Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

Looking Ahead and Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

As we start this New Year I wish you health, happiness and joy in all that you do.  Take time to look back and appreciate what you've accomplished and look ahead with eager anticipation to what the future may hold for you.

As New Year's Day is a time of fresh beginnings I thought I'd start out the year by re-formatting the look of my blog.  Hopefully this style will make it easier to read and navigate. 

I'd also like to take this opportunity to again extend an invitation to you to add your comments or suggestions. It is meant to be an interactive discussion so I'd love to hear from you.

Lean IT - what comes first, technology or waste reduction?

I try to make it a rule not to make a posting that simply says "Take a look at this great blog post I found".   Although I do mention other blog posts from time to time I've always tried to either add something to the discussion or give my spin on the topic.

However, today I'm making an exception.  Kent Blumberg's posting on Lean and IT today is simply quite excellent and there is really nothing more I can say to improve on it.  Although Kent did do a TrackBack to one of my earlier postings I wanted to make sure that you don't miss his message so I'm highlighting it here.

Take a look at Lean IT - what comes first, technology or waste reduction?  This is an important topic and if you have any interest in the proper usage of IT you really need to read Kent's post.

Looking Back - Lessons of the Antikythera Mechanism

At year-end most TV and radio news show typically take a look back at what has gone on in the past year.  So as 2006 comes to a close I thought it would be helpful if I also took a look back on what has transpired.  Back more than 2 thousand years, that is.  Being something of a history buff I've been fascinated by recent news stories on the Antikythera Mechanism.  Discovered by a sponge diver along with more seemingly glamorous artifacts in 1900 off of the Greek island of Antikythera the heavily encrusted and corroded mechanism lay un-noticed until 1902 when an archaeologist noted a gear-wheel embedded in it.  However, it has only just now been determined how this device was used.

Created sometime around the end of the second century B.C. (i.e. over 2 thousand years ago!) the Antikythera Mechanism is the first known analog computer.  Although it wasn't found completely intact the main fragment has at least 30 gear-wheels and numerous astronomical inscriptions.  The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project has reported its findings in the journal Nature.  The mechanism computed and displayed the movement of the Sun, the Moon and perhaps even the known planets around Earth, and predicted the dates of future eclipses.  I find it utterly amazing and fascinating that they were able to accomplish so much given the knowledge and tools of the time.

Some of the things that I believe this illustrates:

• Simplicity, elegance and focus of purpose in design is enduring.
• The power of observation should never be under-estimated.  It is amazing what you can learn just through observing how the world around you works.  I find it mind boggling to think of the amount of astronomical observation that had to be done to do something like this.
• The power of the human mind is an awe-inspiring thing to contemplate.

As we often react to the every day pressure to get things done it might be worthwhile to contemplate what we can accomplish using computers if we go about it correctly.  Four thousand year from now if an archaeologist should find the remains of your PC what would they conclude you were using it for?

Your thoughts?

Let's Not Bring IT into this

Jeffrey Phillips recently raised an interesting topic about his customers who want to implement his software applications but say "Let's not bring IT into this".  As he notes:

What stuns me is the number of times I'll hear "can we do this without IT" or "let's not involve IT if we don't have to".

I left a comment on his blog, but in thinking about it some more I thought it warranted further discussion.  Many thanks to Kent Blumberg for bringing this posting to my attention.

Make no mistake, this is a common problem.  In looking at it, two questions come to mind:

1. What causes this?
2. What can a CIO / IT department do to change this attitude?

Jeffrey believes this is caused by both the business user and the IT guys.  On the business side he voices frustration with the IT guys saying it wasn't in the budget or we don't have the resources therefore you can't do it.  To me that is a symptom of the business not adequately explaining the situation.  In these situations IT is just the front man for the CFO.  What IT has been told is to work on the things that matter which evidence to the contrary are the items in the budget.  If the project truly has a better return than the competing projects it will get funding and staffing regardless of its budget status.  No self-respecting CFO would fund a lower return project instead of a higher return project just because it was in the budget.

From the IT side the problem is, I believe, a lack of understanding.  Isolated in our cubicles we have no idea of what the business is doing, why they are doing, or how we can help.  IT is more than providing PC and routine maintenance of applications.  We tend to view our role as merely technical and don't want to get involved.  It's more "tell me what you want" rather than "how can we use technology to improve the situation".

