Blackboard Mobile Central

Blackboard Mobile Central (EDUCAUSE2009)

Gatecrashed a Benelux meeting with Kayvon Beykpour, now Blackboard, formerly TerriblyClever, designer of mobile offering now called Blackboard Mobile Central. Key points:

• Mobile Central = nothing to do with Bb Learn – will work with any VLE etc.
• Developed at Stanford (also Campus Solutions customer)
• DUT looking into levels of iPhone/Blackberry usage in their student body, despite having already gone with the product
• Accessible on any mobile device – native on iPhone/Blackberry, mobile web for any other device that has internet access.
• Architecture: client devices talk to Bb Central Service/Cloud, cloud gets info a) directly from institution eg LDAP directory, b) from local databases eg course catalogue, integrated with other modules eg contacts, maps. Temporary solution where don’t have web services – client does data extract to Bb database, Bb do API to cloud/device c) authenticated services, where can eg enrol on module – client devices speak directly to institution.
• Can show all video content.
• User loads app from iPhone or Blackberry stores – Bb has to go through app submission process, good relationships with Apple/RIM so not too much of a problem.
• Mobile Learn – to be rolled out, issues about viability on mobile device.
• 2 way communications: announcements; google analytics for the iPhone, tracking usage.
• Completely hosted solution: build iPhone, Blackberry & mobile web apps. Get institutional info, plug it into the cloud.
• Business model: subscription product. All enhancements are part of the subscription. Best to use a phased approach.
• DUT – going with courses, news, events, campus maps, courses, library – no local databases, all web services or RSS feeds.
• Development environment – so institution can create modules using SDK on top of Apple’s SDK.
• Bb creating more formal mobile user community.
• Looking into replicating/simulating mobile app on University portal.
• Implementation timescales – 6-8 weeks.
• Suggestion from Dutch University – there is a need to think about communication strategy with students.
• With iPhone, can go to Bb website & download apps to take a look.

So, worth looking at as possible alternative to campusM. Very similar conceptually/architecturally. No real advantage to Bb’s relationship with Campus Solutions customers, as access to information in any SRS is by XML extracts so vendor neutral.

Leading the University as a ‘Platform’ (EDUCAUSE2009)

Great session by Lev S Gonick (Case Western), Adrian Sannier (Arizona State) & David J Staley (Ohio State). Apart from anything else, the slides just had pictures, they didn’t have many words, which is always a good start.

Looking at the University as a ‘Platform’ ie what it means/might mean to be a new form of organisation suited to the networked economy. A new organisation featuring:

• unplanned activities
• low entry levels
• resistant to command & control
• open to unauthorised behaviour
• comfortable with surprise
• behaviour determined by the inhabitants

Some of this sounds pretty close to existing Universities to me, in part if not in whole.

Anyway, the discussion was around ‘what does this mean for leadership & organisation’ – working the Wiki Way. New leadership needs to leverage the net’s bottom up approach, aligned to the networked economy where collaboration is everything. Suggested modelling this new way of leading & organising within the IT department!

Books mentioned: The Hothouse Effect/Barton Kunstler; Here Comes Everybody/Clay Shirky; The Three Ways of Getting Things Done/Gerard Fairtlough.

& then of course there’s the all important Stone Soup/Marcia Brown edition. Particularly liked this part of the presentation by Adrian Sannier. Stone Soup as an approach to developing an IT strategy. Getting the rebel army, involving the people who operate underneath the radar. Old way of doing strategy – work it out in secret & then try & slip it in. New way – bring them all in, bring it all on, prototype the strategy. Thought: this does seem a little more like hard work than the traditional approach, but then ‘nobody said it was gonna be easy’ (Mark E Smith).

A prerequisite condition for all of the above is a commitment to openness & transparency – & please note that it really was a very thought provoking presentation, to which this blog does not do justice.

Jim Collins – Good to Great (EDUCAUSE2009)

Opening keynote of Educause2009, & pretty good it was too – essentially ran through his views about how great company’s can fail – the 5 stages of decline. Bullet points in a haphazard manner below. Further info at http://www.jimcollins.com/.

