The relationship between Information Technology (IT) and business is always a hot topic. Does IT drives business or business owns IT? The answer depends on who is giving the answer. Although I have a very strong IT background, my answer always is that the business should dictate IT contradicting to the most IT professionals. To me, IT does not generate revenue unless IT is the core of the business that generates revenues. IT helps business to run more efficiently and provide competitive advantages. From IT's perspective, the cutting edgy technologies are exciting, cool, and fashionable. But does it make any sense in adaption the latest technologies if business case is not yet made? I remembered Joe ask the question of how do yo justify the cost of IT projects in class. From a business's perspective, any project only makes sense to accomplish a specific goal, most of the time, return over investment. The difficulty of justifying any IT project makes me believe that only business can understand the true value of the IT project. This is not to say that IT does not have any role of how to implement the business' requirements. IT knows the capabilities the technologies and how to choose the best technologies to meet the requirements.
Some may complain that business does not know what is the best technology for them. It is true that business often lacks behind the technology trends. But IT must learn how to educate business the latest trends and capabilities of the technologies. Just like how business push a new product to the customers. You need a strategy to show off your new products to attract customers. Business is the customer of IT so why should not IT adapt the same strategy like business, marketing technologies to the business? But IT should use a different word for this process, education. It is important not to educate business only IT thinks business should know, in another word, do not pick the technology for business, let the business pick the technology. There should not be any favoritism, like luring business to the technologies that IT thinks are the best by hiding any pros and cons of the each technologies. IT must have faith that business will pick the best technologies for itself.
I read the blog titled, IT leaders, It's time to Give It Up, the writer states that business users are arguing for the control of the technology adaption because of the delay. With outsourcing increasingly becomes popular, there is a viable alternative other than your own IT out there. In fact according to Gardner's survey, by 2012, 20 percent of the business will have no IT assets at all. IT needs to have the urgency to serve business better and cheaper. What do you think?
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Team Building
As I blogged before, I think our group is a very tight group as a whole. Everyone in the group is willing to help out whenever possible. How did we build this team together is a little hard to say. But I believe there are two important factors in team building. One is to have a person who can show leadership and has the personality to bring everyone together. The second one is each team member must show willingness to participate in the team building activities. Without the person to bring everyone together, the team may get along, but it won't function what we consider as an idea team. On the other side, if a team member is unwilling to join team activities, then it is hard to be successful by forcing him/her into the team.
We have a supervisor who is very dynamic and has a very attractive personality. He constantly asks people out to lunch and organizes happy hours whenever he feels and hears team members complaining about being tired. Team members have many opportunities to know each other better through lunch and happy hours. Team building activities also establish bonding among the team members that makes team members much more willing to help each other. One example is the on-call scheduling. Since we are required to respond to pager 24x7, each person must take two weeks at a time. It is very common for the on-call person to ask other members to cover in short notice without any hesitation when he/she can not stay near home.
Current economic environment creates problems in employee morals. Many organizations are cutting jobs and outsourcing business operations to stay profitable and meet Wall Street expectations. Employees are hard pressed to stay focus on their jobs and motivated in this kind of environment. But it is more important than ever to motivated employees to take on more responsibilities. One way to motivate employees is to through team building. When the team functions well, each team members is willing to shoulder more responsibilities and works collaboratively. This is why team building should not be overlooked in hard time. Some expect employees to work harder because they are fear of losing their jobs. But such notion is misguided. Maybe employees will work in fear, but in the long term such tactics would not work well or employees lose their motivation and the workforce will be less productive in the future. So pay attention to your team and make sure they are well prepared to take on the next project.
We have a supervisor who is very dynamic and has a very attractive personality. He constantly asks people out to lunch and organizes happy hours whenever he feels and hears team members complaining about being tired. Team members have many opportunities to know each other better through lunch and happy hours. Team building activities also establish bonding among the team members that makes team members much more willing to help each other. One example is the on-call scheduling. Since we are required to respond to pager 24x7, each person must take two weeks at a time. It is very common for the on-call person to ask other members to cover in short notice without any hesitation when he/she can not stay near home.
