Is IT Dead?

Folks just can't seem to let go of this idea that IT is dying or dead. "Write it off," they say, "don't tell your kids to go into IT." This recent opinion article in ComputerWorld cites the recently announced layoff of 9,000 HP workers as some sort of proof.

Well, I just don't buy it. It is simply too easy of an argument to claim the death of this or that. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the IT industry is primarily about technology -- and that is in constant flux. If HP were to have laid off all of it's Novell engineers when that great empire fell, would we be having the same conversation? Every technology has it's day, but unlike the article, I argue that the mission of IT has not and should never change. IT has, as its core mission, the objective of providing IT services to enable the business to achieve its solutions.

There is no to me difference whether those solutions exist within the walls of the company or not. IT has managed vendors, outsourcing and relationships for decades. When's the last time a company hosted publicly facing stuff out of a branch office by choice? Instead that's all moved to (typically) a third-party data center. Most enterprises don't operate their own conference calling center either, preferring to have a dedicated enterprise or voice carrier do it.

This idea of the "cloud" is all the same idea, just wrapped into another term. I agree that the network has become the world in which we live. Whether you call that the cloud or not is up to your own semantic distinctions. But, nonetheless, the cloud will not live on its own, will not integrate by itself and applications will not magically appear to leverage these things. All of this will still require dedicated, intelligent IT staff. They will just need different technology skill sets. 

And that is nothing new.

The Downstream Effect

We have been making a lot of changes to our internal systems and software over the past month or so. And, it isn't hyperbole to say that there have been quite a few unintended consequences. They have ranged in severity from minor to critical and we have had a lot of challenge to get back on top of them quickly before there was customer impact.

I'm not pretending our planning and execution couldn't be better in some areas, but these types of issues are hardly unheard of in the midst of complex systems. We've built, in one way or another, most of our systems over the 30 years we've been in business. During that time, a lot of business, design and technological decisions have been made. And, no single person has a full understanding of how everything works together. In fact, most groups within the company are now specialized to one degree or another and have limited visibility that happens to the downstream side.

So what's the solution? There isn't just one, but the primary approach that we're trying to use is to leverage the power of teams and the group mind to view these changes in their own particular way. These groups aren't just technical in nature, they are also functional, operational and executive. There are business reasons to push for a particular time-frame, even though that can be difficult on the development, testing and operational teams. Likewise, it's important for Tech or Ops to report back to the Execs as to limitations in resources, systems and the resulting risk for that time line. 

As with most organizations, I'm finding ours to be a work in progress. There's nothing wrong with that at all though. It means that we keep reaching for continuous improvement, trying new and different things to get to where we need or want to be. At the end of the day, there's a lot worse situations to be in than that.

Weekend Project - Upgrade Windows Home Server

I saw the other day that HP released an update to its Media Server software. The 3.0 version had long been promised, delayed many times and now was finally available. While not every user who has a Media Smart server can or should upgrade, MediaSmartHome lays out a pretty decent decision tree. This is especially important since the upgrade isn't free. You are going to have to shell out about $30 with shipping to get this particular update.

Once you've decided to go ahead, I recommend this walk-through from the folks at WeGotServed.com. It provides a nice overview of the process with plenty of screen shots. And it works.

I will add a few items though based on my experience. After all, whether you're upgrading a server at home or at work, it still does and has a lot of information on it. You'll want to take care during that process.

• You may need to disable the firewall on your personal computer for the first step. The restore process uses some oddball ports that may create some trouble.
• I recommend documenting your current setup - at least slightly. You probably want to make note of the users you have on the system and what folders they have rights to. I'm sure a lot of people allow everything for everyone, but to those to don't...
• I also advise noting the add-ins you have and what settings they are set to. Make sure you have license files handy, etc. You don't want to restart everything and have a nice and shiny machine that you can't run your AV software on.
• Once you are complete with the restore make sure you re-enable your firewall and get AV installed on your server pronto!