OK, so what do we do about it?  Here are some of my suggestions:

Business guys -

• Make your case!  Make sure you have you a strong justification of why your project needs funding.  Kent Blumberg has laid out some guidelines for making sensible capital investments.  A strong factual case goes along way in getting support from both IT and the CFO.
• Involve the IT guys early in the process.  Drag them kicking and screaming if you have to but force them to get involved even if they don't want to.  Let them know you need their help and support and don't let them go without getting it.

IT folks -

• Get involved!  Don't wait for an invitation.  Go out and learn the business, talk to the people, learn what their issues are and how you can help.
• Change the rhetoric.  Instead of talking about what we can't do let's talk about what we can do.  There is always a different approach.  If one won't work, what will?

If both the business guys and the IT folks make a concerted effort to communicate and get involved in issues together maybe we can get everyone saying "let's run this by IT" instead.

What are your suggestions?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Creating Customer Loyalty
• Why It's Time to Lose the Snide IT Attitude
• ITBWA - IT By Walking Around
• Or the posts in the "Customer Service" category

Holiday Wishes

Today is Christmas and I want to extend my best wishes to all my readers.  December is a month of holy days not only for Christians but many other religions.  During your holy day observations I hope you take the opportunity to reflect on the true meaning of life and to appreciate your family and friends.

I wish you peace and happiness in the upcoming year.

Mike

99 Email Security, Netiquette and Productivity Tips

The folks at ITSecurity have a great article, Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips that lists 99 great tips that can improve our use of email.  Email at times can be a powerful and useful communication tool.  At other times it can be the bane of our existence when the inbox is overflowing.  Take a look at these tips, I think you'll find them useful.  (Thanks to Grigor at behind the glasses for providing the link to this article.)

The two tips that I found especially significant were:

22. Remember the telephone. Unless you need a written record of a given communication (or if the person you're communicating with is long distance), consider calling (or sending a letter to) your intended recipient instead of an email. People often default to writing an email because it is quick and easy; but sometimes a handwritten letter or phone call can provide the personal touch your communication really needs.

42. Cut to the chase. Sometimes a text chat is the best way to resolve a communication quickly, instead of sending a dozen emails back and forth. By keeping the bank and forth emails to a minimum, you keep your inbox under control and prevent the need to declare email bankruptcy and starting all over.

I've always told the people that work for me about Schaffner's 3 email rule which is based on some of the same concepts that tips #22 and #42 are but with something extra.

If the email thread goes beyond 3 levels and it is more than a factual providing of information and more like a conversation then it is time to stop emailing, get up out of your cubicle and go talk to the person face-to-face (or if distance precludes then talk by telephone).

My reasoning is that with the inherent limitations of email (and for instant messaging too) where there is no body language feedback, or intonation of speech etc. you quickly have a "conversation" where the two parties are talking "at" each other rather then "with" each other.  Although this can happen with face-to-conversations if you are not careful, why not take the effort to increase the chances of a true exchange of viewpoints?

Break that email chain and actually go talk with someone.  You just might find out what you need and maybe some more and probably quicker too!

What email tips or rules do you have?

Technology Driven Productivity?

I just ran across an interesting article in the December 11 issue of Fortune magazine.  In the While You Were Out column Stanley Bing in an article called "The 0% Solution" [this appears to be available only in the print editions] talks about the third quarter Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics report that Third Quarter nonfarm business productivity growth was zero.  Although this has since been revised to +0.2% it doesn't detract from Bing's point.

In this column Bing talks about a number of things he thinks have limited productivity:

1. Too many meetings - probably no one will argue with this
2. Too many digital devices - they provide an overload of extraneous information
3. Too much Internet - it's great for research but do you spend most of your time there on YouTube?

The one on too many digital devices in particular caught my attention:

• "Too many digital devices - iPods, BlackBerrys, cellphones, all pouring extraneous crud into our noggins.  You know what's productive?  A guy with a legal pad and a pencil, locked in a padded room until his work is done."

Oh so true.  This statement highlight 2 simple but very important points. 

• First, tools are only useful if they help you get your work done.  If they don't maybe you should get rid of them. 
• Second, sometimes low-tech is a better approach than high-tech.  Don't always assume going high-tech is the better path.

This reminded of what someone once told me about the effect of the word processor on productivity.  They didn't have any hard data to back up their argument but it does sound very believable.  They stated that the advent of computerized word processing was a revolutionary breakthrough in office productivity.  With it you could now get letters, reports etc. done more quickly, make changes much easier and as it further progressed you could even do it yourself eliminating labor (anyone remember a "typing pool"?).  This is very believable and I presume someone has actually validated this with hard data.

