, Ideas & Objects are aligning the IT developments with the oil and gas business. The Joint Operating Committee is systemic throughout the global oil and gas industry. It is the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic framework of the oil and gas industry. We are identifying, supporting and aligning these frameworks with the compliance and governance frameworks of the hierarchy to achieve a speed, innovation and accountability for the innovative oil and gas producer. We are moving the systems towards the way the industry operates. Not attempting to move the industry towards some theoretical Information Technological model.

For companies competing on the basis of IT-enabled advances, knowing when to jump onto the innovation racetrack can be as important as how. Timing and sequencing, at their simplest, ensure that all prerequisite investments are in place before new IT initiatives are launched. Particularly in the retail sector, our research highlighted the importance of multiple tiers of investment, each laying the foundation for the next. In general merchandising, for example, before companies can implement sophisticated planning applications, a certain level of competence in warehouse- and transport-management systems is needed to get goods to customers.

So yes we should make these investments in preparation for the implementation of People, Ideas & Objects systems. But those should be to ensure that the community first of all captures the correct ways and means of industry operations in the Preliminary Specification. And that we continue to ensure that the industries needs are met by the technology, not the technologies needs are met by the industry.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

The Preliminary Specification Part II

Yesterday in the first part of our discussion on the output of the Preliminary Specification. We talked about how technology was not an influence in the Preliminary Specification. And how producers, the service industries, society and individuals were all included in having their needs met by the software developments at People, Ideas & Objects. Today in Part II of our Preliminary Specification Output summary, we want to talk about the geographical scope of the application, and how that will be represented in the output of the application.

As part of the output of the Preliminary Specification the community will determine what the geographical scope of the People, Ideas & Objects application modules will include. This will involve determining which participating producers geographic needs are be to met in terms of areas of operations; U.S., Canada, Britain, etc. Regulations that govern those areas; royalty requirements, tax regulations, currency, security exchanges etc. Service industry providers etc. Etc;

In each instance a determination of the subscribing producers requirements of where their operations reside will need to be assessed. Next a determination of what the geographical scope requirements are for operations in that region will need to be populated within the Preliminary Specification. A determination of the cost benefit of developing software for that region (see the recent blog post “Budgets and Canadians” for more information) needs to be made. Finally decisions as to what the final geographic scope of the initial Preliminary Specification will be and how the budgets for any anomalies will be resolved.

In many ways this sounds like what current systems requirements do in terms of defining what needs to be done. As we progress through the Preliminary Specifications Output series we’ll see that the output will involve many things for People, Ideas & Objects that are different. These geographic requirements are capturing many of the compliance and statutory requirements of the system, but as we progress through this output summary we’ll see how this systems development differs.

In many cases the regulatory and compliance agencies that require producers to report to them have established advanced technical guidelines for their reporting. In many cases this has included technical frameworks, application programming interfaces (API’s), business rules and in the case of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) an entire XML syntax.

What will need to be done by the community is to take these requirements and tie them into the various modules that exist in the Draft Specification. The SEC requirements would fall under the Financial Marketplace and Compliance & Governance Modules, and other areas such as Security & Access Control. The royalty frameworks would fall under the Partnership Accounting and Petroleum Lease Marketplace Modules. We will get into more specific detail of how the details of this output is specified in later posts in the Preliminary Specifications output summary. For the purposes of geographic scope I think we have the picture in that there may be ten’s or hundreds of lessor regimes to comply with in the People, Ideas & Objects systems geographical scope. As there may also be several securities regulators governing operations for producers located in geographical regions within the scope of the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification.

On Monday we’ll pick up with this discussion with the related topic of how the service industries are not only a part of the geographical scope, but also a critical part of the innovation that occurs in the oil and gas industry.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

The Preliminary Specification Part I

For the next few months I want to talk about the output that the community will produce for the Preliminary Specification. Although I have hesitated in the past in making any comment about what the output would consist of, it may be appropriate at this time to offer some suggestions just to get the ball rolling. I don’t wish to limit in any way what the scope of the output would look like, only to offer a few suggestions as to how I might see the output of the Preliminary Specification. These posts will be able to be aggregated under the PS-Output label of this blog.

