{"id":943,"date":"2012-09-21T08:15:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T15:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/?p=943"},"modified":"2023-10-20T18:43:23","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T02:43:23","slug":"governance_gone_wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/governance_gone_wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Governance Gone! Wild!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"While to some the acronym, \u2018GGW\u2019 might conjure up beautiful visions of fancy tour buses traveling the country capturing everything in sight on video for the whole world to see (as long as you pay the $9.99 per DVD, or opt for the $19.99 for full-DVD collection, or get their online subscription for $9.95 per month — or whatever it costs), I have just witnessed a different version of \u2018GGW\u2019 that is anything but beautiful.\u00a0 In fact, \u2018Governance<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Gone! Wild!\u2019 is down-right scary!<\/p>\n

I just attended several days of the\u00a0Dreamforce 2012\u00a0conference in San Francisco and, as always, I was impressed with the innovation, which is clearly evident at these events.\u00a0 I was impressed with the creativity of all the Software as a Service (SaaS) applications available built upon the\u00a0Force.com<\/a>,\u00a0heroku<\/a>\u00a0and\/or other\u00a0Salesforce<\/a>\u00a0platform services.\u00a0 There were apps for this, and apps for that, and apps that work with other apps, and integrated apps.\u00a0 In fact I\u2019m on \u201capp-overload\u201d right now and tonight, instead of sweet sugar plums dancing through my head, I will most likely have a nightmare about all the possible lack of\u00a0governance\u00a0issues that are not being addressed in this quickly-evolving \u2018cloud\u2019 environment.\u00a0 It\u2019s truly like the Wild West!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/center>This is not to say that these SaaS application vendors have overlooked governance issues completely.\u00a0 In fact I suspect many of them take these items seriously and have built their respective solutions accordingly.\u00a0 However, I can tell you what is an obvious generalization is the main pitch-points in these solutions is (1) easy user experience with a simple, familiar web-interface and (2) ability for organizations to self-manage or re-configure solutions without the need for costly professional services or software development.\u00a0 These are not bad pitch-points in the least but what I must say is that conversations seem to rarely dig too much deeper than the surface of some point-and-click functionality and a demonstration or two.\u00a0 I admire these vendors for their passion to solve very specific needs for enterprise customers and I\u2019m invigorated with their energy to quickly have their\u00a0Killer SaaS app<\/a>\u00a0deployed and being utilized by their customers to improve operational efficiency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet, as I put myself in the shoes of the SaaS vendor the last thing I would want to do is possibly slow down the sales cycle by bringing up governance and organizational readiness topics such as policies, processes or people that wasn\u2019t directly related to my particular technology.\u00a0 These topics are somewhat related to the technology but it\u2019s more about the organizational readiness by the customers themselves.\u00a0 We must remember that these applications are promoting their solutions to enterprise organizations, not consumer.\u00a0 Therefore, I would like to give one specific example of what caused my \u201cGovernance Gone!\u201d nightmare.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wild!\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a>As seen below in the photo below (not to the left), Salesforce.com introduced their new \u201cmarketing cloud\u201d.\u00a0 At the Dreamforce conference they setup an example of the \u2018Dreamforce Social Media Command Center\u2019.\u00a0 They had a full-time agent at each of several work stations.\u00a0 Each of these work stations was monitoring a different social media feed.\u00a0 One each for Facebook, Chatter, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and maybe even a few other social networks to provide an example of a Social Media Command Center and how this could be a reality within your particular organization.\u00a0 As I saw this incredible activity of feeds, tweets, #hashtags, likes, posts and other real-time social interaction \u2013 this is where it really struck me about Governance (or lack thereof in this scenario).\u00a0 It was\u00a0Wild!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are the types of things I was thinking to myself, not from a technology perspective itself, but rather \u2018are these people considering the following types of items\u2019 before going buck-wild to immediately implement this type of Command Center within their own organizations:<\/p>\n