Current economic environment creates problems in employee morals. Many organizations are cutting jobs and outsourcing business operations to stay profitable and meet Wall Street expectations. Employees are hard pressed to stay focus on their jobs and motivated in this kind of environment. But it is more important than ever to motivated employees to take on more responsibilities. One way to motivate employees is to through team building. When the team functions well, each team members is willing to shoulder more responsibilities and works collaboratively. This is why team building should not be overlooked in hard time. Some expect employees to work harder because they are fear of losing their jobs. But such notion is misguided. Maybe employees will work in fear, but in the long term such tactics would not work well or employees lose their motivation and the workforce will be less productive in the future. So pay attention to your team and make sure they are well prepared to take on the next project.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Short term vs long term
I had an ongoing facebook conversation with a friend over the last few days. The topic is about outsourcing in companies. He and I shared the same feeling that senior management of the American companies worry more about short term financial success and sacrifice long term interest.
Ever since dot come bubble, we have housing bubble, and then the great recession. All the problems can be traced back to the shifting investing philosophy from long term to short term. Everyone (me included during the dot com bubble) wants to make a quick buck and have unreasonable expectation of return from investments in stocks. The impact on the management is that they must do everything to meet Wall Street's expectations, no matter what. The end result is that, companies like Enron played the accounting game to keep stock price up. For other more honest CEOs, they would not try to cheat or break the law, instead they cut cost to meet the financial expectations or outsource to reduce costs. One might ask what is wrong with outsource? My answer is that, there is nothing wrong if you can provide the same level of quality product or service. More often, the quality suffered. I can still remember calling DELL and received bad service. Apparently I was not alone. A few years back, DELL bashing was so great that they had to move some part of the phone support back to the U.S. DELL's image suffered greatly and its market shares had dropped from number 1 to number 3 according to the most recent data analysis.
The great recession made the matter worse. The reduced demand from consumers added additional pressure to the companies. To many CEOs, the only way to keep their profits is to reduce cost. Not many dare to invest more to produce better products (Intel and Apple maybe the exceptions). The traditional way of thinking that company must be responsible to all the stakeholders, not just to the stockholders is no longer true. Today's stockholders are more mobile than ever before. Remembered day-traders? Technology makes online trading costs at the friction of the old broker fees. Investors can move their money to anywhere around the world in seconds so long term investment philosophy is no longer fashionable today. CEOs must realize that short term gains may hinder their companies' long term health. In another word, investors interests (short term) may not align with the long term success of the company. Decisions to reduce cost, outsource, or layoffs should not harm long term viability of the company.
Ever since dot come bubble, we have housing bubble, and then the great recession. All the problems can be traced back to the shifting investing philosophy from long term to short term. Everyone (me included during the dot com bubble) wants to make a quick buck and have unreasonable expectation of return from investments in stocks. The impact on the management is that they must do everything to meet Wall Street's expectations, no matter what. The end result is that, companies like Enron played the accounting game to keep stock price up. For other more honest CEOs, they would not try to cheat or break the law, instead they cut cost to meet the financial expectations or outsource to reduce costs. One might ask what is wrong with outsource? My answer is that, there is nothing wrong if you can provide the same level of quality product or service. More often, the quality suffered. I can still remember calling DELL and received bad service. Apparently I was not alone. A few years back, DELL bashing was so great that they had to move some part of the phone support back to the U.S. DELL's image suffered greatly and its market shares had dropped from number 1 to number 3 according to the most recent data analysis.