I'll say the interface is much prettier, though slightly sluggish. The latter may have to do with the fact that the server is both currently backing up my computer and probably running its initial AV scan. I'll continue to monitor and see how this new version performs.

Process Re-engineering

As part of my MBA program, I'm taking a class on Information Technology for Management. While this is a topic with which I have more than a passing familiarity, I am finding myself picking up a great deal of information as well as new ways of looking at old problems.

One of the assignments for the class was to read a well known business book by the title of Reengineering the Corporation.

The last edition is from 2003 so it was updated relatively recently. It includes discussion of how to approach the difficult problem of re-making processes at companies that have existed for a long time. It is a powerful book that is a must read for any manager who is struggling to bring change to their department and improve productivity. 

It is an easy read, is just over 200 pages and I cannot recommend it enough. Buy it now and take it with you on your next plane ride, it will be worth the 12 bucks. I promise.

It's the Training, Dummy

Are your users dumb? Or are you?

Software development firms love to believe that their products are "intuitive" and "easy to use." But, invariably, when those folks see how their products are used in the real world the are surprised how people are using them. They are shocked that some features are not being used. They are dumbfounded at the work flows that users have concocted. "There's an easier way!" they cry. But the users don't find it.

It has been an unwritten rule that the degree of complexity in a system dictates its ease of use. I challenge that statement. I believe that unplanned complexity creates systems that are hard to use because the design metaphor tends to change over time due to evolving requirements. These are the situations in which a clean start may be appropriate in order to make a more coherent system.

But, that's rarely possible on a regular basis. You can only rip out the foundation and start over so many times in a year or quarter. Instead, you need to be able to bring the tablets down to the people. We live in a time in which distance learning is becoming more and more effective. Products such as WebEx, GoToMeeting and Live Meeting are all ways that we can engage with customers that we couldn't before. That can save cost and allow you to reach more customers than we could before. But, is it effective?

There is a great deal of value in bringing people together in person, especially for training events.Trainers teach best when they can see the body language of their students. Students learn best when they aren't trying to take training classes in their offices with emails, phone calls and co-workers constantly interrupting them.

There's a time and a place for all the various training approaches. Webinars might be highly appropriate for your customer base or at least a segment of them. You probably will need to reach out in all sorts of ways: on-line help, on-line video training, appearances at industry events and conferences, in person group training, on demand training, etc. The important takeaway is to commit yourself and your company to ensuring that your customers have the opportunity to learn enough about your system to ensure that they can use it effectively. They will be much more likely to keep it.

So, next time your product isn't gaining share in the marketplace, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, "Is it the training?"

Management, Mistakes and the Pursuit of Perfection

Management books, journals, magazines and podcasts. They are everywhere. And plenty of them are very useful and have great information about the art and science of management. But, it's rare that any of them talk about mistakes. Now, we are all human the last time I checked. (In the event I'm incorrect, I humbly welcome our benevolent alien overlords.) So, we make mistakes. Yes, even managers.

And in management, you can certainly make plenty of errors. Managers new and old can fail to act in the presence of poor behavior, allow bad patterns to develop and so on. Even worse, they can feel paralyzed by the results of their inaction. That can result in a manager who is in a miserable job. Patrick Lencioni ably writes about what happens to a company when employees are unhappy in a easy to read parable.

It's bad enough when a single or even a few employees are caught in that pickle, but an unhappy manager can make a lot of folks life unhappy. They have real or perceived power, the ability change things and they do control peoples' lives. It is a very bad combination when a manager is miserable.

But, there's almost no such thing as a mistake that cannot be undone in the world of business. That's not to say that it might not take a lot of work to right a few wrongs, but it can be done, one way or another. It does require strength of character and a dedication to the pursuit of perfection. If you don't have both, I'd argue that you might want to pursue another career path that doesn't include management.