The second part of their argument is less evident but still very believable.  They stated that as the technology of word processing improved productivity peaked and actually decreased as the software got better!  The reason for this was with the more advanced features people were spending more time on "wordsmithing" than on the actual writing.  Should I highlight this?  What about italics?  Maybe I should add color? Indent the paragraph and add bullet points?  The point of this argument is that we can let the tools and all of their features distract us from our main goal.

As the purveyors of all this feature rich technology we in IT need to carefully examine how we apply it to make sure we are actually improving and not subtly inhibiting productivity.

Bing's somewhat tongue-in-cheek article and my anecdotal observation barely scratch the surface of the relationship of IT and productivity.  Fortunately, Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School has done a very insightful analysis as described in IT and productivity growth: it was nice while it lasted? and takes the discussion beyond the issue of IT productivity tools.  McAfee makes a strong case that IT has (and will) positively impact productivity as the effect of IT has shifted from merely speeding things up to transforming how we do things.  He states:

"My hypothesis is that IT actually is a game-changing innovation of the same magnitude and importance as electricity, the IC engine, the shipping container, etc.  As I wrote in November's Harvard Business Review, I view IT as a general purpose technology (GPT) --  an innovation so important it leads to a long-term jump in an economy's normal march of progress. "

He argues that the impact of IT is now being seeing in the growth of the segment of productivity attributed to "other contributions" rather than just working smarter with better tools (e.g. faster computers) that we have seen in the past.  A increase in computing speed no longer has a significant impact since what we have now is already more than enough in most cases.  McAfee points out that what IT does do now is to allow us to transform our routines with benefits in the form of (see his article for a full description of these):

• Specified with great precision and granularity
• Replicated and scaled up with high fidelity
• Propagated with confidence
• Deployed across a very large footprint

It is this kind of transformation effect that is showing up in the "other contributions" factor.

McAfee makes a strong and compelling case and one that I think makes a lot of sense.  You may also want to check out a review of McAfee's article by Nicholas Carr in his blog posting Productivity Paradox 2.0.

Bringing this down from a macro level to a micro discussion, what does all of this mean to us IT managers on a day-to-day basis?  I think it highlights the fact that we need to shift our focus from the tools, e.g. faster computers, upgraded software, new input devices, to the transformational impact.  This is why discussions on PC's and should we migrate to Vista are at their heart, tactical discussions.  Yes, tools are important but what you do with them is more important and what we need to do is to use them to transform, revolutionize the way work and not just make it go faster.  That's where the real productivity gains will come from.

How do you feel about this?

[I should note some irony in Bing's article where he talks about "too many digital devices" and the impact on productivity.  The footer on the article points out that you can read the latest Fortune articles downloaded to your handheld device.  No doubt they believe it will lead to increased productivity.]

The Best IT Advice I Ever Got

eWeek.com recently asked several IT professionals about the best IT advice they ever got and have compiled this in an interesting slide show "The Best IT Advice I Ever Got".  Check it out, there is a lot of wisdom in these few slides.

My favorites from the eWeek.com list:

• Don't prematurely optimize. Prove something works first and then optimize, because you'll never guess where the true issues lie and will waste a lot of time in the process.
• Managing IT = 80% people, 20% technology.

Some I would have added if I had been asked

• Don't let "best" get in the way of "better". (with thanks to Bill Clark)
• People don't care how much you know until the know how much you care. (with thanks to Russ Svendsen)

Which do you like?

Is Vista Worth the Bother?

I came across a rather interesting debate in eWeek.  Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in his article Vista: Why Bother? addresses the issue of upgrading to Microsoft's new Vista operating system with a resounding opinion of "If your operating system isn't broke, why 'fix' it?"

His colleague Joe Wilcox in a posting called Vista? Yes Bother has a decidedly different opinion.  He argues that the if it isn't broke argument "reflects a sentiment I hear too often as an excuse for keeping old technologies in place--long after their real usefulness is gone."  Excuse me, - real usefulness is gone?  Just because a new technology comes out does make the old technology useless.

He states that the reason people won't upgrade is plain simple resistance to change and the aesthetics of Vista are enough to justify the change.  What foolishness.  He points out that people change cell phones and iPods frequently due to aesthetics so why not PC operating systems.  Although individual may value the aesthetics of cell phones and iPods enough to constantly change them the fact remains that your call goes through just as quickly, reception is the same, and quality hasn't changed.  So although I may be willing to pay to upgrade my own equipment I would be very surprised to see any corporation pay out money for the aesthetics alone.