The great recession made the matter worse. The reduced demand from consumers added additional pressure to the companies. To many CEOs, the only way to keep their profits is to reduce cost. Not many dare to invest more to produce better products (Intel and Apple maybe the exceptions). The traditional way of thinking that company must be responsible to all the stakeholders, not just to the stockholders is no longer true. Today's stockholders are more mobile than ever before. Remembered day-traders? Technology makes online trading costs at the friction of the old broker fees. Investors can move their money to anywhere around the world in seconds so long term investment philosophy is no longer fashionable today. CEOs must realize that short term gains may hinder their companies' long term health. In another word, investors interests (short term) may not align with the long term success of the company. Decisions to reduce cost, outsource, or layoffs should not harm long term viability of the company.
Crowdsourcing within the company
In a large company, there are many talented employees that are available and can be targeted for the Crowdsourcing concept. Personally, I know many very smart Information Technology individuals that could be leveraged for important projects. For example, SharePoint Administrators know how this technology works so when business starts to develop SharePoint based applications, business can leverage the knowledge of the SharePoint administrators during design to avoid some of the pitfalls. I have seen some business units tap into knowledge during the hiring process to ensure the right developers are hired. But this only happens when the hiring managers know administrators well, not as the best practice company wide.
In a big company, not everyone knows each other. To make it more difficult, in most cases, people don't know the strength and weakness of the employees in other department, business units, or sometime within the same department. Crowdsourcing in the narrowed sense can be adapted into company's strategy, especially in the information technology field. Many talented employees are buried into everyday works that an employee with less experience can do and provide little value to the organization.
How to tap into all the talents within the organizations is a two step process. First, you need to gather the talents of the employees. In another words, you want to know who can do what better than anyone else within the company. One way to gather the information is during the annual reviews. It is common for managers write reviews only for employees' financial rewards/promotions, but what employees excelled in some areas are not leveraged and information can not be found easily nor shared across the company because of the HR policy. HR needs to extract such important information and separates it from the rest of the confidential information and enter into a centralized database that can be shared across the company.
The second steps is to place a policy company wide to use the talents within as much as possible before bringing in outside consultants who are expensive and may or may not workout in the end. In contrast, internal employees know the environment, process and business of the company. They know how to overcome the road blocks from their previous project experience. They know the internal politics and how to maneuver around the potential, but critically important requirements. For example, security requirements can kill, fail, or delay a project if they were not taken into considerations. All these knowledge can not be learned in a short period of time for the outside consultants.
In a big company, not everyone knows each other. To make it more difficult, in most cases, people don't know the strength and weakness of the employees in other department, business units, or sometime within the same department. Crowdsourcing in the narrowed sense can be adapted into company's strategy, especially in the information technology field. Many talented employees are buried into everyday works that an employee with less experience can do and provide little value to the organization.
How to tap into all the talents within the organizations is a two step process. First, you need to gather the talents of the employees. In another words, you want to know who can do what better than anyone else within the company. One way to gather the information is during the annual reviews. It is common for managers write reviews only for employees' financial rewards/promotions, but what employees excelled in some areas are not leveraged and information can not be found easily nor shared across the company because of the HR policy. HR needs to extract such important information and separates it from the rest of the confidential information and enter into a centralized database that can be shared across the company.
The second steps is to place a policy company wide to use the talents within as much as possible before bringing in outside consultants who are expensive and may or may not workout in the end. In contrast, internal employees know the environment, process and business of the company. They know how to overcome the road blocks from their previous project experience. They know the internal politics and how to maneuver around the potential, but critically important requirements. For example, security requirements can kill, fail, or delay a project if they were not taken into considerations. All these knowledge can not be learned in a short period of time for the outside consultants.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Perfect ending!
Just got home from work on the Friday night/Saturday Morning. The workday started at 9AM in the Morning. Today is the last day before our project is going to the UAT (user acceptance test) for the team high visibility project. Our company partner with one the the greatest technology company in the World to work on their rapid deployment project. The whole group was ready to finish the project and hand it to the user.
