A blog about Practical, Effective IT Strategy Planning, by Andres Vivas

There is a new President in the U.S of America. I’ve been looking for information about what is the current IT strategy for the new administration, and haven’t found many details.

For starters, who will be the CTO for the government? I know that Google’s Eric Schmidt said no to that position. But I don’t know who is in that short list, and when there will be an announcement about it.

My interest focuses on what is the IT Strategy for the biggest IT client in the world.

I found an interesting articles about the role of the new CTO, from the Federal Computer Week magazine: Obama CTO may lack sufficient influence

Topics like Network Neutrality will occupy central stage, I assume. But what about modernizing the existing infrastructure in all Federal agencies? Make investments in a more efficient way? Not having a centralized strategy for web sites and internet usage?

So, all in all, I have only questions and no answers at this time. I will be monitoring this topic as it is very important to help us understand where the biggest IT spender in the world will be investing. This will probably affect everybody in the IT world in one way or another.

What are your thoughts about the future of the IT investments by the government under the new administration?

Technorati Tags: Government, IT Strategy, Obama

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Any IT worker has experienced this situation: “Let’s deploy Widgets ABC as a temporary solution. When we have time, we will fix/develop/procure/correct it and do it right, it will be OK“.

And we all know it will never happen. Or, actually, it will. Next time it breaks, or next time we need to make an update (which will happen precisely at the same time of another crisis, so we won’t have time to do it right that time either). There is a reason why duct tape is so popular, right?

What have you noticed about temporary solutions?

Here are a few points I can think of:

1. They are applied with agreement from management –either implicit or explicit
2. Everybody knows we won’t fix it until it breaks again –an we all agree to that
3. They last three years (This is what I call the Andres Vivas rule of Temporary solutions)
4. They get deployed at the last minute, just when the deadline is here, so we use that as justification of why we had to do it
5. We won’t document it, do next time it breaks we will have to sit down and think, trying to remember why and how we deployed it –and that is IF the same staff is still there three years after it was deployed, otherwise the newer staff will have to guess and then think that the people that were there before them were not competent at all

What else have you noticed about Temporary Solutions?

I am sure that better planning should minimize these situations, but how can we avoid these situations completely? Any ideas?

Meanwhile, as a temporary solution, I will leave the discussion open, I’ll come back to revisit this topic when I have more time.

Technorati Tags: IT Strategy, planning, Temporary solutions

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Thanks to Raj Sheelvant’s blog I learned about the article titled Ten imperatives for midmarket IT strategy in 2009.

I suggest you read that article. It provides very good points.

I strongly agree with imperative #10: Review your strategic plan. It is boring. And painful. But will give you a great high-level view of what’s coming, what projects should continue and should be put on hold.
Also, imperative #8 Ensure strong governance, follows the same pattern as #10, being both un-exciting and tedious, but completing this step will provide great clarity and a high return on the time and effort invested.

I have to recognize that imperatives #4 Don’t forget risk (it is NOT about what you probably are thinking) and #5 Figure out compliance where not in my short list of things to do next year.

What about you? What do you take from these ten imperatives? Which of these will you implement first?

Technorati Tags: IT Strategy, Processes, Tools

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The worst kept secret of successful executives is the ability to present an idea, and deliver it in a way that makes the audience agree with their points.

I’ve been informally studying what makes some presenters successful. These are the top ten tips, tool and techniques that I have identified:

1. You, the salesperson. Great presenters have mastered the ancient art of sales. The sooner you recognize that your mission as presenter is to sell your idea, the better your presentation style will be.  See yourself as a succesful salesperson. It is amazing how your mindset changes when you realize this.

2. Be prepared: Identify the core message. The key to successful presentations is to focus in one and only one core message. The more messages you try to deliver, the higher the chance that your audience will not get it.

3. Be Prepared: Identify your audience, and tailor your language to that audience. If you are talking to other Executive level members from your organization, make sure you use executive-level lexicon. Talk about Return on Investment (ROI), bottom line, strategic plan, etc.

