The other day I was talking to a former colleague about some of the challenges he was facing in his new job.  He said something to me that really gets at the heart of why some IT organizations never seem to win the trust of the business, he said "...we have to keep the easy things easy...".  What does that mean?  Quite simply it means that things like implementing a new ERP system or creating a new client billing system or a medical information system are always going to be hard - let's face it those are big things with lots of moving parts and they take a lot of time and effort to get right.  But, there are also those little tools, applets or whatever you want to call them that are simple and have very little risk that can have huge positive impact to an organization.  It's those things that we and IT professionals need to ensure stay simple.  Too often it’s easy to get swept up in all of the analysis and guessing at what might happen or allowing ourselves to lose focus and suddenly that simple request to create a one-page web app turns into a monster that suddenly has to tie in to the financial system and send client communications and work online and offline, etc.  Suddenly that simple things has turned into a 5 man-month exercise in futility and if it ever does get finished it most likely fails to make anyone happy.

Instead we have to remember to focus in on small steps that may not always be the ideal solution but one that works.  You don't always have to "swing for the fence" to hit a home run, sometimes you can score with just a bunt.

Believe it or not there are some companies out there that are hiring despite the current economic conditions.  I have a couple of clients that are either hiring new head count or reshuffling the existing head count to create new positions in IT – either way, these companies are growing their IT staff, not shrinking it.  Part of what I do when helping clients set up project management offices, architecture teams or quick response teams is to be a part of the hiring process.  It starts with helping them clearly define exactly what it is they are looking for this new person to do; what is their role, their responsibilities and overall scope and impact within the organization.  This helps shape not only the technical and operational duties for this new position but also to define the type of person you need.  I also encourage them to get a reasonable amount of people involved in the interview process especially people with whom this new person would have regular interaction.  This can be somewhat of a fine line because you don’t want to overwhelm a candidate with 20 people that want to have a role in the interview process but you need to at least get someone from the team they will be a part of, and maybe someone to represent each of the teams they will interact with on a daily basis.  For example, if you are looking for a project manager make sure that a PM is a part of the process as well as someone from data center operations, development and maybe even a business person as well.  The important thing to remember here is that not all of these people are there to test the candidate on his or her technical skills, that job falls to one or two people.  The rest of them are there to evaluate how good a fit this person will be in your organization.  To me this is one of the most important aspects – you can teach a technology but you can’t teach (and rarely can you change) a personality.  There is also no such thing as a “right or wrong” personality – only right or wrong fit for an environment so be sure this person will fit in your.  The other thing I remind hiring managers of is to not be afraid of hiring someone that’s a bit over qualified.  Sure, you have to make sure their skills are still applicable to your environment and that they won’t become bored within a week but don’t rule out a candidate just because they could walk in the door and do your job.  Having a succession plan in not a bad thing – in fact it’s one of the greatest ways to push your own career forward.  You will never be able to move on the “the next level” if you are up to your eyeballs in your current work, you just won’t have the time to learn new things or successfully take on new challenges.  So regardless of whether you are hiring or not be sure to think about your succession plan – a wise man once told me the best way to move ahead in life is to make yourself obsolete in your current role.

Wow, over a month since my last post…I guess I took that whole “simplify” thing a little too seriously and it’s time to get back to business.  Before I get back to posting about getting the most out of your IT shop I wanted to share a quick note about a little technology upgrade I did last month.  Very simple really, I finally got around to upgrading my Windows Mobile device to Mobile 6.1.  I have had an XV6800 from Verizon for over a year, in fact I ordered it the moment it came out and one of my biggest disappointments with the device was its battery life.  While friends of mine have the same HTC device but with other carriers we have had distinctly different experiences when it comes to battery life.  For me it was the painful experience of not even being able to survive a single day without some way to recharge this device.  I also didn’t like the locked down GPS (thanks to Verizon) that crippled any GPS capable app from working except, of course, for VZ Navigator.