I went to check with our DBA to ensure our database is ready. To my surprise, I was told that the server had some issues and database was not going to be ready until after lunch. Once the whole team learned of the news, you could tell the tension out there. We couldn't do anything without our database. Some how everyone was still confident we would be able to get it done. We still worked on our own part to prepare for installation in the afternoon. As promised, we had our database ready after lunch.
We were in the good mood again and ready for the next task, testing firewall port was open. Firewall was setup the night before, however, since our database was not up and running, we could not test. I opened my telnet and tried to connect to the database, I watched on my screen “connecting …..”. The longer the …... going, the more nervous I got. Finally the bad news came, “unable to connect”. It was time to regroup. My of my team member got on the phone and reached out to the network team. In the mean time, another team member contacted vendor who was standing by to help us to install their software. An hour passed by, network group concluded that web server was using the wrong IP.
It was time to get server team involved. Server team spent the next hour to research why the server was using the wrong IP and suggested to add another network card to the server. The suggestion sounded reasonable and we agreed. Second network card added to the server. I started my telnet session again “connecting …..”. Bad news again! We went back to network and asked for help. Network told us to run a command to force server using the correct IP. What a great idea! It worked. My telnet session finally went through and we were golden. All of us relieved after all, we had our plans for the Friday. One was planning to go to girlfriend's big birthday dinner, one had a movie date with wife, and the other two had poker night planned weeks ago.
We were ready for roll and we had vendor ready to support us. We were happy again! Our supporting people went home since we had resolved all the problem. The rest of the install was just a piece of cake. We followed our installation instruction and ready to install. We ran the first command, “Error, unable connect to the database”. We could see the database, we could reach the database, but we just could not connect to the database. Vendor suggested we used different way to connect. No, it didn't work! After many tries, we concluded that something wrong with the account we used to connect to the database. DBA went home already. Time to page on-call DBA. It was raining outside and they just left work. We waited for awhile and got a call from our on-call DBA. After we told him what kind of problem we had, he said he just pulled to the side of the road and it would be another 30/40 minutes before he could get home, but there was another DBA would be able to help us in a few minutes.
DBA back from home and spent a few minutes to check the account we were using. There was nothing wrong with the account permission! But we still could not connect! Finally we found out that we read the password wrong. There was an exclamation point in the password “!”, not the letter “i”. Now you knew why I used so many exclamation points here!
We ran the command again and it worked. We were able to connect to the database, finally, yea! We finished installation. It was time to configure the software. “Go home” said our supervisor. It was going to be boring for you from now on. We had done this part before so it was going to be easy. Not long after he said “go home”, “Houston, we had problem”. The configuration person reported wizard crashing. No................., this could not happen. It did happened. It was time to go back to the drawing board again. Everyone one of us researched on the reason behind the crash. Vendor was doing the same. After many tries, one of the team member found the solution. We needed our colleagues from directory service to help. Our service account didn't have proper permission. Fortunately, it didn't take long to get us back to the business. Our service account was granted the permission to fix the problem. Wow, finally our server was serving up the page to ask our credentials that we didn't get before. We were excited! Enter user name, then password. The login page came back to ask user name and password again. We must type in the wrong password. We typed slowly to make sure we didn't miss typing it. Still didn't work. What else could be wrong! Then we remembered trouble shooting 101 in our favor operating system, reboot! Of course, it worked, actually it worked like a charm. We could continue configuration wizard again. “Running.....”, then “Error” again. Was this real? This could not be true. We would never be home, everyone was thinking the same. It was close to the midnight. This software was getting ready to be released to the public at the end of month. Let's run it again. To our surprise, it didn't give us the error this time. But why? At this point, no one would care to find the reason it worked the second time. We got it done and we finished up the work.
What amazing over the whole day was that no one gave up and we had a sense of humor among us the entire day. It was the team work that got us through and ended the night with an exclamation point!