   Do you really think that the CFO cares if the latest application was built using Java or .Net? Oracle 10g instead of MS SQL Server 2008? He and the CEO probably will care more about the amount of investment required. The VP of Sales will not care about Mac or Windows Vista, but how your application will help her to close more sales.

   On the other hand, your technical staff probably will understand better if you present terms in a more techie-like language.

   If your audience is mixed or unknown to you, avoid specific terms. Stay away from jargon and acronyms, or at least introduce them before using it (for example, say “following the Systems Development Life Cycle – SDLC, a set of best practices to develop system, will improve our chances to deliver the project on time“, instead of just SDLC, with no explanation).

4. Use the power of 1. As it has been said, “A death is a tragedy, a million a statistic”. If your message involves something that will affect many people, make sure you make it personal. Present the scenario for one person, name that person, and tell how what you are proposing impacts her. Then quantify the impact. Later, ask the audience to imagine the same effect for the whole targeted group. People will get it that way.
   For example, say you are presenting to the board of directors an idea to provide the sales staff with an application that runs on their handheld device, to check inventory online. You may want to present the scenario for one of the sales rep in the group:

   Jane, one of our best sales representatives, was visiting our customer Acme, inc last Friday to offer them our new product, the widget 1.25.

   She did a great job of presenting the case for the product, and Mr. Clark, Acme’s procurement executive, was ready to put an order. Mr. Clark asked Jane if we had 150 units ready to deliver by the end of the month. Jane promised Mr. Clark she will have the answer for him next Monday, as she couldn’t check the inventory at that point.

   Jane checked first thing in the morning and yes, we could deliver the product as requested. However, Mr. Clark was not as excited about it anymore and asked her to stop by next month to check again about their needs.

   We couldn’t close the sale that day. We don’t want anything like that to happen anymore. That day we lost $75,000 in revenue. If this happens only once a month to each of our 100 sales reps, we are missing the opportunity of closing $750,000 of profit per moth during customer visits.

   We are requesting additional $250,000 to design and deliver a system that allows the sales staff to check inventory and product delivery capabilities online, from their phone or PDA.

   What do you think the board of directors will say after this explanation? How can they logically say no to your request? Do you think this would be more successful than just saying:
   

   “I’m requesting $250,000 to develop a new application for PDAs. It will help sales people to get inventory information online.”

   I certainly believe that Jane’s story will give you a better success rate.

5. What’s in it for them? Make sure you present your audience with reasons to keep listening to you, to pay attention to what you are saying, and to even consider support you or agree with you. Make them care.

6. Make it a Dialogue, not a Monologue. Ask questions. When needing support from them, ask a positive question, and start nodding as soon as you finish the question. Keep nodding for 5 seconds, before answer positively to your own question. That will establish a relationship between you, the presenter, and your audience, as now all of you are nodding and agreeing.

   When possible, ask for input from the audience, ask them engaging questions constantly, like “are you following me?”, “does that make sense?”, “are you with me?”

7. Make it a Mystery. One of the reasons why the TV show Law and Order is so popular is that they present you a case, and then they start giving you clues. You are hooked. You start answering the questions posed, and filling the gaps. Do the same. Present a problem. Don’t tell them the solution right away. Let them wonder what is the right solution. Circle around the solution. Guide them to the solution, but don’t give it to them. Let them arrive to it by themselves. Only deliver the solution at the end, when some of the attendants have already guessed what is the “right” solution. People love to be right. I know I’m always right, right?
8. Say NO to death by powerpoint. There is nothing worse than a presentation where the presenter goes through a slide full of text, cheesy graphics that have nothing to do with the topic, and he is only reading the slides. Trust me, in 99% of the cases, your audience can read the slides by themselves, so don’t offend them by reading to them. In the other 1% of the case, you audience can’t read, then why having the slides in the first place? The powerpoint or keynote slides should be just a guide for the presentation, not the presentation itself.

9. Draw it. Instead of showing to the presentation with a Visio or Photoshop image that represents your idea, draw it in front of our audience. Use markers and a whiteboard, and draw it. Your audience will follow the process to arrive to the end result, they will make it to the solution at the same time with you. If you think you are not a visual person, I recommend you read The Back of the Napkin, which provides a great set of tools to present your ideas visually.

