Collaboration “in the Wild”: Some Observations

15 November, 2009
Hands-On, Collaboration
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An Enterprise 2.0 dream scenario: implementing a complex project across multiple sites, in two different time zones, with a large team (well over 100). The team was reasonably savvy with collaboration tools; core team members were quite comfortable with Instant Messaging, and we have been relying on SharePoint for many months. A centralized, coordinated document repository; a single source, very public bugs/issues list - the foundation was in place for some time, so our "go-live weekend" experience was pleasantly predictable…

Underwhelming experiences with Google Wave

17 October, 2009
Social Networks, Web 2.0
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Took some time today to work with the new communication meme - Google Wave. I wouldn't call it a fundamentally new way to communicate - well, not yet. I think Google is safe to continue with a "preview" label - clearly not even "beta" yet. No horrible bugs - at least on the Windows platform - but some obviously missing features. And, I am not all that impressed with the basic idea - it's just a mashup of Google Docs,…

Introducing … Google Wave

13 October, 2009
Social Networks, Hands-On
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Thank you for signing up to give us early feedback on Google Wave. We're happy to give you access to Google Wave and are enlisting your help to improve the product. To accept your invitation, sign into Google Wave at the following link ... Well, maybe not the most exciting email I've received over the past few years, but it was nice to get the [sorta] early notice. I'm definitely in the second wave, but I'll not look a gift…

A Company is like a Sphere

15 September, 2009
Out of the Box
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Where do these great analogy ideas come from? Full credit - I got this one from a speaker at the SAP Research Center in Palo Alto, last spring. A company is like a sphere. As it grows, volume increases much faster than surface area, and the larger a company gets, more people get embedded and hidden from the end customer than are on the fringe, in customer-facing roles. As a general rule, this is a bad thing. Well, maybe a…

Frustrating Paradox: Simple and Difficult

1 September, 2009
Design
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I think this is one of those fundamental concepts that, once it is pointed out to me, become self-evident and obvious (ie. why didn't I think of that). I'm curious if other people agree ... When something is simple to describe, it is difficult to create. When something is difficult to describe, it is simple to create. I've seen these principles illustrated in different areas of business and technology; understanding this relationship can relieve frustration and provide hints on where…

Training and Learning: A Different POV

The topic was training users for an upcoming project rollout, and the debate (as always) roamed back and forth between "traditional" (classroom training, scripts & workbooks) versus "experiential", pairing existing users with their counterparts (who are new to the system), walking through the basics (screen navigation, terminology, and step-by-step instructions for the most common required tasks). Training methods are a common area of debate and discussion with system implementation folks, and I can make a great case for any and…

Perfect IT

4 August, 2009
Out of the Box
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I once met with a rather thoughtful Project Manager to catch up on things. An interesting person to talk to – it’s the cadence and style of his chat, he's a fairly laid-back guy. I asked where his Stress comes from - he shows no visible signs of any, and it made me Ponder. We ended up talking about golf, IT Projects, and the “Search for Perfection” in our work. So, what is “perfection” in the IT world? Is it…

Technical Debt and the Cost/Benefit of Knowledge Retention

A rather rigorous, Financial-sounding title for a high-concept line of thought ... Thanks to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, for calling my attention to this article by Martin Fowler on Technical Debt: Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs…

Real Business Users and SharePoint

Introducing buzzword-compliant technology like a wiki, or integrated collaboration spaces like SharePoint, will typically go well with a motivated audience like your internal IT department. But if you really want to understand how this stuff works, try it with "real people" - line employees in sales and marketing, operations, and finance. Sure, you've heard complaints from these folks (they have better PCs at home, the SAP/Oracle UI is brutal compared to Amazon and AT&T U-Verse, and why can't they just…

The Delicate Art of Pushing Back

Commiserating a week or so ago with an old friend, struggling mightily with some external consulting firm providing technology talent, developing customer management systems for Big Sales Company. There were some critical dependencies on the server side, and the (internal) project team needed some on-site assistance working through the issues. Ad hoc phone support was just not cutting it - but the external project lead was pushing back. It's very difficult to get on-site, dedicated help for these in-demand DB…