I went to check with our DBA to ensure our database is ready. To my surprise, I was told that the server had some issues and database was not going to be ready until after lunch. Once the whole team learned of the news, you could tell the tension out there. We couldn't do anything without our database. Some how everyone was still confident we would be able to get it done. We still worked on our own part to prepare for installation in the afternoon. As promised, we had our database ready after lunch.
We were in the good mood again and ready for the next task, testing firewall port was open. Firewall was setup the night before, however, since our database was not up and running, we could not test. I opened my telnet and tried to connect to the database, I watched on my screen “connecting …..”. The longer the …... going, the more nervous I got. Finally the bad news came, “unable to connect”. It was time to regroup. My of my team member got on the phone and reached out to the network team. In the mean time, another team member contacted vendor who was standing by to help us to install their software. An hour passed by, network group concluded that web server was using the wrong IP.
It was time to get server team involved. Server team spent the next hour to research why the server was using the wrong IP and suggested to add another network card to the server. The suggestion sounded reasonable and we agreed. Second network card added to the server. I started my telnet session again “connecting …..”. Bad news again! We went back to network and asked for help. Network told us to run a command to force server using the correct IP. What a great idea! It worked. My telnet session finally went through and we were golden. All of us relieved after all, we had our plans for the Friday. One was planning to go to girlfriend's big birthday dinner, one had a movie date with wife, and the other two had poker night planned weeks ago.
We were ready for roll and we had vendor ready to support us. We were happy again! Our supporting people went home since we had resolved all the problem. The rest of the install was just a piece of cake. We followed our installation instruction and ready to install. We ran the first command, “Error, unable connect to the database”. We could see the database, we could reach the database, but we just could not connect to the database. Vendor suggested we used different way to connect. No, it didn't work! After many tries, we concluded that something wrong with the account we used to connect to the database. DBA went home already. Time to page on-call DBA. It was raining outside and they just left work. We waited for awhile and got a call from our on-call DBA. After we told him what kind of problem we had, he said he just pulled to the side of the road and it would be another 30/40 minutes before he could get home, but there was another DBA would be able to help us in a few minutes.
DBA back from home and spent a few minutes to check the account we were using. There was nothing wrong with the account permission! But we still could not connect! Finally we found out that we read the password wrong. There was an exclamation point in the password “!”, not the letter “i”. Now you knew why I used so many exclamation points here!
We ran the command again and it worked. We were able to connect to the database, finally, yea! We finished installation. It was time to configure the software. “Go home” said our supervisor. It was going to be boring for you from now on. We had done this part before so it was going to be easy. Not long after he said “go home”, “Houston, we had problem”. The configuration person reported wizard crashing. No................., this could not happen. It did happened. It was time to go back to the drawing board again. Everyone one of us researched on the reason behind the crash. Vendor was doing the same. After many tries, one of the team member found the solution. We needed our colleagues from directory service to help. Our service account didn't have proper permission. Fortunately, it didn't take long to get us back to the business. Our service account was granted the permission to fix the problem. Wow, finally our server was serving up the page to ask our credentials that we didn't get before. We were excited! Enter user name, then password. The login page came back to ask user name and password again. We must type in the wrong password. We typed slowly to make sure we didn't miss typing it. Still didn't work. What else could be wrong! Then we remembered trouble shooting 101 in our favor operating system, reboot! Of course, it worked, actually it worked like a charm. We could continue configuration wizard again. “Running.....”, then “Error” again. Was this real? This could not be true. We would never be home, everyone was thinking the same. It was close to the midnight. This software was getting ready to be released to the public at the end of month. Let's run it again. To our surprise, it didn't give us the error this time. But why? At this point, no one would care to find the reason it worked the second time. We got it done and we finished up the work.
What amazing over the whole day was that no one gave up and we had a sense of humor among us the entire day. It was the team work that got us through and ended the night with an exclamation point!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
What should Sally do?
