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…

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,…

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…

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…

Field Notes: Video Conferencing for Business Conversations

This past week saw my first experience with video conference calling - something obvious to consider in these tight economic times. Some observations - I got quick feedback that my original camera position was disconcerting for the others. I had put it off to the side, which made me look “off camera”, almost in profile, while in conversation. As I thought about it, I agreed - because if I was looking at me, it would be weird / annoying. I…

Low Tech SharePoint Hack: Project Status Indicator

I'm doing a little hacking in SharePoint that is pulling together a few ideas from the past: Keeping my tech skills sharp Knowing when to search for the answer (vs. stubbornly sticking with DIY) Communicating status tersely but effectively Apparently, I'm also trying to answer a question that is meaningful to many others, as it is used as an example in the Help files for Microsoft's online SharePoint guides, the add-on Web Parts we use here, and many other places…

Would you like me to google that for you?

12 March, 2009
Tech Management
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Got some rare Re-Tweets today on a techie insult - so snappy, I had to write a post to use it for a title! Deep in the problem analysis and debugging process, the typical IT hack experiences counter-balancing pressures that impact decision making - Capable Independence vs. Speed to Value. Capable Independence is just fancy-talk for the idea that I should know what I'm doing. Ego 1 - Who needs manuals, I wrote this thing from the ground up? Ego…

PMO Nirvana is a Conversation, not a Schedule

22 February, 2009
PMO
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We continue to iterate on our PMO processes - managing too few resources and too many project requests, an environment I have consistently seen in every IT group I have ever worked with. Our latest discussion concerned the concept of FIFO work on projects ... ... when presented with five things to do, I will only [emphasis added] work on them in the order received. This is an exceedingly poor assumption for your personal run-rules, and a short-sighted objective for…