• Leadership is a common variable in success & failure – what matters is the type of leadership. Successul leaders were socially adept introverts, signature characteristics were humility, ambition for the work, & a stoic will to make good
• Universities have a distributed power map – if there were 100 power points to allocate ‘faculty have 1000 points of no’. So a successful leader has to create the conditions in which the right things will happen, without having the concentrated power to make it happen.
• Leadership is not about power – it only exists when people follow when they have the freedom to choose not to
• Packard’s Law (as articulated by Jim Collins) - don’t decide where to go, then get the people on the bus, then drive the bus – get the right people on the bus first
• You can’ motivate people – they motivate themselves – but you can demotivate, & one of the best ways to do this is to ignore the truth, to fail to confront what needs confronting
• In business, money is a means to success & also a definition of success – in the social sector, money is only a means. 
• The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency – on the other hand: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines” – Ralph Waldo Emerson. So, you pays your money & you takes your choice
• You don’t need a to do list – you need a stop doing list. Existential dilemma: do you put the need to prepare a stop doing list on your to do list?
• Finally, list of to do’s (nothing like being inconsistent )

1. Do diagnostics of the team (free tool on jimcollins.com)
2. Think about how many key seats there are on the bus, how many have the right people in, how to get to 100%
3. Think about having a ‘personal board of directors’
4. Get young people in place/in your face
5. Turn off electronic gadgets – create white space for thinking
6. Questions to statements ratio – double it
7. Start a stop doing list
8. Suspend titles & have people articulate responsibilities ie I am the one person with responsibility for A, B, C etc
9. Work out below waterline ie life threatening risks & take them away
10. Set a BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal (?)

& then ended up with a bit that got dangerously close to being motivational – so I’m with Emerson on this!

Revisiting Your IT Governance Model- Kelly Block, University of Illinois

Reference www.itpc.uillinois.edu

Be interesting to see what their definition of IT Governance is – starting off with a description of “an ERP, surrounded by chaos”, & their Enterprise System Structure for Administrative IT systems – which isn’t where I’d start.

Governance process focuses on Administrative IT systems, process for directing the enterprise systems structure, & what projects will go through the governance process. Controlled by an ITPC – which I think was the IT Process Committee – & has a $1.5m budget pa. Looks to me more like Programme Management/a means to manage a portfolio of IT-related projects or rather the way that our Systems & Projects Development Programme functions under the auspices of the Development Programme Steering Group (in place since 2003) – but this is subordinate to our Information Management Steering Group, & also we look at all IS projects, not just what would traditionally be called ‘administrative’. Where are Architecture & Principles? Their IT Governance model is clearly/really a process for prioritising & managing IT projects – so a good thing but not what I thought it would be.

In terms of their process – seems very resource driven, budgetary constraints are making this more rigorous. Looking for projects that are mission critical, at ROI, more rigorous prioritisation. Looks effective as a means for engaging the business in decision-making about IT projects, which is important of course. Mission criticality review – good exercise, some projects removed, some higher/lower priority, some reduced budget – could be a good approach to follow.

Use a PPM tool from Clarity - very useful for measuring effectiveness of projects. Supports a more rigorous approach to programme evaluation. Our own PMO should look into this. Very comprehensive information available about projects at all stages – pipeline, in progress – & particularly in terms of resource profiling.

So – overall a good presentation on a comprehensive PPM process, but not what I’d call IT Governance – no mention of ‘encouraging desirable behaviour in the use of IT’, also at the PPM level no mention of benefits realisation. Mentioned that need to do more about ‘post-project surveying’ which looks like the benefits realisation process, but not articulated as such.

Process has improved direction & accountability, strategic alignment, transparent prioritisation/resourcing, & raised profile with senior management – pretty much what our stuff is intended to do/has done quite successfully, but makes me think we maybe need to tighten up a bit.

CIO Grand Challenge: The Institutional Horizon

08:30 on a Tuesday morning & the first session of EDUCAUSE2009 for me – Seminar 20A, pretty full room of what I guessed must be existing & expiring (there’s a Freudian slip – I meant aspiring!) CIOs – which a show of hands proved to be about right, 2/3 the former. Not entirely convinced that all these would be CIOs by my definition – might have been more traditional IT Directors, but this is speculation - nor that they were represented on the Executive Board/Senior Management Team – further discussion suggested that the latter wasn’t the case. Would have been interesting to have further discussion about the definition of CIO – here seemed to be the senior IT leader in the organisation – & what made a CIO different from an IT Director.