After reviewing these two arguments I stick with my original opinion that I wrote shortly after Vista was released;

Although the benefits can not be quantified companies will still make the expenditure -- eventually.  The reason for this is that although for most it won't be an investment with a specific return it will become a CODB (cost of doing business) for all of us.  We will need to make the switch as other new programs are developed that require it, as new PC's with Vista and Office 2007 added to the "fleet" reach a critical mass, as we run into compatibility issues, and perhaps most importantly as we develop new applications that take advantage of the new features.  Because of this companies will make the change over time as they see these issues arise and budget time, money and resources accordingly.

Joe's article generated a lot of comments (52 comments since it was published Friday morning).  The thing I found encouraging was that most of them also saw no need to rush into upgrading to Vista.  If IT really wants to be considered part of the business we need to think like businessmen and businesswomen and stop doing things just because they are cool.

What do you think?

Critical Skills and Competencies for IT employees

One of my more popular posts discusses critical competencies that CIOs need to succeed.  It discusses a paper entitled "CIO Leadership Diagnostic - A Pathway to "Best In Class" Performance" .  The paper was written by Eric Sigurdson who leads the Information Officers practice at Russell Reynolds and George Klemp, founding partner and President of Cambria Consulting, a Human Resources consulting firm.

This discussion generated an intriguing question from a friend of mine -- What skills and competencies do I look for in IT employees?

First, let me start out by explaining my take on skills and competencies because this will come into play later in this posting.  I view "skills" as task oriented.  For me a characteristic of a skill is that you can readily get training on the skill.  I view "competencies" as behavior oriented.  I see competencies as descriptors of a person's behavior, almost like a character trait.

By way of example, being proficient in Excel is a skill whereas analytical thinking is a competency.  Some people are gurus at manipulating Excel spreadsheets but don't know how to interpret the results.  Conversely some people can analyze and interpret the data but don't know how to fully utilize the spreadsheet.  And there are some people that can do both.  In terms of my earlier skill/competency characteristics; you can readily get training in Excel.  There are Excel training books, CD's, tutorials and classes.  While you may be able to get training in analytical thinking, it is much harder to find.  Likewise, if describing someone's characteristics we would be more likely to talk about their analytical thinking ability more than their Excel skills.

This is not an exact, precise description.  A friend of mine in Human Resources told me their are whole books written on this subject and even then it is still open to interpretation.  However, a good description of skills and competencies is by Vicki Heath of Business Performance Pty Ltd.

Having laid this foundation here are the critical skills and competencies I look for when hiring IT employees.

Critical Skills for IT employees

• Technical Skills - These are the skill that are particular to a given position.  This would be things such as programming skills, knowledge of networks, etc.
• Communication Skills - I look for the ability to communicate (written and oral) effectively.  IT people at all levels need to be able to communicate their ideas, IT concepts and sell their message.

Critical Competencies for IT employees

• Analytical thinking - we are in the problem solving business so analytical thinking is critical
• Conceptual thinking - we need to be able to see how all the pieces are "linked", changing something in one program will have ramifications where?  How does it all work together.  For higher-level IT positions we need to be able to see the strategic impacts
• Service orientation - we are here to serve our customers, not the other way around.  It is essential that we maintain the proper perspective in all of our activities.
• Empathetic attitude - in order to effectively work with our customers we have to be able see things from their perspective.
• Passion - we need to perform our functions enthusiastically and motivate others through our enthusiasm
• Bias for action - We need to get it done now
• A sense of the practical - Our customers want workable solutions along with wanting in now.  A good solution now is better than a perfect solution sometime in the future.
• A sense of curiosity - There is always something to learn and a better way of doing things, we have to let our natural curiosity roam freely.
• A happy persona - Although we should take our work seriously we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously.  A good sense of humor can carry us through trying times.

A lot of people would point out that these competencies don't describe the stereotypical IT employees which takes me back to the earlier discussions on skills versus competencies.  In the past I know some of my subordinates have been frustrated when I refused to hire someone they thought was an excellent candidate because of their expert programming skills.  I truly believe that it is essential to have these skills and competencies.  So, while I can easily get programming training for a lesser skilled programmer with the right competencies it is much more difficult to improve someone with weak competencies.  I'd rather pay the price for skills training now than suffer continual poor performance due to weak competencies.

