Be a leader of IT Professionals

James Callaghan once said "A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice."  Now, while this is accurate for most, leaders of IT professionals know that there are certain facts that should not be eroded if they wish to achieve maximum performance from their IT teams.  IT Professionals have the patience of a gnat and the tolerance of a pig you are teaching to sing.  Along with these attributes, IT professionals have their ideas about the direction their work should be focused and get annoyed when decisions are made that are outside of their tolerance zones.

To make matters worse for those of us that will manage these IT professionals, each of them has a different "hot button" and acceptable tolerance level that we need to work with.  There are several things that management does to screw up the delicate balance of having a happy IT group and having an energy-drink and coffee infused lynch mob that can put your project in jeopardy.

1) IT professionals use tools to power their abilities.  Whether it is hardware (server, desktop) or software (development, productivity), IT people need to have somewhat modern equipment and software to enable them to use their skills effectively.  Many companies see an investment in hardware and software as a cost in depreciating assets rather than an investment in the productivity and efficiency of the IT staff.

2) Management has a determination to make decisions because "they know the business better". Yes, this may be true, but who knows the technical challenges and facts behind the business.  The IT staff.  Making a decision without involving them will set up the organization for failure because the decision makers did not understand the full effect of their decision.  At least, by involving the IT staff, management can make an educated decision, rather than having to scramble to fix the effects of the decision after it has been made.

3) Why is it that management looks at training as a waste of time, money and resources.  Many feel that IT staff can teach themselves.  What these manager fail to understand is that every individual learns differently and at different paces.  This is one of the benefits of training, since it will encompass most of these learning methods.  Some IT staff are not given the time and/or resources to go through material or work in a test environment to teach themselves.  Another comment I have heard many times is "if I train them, they will just go to another company".  Perhaps, but think about how those IT folks may go looking elsewhere that does provide training to keep them engaged and on top of the technology.  Another alternative is having an unskilled workforce maintaining status quo because they have no other choice but to stay.  This stalemates the company growth as well as the IT staff career goals.

4) Drop the "business-speak" with the IT staff.  The IT folks see right through the use of such business buzzwords to the point that they discount everything being said.  As a manager, do not try to talk "tech", especially if that is not an area of expertise for you.  IT staff will focus and listen if you just give it to them straight and drop the big words and business-speak.

5) Many IT people work better when left alone and in their own world.  Some management understand this, but that leads to a problem.  If IT staff is left alone, management has no opportunity to become a leader because they don't understand everything the IT staff is working on or what problems are troubling them.  Don't let the IT staff work in a vacuum, but don't spend so much time with them that you suffocate them either.  There is a fine balance that you must find with each individual.

I have been on both sides of this chasm. I started out as an IT resource and moved into several management roles.  As an IT resource, these are the areas that I saw mistakes being made many times.  In a management role, I could use this information to become more than a manager, but to be a leader.

How about you? What other items would you add from an IT resource or management perspective?

Teaching a Pig to Sing

Sometimes we run our projects as usual and something happens that changes the direction of the business.  This change causes the organization to no longer require the output of the project we are running.  Many organizations that are faced with this type of scenario are unsure of how to address this.  In the face of uncertainty, these organizations will choose to keep the project and the project team together until completion.

We know this does not make sense, if the output of the project is not what is required, but in lieu of developing alternatives, our sponsors choose to keep these project moving forward.  The problem is that these "black sheep" projects are not good for a project managers' career.  Yes, the project manager will be the one to take the fall on these projects if not carefully managed.

From a business standpoint,

Social Project Management

As project managers, we are all very aware of the need to communicate to our project teams as well as our stakeholders.  The basic formula for calculating possible communication channels is N(N-1)/2, where N is the number of stakeholders and/or project members.  For all intents and purposes, project members are stakeholders as well, so stakeholders will be the general term used in this post.

Why is communication so important as well as understanding the number of possible communication channels?  Let's first think about whether we are "project managers" or "project leaders".  I tend to use this a spark to networking conversations. Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith call out 12 distinctions between managers and leaders in their Learning to Lead workbook. See how many of these you can recognize in your organization.