Layout was round tables for group work – not ideal, & the acoustics were poor which didn’t help – with a general introduction then a presentation/group work/feedback on each of three scenarios, followed by a general roundup on CIO competencies.

Purely by chance my group – four only – had no US representation, consisting of two gentlemen from Kobe University, Japan, one from Seneca College, Canada, & me from Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Institution sizes: Kobe, 20,000 students; Seneca, 20,000 with another 80,000 part-time, if I heard right; LJMU 25,000.

Introduction: couple of comments resonated: the CIO needs to be an effective leader & staff manager, & these two roles need very different skillsets; if the CIO is spending too much time as a staff manager then won’t succeed as CIO! Also, need to understand & respect the campus culture & be able to work in it effectively, even if the culture appears to be counterproductive.

Scenario One: Organisational Change. Noted that the two main occurrences that caused organisational change in IT were merging assets &/or reducing staff numbers. Reference was made to the Unfreeze/Transition/Refreeze approach (though not in those terms directly) – ref Lewin – & noted the importance/difficulty of creating a transition space for staff to adapt to new beginnings.  If only we always had the luxury!

The scenario: a  new CIO is brought in to make a change, essentially to create a merged service department from decentralised assets, & in particular to incorporate an existing media service. There is a need to get the support of a new senior manager & manage cultural issues within existing structures/staff. What should the CIO do?

In our discussion we discovered interesting models within our institutions: Seneca had recently gone from a ten member Executive Board, with the CIO represented, to a new four member Board with the CIO not represented & reporting to the VP Finance not the (new) President. Kobe had an eight member Board on which the CIO was represented – but commented that the fact that the CIO was a Board member didn’t necessarily make realisation/execution any easier. We more or less came to the conclusion that we would try & engage with existing staff by presenting the planned merged service as an opportunity for staff development/career progression; noted that the benefits for management and staff were very different & needed to be articulated differently; noted the complexities of different cultures & the issue of dealing with trades unions.

Comments in group feedback/discussion: there was a need for team building & sound people management; noted the difficulty of dealing with territorial/political issues; there was a need to focus on end customer benefits to drive change; & senior management support could be gained by selling them on enhanced service levels.

Scenario Two: Financial Planning. A new senior administration is presenting new priorities, not necessarily clear yet, budgets are tight, & the CIO needs to inform the new administration of infrastructure needs & the realities of IT budgets. The CIO no longer has a place at the top table in the new structure – how does the CIO get senior engagement with IT issues/priorities?

Interestingly for our group discussion, this was the scenario that Seneca had just been through. Our first clear priority for the CIO was that he/she should make themselves ‘useful’ to the new President; find out what his/her agenda was, what pushes his/her buttons, & support that agenda even if not the CIO’s own – the tactical or dare I say it (yes I dare) Machiavellian approach. Although budget cuts were not currently on the table for IT, we felt that clearly they would be on the horizon, & the CIO needed to be proactive in presenting a budgetary projection for IT that acknowledged this & presented options for cutbacks. Japanese position: as a national university, Kobe was facing cuts in government funding of 2% pa year on year, but felt that IT was still seen as an investment area. Quite close to the feeling at LJMU – but clearly the cuts are imminent & it’s best to be planning for them. We discussed the need to make the case for IT being the driver for cost efficiencies in other areas of the University, but agreed that the case was unproven & more work would be needed. Finally, we noted that if cuts were going to be split across services for administrative & academic areas, it would be important to engage with faculty leaders so that they were involved in prioritising etc.

Comments in group feedback/discussion: need to have a living tactical/strategic plan based on customer requirements; listening essential – listen to everybody & pay attention, then when the strategy is fed back, what they’re hearing is familiar/what they want; comment on our group’s feedback: yes, need to be proactive, but what if no good at it?; finally reference to the value of ‘the visit’: the need to build relationships through informal visits to stakeholders with no agenda, just listening/getting to know.

Scenario Three: Strategic Planning. New CIO/new President. The latter wants an IT strategic plan quickly, but is still working on a new institutional plan. There is a decentralised IT support structure & an amorphous Governance structure. What does the CIO do?