So last month I finally took the time to flash the new OS on to the device, a relatively simple process.  Now I did have some issues reactivating the device, in fact at one point the Verizon rep I had spent over an hour with on the phone said “…so have you thought about upgrading to a new phone…” but after a couple of days of resetting things on my end and on Verizon’s all is well again.  In fact things are actually much better!  My XV6800 can now go almost 4 days without needing a recharge!  I have no idea why this happened but it did.  With that bit of good news I pressed onward and downloaded the Valhalla patch which replaces the locked down GPS DLL file with an open one and presto I can now use Live Search and other GPS enabled applications.  So for all the rest of you XV6800 users out there if you haven’t upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1 you might want to give it a try.

Maybe I'm just getting older but I find that lately I keep repeating the need to simplify things.  Whether that's while creating a new Project Management Office or just with everyday life.  In fact recently a colleage and friend of mine posted an entry on his blog on how he made a change to simplify his life by adjusting his cell phone - and he is really enjoying his newfound freedom.  Today while I read this article on this year's leap second, I again realized how sometimes we make our lives too complicated.  Don't get me wrong, I love how technology has changed my life for the better and I really enjoy these little trivia facts such like the leap second but every now and then it's nice to just sit back and enjoy a relaxing pace of life and not think about things like this.  So during this crazy holiday season I encourage all of you to sit back, relax with friends and family and let go of the complexities we fill our lives with - even if just for a moment.

 Happy holidays!

Today I stumbled across the first in a series of posts on User Experience (UX) by Dr. Charles B. Kreitzberg and Ambrose Little.  The article, posted on the MSDN Magazine site, gives a great overview of what UX is and why its so important.  It also touches on how this field has lagged behind other aspects of the software development process until recently.  It also touches on a key point I try to make with my clients when talking about software design - UX doesn't have to cost a lot or take a lot of time.  I try to impress upon development teams how easy you can do some of the basic UX step by using paper prototypes.  Why paper?  I'm guessing that many of you have either seen or put together mock-ups of future systems or applications and if you ask a developer to do something like that (or even a business analyst) you usually end up with either a Photoshop picture or some stub of code that has the basics of screen layouts, etc.  The problem with these things is that you probably invested too much time to do them AND many users will look at them and assume you are farther along than you really are.

Enter paper prototypes.  I firmly believe that pictures are the best way to show intent and capability to end users when designing software.  With a quick glance they can see so much information even if functionality is only implied (seeing a picture that has dropdown boxes implies something about the data entry process for example).  By using paper and pencil you can quickly create screen or report mockups that convey a great deal of information and can even be used to conduct task flow testing and no one will mistake a piece of paper for anything other than what it is - paper.  They also tend to be more open with feedback and requests for changes because they don't feel locked in to a solution that you might have put a lot of effort in to, after all its just a pencil diagram.  This is a great tool in the agile environment or even for those who just want to speed up their design phase.

Hopefully future posts on the MSDN site will dive into how new tools are helping integrate UX into the development process.

As the Thanksgiving holiday weekend draws to a close, I want to share with some non-business fun with you.  Personally, I have always been fascinated with astronomy, aviation and aerospace in general and so any time I get a chance to get out and fly on a clear night it is one of my greatest pleasures.  Earlier this weekend I had a chance to do just that and our fun started on the drive to the airport as we tried to identify some of the brighter spots in the sky – not an easy task while driving on twisting roads with tall trees on each side.  And during our flight as we got away from the city lights we were treated to incredible views of the stars, planets and galaxies.  Truly a magnificent sight.

My wife and I are both intrigued by this stuff so several years ago we decided to get a telescope so that on clear nights we could tour the skies.  Our 8-inch Meade telescope makes that quite easy to do thanks to its tracking system – in fact we have even tracked the Shuttle and International Space Station a couple of times.  For us, being able to actually see these things is nothing short of inspiring. The technology that exists today makes it easy for anyone to see the sky.  There are lots of telescopes out there, ranging from just a few hundred dollars to thousands or even ten thousand (okay, maybe someday when I retire to an isolated chunk of land far away from city lights that might be a nice treat but for now I will stick to the lower end of the spectrum).  My point is there is something for everyone – even those who are unable to find those dark skies or just don’t want to mess with setting up a telescope.  For those and in fact everyone who likes to look at the sky, I recommend the WorldWide Telescope.  This freely downloadable application lets you pick the location and time and view the night sky by combining actual images and augmenting them with guided tours and insights from great astronomers.