• Managers administer
  Leaders innovate
• Managers ask how and when
  Leaders ask what and why
• Managers focus on systems
  Leaders focus on people
• Managers do things right
  Leaders do the right things
• Managers maintain
  Leaders develop
• Managers rely on control
  Leaders inspire trust
• Managers have short-term perspective
  Leaders have long-term perspective
• Managers accept the status-quo
  Leaders challenge the status-quo
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line
  Leaders have an eye on the horizon
• Managers imitate
  Leaders originate
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier
  Leaders are their own person
• Managers copy
  Leaders show originality

If you have been in any size organization, you will have surely noticed many managers and executive team members go off and make a decision on something they have absolutely no clue about.  These decisions are being made because management feels they know more about the area or for whatever reason, just refuse to consult with the subject matter experts that can provide the guidance needed to make the informed decision.

This is how managers work, leaders do not operate in this vacuum.  They talk with people to gather ideas, new ways of doing things, and more.  Leaders offer information knowing that this will repay them many times over.  Leaders listen to knowledgeable people and this helps them make an informed leadership decision, not a management decision.

So, why do I bring this up? In many of the organizations I have worked with, the management and executive teams seemed to have this understanding that those higher up on the organization chart knew more. This may be true in a small number of organizations, but for the majority it is not.  This is where social media comes into play, but why?

Social media removes the bureaucracy and just connects people to people.  These people are typically the ones that do know things, rather than those that are assumed to know them.  There are real conversations happening, albeit in 140 characters or less.  This is the beauty of it, though.  It forces the crap out and delivers only the relevant information.  These connections listen and provide unique perspectives on what challenges your organization and/or projects.  There is no dotted line hierarchy for reporting, no "you cannot have this resource" discussions.

So, if we look back at the communication path calculation again.  Let's assume we have 18 people we interface with directly.  This is 18(18-1)/2 = 153 possible communication paths. Good for a manageable project.  If we extend this communication path out beyond the walls of our organization and onto Twitter or Facebook, we have a much larger range of communication possibilities. Each "follower" is a communications path, so let's say I have 350 followers. This would put our communication paths at 350(350-1)/2 = 61,075.  Compare that to our meager 153 communication paths by staying within the walls of our organization.  This is one of the ideas behind "crowdsourcing", where we utilize the power of social media to assist in our challenges.

As project managers or project leaders, we need to learn to embrace social media to help us out where it is appropriate.  Of course, company confidential or proprietary information would not be best served through crowdsourcing, however, steps can be taken to mask the actual product or project being developed to still allow you to leverage social media to your advantage.

How are you using social media for managing/leading your projects?

Project Management through the rear view mirror?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It still surprises me how often I see many organizations, large organizations, still managing their projects through the rear view mirror.  Let's think about this analogy for a minute.

Most of us understand the speed and efficiency we gain when moving from point A to point B while driving a car.  We also understand how much slower things can get if we try to move from point A to point B by driving in reverse as we are looking in the rear view mirror.  Along these same lines, it would be disastrous if we were to move forward from point A to point B by only looking in the rear view mirror and not paying attention to where we are going.

It is this idea of focusing on where we have been rather than where we are going that I have seen too many organizations get caught up in and stalemate in analysis paralysis.  When this happens, the goal of the project is either not achieved or the scope is changed to match what can be accomplished.  By focusing too much on past efforts, we are setting ourselves up to repeat the failures.  We need to learn from our past, but not let it drive our future projects.

Project management is about continually learning and making our processes better.  If we continually drive forward by looking at the past, we will stall because we can no longer "learn" or get better results out of our performance due to our narrow vision of what can be achieved.  Only by trying different things can we truly understand what creating better processes and efficiencies is about.

In the end, we want to keep moving forward and using the past performance and issues as a guide to help steer clear of the potholes on the project management highway.

Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Tweets

Alan Lepofsky had a post where he played with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to come up with a Hierarchy of Tweets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He goes on to describe each of the levels in the hierarchy as it pertains to tweeters.  Very  humorous.

I think my favorite is Love/Belonging. He mentions about the ego boosting banter that goes on because the tweeter think his family and friends are following him, but are not.

 

Nice and creative, Alan.

Halloween Engineer way to clean a garage

So, I was doing my pre-spring cleaning of the garage that I always do.  This time the purpose was to get the car actually in the garage.  In any case, I am a "holiday engineer", which basically means that I build things (typically dead and scary), along with kid-friendly creatures, for Halloween decorations at the house.  Back in 2000, I built this guy:

He was sitting in my garage for many years.  I would pull him out for halloween and them back in the garage he goes.  Well, this year, I decided it was time to let him go. So, off I went working on cleaning the garage today and I get to him.  He is too big to fit in the dumpster I rented.  He is made of chicken wire, wood, drywall plaster and Great Stuff expanding foam insulation. I decided the best course of action was to start breaking him down into manageable pieces.

I break out the handy reciprocating saw, put on the safety glasses and go to work, starting on his arms.  I cut off the arms at the elbows, thereby releasing the candles.  I then move onto the lower part of his body and start cutting away.  I look up and see several of my neighbors watching with looks of horror. I share a glance and go back to work on him.

The coup de grace was when I cut off his head and and then carried the head by the neck stump with everyone still watching.  I still had a little fake blood left in the in the sack attached to the neck, so that was dripping a little bit, which just added to the fun.

In the end, the kids in the neighborhood explained to their horrified parents what my "candle-dude" was.  You see, when I build these things, I do it so all can see them going together.  It helps to minimize the frightening of ToTs (Trick or Treaters).  It also allows them to be in the know when things light up for Halloween.

Crayon Physics

I just stumbled across this today though it has been available since 2008.  I have been enthralled with the game demo. Basically, the game comes with several levels of "playgrounds".  In the playgrounds, you have an objects (usually a ball) that you need to get to a star object as the goal.  There are objects missing (shapes) in order to complete the goals.  It is up to you to determine what is needed to reach the star.  The fun part of this game is that you use the crayon (mouse or tablet pen) to draw the missing pieces.  Once you release the pen or mouse button, the piece you just drew is dropped into the playground. From here you can either push the ball to start it rolling or if the object you drew was above the ball, when it drops, it will force movement of the ball depending on how the object falls.

There is also a playground for you to submit your own playgrounds as well as download those of other users.  Some of these playgrounds can be quite elaborate and tricky.

Check out the video on the main page for a sample of what this thing does.

Windows 7 God Mode - Um, yeah....not really

Over the last week or so, I have been seeing a number of posts (Twitter, Facebook, blogs) talking about gaining access to hidden features in Windows 7 that has been termed "God Mode".  Some have even called it "Super Admin" mode.  After seeing all of these posts and realizing that many have moved directly into Windows 7 or migrated from Windows XP, they do not realize that this "feature" was available in Windows Vista as well.

Let's first show how we gain access to it then we will kill the rumor and lay it out for what this "God Mode" really is.

In order to get access to this you simply do the following:

• Open C:
• Create a new Folder
• Rename the folder name to GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
• Browse all the wonderful things Windows 7 can do for you

Ok, as far as the folder name, you could name it FooBar. or David. or whatever.  The piece that makes this work is the {ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.  What exactly is this?  You may say it looks like a GUID used in Windows and found in the registry.  Yup. That is exactly what it is.

So, what exactly is this telling us? The folder name we used is basically a reference to the GUID listed in the registry.  The System.AppUserModel.ID is pointing to ControlPanel. When we open the new folder, it is simply opening a link to Control Panel and displaying the items in a list view.

Here is a listing of what the new "God Mode" displays.

In the end, there is no "God Mode" or "Super Admin" mode, only a different view to your Control Panel.  Oh, this was also available in Windows Vista, so it is not even a new thing.  It just goes to show how popular Windows 7 is turning out to be.

