Managing IT Workers, Logic and “Do I Have Too?”

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This blog is partly about managing IT workers, and it’s also applicable to
anyone who wants to manage more strategically.  I’m writing it after
sitting in project review meetings for the past two days.  I wish I could
stand up while I’m typing this, but then my back would talk to me as I
stooped over.  Enough whining, here goes. 

Years ago Jim McCarthy surfaced the issue of respect in managing IT
workers in a back-handed way, with the book Don’t Flip the Bozo Bit.
He was driving hard at a dysfunctional way of handling disrespect.  The
basic message, being don’t be so quick to disrespect someone, you may
need them next week.

Jeff Elio in his current article in CIO magazine, The Unspoken Truth About
Managing Geeks, underscores the importance of respect, and how that it
is predicated on the: 1. perceived use of logical consistency by others, or
lack thereof, 2. being right when making decisions, and 3. being competent.

It’s a great article, clarifying how much you lose if you don’t manage
your IT team or staff in a way that is logical and engenders respect.  I’ve
grabbed one key executive just this week, and had him go back and
renegotiate deliverable deadlines that were unreasonable with his IT group,
because they weren’t logical given the tasks outstanding and he was losing
his group’s buy-in on the project as  a result.

Here’s what I didn’t read in either source, and I think is just as fundamental.

Managing IT workers need the respect of logic and competence
balanced with holding them accountable to best practices. 

Actually I tend to hear the second phase bounced back to me something
like this, “Do I have too?”  This especially comes up around the topic of
documentation.  I did a project for Nokia years ago.  They had a very
simple solution for the IT folks we had on the team from 14 different
countries.  They simply didn’t pay if the work wasn’t documented.

We all struggle with the “not-fun” “do I have too” aspects of work.
I just find that IT workers struggle with it a bit more.  Maybe you
find it to be different – let me know.

Bottom Line:

You’ll get the best results managing IT workers if you balance logical
consistency, realism and competency with holding people accountable
to best practices… on an ongoing basis.

Links:
IT Management System
IT Management Solution – Simples Wins Over Complex

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Posted in IT | No Comments »

Meeting Management – an Untapped area in IT Management Systems

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Robert Hamada (aka Reid Hastie) wrote a recent NY Times article, “Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time“. He describes the distress of non-effective meetings and their consumption of the participants unrecoverable time, and their pervasiveness (“every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones”). But his focus is to point to setting clear goals and personal responsibility as the antidote. It’s good, but not enough… and technology, specifically an information technology management system, can help, let me explain.

Actually Hamada’s article touches on where technology helps the most. He describes different participants each taking “mike” time (my phrase) to speak to their own agenda – none of which particularly helped the meeting move forward or created a outcome achieving process. It reminds me that most meetings have a loose enough structure that they frequently drift into a “karoke” effect. Who ever wants to sing… can. And in fact may in effect stay at the mike for several songs, or sing multiple verses of the same song.

I think most meetings have a poorly defined and much to wide definition of acceptable verbal behavior. Think about it for a moment. Is it OK to express yourself in 50 words or 500 or 5,000? It’s probably not defined or enforced in the meetings you attend. Here’s a few more examples.  Is it OK to tell stories to illustrate your point? Is it OK to tell stories without checking to see if anyone is confused and needs the story for explanation… or bored and needs the story for entertainment;).

Robert was correct, we don’t have clear enough objectives and shared responsibility for reaching them, but perhaps as important, we don’t have agreed upon definitions for when to get on the “mike” and how to act once you have the “mike”.

We’ve completed two studies on meeting management, in both of which we were able to demonstrate a 50% reduction in the time spent in the meeting to cover the same set of agenda and project items.

We use ManagePro as the IT Management System to provide a framework for not only setting the agenda, but also for structuring or defining meeting behavior. In essence the meeting ran with ManagePro projecting the projects and goals to be reviewed on the meeting room wall using a projector. Meeting behavior was structured, perhaps a better work is focused or contained, as the following sequence of behaviors.
1. Read the displayed latest progress update on the selected topic,
2. Discuss the status and document any additional information discussed
3. Identify any action items coming out of the discussion and create them on the spot as to-dos with a person assigned and a due date… then move on to the next item.

By-the-way, if anyone knows where you can find sand-timers that are large enough to easily see in a meeting, let me know. They would make an excellent prop for giving people a visual cue to wrap up their discussion.

Links:

Working Strategically – Outcomes, Time and Value

Being a Strategic Manager and Your Schedule

 

 

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Posted in IT, Meeting Management | 1 Comment »

IT Management System – Recommending & Reflecting Business Intelligence

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Gartner just published their CIO January 2009 outlook survey report,
and I’m wondering if it resonates with you and possibly even causes a certain twinge.