In the absence of an institutional plan, which in my view is the only one that matters, we decided to go for an ‘organic’ approach: try & get at least a heads up on the possible agenda of the new President; leverage (sic) existing informal Governance relationships/structures to get some scenario planning going around the possible agenda; present the scenarios to the President as planning options/a work in progress. There was no group feedback/discussion.

Last part of the session was presentation/discussion about CIO competencies, & I’ve just noted as bullets below things that I thought might have some mileage in them:

• be able to place your own desires second to the goals of the institution
• recognise that IT is not generally viewed as a strategic enabler in most HEIs while still being able to work as if it were
• have a high tolerance for ambiguity in policy, procedures and decision-making: if you want everything clear & laid out & well signposted, then CIO in an HEI is not the job for you!
• the job of an IT department is to deliver quality of service, not technology
• an IT Governance structure is fundamentally for communication, if it doesn’t do that, it won’t add any value
• associate yourself with people who think differently from you

& that about wraps it up. Couple more observations: interesting in feedback/discussions that I sensed an emphasis on breaking through strategic/organisational inertia by focusing not on the strategy or the organisation, but on the customer, which I think is very good advice; as stated at the beginning, I think it was a shame that there wasn’t any discussion about what a CIO was/was for, although I appreciate that this wasn’t the objective of the seminar, to me it was an elephant in the room (not the elephant – there were a number of elephants, but it was quite a large room).

(Being flippant for a moment, I would compare  this to having a discussion about god & the role of god in our lives, without ever discussing whether god existed in the first place).

& finally building on a similar theme, if we could define what a CIO was in the first place, would be good to ask the question ‘Do we need CIOs? (does god exist?) & also ‘What will the role of the CIO look like in 2015? (if they still exist). It was a useful seminar in that it got me thinking, but I think it could have been more radical – it seemed to be focusing on how to do what we do now better, rather than how to meet the challenges of how things might be very different in the future – but maybe that’s just me…

EDUCAUSE2009

Well, here in Dallas for the third day & the jet lag’s receding, so time to get down to some work in the Mile High City.

Won’t be much to report on EDUCAUSE2009 today – just off to to register in the fantastic looking Denver Conference Centre, see what variety of documents there are to stuff the inevitable bag with, see what the inevitable bag is like, & review the sessions that I’m thinking of attending.

Then kicks off tomorrow with ‘The CIO Challenge’, set of scenario planning exercises for existing/aspiring CIOs, sounds a bit like hard work with an 08:30 kickoff, but should be good. After that I’m mostly trying to focus on three areas: CIO/organisational structure stuff; Enterprise Architecture (as always!) – looks like good session with Jim Phelps/ITANA Thursday lunchtime; & mobile apps, checking out what Blackboard (& others) are doing & reviewing in relation to campusM which we’re already looking at. The latter is getting very good reports from Chris Sexton/Sheffield where they’re just rolling it out.

Will also be the opportunity for getting updates on all kinds of stuff, & I’ve already got meetings with Wimba, Jenzabar & D2L.

More later.

 

Portals Unbound

I’m tasked (tasked? what does that mean? why have I said it?) with coming up with a portal strategy for LJMU – & the main thing tasking me is what exactly we/I mean by “portal” – so I’m very glad I came across this interview with Jim Murphy from AMR Research in the latest copy of Oracle magazine

While I was fairly certain  that a portal wasn’t a website – I didn’t know how to describe what it was. So here goes Jim:

“Portals are moving from something tangible and demonstrable, like a specific Web site, to an abstract point of access. In other words, while portals employ Web-based technologies, access isn’t necessarily embodied in a Web browser. Today’s portals are better seen as virtual points of presence, accessible from any interface, system, device, or application that happens to sit in front of the user“.

Then goes on to some good stuff about the three common denominators of Presence, Identity & Convergence. Well worth a read, & it’s laudably brief.

So, a very good articulation of what I was trying to articulate – for a technical audience. I now have to work out how to explain an “abstract point of access” or “virtual points of presence” to my senior stakeholders. Or not – I’ll probably just tell them it’s a way of making it easier to get hold of/do all their stuff, & leave it at that. Not being flippant here – after all, that’s what it is.

But the article did make things clearer for me, so thanks Jim!

JISC FSD Launch – Barriers & Possibilities for flexible & shared ICT service provision

Launch event held at the Grafton on Tottenham Court Road, 2nd October.