In general the first requirement of the Preliminary Specification is that it will have no consideration of any technology. It is all about the oil and gas industry and the people that will be using the application. Consideration of the technology is not valid in this project, technology will accommodate the needs of the users when the time comes. This means that the General Ledger, the Relational Database Management System, Java etc are not pertinent to the considerations of what is required in the Preliminary Specification. (Please note however that we have selected this Oracle Stack as the base of Detailed Specification.)

Secondly we are looking at the global scope of the energy industry. Or as been stated elsewhere, the producers, services industries, society and individuals. That’s maybe a bit broad and could use a bit more detail. What is intended to be included in these classification is as follows.

Producers

• Start-ups
• Junior
• Independents
• Integrated Oil Companies
• National Oil Companies

Services Industries

• Field Services 
• Research
• Development
• Operations
• Engineering
• Project Management

Societal

• Royalty
• SEC
• Tax
• Compliance
• Environmental

Individual

• Employment
• Entrepreneurial

As we can see the functionality and process management of the application modules will include organizations and individuals outside of the producer firm. Transactions, interactions and collaborations occur outside of the producer and these are being captured by the People, Ideas & Objects application and therefore will be used within the various firms, agencies and industries noted above.

The output of the Preliminary Specification will therefore include the needs of these other organizations and people in addition to the producer firms. Their inclusion in this process is not limited to just managing transactions. A thorough review of the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules reflects the needs of the producer and service firms transaction management are not the only aspect that needs to be considered.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

So Much For SLA's...

Building on yesterday’s post of how the Preliminary Specification is what the software development team will be building to. In today’s post we discuss the use of Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) in the People, Ideas & Objects community. Simply SLA’s will not be used by People, Ideas & Objects in determining software definitions.

It would seem counter productive to have the community established to produce the Preliminary Specification. With the producers, users, service industry and others being a critical part of that community. And then have some producers not participating in that community because they feel they have their needs contractually agreed to through an SLA with People, Ideas & Objects. SLA’s have been the traditional manner in which firms have managed their technological needs and they will probably see no reason to change this culture. However, there will be no SLA’s here to manage the software definitions.

By contractually defining the relationship between the producer firm and PI&O within an SLA. The producer would seek to manage the specific details of the SLA and claim that we are in technical default when our main page did not load within the 0.125 seconds or other such nonsense. This is the state of vendor relationships when SLA’s get in the way.

As we stated yesterday. Our developers will be developing software that meets the needs of the producers as defined in the Preliminary Specification. If the producers do not wish to participate in the Preliminary Specification that is their choice and therefore their needs will not be specifically met. However, if they are interested in having software that meets their needs, and are willing to actively participate to define their specific, detailed needs then the community is the place for them to be. You’ll have to give up your SLA’s, but maybe those agreements have had better days.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Developing to the Preliminary Specification

Through out the course of software developments, People, Ideas & Objects (PI&O) developers will be developing software to the Preliminary Specification. That may be another obvious comment but it may not be too obvious from the point of view that I want to stress in this blog post. The possibly not-so-obvious nature of the comment is that the community is responsible for the accuracy of the application. If there is an error in the software, it will naturally translate to an error in the Preliminary Specification. Therefore the community must ensure that the Preliminary Specification, they approve, is correct.

So what does this mean? The old systems adage garbage in, garbage out. So how do we ensure the quality of the Preliminary Specification? Here are just a few of the many reasons that PI&O’s approach is different.

Users
There has never been a user focused development like PI&O. Where the responsibility and authority for quality fall exclusively within the domain of the user community. Where the user community is comprised of the producers, service providers, society and individuals as vested interests in their software.

Eyeballs
The product of the community, the Preliminary Specification, will be available on a read only wiki to everyone. Ensuring that anyone and everyone in the industry can have input through the community.

Unconstrained approach
People, Ideas & Objects approach to development is unconstrained by the demands of existing software code. And is unconstrained by the installed base of any software currently in use. It is a clean slate approach that is oil and gas industry focused, based on what is needed.

Draft Specification
Guided by an overall vision of what is possible. The Draft Specification provides an understanding of what is possible when we use the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer. Using this vision as the starting point of the community developments ensures that the Preliminary Specification will be all that it can be.

Proper Scope and Highly Engineered Solutions. 
Our budget accepts the realities of developing a solution with these aspirations. We have also provided an overall value-proposition to the producer firms that participate with PI&O. One in which producers receive highly engineered software solutions at very low costs. 

These are just a few of the many things that People, Ideas & Objects provide our users and producers. For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.