What skills and competencies do you look for in your employees?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Change Martyrs
• Why It's Time to Lose the Snide IT Attitude
• CIO Competencies
• Or the posts in the "Organizational Development" category

Change Martyrs

In her Manage to Change blog, Ann Michael has an interesting post on Change Martyrs.  By change martyr she refers to the situation were ". . .the initial person highlighting an opportunity was unceremoniously dismissed, marginalized or otherwise rendered powerless."  She goes on to point out that it is not unusual for this person's concept to eventually be implemented after they are gone.  Unfortunately, this does happen more than we'd like.  Being a pioneer or prophet can be a dangerous job!

Take a look at her post.  She poses the interesting question of whether an organization is more accepting of an idea from the outside and tends be less accepting if an internal source is proposing the change.  I think she has a point.  Two factors come to mind that might explain this. Both have to do with the relationship between the future martyr and the rest of the organization.

First, an internal proposer is a known factor.  We know where they stand in the organization, what their history is and what their political backing and clout is.  Therefore, in their resistance to change the rest of the organization knows how to attack this potential disruptor of the status quo and is quite comfortable in doing so.  With an outside change agent we know less about them, who supports them and how strongly and therefore proceed much more judiciously and cautiously.   Our uncertainty gives the outsider a chance to adapt and counter with additional arguments and justifications.

Second, the change martyr themselves can fall victim to this familiarity.  Since they know the organization and all the players they can often fail to adequately explain and sell their change.  "They know me and what I stand for.  There is no need to sell them on this new idea.  Just that fact that I'm suggesting it should be enough for them."  Wrong!  The outsider knowing he has no support base instinctively knows he as a major sales job on his hands and acts accordingly.

We in IT are often in this role and would be well served to take some prudent steps that will both help get the change implemented and ensure we are around to see it happen.  My suggestions:

1. Work behind the scenes to make sure we have the key decision makers and influencers support and understanding.  Work with them one-on-one to bring them along to the new concept.  To use one of my favorite LBJisms "Better to have 'em inside the tent pissin' out than outside pissin' in."
2. Sell, sell, sell.  Change is hard.  People need to be convinced and emotionally ready to accept it and that means it is up to you to sell them on the idea.  This is an especially tough concept for most IT folks.  We don't naturally like to sell.  The facts should speak for themselves.  The truth is they don't -- you have to be their voice.

What are your thoughts?

Creating Customer Loyalty

I recently had the pleasure of hearing J. Downey Bridgwater speak at the Houston Planning Forum.  Mr. Bridgwater is Chairman, President & CEO of Sterling Banchares, a Texas bank focused on serving owner-operated businesses.  A number of things that Mr. Bridgwater talked about apply equally to banking and to IT.

In thinking carefully about building customer loyalty the executives at Sterling Bank came up with 3 key elements that they needed to focus on. (Hmmm - focusing your key action items in to 3 key items for clarity sounds familiar).  These 3 items are:

• No Defects - it has to be right after all they are dealing with your money
• Timeliness - they have to execute quickly and be responsive to your needs
• Caring - they have to care about you and your business

These 3 actions lead to customer satisfaction and repeated satisfaction leads to customer loyalty.   We in IT can apply these same 3 tenets to our work and can build our customer loyalty too.  When you think about it our customer want the same thing.  They want defect free service provided quickly and responsively and they want us to be care about what they are trying to accomplish.

Mr. Bridgwater pointed out the need for a proper balance between sufficiency in meeting the customer's needs and efficiency of operations needed to satisfy the shareholders.  This is always a fine line to walk.  The Sterling Bank approach is to first determine what needs to be done to meet the customer requirement and then determine how to do it efficiently.

This can be an important lesson for IT.  Often we in IT tend to do this in reverse.  First we determine the most efficient way for IT to operate then we try to make our customers deal with us in this manner which not surprisingly often leads to customer frustration.  There is a subtle distinction between these two approaches and it is in the area of bias towards the customer.  Personally, I favor the Sterling Bank approach.

Isn't it amazing what we can learn by seeing how other service providers operate?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Why It's Time to Lose the Snide IT Attitude
• Or the posts in the "Customer Service" category

Most PCs Can Not Run Vista

A article in eWeek reports that most business PCs will need to be upgraded in order to run Microsoft's new Vista operating system.

About half of the average business PCs in North America are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, while 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium.