FTC worries about cloud data

ars technica has a great story about the FTC believing consumers don't have a clue about the privacy implications.

While cloud storage is not a very new concept, the use of the cloud by consumers is picking up now that pricing for these services is acceptable for most.  I am just talking about personal storage from services like Amazon and Rackspace.  Personally, I keep backups of my blog and associated plugins, etc. on Amazon S3.  For any development work I do, I also store out on S3 and light up BitTorrent streaming to others I am working or sharing code with.  Once the seeding is complete, I shut down the BitTorrent in S3 to save on Data Transfer Out charges. In the end, I don't keep a lot of data in the cloud myself because of this. Oh, I did consider dumping my local NAS content (MP3s, videos, photos, etc.) out there, but I could get a few external USB drives for what it would cost to store all that.

In any case, the article uses the Nexus One (Google Phone) as an example. How timely, huh? All of the personal data, browser history, contacts, etc are backed up to the cloud so that the data could be restored to a different phone in the event the current one is replaced.  Of course, many carriers are taking this approach to backup your phone data to assist in changing phones.

ars makes a good point about that data being accessible to Google for search (definitely), hackers (possibly), and law enforcement (watch the privacy disclosures).  If you have Google accounts (GMail, Calendar, Docs, etc.), you know that data is searchable and that Google will attempt to hold back law enforcement unless an active investigation or subpoena is enacted, but privacy terms also change.

What do you think? Is your data protected in the cloud like it would be on your own systems?

Business Strategy 2010

Well, here it is, the second week of 2010 and I am finally getting around to posting my first entry of the year.  One of my resolutions was to post much more frequently.  For this entry, I am stepping away from my technical content and providing my thoughts on long-term item, business strategy.

We need to understand what "strategy" means.  In general terms, a strategy is a plan to reach a goal.  This is fine, but it does not provide a roadmap to how you actually do this.  What is missing is a "tactics" component.  To further extrapolate this, let's consider a strategy as where we are going and the tactics are how we get there. This is still somewhat incomplete to me.

A strategy should be a plan that maximizes the effectiveness of your resources, taking into consideration  environmental factors (including your competition), risk, and core competencies.   Strategy is also about deciding what you will NOT do.  This also means you need to stick to that decision.  Resources and products should be focused on your target audience and not try to be everything to everyone.  Taking an idea from Sun Tzu's "Art of War", if you spread your resources too thin and try to attack from all angles, you will not win. In essence, you will be nothing.

Tactics should be tied to your strategy in order to be successful.  What differentiates tactics from strategy is that tactics are the decisions that are made while implementing the strategy.  Strategy is your roadmap and tactics are the actual route being taken based on internal and external inputs.

Strategies have several traps that are easy to get caught up in.

EVERYBODY WILL BUY ONE

There is nothing that everyone buys. Not even water! Yet, time and time again, organizations insult us with claims that their product is so fantastic that everyone will not be able to live without it. The problem is that it is a misconception and one that may cost you greatly. The "idea" is the trap. Study the market and isolate those people who will buy your product.

JUST ONE PERCENT OF THE MARKET

How many times have you heard someone mention that the sales for {insert name here} were {insert high dollar value} and then make a comment something similar to, "If I could only get one percent of the market, I'll ... "? Ok, the arithmetic may be correct, but reality is a different story. That one percent proves to be more difficult to sell than originally thought. These statements prove nothing other than the fact that you can do simple arithmetic. Don't talk about how much of the market you need, show everyone how much you can get.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

No purpose is served by developing elaborate strategies that an organization cannot execute. They must be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, tangible). Money limits strategic alternatives. You must live within your pocketbook. You must live within your own capabilities. Make your strategies fit your organizations talents.

Strategy alone will not make you successful. Great strategies will fail if not adeptly executed. It doesn't matter so much what you do but how well you do it. There is no single Master Strategy.

In the end, You do not want to engage  unless you have the advantage.