10. Use analogies and examples. When presenting a newer, abstract concept, try bringing the point home by using an analogy. If you are presenting a new intranet portal for the company, don’t tell them you are implementing a new shinny website. Tell them you are implementing “the Google of the company“, where they will find all the information that exists inside the company. You don’t need to tell them anything else. They got it by now. At this point your only concern is to live up to the expectation, but have no doubt, people “got it” during your presentation.

There you have them. Ten tips. I know that you probably already knew half of them, if no more.

Oh, and by the way, the most important tip, the one that will make or break any presentation:

Be Passionate. If you don’t believe in what you are saying then your audience won’t care. People know when the other person is not honest. If you are presenting something that you don’t really care about then your words won’t have the same effect.

Let me know which of these point you agree or disagree with. I want to hear from you.

Technorati Tags: Effective Communications, keynote, Made to Stick, powerpoint, the back of the napkin

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A Forrester Research article titled Does Your IT Culture Need An Overhaul?, by Marc Cecere, discusses the importance of understanding the organization’s culture and, specifically, how it is reflected in the IT team. The study shows that 85% of those surveyed believe the organization’s culture differs from its overall culture.

the firm’s success is defined by a completely different set of metrics, one that the technical staff rarely understands or even cares about.

When I read this I had to agree with it. I too get usually that same feeling. It is easy for technical staff to get distracted by the latest and greatest changes in technology. Would you rather spend your day on finding more efficient tapes for the backup system, instead of evaluating the usefulness of the iPhone in your division? I know I’d prefer the novelty. Problem is, the firm’s success is defined by a completely different set of metrics, one that the technical staff rarely understands or even cares about.

If the IT culture is not aligned with the business (by the way, when are we going to recognize that IT is an integral part of the business?) then problems like us-versus-them attitude, unstructured process, or even worse, too much bureaucracy, where the process is so cumbersome that people avoid IT and nothing gets done), or a mentality that IT works in a firefighting mode, just rushing to find workarounds instead of fixing the root cause of the problems.

What to do about this? I can think of a few things that are effective to bridge this cultural gap:

1.  Exchange of ideas (Intrateam workshops)

Establish a routine of team collaboration and ideas exchange. For example, once a month have a guest from another team. Ask her to talk to your team about what she does, how she interacts with IT, and what are the most critical technical problems she faces it. This will help the IT staff to understand what others do in the firm, while providing other teams’ members to feel closer to the IT staff. Common understanding of each other’s roles and challenges improves the culture and breaks the barriers that may exist.

2.  Common goals, common metrics

Make sure the goals for the IT department are in alignment with the main business goals. Then, define metrics that help you lead your team to reach them. Constantly, remind your staff of the organization’s mission, and when approached by your staff to make decisions, think out loudly “How does this fit in our Mission?”

3.  Periodical reporting

Generate a monthly or quarterly report of activities and achievements by the IT department. Make sure each maps to at least one of the organization’s goals (otherwise, why did you do it?), and mention what divisions benefit from them. Make sure the heads of all divisions receive it. Ask them for feedback. Show them that IT is there to help, to be a team player. You can use a simple table like this:

2009-Q4 Activities Report, IT Division

4.  Targeted research

Make sure you allocate targeted research time for the IT staff. By targeted research I mean that you as the IT head approve the type of research projects that are started, and request the team member provides an explanation of how and why this is important for the corporation. They must understand that this research and its findings will be made available to the organization, and that maybe a brown-bag presentation will be requested.

Also, propose a couple of topics where you want to see some improvement (use the feedback you got from the divisions’ head when you sent them the periodical reports, and from the Suggestions box), and ask for volunteers to work on them.

By presenting the results to the rest of the organization, others will have the chance to see how creative and talented your staff is, and will start proposing more topics for research.