So enjoy the holidays and maybe even inspire someone you know to start watching the sky.

Today I would just like to wish everyone a very safe and happy Thanksgiving.  This past year has certainly been very good to me and I would like to thank my family, friends and clients for their support and generousity.  I hope all of you can take the time this holiday season to be with the people who bring you happiness and enjoy your time together. 

Recently I have had a chance to do something I haven't done in a long time and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing it - writing code!  I have to admit it's been a while since I did any real software development and I was just a little bit rusty to start but I soon found I have a lot of help.  Now I have managed development and architecture teams for years since then and occasionally I have paused to wonder if I could ever really go back or would even want to.  So when a client of mine asked me to help them out and put together a quick call tracking / ticketing system it was with some hesitation that I agreed.

So where would I even start?  I certainly hadn't done any recent development and in fact the last bit of code I had really written from scratch was some web site stuff in classic ASP but even that was pretty limited and I had relied heavily on my old school knowledge to get me through it.  Naturally I turned to my vendor of choice for some help.  My first stop was the Microsoft Developer Network web site and I quickly found what I was looking for - and at a price even I was happy with!  The site is full of all kinds of information about Microsoft's development tools and preferred languages and includes links to blogs and community sites where you can find all kinds of good information and lots of startup code.  But best of all Microsoft has created a FREE version of their popular Visual Studio development suite - Visual Studio Express.  As its name implies there are some missing features but for the new developer or for someone that only occasionally needs a tool this is great.

Visual Studio Express comes in four flavors; Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Visual Web Developer.  The first three are language specific and targeted for Windows Framework application development while the fourth is meant for creating web applications and allows you to code in C# or VB.  Along with these 4 components there is the free SQL Server software called, not surprisingly, SQL Server Express.  All of these tools are based on the current 2008 versions of their commercial counterparts Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 but naturally have some limitations - for example the SQL Server Express only supports 1 processor, 1GB of memory and a maximum database size of 4GB, certainly enough for development and even small applications.

So naturally I dove in and quickly discovered that these tools were nothing like what I had used in my past.  Sure I was familiar with the automatic generation of code stubs for forms and controls and I had even seen the Intellisense to some degree but once I started using all of this stuff I was amazed at just how fast things came together.  For anyone not familiar with Intellisense it is the ultimate "sentence finisher".  As soon as you begin typing it begins to prompt you with options and then filling in pieces of code that you will need.  For example, it attempts to complete variable names for you or code segments such by automatically adding things like the "End If" statement for you whenever you start and "If" statement.  And if you are like me and aren't really sure of what properties or methods can be used with which objects and when it will prompt you though that as well based on the type of object or function you are working with.  Help like this was never around when I was coding for a living!

Anyway, I could go on for hours about all the cool things I rediscovered and how much fun and easy it is with the tools available today.  For those of you that are looking to get into development or know someone who is I highly recommend checking out these fantastic tools.  There are even toolkits for creating Facebook and Popfly applications not to mention complete open source starter kits for all kinds of typical applications.  So go download these free products and start unleashing your creative powers!

Lately I have been dealing with the PMO process, or maybe more accurately the lack of a PMO process, with many clients and I have shared many of my thoguhts here on this site.  Well in my efforts to create PMOs and simple, agile governance processes I came across a great series of webcasts that talk about some of these very things.  The series, available for download here, is presented by Mike Turner of Microsoft and references the Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) but also speaks generically about PMOs.  The MSF is also a great source of really generic practices - while published by Microsoft all aspects of the MSF can be accomplished without any Microsoft tools.  Naturally they like to think they have solutions that can help but the choice is yours.