This is a case study on the www.hbr.org. To read the case, click on the link. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/what_more_evidence_do_you_need.html
After reading the upcoming case study and comments, I see this case differently. AMC (American Medical Center) is not a successful hospital, at least financially. It makes perfect sense to keep the status quote if AMC is successful, but this is not case here. To play defense and go down the path of not losing money in the foreseeable future, AMC's CEO lacks the vision and courage to lead the organization and set a higher standard for AMC. As indicated in the case, senior management is contend to have low standard of not losing money, instead of set the bar high of being profitable. In the long term, low goal standard will formulate a conservative culture and prevent new ideas or changes. AMC's problem lies it does not provide any better cares for the patients than the competing care providers. Even worse, its' facility can not compete against the nearby providers. No wonder AMC can not attract high paying patients to off set poor patients who do not pay.
To improve AMC's competitiveness, it must either invest in the facility to match competitors, or to reform its health care system to bring better health care delivery system and better quality. Major investments in improving facilities are a huge challenge for AMC. However, switching to EBMgmt (Evidence-Based-Management) will increase the quality care and AMC can t make this approach to build its reputation on providing better care than the competitors. Given the choice of better health care or comfortable facility, patients will chose quality over comfort. However, quality improvement takes time and so does the reputation. How to convince the board and senior management is perhaps the biggest obstacle.
A superior vision is only half of the battle for AMC, just like many other companies, it is far more difficult to win the political battle. The key is to have upper management and the board of directors to buy in this vision. I am sure just like Sally's worry about the future of her own career at AMC, the CEO Mark is also worry about his own future. The fact that Mark allows EBMgmt to go forward at the first place is an indication that he believes in it. Then the question is how to persuade the board of directors to believe in EBMgmt. One advantage is that middle managements are already on board. The key is for Sally to express her opinion to Mark and two of them build a strategy to give middle managers a chance to communicate with other senior managers and the board of directors directly. I believe the decision for Sally to make totally depends on how strongly she believes in EBMgmt practice.
After reading the upcoming case study and comments, I see this case differently. AMC (American Medical Center) is not a successful hospital, at least financially. It makes perfect sense to keep the status quote if AMC is successful, but this is not case here. To play defense and go down the path of not losing money in the foreseeable future, AMC's CEO lacks the vision and courage to lead the organization and set a higher standard for AMC. As indicated in the case, senior management is contend to have low standard of not losing money, instead of set the bar high of being profitable. In the long term, low goal standard will formulate a conservative culture and prevent new ideas or changes. AMC's problem lies it does not provide any better cares for the patients than the competing care providers. Even worse, its' facility can not compete against the nearby providers. No wonder AMC can not attract high paying patients to off set poor patients who do not pay.
To improve AMC's competitiveness, it must either invest in the facility to match competitors, or to reform its health care system to bring better health care delivery system and better quality. Major investments in improving facilities are a huge challenge for AMC. However, switching to EBMgmt (Evidence-Based-Management) will increase the quality care and AMC can t make this approach to build its reputation on providing better care than the competitors. Given the choice of better health care or comfortable facility, patients will chose quality over comfort. However, quality improvement takes time and so does the reputation. How to convince the board and senior management is perhaps the biggest obstacle.
A superior vision is only half of the battle for AMC, just like many other companies, it is far more difficult to win the political battle. The key is to have upper management and the board of directors to buy in this vision. I am sure just like Sally's worry about the future of her own career at AMC, the CEO Mark is also worry about his own future. The fact that Mark allows EBMgmt to go forward at the first place is an indication that he believes in it. Then the question is how to persuade the board of directors to believe in EBMgmt. One advantage is that middle managements are already on board. The key is for Sally to express her opinion to Mark and two of them build a strategy to give middle managers a chance to communicate with other senior managers and the board of directors directly. I believe the decision for Sally to make totally depends on how strongly she believes in EBMgmt practice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)