Over / Under Communication for Project Managers

It is often said that you can't over-communicate, but I'm willing to bet most folks - and especially your project sponsors - underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning - and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management. Media To achieve any decent amount of success, you have to be a good communicator with both face-to-face and written / published media. And by "good"…

Failing Faster

14 June, 2009
Tech Management
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Here is a simple question to ask yourself: do I insist on solving problems myself? A noble goal, until it takes too long to get the answer. Why don't we fail fast enough to ask the question to someone who knows? Remember, we pay a ton of money for annual maintenance to our enterprise software providers, so we should [more quickly] be "giving up", and submitting the question to the "experts" to get to answers quickly. In an earlier post,…

Who owns Master Data in your company?

30 May, 2009
Master Data
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I've had to respond to this question, inside and outside of the company, in a number of different conversations over the past few days. It's interesting, because this is one of those conversations where semantics mean a lot - what people say is just as important as what people don't say. I only mean that people assume their listeners have precisely the same understanding of the concepts - which is often a mistake. Case in point - who owns the…

Notes from SAPPHIRE 09

16 May, 2009
ERP
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Yesterday at work was "catch-up day" from a week at SAPPHIRE 2009, the annual user conference for SAP. As with the JDA/Manugistics conference earlier this year, there were concerns that attendance was going to be low, because so many companies are limiting travel expense. At the conference, I did hear that attendance was only was 60% lower than last year. Conferences like this are great opportunities for IT to do a ton of learning - about the specific technology, of…

Wikis in High School

Last month, Vinson wrote about the use of wikis in school projects, and it reminded me to dust off some notes I took from a conversation with my daughter Sean MacLennan, late last year. It was a history project about World War II, and the class was asked to compose their reports on a wiki. Sean is a pretty good writer, and she likes to write, so I was interested in her thoughts on the wiki as a medium, and…

Business Benefits of Social Networks Exist, but …

When I see / read articles like this, or hear the breathless claims of vendors, pundits, and True Believers, I'll privately chuckle to myself. All of this stuff - social networking, collaboration, and innovation - are 21st century takes on good old Knowledge Management (KM), circa 1998. Do these sound like presentations from your recent Enterprise 2.0 conference? Managing Cultural Change to Create a Knowledge Sharing Environment Effectively Managing Information Overload in the Information Age Information Content and Security in…

Five Stages of Twitter Relevance

I'm already fielding internal (as well as external) questions about the application of Twitter in a manufacturing company, and I'm developing a reasonably good model, I think - one that will apply to the hard-core, salt-of-the-earth, manufacturing business leader that I've worked with at many organizations. This "maturity model" approach has been used before; back in December of 2008, Bhagarva sketched out the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance - but that model only helps existing bloggers and social networkers understand…

Practical Innovation Lessons from Software Vendor R&D

16 April, 2009
Purposeful Innovation, Application Development
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I recently had the chance to listen in on a roundtable discussion involving a software developer's R&D group, discussing some of their thoughts on architecture. Some interesting ideas around "innovation" ... Innovation vs. Cost Control A question from the floor - how sensitive are the R&D arms of major vendors to existing investments in infrastructure for their installed base? Response was framed with a pair of quotes: "Innovation without disruption" is apparently one of their goals. However, is that just…

Location, Location, Location: Terminology Confusion in ERP Projects

11 April, 2009
ERP, Documentation
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Have you ever experienced the clash of terminology that results when supply chains are brought together, due to acquisition or merger? The typical scenario: different groups using multiple terms to describe where product is manufactured at and shipped from; folks use terms like "location", "plant", and "site" interchangeably, and confusion can result - are we talking about SAP configuration? Wide-area network architecture? Rollout plans? To communicate effectively, it helps to clarify things. Here is a starter list of terms from…

Practical Applications of Twitter in Manufacturing?

5 April, 2009
Supply Chain
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Over the past few weeks I've had a couple of interesting discussions about the introduction of Twitter to Manufacturing. When someone poses a question like this to me, it throws me for a minor loop, because for very basic, practical reasons, it just doesn't seem to apply. More keyboards & data entry on the floor? Not likely. However, a few months ago I wrote this rather breathless item, expounding on a brainstorm regarding the use of YouTube and Twitter in…