Archive for January, 2010

We are way too addicted to e-mail.

Project managers in IT often confront the tall hurdle of fostering smooth communication among team members separated by time and distance. It’s not easy. The IT project highway is strewn with failed and discarded projects that spun out from poor communications across widely distributed teams.

The challenge for a project manager is to develop for distributed teams a sense of presence that leverages new technologies with appropriate usage. Presence is one aspect – perhaps the biggest – of a team member’s engagement with the project team and its coordinated activity. Although e-mail supports an existing sense of presence, it is incapable of creating a sense of presence on its own.

Think of what “presence” means relative to the physical placement of a team of people working together toward a common goal. The best sense of presence exists in a team where the members are in the same place at the same time interacting face to face (e.g., a football team or a focus group). Close behind is the team that’s under one roof but in different locations (think cubicles). Then there’s the team where the members are in different buildings but the same postal code. The physical separation of teams can extend across multiple states, countries, and continents.

Contrary to what telephone ads say, long distance is simply not the next best thing to being there. To be successful, we need as much team presence as we can achieve, but we can’t achieve much when we’re so geographically separated. Well, presence is all about communication. If we look at the spectrum of presence in the team examples above, most person-to-person communication generally falls into two categories: synchronous and asychronous.

Synchronous communication occurs when people interact in a real-time dialogue. The obvious example is two people in the same room talking to each other. Direct telephone conversations are synchronous (although phone tag via voice mail is asychronous). Instant messaging (IM) and chat are synchronous, but with intriguing potential for latency (such as sending an instant message to somebody who gets it an hour later). Through high-tech telephony (e.g., Voice Over IP (VoIP)), IM, and chat, we’re experiencing new and diverse ways of increasing the information stream through the combination of visual and aural channels. Video-enhanced IM is an example of this, and so is the IM window that displays what songs you’re currently listening to while you’re chatting with somebody about your latest status report.

Asychronous communication, on the other hand, operates in bursts of one-sided dialogue. The most obvious example is e-mail. When I write you an e-mail message, I send it without knowing when you’ll read it or when (or if) you’ll respond to it. I generate it on my own time and terms, and you respond on your time and terms. This is good in a world in which we’re not all on the same schedule. Messages can be queued up, and the act of responding can be queued up as well. Before e-mail, the written memo was the primary example of communication asynchronicity. Another example of asychronized dialogue is the blog, which has the added backbeat of e-mail as well as blog comments to augment the layers of communication. Twitter and its corporate-friendly cousin Yammer are kind of a mash-up of IM, blogging, and e-mail.

Both synchronous and asychronous communications provide the means for people to be present to each other in varying degrees. Assuming we have all of these diverse, cool ways to communicate, what helps a team the most as it strives for its goal?

To me, it seems to come down to two things: bandwidth, and what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) appropriate messaging.

For this discussion, bandwidth refers to the potential range of information that can be communicated in the context of a particular exchange. Two people talking in person, face to face, is high-bandwidth communication. In addition to the actual words, each communicator can also parse intonation, facial expression, body language, and some of the more subtle signals (personal appearance, etc.). A two-way videoconference is high-bandwidth (although not as much as in-person) because it combines visual and aural richness. A telephone conversation is the next step down in bandwidth, eliminating the visual and some of the detail in the aural spectrum. (With cellphones, bandwidth shrinks even more because of the “Can-you-hear-me-now?” syndrome.)

Asynchronous communications generally have less bandwidth than synchronous, but not always. A video-mail message has greater bandwidth than a conventional e-mail message. But it has less bandwidth than a videoconference because the latter is synchronous and real-time, incorporating the immediate responses of all participants to the messages being conveyed. For all the ubiquity of e-mail in our working world, it surprises me how much people ignore the low-bandwidth nature of that means of communication. Without quirky visual add-ons like emoticons and “grin-dicators,” e-mail cannot convey emotion very well, or any of the other nuances that come through the visual and auditory aspects of higher-bandwidth exchanges. Nearly everybody has had at least one bad experience with misinterpreted humor in e-mail, and we all know the principle that major bad news should not be conveyed through e-mail.

