by Pat Neary

A post INFOCUS and JDE Partner Summit reflection

I had the pleasure of being in Denver for Quest’s INFOCUS event and Oracle’s JD Edwards Partner Summit during August. I took advantage of being in the US to also attend the Regional User Group meeting in Houston at the end of the month. In and amongst all of that, I made time to visit with my family (something I’ll come back to as I close out this article).

Both INFOCUS and the Partner Summit were excellent this year. We enjoyed spending quality time with customers, prospects and other partners; working hard to make sure companies committed to JDE are well served and doing a great job of getting the most out of every dollar they spend on JDE.

The Oracle JDE team and Lyle Ekdahl seemed to move on from talking about continuous delivery in 2017 to put more emphasis on continuous adoption and continuous innovation. Whilst challenging everyone to think about innovating continuously, there was an interesting segue into talking about autonomous ERP and how all our worlds will, perhaps sooner rather than later, change dramatically.

I came away from my August travels with one key notion stuck in my head…

We need to think about modernizing our practice

(i.e. the way we look after and think about evolving JDE)!

This idea resonates with what DWS has been actively promoting in the market since 2016. We’ve been promoting the ideas of “get current, stay current” and of running “smaller, faster, smarter” projects. We’ve used these ideas to articulate how our technical upgrade and managed code-current services, along with our testing products, can form an integral part of a modern and enlightened strategy for JDE.

Modernizing and changing is a big thing.  Arguably, it is everything.

When you think about modernizing and changing the way you run projects, it makes sense to think about testing smarter. Testing, after all, is not easy to do. It takes a lot of time and is a big part of every project. It is also cited as a common reason why many companies hold back from running more frequent JDE projects.

So, with testing solutions readily available (DWS Dimension SwifTest™, Focus™ and LoadTest™), why aren’t more companies working to test smarter? The reasons are no doubt varied, but fundamentally I think it’s because of competing priorities and the fact that, quite simply, change can hurt!

I can’t really speak to the competing priorities problem. All I can suggest is that companies might want to think about including the introduction of smarter testing within existing priority projects, as opposed to talking about introducing smarter testing as a priority on its own.

As for the bit about change hurting; that I can relate to. I took up road cycling about 18 months ago and love it. I cycle a fair bit and have ridden more than 1,500 miles this calendar year. During August, on my travels, a family member with whom I spent time suggested that I need to make changes to the way I ride (the way I pedal actually) and that if I changed I would see dramatic improvements in my power output.

So, for the last two to three weeks, I have been working to change the way I pedal, and I can tell you that it does hurt! But I’m convinced that I’ll be better for it in the longer term.

This advice, I suppose, is a bit like DWS telling one of our prospects to test smart, or like Oracle JDE telling folks to modernize their practices.

So challenge yourself, modernize the way you work, and make smart testing part of the way you’ll run future projects. It may hurt a bit, but it’ll be worth it!

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