Within these figures, 41 percent and 78 percent, respectively, require RAM upgrades to meet the minimum and premium system requirements of Vista, says a new study by Softchoice Corp., which is expected to be released later this week.

These are some rather amazing statistics and are further evidence that companies will switch to Vista in a slow deliberate manner.  The need to upgrade PC's is just one more factor along with checking home-grown applications for compatibility, purchase cost, training cost etc. The eWeek article goes on to state:

"Most organizations planning to deploy Vista within the next two years will have a PC life cycle that is affected by these factors, which, taken together, present a significant operational and financial stumbling block if not planned for well ahead of time," he said.

Preliminary user surveys suggest that 27 percent of organizations are planning to wait one to two years before undertaking a Vista rollout, with some 33 percent planning to wait between six months and one year.

The thing I find most amazing is that Microsoft didn't communicate more closely with PC manufacturers and corporate users to ensure more Vista-ready PCs were in place.  Given that they were about 4 years late in rolling-out Vista you would think that they would have done more to speed up its acceptance. 

What are your plans for switching to Vista?

Why It's Time to Lose the Snide IT Attitude

I happened to come across an eWeek.com article by Deborah Rothberg entitled "Why It's Time to Lose the Snide IT Attitude".  A couple of things about this really grabbed my attention.

First, by saying it is now time to lose this attitude she seems to be implying that up to now it was acceptable.  I guess I missed that first memo.  But what foolishness to ever think it was ever proper to deal with a snide attitude to customers.  It never has been acceptable and it never will be!  Someone please tell me that isn't what she meant.

I thought perhaps I was reading too much into the above "implication" until I started reading the comments (the second thing that really grabbed my attention).  There are quite a few from people that still believe in that mode of operation.  The whining about how our customers ask "dumb" questions (and even worse, do it repeatedly), do things that are clueless, and show no interest in learning as much about IT things as we know is truly amazing.

We are in a service business.  We're here for the benefit of our customers - not the other way around.  So what if they ask "dumb" questions again and again. Our job is to help them. Instead of asking why won't they learn maybe we should be asking how we can do a better job of educating them.

If our message isn't getting out and being understood maybe the fault isn't with the listener but with how we are sending the message. People have different ways of learning and absorbing things. We have to be prepared to use multiple teaching and communication styles if we are to be effective. In my experience a snide attitude is usually one of the most ineffective styles.

As a service organization we have to remember the goal isn't what makes IT efficient but what makes the user/customer/client more efficient.

Those with this snide attitude frequently talk about the pressure to be efficient, cut costs etc. and bemoan that our customers are often impediments to this.  It might just be our lack of service orientation that could be causing this.  If IT isn't really providing me good service but I need IT in order to run my business than naturally I'll try to minimize the cost.  Why spend any more money than absolutely necessary on something that isn't giving me what I want?

Dan Morrill also commented on this article in his blog post, Dumping the traditional IT attitude.  He sounds a similar theme:

"The concept makes the idea that business just like any other customer will go elsewhere when service is not what they are getting, or the service is not what they need, or even worst, they think they will get no service or lousy service from the internal IT department. Every outsourced contract, every outsourcing decision made by the business units then becomes a failed project for the IT department. It is another lost opportunity to show business value, and an understanding of the business by the IT department."

If we "dis" our customers why should we be surprised if they take their business somewhere else?

Getting beyond the "implication", Deborah's article did have some very good points about why we may need an attitude adjustment:

1. You don't want your users to hate you
2. It's bad for business
3. It makes for compromised end-products
4. It could be career suicide

If we won't do it because we think it good for our customers maybe these points will convince it is good for us.

Your thoughts?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• ITBWA - IT By Walking Around
• We need to maximize the number of complaints!
• Or the posts in the "Customer Service" category

It's Alive! Or is it? The Return of Video Conferencing?

I thought video conferencing (VC) had died.  In fact at my last place of employment we issued a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order on the VC equipment.  Frankly, the technology just wasn't that good.  For anything other than a one-on-one meeting the television monitor just wasn't much help.  To view everyone on the other end you had to have such a wide view that the all important body language factor was pretty much lost.  There was no real eye contact. If you had more than one other location in the conference you would get the video and audio flipping back and forth with people talking over each other.  The audio lag especially on international calls was also very disconcerting.  People quickly learned simple audio conference calls coupled with Webinar technology was just as effective in addition to being less expensive.  Why pay all that