One fellow I used to work for used to say that there were some "givens" in each job. These givens were immutable laws of politics in an organization. That might be a legacy worker, a certain vendor who was a relative of the owner or just a way of doing things. I agree with him to a point. There are givens at a particular point in time. But everything evolves and changes. In life and in business, we do not stay the same. So we must be alert to those times and opportunities in which we have a chance to make positive change, even if it means acknowledging our own mistake.

Just a Little Bit Better

There's that old saying, "Don't confuse activity with results." And while that's important, all to often we confuse results with no results. Yes, I purposely wrote that sentence just that way to make a point.

There are plenty of times in live in which you can measure quite distinctly how you've done on something. That's the way life works. And even when you can measure objective success, that might not be that important in the grand scheme of things. The point here, is that sometimes it's too easy to focus so hard on the challenges ahead that we forget to celebrate the challenges conquered.

If you walked into a situation, whether personal or professional tomorrow and made it 1% better, would you be pleased with that? Most people would probably scoff at an improvement of one percent. They'd consider it a waste of time, a demoralizing failure. But what if you did that every day? If you worked just 200 days a year that would be 200% improvement. (And, no finance folks, I'm obviously not compounding here!) Now that's nothing to sneeze at.

But how do you measure these things? How can you say you've improved subjective things like staff morale, effectiveness, etc? Guess. Make an educated guess. No, it's not a fancy system. 

At the end of the day, give your self a point if you made things better, subtract one if you made things worse. Keep track for a month. The results will undoubtedly surprise you and it might just focus your goals and activity for the next day.

And that my friends, is both activity and results.

Group Change

Ever had a group discussion about how things need to change? Perhaps the group talks about reasons they are unable to succeed or problems with process or procedure. Do you ever get the sense that there's an undercurrent of "everyone else but me needs to change"?

It's often been said that the only thing that's consistent in life are the forces of change. Well, I'll provide the corollary to that. The other thing that's consistent in life is a person or group's resistance to change. Don't get me wrong, some people are better at embracing change than others. But human beings are creatures of habit, so it's all too easy to slip into a pattern, often without knowing.

In order for us to become better employees, managers and people, we need to break out a mirror and regularly take a good hard look. Is what I am doing right now the best, most important thing that I should be doing right now? Is how I am doing my job the most efficient way possible?

Just the other day, we ran into an issue where we made a change to a customer account. There was some ensuing fallout related to that change. In post-mortem discussions, I found myself suggesting us using an email to notify everyone. That's NOT being an agent of change. That's falling back on old habits. For the past two years, we've been implementing an enterprise wide CRM system. So here we have this CRM system that is meant to unify customer information across the organization, and we'll go back to sending yet another email into the daily noise?!? Shame on me!

I was able to catch myself later that day and talked with the operations folks on documenting those changes within the CRM so that people in Customer Service, development and so on would be able to reference those changes and they'd be permanently documented rather than hiding in someone's in-box. Some days, the person who has to change is you and every day, you have an opportunity to make the right choice.

Re-organization in Your Organization

The world is changing quickly these days. Probably faster than most of us can even appreciate in real time. Our recent global economic meltdown is proof enough of that.

Individually, we can react to a shift in circumstances in the way in which we prioritize our tasks, the rigidity in which we might enforce policies and procedures and so on. But for an organization to properly address a significant shift in the marketplace, it must take a more drastic step of re-organizing. This process, sadly, often includes staff reductions, but is necessary to allow the company to place the right people and resources in front of the most important challenges.

These changes are not without costs, though. Change causes discomfort and can reduce morale as people often feel uprooted and unsure of the conditions. Productivity takes a short term hit as folks come up to speed with their new roles, challenges and staffs.

Regardless of the negatives, companies will need to continue to be agile in its approach to structure. And we as leaders, manager and staff will need to get better at foreseeing and shepherding change through our organization. We'll need to all work together to fill in the gray areas with detail and help people feel comfortable and empowered with change rather than merely being a victim to it.

I know, I know. Easier said, than done, right? Well, what isn't? Just because it's hard doesn't mean we still don't need to get better at it.