The subtitle essentially reflects that budgets will remain flat, but the focus of spending will be different.  The difference being the emphasis upon improving business process and operational efficiencies through the use of business intelligence.

Here’s one more quote from the report and then I’ll tell you what I’m thinking:
“They expect IT to play a role in reducing enterprise costs, not merely with cost cutting, but by changing business processes, workforce practices and information use.”

In the past IT often was relied upon to pick, and not miss, whatever tools management deemed necessary to help move the organization forward.  It would be easy to forsee that in 2009 that will extend to picking the right Business Intelligence (BI) product.

Here’s the TWINGE – what if IT had to actually model the use of operational efficiencies and business intelligence… before IT could recommend it to any other department?  Notice that I’m referring to operational efficiences (and success), not use of cutting edge tools.

What if IT had to reflect strong BI internally, before it could recommend it externally?  In IT we are good at picking tools, but not so good at being the leaders in continuing to track, measure and improve workforce practices and information use. 

In fact, would you feel comfortable asking someone to recommend a tool for your use to improve a process they weren’t in the top 10% at managing themselves?…

Probably not.

I don’t know if you’ll find the requested new operational efficiencies by the meta analysis possible with many BI programs.

But I do know that if you don’t have:
-  transparency around the basics (what’s the outcome, what’s the plan to get there, where are we to date, and what’s next)
-  and simple metrics around the process (% of time we meet due dates, top priorities are worked, projects are completed within time estimated, within budget),

… then higher order BI results end up sitting on a slippery slope, e.g. the reports look much more convincing then the strength of the data supporting it.

So to all of my friends in IT, knowing that you’re going to get the call to help use BI this year to gain operational efficiences and get to outcomes at less cost… what if you helped pre-empt that process by planning on modeling that process for the rest of the organization.  Your thoughts?

 Links:

IT Management: Simple Wins over Complex

IT Management System

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Posted in IT | 2 Comments »

IT Management Solution – Simple Wins over Complex

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I’m in an out of different IT departments across the country most weeks.  When it comes to managing their work, which is usually immense in scope, they usually have a number of cool complex applications, a high state of information overload, and two performance degrading conditions that seem to be consistently present… so much so you can bet your lunch on it.

1. They have acquired a number of high powered tools to manage everything from request tickets to extended project work break down structures, and are succeeding at using most of them for one purpose or another – but they don’t have the basics readily available across all the projects in play.  In fact you could say there’s a general seduction factor operating with their favorite (high powered) software package.  All others are second class.  If their favorite application does not provide the basics, it starts getting managed piece-meal in spreadsheets email, and word documents, etc.

2. They have many tools, but no one central tool for tracking the basics across all of their projects.  In fact they can only get the basics of status updates by having a meeting, actually multiple meetings, all of which impacts the ability to deliver per plan.  Actually the plan isn’t identified on most projects.  In fact if you push a little, you realize they are slightly out of control and hate to document… but they’re busy and find a way to get things done.

IT departments need a simple overarching or bridging information management solution more than most departments!  It would make it a lot easier to manage their deliverables.

But that raises a certain question, “Why is IT so much in need of… simple IT?”

Partly it’s the nature of the work.  It’s so varied with a diverse range of deliverables to accommodate – so you need one central place to track it all.

Partly it’s because IT people are extra sensitive about time spent to manage information.  If they have to double enter something, you would think it’s a major trauma.  They can spend more time complaining about the prospect of a double entry task, it would take to complete.  So the idea of getting information from various tools into one central management tool seems extra laborious to them – and so it gets avoided.
But there’s more to it than that.  I regularly see some prevailing belief systems  that tend to push the fuzzy factor if left unchecked.  See if you observe these as well:1. One belief system seems to be “If I know it in my head, why do I have to write it down… what, just so that you can complete a report?”  “If you have a question, ask me and I’ll tell you.”2. Another one is “I only want to use tools that I think are the best.  And until a tool can meet the outer range of my favorite features… I’m not sure, maybe even definitely sure it’s not worth using.  Find something else.”

Given the current IT workload, the need to do more with less and the accompanying belief systems, I’m often struck that despite the appeal of sophisticated, slick, all encompassing solutions, what IT departments need more than anything else is the technology to provide answers to three simple questions on every project:

1. Where are we to date? (which can be as simple as a 50 word status update, or also include basic % complete, budget used and amount of budgeted hours consumed).

2. What’s the plan going forward or simply what’s next?  Whether it’s a todo list or a work break down schedule, the question remains the same.

3. Where can I find relevant documents, and the contact information/people?

I worked with two IT departments today, and am on with two more tomorrow.  For each, ManagePro provides a lot of features, but the most immediate value starts with answering those three questions.  It still fascinates me that there’s so much discussion and reluctance to get the process in place to have those available in one click.   Do you experience the same?

Thursday, January 15th, 2009
Posted in IT | 2 Comments »