Yet distributed work teams often rely heavily on e-mail as the medium of choice for most communications. Because of e-mail’s inherently limited bandwidth, this can mean real problems in overcoming the challenges of being physically distant. Without augmenting presence with other communication channels — in-person meetings, Twitter/Yammer, phone calls, IM, videoconferencing, etc. — a team can run amok in response to misfires, omissions, and the other slings and arrows of a limited medium.

However, the asychronous nature of e-mail is its saving grace. There are plenty of communications where e-mail is the best medium for the message. And that’s what I mean by “appropriate messaging”: Pick the right means for what you need to communicate.

• To exchange a lot of information in a short time, get everybody in the same room. (Get rid of the chairs beforehand if you want to keep the meeting short.)
• To ask a quick question, use IM or the pick up the phone. (It’s best to batch up your questions if you risk repeatedly interrupting somebody’s work.)
• To engage in a one-on-one dialogue with a geographically separate colleague, crank up the webcams to allow facial expressions and body language to increase the level of engagement.
• To make a specific statement for which an archival record is required (e.g., meeting minutes, meeting agenda), use e-mail.
• To conduct brief written dialogues with the whole team in order to convey status, progress, questions, issues, etc., check out Yammer, the internal microblogging platform that has grown increasingly popular in IT environments.

The presence to each other of distributed team members is enhanced less by the increase in the means of communication and more by the specific means they choose for conveying their messages. While it’s probably best to have the most high-bandwidth exchanges you can afford, it doesn’t mean lower-bandwidth communications aren’t useful as well.

There are myriad articles and other sources of information that discuss the benefits of “aligning” a company’s IT strategy to its business strategy.  It sounds like a no brainer for an IT leader.  Align the IT strategy to the business strategy and all is good (not easy, but good).  According to a recent article in CIO magazine, “if the IT organization is discussing the need to align the IT strategy to the business strategy, they are too late.”  I suppose that making this kind of statement implies that the company’s IT organization is not aligned to the business and that’s not good for the IT organization and the business, right?

Well, according to a study by Bain & Company covered in MIT Sloan Management Review titled “Avoiding the Alignment Trap in Information Technology”, alignment may not be the largest problem in an underperforming IT organization and it may not be the first place to look for answers or make adjustments. The study suggests that the first place to investigate is the effectiveness of the IT organization. Are projects being accomplished on time and on budget? Are the systems used today running smoothly? Is there unnecessary complication in applications and infrastructure? Richard F. Connell, CIO of Selective Insurance Group, said in the article, “Aligning a poorly performing IT organization to the right business objectives still won’t get the objective accomplished.”

Additionally, the study presented some very interesting numbers and drew some interesting conclusions about the correlations between the overall performance of a business and the effectiveness and alignment of its IT organization.  As you may have guessed, the companies where the IT organizations were both effective and aligned were the most prosperous.

How would you rate your company’s IT effectiveness and its alignment to the business?

You can also view the full article in the MIT Sloan Management Review (subscription required for access to full article).

Tough times in midmarket companies have compelled IT managers and employees to wear more hats (and bigger hats, too). Whether through staff reductions or withdrawal from outsourcing arrangements, IT teams in the “Great Recession” have had to do more with fewer people. This means that “generalists” – people with multiple skills and know-how across a number of IT knowledge areas – are more likely to keep their jobs and even thrive in them, or get the new job if they’re in the market.

This is the message confirmed by the IT salary survey conducted last month by SearchCIO-Midmarket.com. In addition to the survey results themselves, comments in the article by several IT managers confirm that generalists are in demand:

“‘Specialists are in big trouble, in my opinion,’ [according to Bob Clabaugh, director of network and systems engineering at Northwest Regional Education Service District in Hillsboro, Ore.] ‘Broad-skilled generalists who have had their hand in everything are going to be the ones scooped up by midmarket IT shops.’ Smaller organizations will be looking to fill multiple roles with one person, saving on employee onboarding costs and multiple salaries.”

In our work with many midmarket companies in the mid-Atlantic region, we’ve spoken with many CIO’s who express a need for IT practitioners who demonstrate knowledge of and interest in the business side, who regard IT as the enabler of business performance, directly or indirectly. Often, when an organization lacks such generalists internally, outside help is often needed to both provide a broader perspective, and to coach the organization to develop that talent internally.