I have also found that many organizations stuggle with the concepts of an iterative approach.  This doesn't always mean you have to be in an "agile" environment either, iterations can take on a very broad range of time and cover everything from a "program" to a build.  In the webcast you will find the picture displayed here on the right which I think does a great job of defining this broad range of iterations - anyone should be able to understand these definitions.

I highly recommend reviewing the webcast series for anyone who is looking to refine or create a PMO in their organization.

In a recent post I talked about the need for IT governance with just about any size company in order to manage their IT resources.  Based on some feedback from colleagues and interaction with some of my clients I thought it might be best to revisit this topic and dive in with a little more background.  In my experience IT governance (ITG) has always been a part of an organization's Project Management Office (PMO).  But as a former colleague of mine recently pointed out not everyone is familiar with the workings of a PMO.

All of this alphabet soup usually gets people, especially the finance folks, very nervous thinking that technology department is about to become incredibly bureaucratic and expensive.  While it's true that on many occasions this has been the case I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way.  These constructs can be executed in very simple forms and with minimal overhead and administrative burden.

Before going much further I think it's fair for me to explain what I think the goals are for an ITG process.  The ultimate goal of course is to make sure that technology resources are providing the most value to the firm but what does that mean?  Well, for starters I have never seen a company that didn't have a demand for technology resources that exceeded the IT team's ability to respond - demand always exceeds the supply.  So one of the most important roles of the ITG process is to provide a forum for vetting various ideas and needs within the organization and then prioritizing those initiatives.  This provides direction to the IT staff.  Secondly, IT has to give the business insight into the operations of the IT organization, IT needs to show them what they are getting for their investments.  This means there has to be a level of transparency in IT, status reports on major initiatives should be reviewed and operational stats should be shared (ex: uptime stats or number of requests processed, etc.).  And lastly the ITG process should serve as an opportunity for business and IT leaders to collaborate on corporate strategy and planning.

So with those goals in mind what do you need as a part of the ITG process?  Again, it can be very simple but in some form or another you need a list of all those technology related requests - without it you can't very well vet them all to determine priorities.  And as a part of that list you need to have some ballpark estimates regarding those requests, just rough guesses as to the effort/cost, value and time frame for these items.  For example, is this a labor intensive project that could be done in a month that would yield incredible cost savings or allow you to enter a new segment of the market?  These estimates don't have to be perfect, the point here is to get some relative benchmarks so that you can compare the ideas to each other and then make a decision as to which ones deserve further effort.  For large projects this might mean approving a request so that more detailed research can be done to refine the costs and value and then return for a final approval before proceeding.  This doesn't have to happen for all projects but if you are betting the future of the company on it you might want to have a couple of checkpoints along the way.  :)

You also need to have some idea as to the throughput capabilities of your IT organization.  Equally important to know that the priorities are is knowing how much of a dent you can make in that list.  If the first item on the list is so large that it takes the entire IT staff the business might decide to instead tackle the next three items first to get some quick wins.  Communicating your capacity plans also sets the stage in terms of expectations for project completion.  Better for people to know right up front that a project is going to take six months than to not tell them and have them start playing the "Are we there yet?" game right out of the gate.

And I've already hinted at the third component of the ITG process - who needs to be involved.  To be successful there has to be a representative from all the key business groups.  For example you might need to include your finance and HR leaders as well as sales and customer service.  And of course any heads of business lines.  You don't want the group to get too big but it needs to represent all the elements that are needed to make your organization a success.  In some organizations that means getting the C-level or EVP type folks responsible for these groups, in other companies it might be better to have people a layer closer to the action involved in this process.  Whatever the group they need to have two things; an understanding of the tactical and strategic needs of the group they represent AND the authority to make investment decisions.  One without the other does no good, you either end up spending lots of time and money on the wrong things or you are constantly waiting for someone who isn’t a part of the process to get back to you with final approval (i.e. more meetings to rehash all the details).

And that's about it.  All you need to do now is do this on a regular basis - I recommend monthly with an extended meeting once a quarter to get into more strategic planning.  Need help getting started?  CETEC Consulting can help you with that.