Very good attendance/range of participants. Following are my usual random comments, hopefully of interest…

& must mention great early comment from David Rose/the Open Group – if EA needs a burning platform to focus activity on, are the EA practitioners firemen or arsonists?

Key points (for me) from Strategic Technologies Group presentations on Maturity & Readiness Towards FSD

• Oxford. Clear commitment to SOA; barriers identified as organisation, vendors, VAT. Key work in area of student systems: currently using the Oracle Student System which is being desupported by Oracle in 2013. Unlike LJMU, where we are moving to Oracle Peoplesoft Campus Solutions as the natural follow on to OSS, they have taken the view that at the moment they want to avoid moving to another big monolithic system, plus they find the available alternative student systems ‘uninspiring’. Currently planning an incremental replacement of OSS based on a service approach – one concern is whether  OSS will enable/support SOA/FSD. This looks to me like a valid & creative approach – albeit also very ambitious.
• Imperial College. Looking at the use of EA as a strategic planning aid – can’t argue with that, very much the approach we’re  taking, seeing the ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ modelling as a very powerful way of developing strategy. Also referenced importance of Governance. Barriers: vendors, organisation, (lack of) governance
• Thames Valley University. Intelligent Decision Support in HE (IDS-HE). Project on reporting on student retention issues & making interventions. Collecting data sources, data integration, data mining, student intervention. Not sure what this has got to do with FSD quite yet, although good project – probably lies in aim to identify scope for sector-wide reusable solutions. Not yet addressing attendance/PBS – but it could. Comment from Peter Tinson – Home Office are not expecting insitutions to develop/put in new systems to monitor attendance, but expect them to use systems they’ve already got – so if you are putting in new systems, stop it! TVU open to expressions of interest ref joining an IDS-HE Special Interest Group.
• Leeds Metropolitan University. All about integrated student-facing services. Service diagram – essentially an EA model but not presented as such – so would benefit from common representation of such models, eg Archimate. Objective – be able to say why we’re using what we use, & how things fit together – very good articulation of an aspect of EA. Barriers: institutional change; availability of expertise; supplier engagement; economic climate. <Note: deployment of shared modelling language across FSD/STG/EA work would have great benefits in terms of shared understanding, key objective for JISC – at the moment there is a risk that everyone will be doing this modelling using different languages/tools/approaches which will make it difficult to compare/contrast/share>.
• Cardiff. STG membership very much informed/based on EA work. Fragmented IT governance, difficult to defragment in a devolved environment. Good handle on reality of EA & what it means. The cake driven approach to EA must be the way to go.
• Roehampton University. JISC funding has enabled investment in modelling software – standard/exchangeable way of representation, very important, ref Leeds MET. Develop understanding of business & enhance abilityof IT to support it through modelling exercises. www.roehampton.ac.uk/cairo.
• Nottingham. Common themes important – EA; Governance; Data Management; etc

Next presentations from possible consortium members, introducing projects:

• RMAS Consortium/Exeter University. Research management at Exeter = burning platform. Another modelling approach. Market research has not identified a clear supplier solution. Very tight timescales to move through procurement to pilot. Expectations from STG: access to technical expertise; forum to share approaches to governance (key area!); knowledge & best practice.
• Bloomsbury Consortium. The Bloomsbury Learning Environment – started with Blackboard. Since 2006/7, Blackboard hosted. Now extending into other services – huddle, Wimba, google docs, iTunes U etc. Key lessons in governance area? Apparently no MoU, SLAs etc, which was surprising.

& then lunch was followed by an excellent Affinity Diagramming session looking at barriers & enablers to FSD, facilitated masterfully by me & Andy Jordan – joking aside, it did go very well, got lots of ideas out clustered into useful themes, & will be useful to the JISC in thinking about what they might do to drive the agenda forward. Themes were as you might have expected: Culture; Senior Management Buy-In; Suppliers; Governance; Resources; External Factors; Drivers (lack of) – but there was some valuable detail in there. Interesting that there were as many post-its on enablers as on barriers, which is unusual as there are usually far more on barriers; that not that many were about technology; and one post-it from barriers said ‘900 years of institutional independence’.