Visit the the IT salary survey at SearchCIO-Midmarket.com for the full article.

To set up a “GodMode” folder that provides access to all Windows 7 tools in a single location, perform the following setup routine:

1. Select any folder from Windows Explorer where you want to locate the “GodMode” folder – I placed mine in C:\, but any location will work
2. Create a new folder titled:  GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
3. Enter the new folder – all of the Windows tools should be there broken out by base function.

Or when the AC unit turns on, or when I vacuum the office?

A trend in high end desktops and laptops that is likely to quickly be adopted at all price points is the use of Active Power Correction Factor  (Active PFC) based power supplies.  Active APC has benefits, but mostly for enterprise level use, as it reduces stress on the AC wiring by lowering the current drawn by power supplies with a high Power Factor, which can reach 90% in an Active PFC supply, vs. the 65% seen in typical Passive supplies.  UPS costs are also reduced, as an Active PFC requires less current capacity than the older Passive supplies.  Active PFC supplies don’t use less power, but they do deliver a higher percentage of it when called upon to the PC components.

So what’s the downside and why wouldn’t you want all of your new hardware to utilize Active PFC?  There are two compelling reasons:

• Your existing UPS probably won’t keep an Active PFC based PC running when the power goes off, or during a brownout when the UPS takes over.  This is due to the need for most Active PFC power supplies to be fed a true sine waveform. The majority of the household UPS’s are stepped “simulated” sine, which isn’t a viable source of power for Active PFC based designs.  Data Centers typically use UPS’s utilizing true sine waveform, so see the benefits, but at price points starting at around $500, aren’t a viable option for most home and SMB based computing.
• Active PFC won’t likely reduce your electric bill.  Power Factor isn’t a criterion on which homes and small businesses are billed for electricity. This is true except in the case of commercial utility users who pay for V(oltage) x A(mperes).

Some vendors are providing options for Active or Passive Supplies.  Unless your existing UPS is a true sine wave capable device, or you plan on replacing the OEM supply, strong consideration should be given to avoiding Active PFC.

For many IT organizations, setting up a Project Management Office (PMO) is a lot like a New Year’s resolution: The best intentions don’t change anything unless you know the whole scope of what needs to be changed. In most cases, the organization knows that it needs to improve its project management, but it’s not sure what the first steps should be.

When we work with IT organizations to enhance the effectiveness of their project and portfolio management, we start by assessing where they are now: What are the needs, perceived weaknesses, challenges, opportunities, and anticipated benefits? After building a team to focus on PM effectiveness, we start our work by conducting a survey of the team to gather current impressions about how project management is handled now. Conducting the survey at both the beginning and end of a PMO development effort provides a yardstick for measuring specific improvements later on.

We’ve posted a copy of one version of our Project Management Effectiveness Survey on our Resources page. It’s available free to registered visitors. Of course, we encourage you to register for access to our entire library of white papers, technical articles, tools, tips, and other documents available free on our Resources page.

If you’d like to talk with us further about our project and portfolio management services, send us a note on our Contact Us page.

A good article appeared late last year at CIO.com about the linkage between project success and a project’s alignment with business strategy. In essence, the project manager needs to both 1) know the company’s high-level business strategy, and 2) know his/her project’s value relative to that strategy.

Many factors influence project success and failure, including schedules, resources and funding. But new project management research from training company Insights Learning and Development, certain chapters of the Project Management Institute and a strategic execution consultant suggests that the single most important factor influencing project success is the project’s link to the organization’s business strategy and the project manager’s understanding of how the project supports the business strategy.

This certainly conforms to our experience with a wide range of IT projects at IT Evolution. Every IT project should demonstrate its full business value before it even gets launched. Part of the value equation involves a solid knowledge of the organization’s strategy on the part of a project’s PM, sponsors, and stakeholders. Sometimes, the PM needs to act as the evangelist on business strategy to those who might not be as familiar with it, particularly in technical environments. Clear alignment with business strategy raises a project’s profile, solidifies its support, and significantly enhances its chances for success.

Read the full article over at CIO.com.