Followed by presentation from Paul Hopkins/De Montfort on the Student Tracking & Engagement Project – demonstrator on student attendance/retention, then round table sessions on EA, Support, & Supplier Engagement – don’t know about others, but I was flagging by this point (after 3pm on a Friday afternoon), so commentary almost ends here – but it was a worthwhile event & I think JISC/the FSD Steering Group have a lot of useful information to process/inform future activities. Hopefully it was also useful in engaging STG members & other attendees.

Final points – ref the EA side of the street, which personally I think is a very valuable avenue to go down (?), I have lingering concerns about: lack of clarity about what EA is; continuing focus too far over on the technical side; & I think an impression still being given that this is somehow something complex & difficult & requiring education in a whole new language, when it should be presented as a simple & obvious tool that helps the organisation to make a better job of lining up its information systems with its business processes & its people & to make better informed decisions about future direction. EA as strategic change management tool – that’s the way to go. Plus I would advise strongly against anyone ever having an ‘EA Project’ – what would that be for? – & wish there was a way of depicting this stuff that didn’t involve boxes & arrows (usually lots & lots of boxes & arrows). Mime. Song. Street theatre. Please.

Coherency Management (Part 2)

Just passing the time on train to a JISC Flexible Service Delivery meeting in London tomorrow, so I thought I’d have another go at ‘Coherency Management’ by Duncan, Gotze, Saha and Bernard (Authorhouse 2009).

Having finished Chapter 1, I was hopeful that better standards of written english in subsequent chapters might make it more readable. Sadly, so far (a mere four pages in) Chapter 2 (The Four Design Models of EA: Saha) is not showing any improvement. I quote one of many possible examples from a section on what characterises the current state of EA programs: ‘EA and their recommended artifacts and models often tend to become the end leading to legislations and compliance requirements‘. Well, you tell me. I could go on but there are too many errors to make it worth bothering. I really don’t know how much further I’ll get – skipping chapters makes you afraid you might have missed something, but the standard of english – is this really down to bad proofreading? – makes you feel as though you’re missing something anyway, along with feeling like screaming, tearing hair out, etc. I’m sure it’s not just me – might have a last go, but it doesn’t feel like a good use of my time as I can’t quite work out what it all means.

Coherency Management/Business Process Management: A Rigorous Approach

Just started on another book in my relentless & doomed search for the truth – ‘Coherency Management – Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility & Assurance’  by Doucet, Gotze, Saha & Bernard (AuthorHouse 2009). Possibly a good way to pass the time on the train, if you didn’t have to carry it to the train & were accustomed to travelling with a house brick.

Essentially it’s another new approach to EA labelled as Coherency Management, & consists of an introduction by the authors covering the overall approach, followed by a series of related/relevant articles & ending with a roundup/epilogue. So far I’ve read the forewords – by John Zachman, very neat, & John Herhalt, KPMG – the prologue by the authors/editors, & Chapter 1 – Introduction to Coherency Management. The overall message so far seems to be that EA is not really new but was always there, albeit implicit, that EA is very important, & that it’s not just about IT, or just about getting IT aligned with the business, but is about getting the business aligned with itself, as it were, & about overall business capability, not just some technical stuff – so doesn’t seem like anything particularly new so far, but unfortunately it’s hard to tell.

Because (& you should never start a sentence with because) Chapter 1 is marred by an overall poor use of english that detracts/distracts from the message & makes it hard to read/concentrate. There are problems with grammar, incorrect use of words, & spelling. Couple of examples (& there are plenty to choose from!): ‘A major tenant (sic) of this book is that we recognise that EA is NOT really new’; ‘If EA is done only when something else tells that the enterprise needs to change then EA will never tell when the enterprise needs to change’ . I don’t think I’m being pedantic here & it’s very annoying because I’m sure there’s a useful message in there, but it’s hard work working out what it is. I’ve said previously that I think it’s very important that EA is communicated in standard english – this wasn’t quite what I meant! Hopefully it’s just lack of proofreading & it gets better, otherwise I’ll have difficulty with the rest of the book.

Another book – ordered but not yet with me – is Business Process Management: A Rigorous Approach by Martyn A Ould (BCS 2005). Given the recommendation by Ian Thomas at the UCISA EA/SOA seminar last week (see earlier post) should be good – just got to get through Coherency Management first!