5.  More milestones, shorter projects

A common issue is that projects run for too long. The technical staff is, usually, looking for new things. By continuously working on the same thing for months in a row you increase the chance of people leaving. Work in conjunction with your Project Management Office – PMO (If you don’t have a PMO in place, contact Alec Satin, PMP right away), to approach long projects in a phased approach. When possible, allocate some break time between phases so the staff gets a chance to work on something else.

6.  Suggestions box

The ol’ Suggestions box is a valid tool, if used correctly. Setup an inbox where people can submit anything they want anonymously (to make sure it is anonymous, create a public accessible form that emails you the suggestion, contact me if you want to more details about how to accomplish this). Take every suggestion seriously, focus on what it is said/requested, and don’t waste time trying to figure out who sent it. This feedback is priceless, but people will only use it if they see you handle it correctly and positive changes come out of it.

Technorati Tags: Business Strategy, Culture, IT Strategy, Metrics, PMO

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If you want to read a book about how to create a message that sticks, one that people remember, then I strongly suggest you read the book Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

The authors, brothers Chip Heath & Dan Heath, present six principles that they have found are present in sticky ideas.

1. Simplicity: We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. This means identifying the core idea, and present it in its simplest of forms.
2. Unexpectedness: We need to be counterintuitive. [...] For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. [...] We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge -and then filling those gaps.
   
3. Concreteness: Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mena the same thig to everyone in our audience.
   
4. Credibility: Sticky ideas have t carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves.
   
5. Emotions: How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something.
   
6. Stories: How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories.

Conveniently (or maybe to make it more sticky), these six principles can be compacted in the acronym SUCCES: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story.

If you don’t have time to read it all, I recommend you read the Introduction, pages 3 to 24. In my case, I was hooked after the introduction, so I kept reading until I finished it; I couldn’t put it down.

Summarized the way I did, the book does not seem like anything of real value. However, the authors present these principles in a great way -which I was expecting, as the book is about effective communications. Great examples and tools should help the readers to come up with ways to improve their communication style in their daily activities.

I’ve used some of the tools and examples presented in the book, and I can testify that they do work.

Strongly recommended.

Technorati Tags: Book Review, Effective Communications, Made to Stick

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I’ve been sick for the last 5 days thus I haven’t been able to make it to the office this week. This reminds me to ask you: How well documented are your processes and procedures?

In the past few months, we’ve been working on making sure that every process and procedure is identified and its corresponding Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is created or updated.

Make sure that your SOPs are up to date and that there is at least an identified, trained backup for each function.

In IT organizations is very common to have a staff member or two that can do everything, and everything they do is stored in their heads. This increases risk for the organization. Make sure that your SOPs are up to date and that there is at least an identified, trained backup for each function. This includes the functions of the CIO and IT Directors.

So, are your SOPs up to date, indexed, and located in a place where they can be found by the backup personnel when needed?

Technorati Tags: Procedures, Processes

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As you may have noticed by now, I’m all for effective communication (and who isn’t?). It is an art and a science that CIOs and IT Managers must master.

As a leader, you must assure that people understand what you are asking and expecting from them. But you also need to make sure that colleagues and customers “get it” when presenting a new plan, project or strategy.

I found this article this morning, where the author recommends 10 Ways To Explain Things More Effectively.

I strongly agree with most of the points and the only concern I had was point #9. Why? Because I don’t think that using the concepts of Supersets and Subsets are that applicable to “normal” presentations, unless we are talking about software version, as explained.

My favorite tip was #7. I use that technique commonly. Analogies do help to drive the point home easier.

What do you think? Any point that you think is great or incorrect? Please let me know by adding a comment.

Technorati Tags: Effective Communications, IT Strategy

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Take a look at your organization’s Mission Statement (you do remember it, right?). If it meets three or more of these criteria then I honestly believe it is worthless:

1. It is longer than two phrases or one paragraph
2. It has more than 30 words
3. It is full of buzzwords (for more examples of buzzwords, see this list)
4. You can’t remember it
5. Neither can your staff

I guess these points make you realize what I believe makes a mission statement useful for the staff and the organization, but we will discuss that later.

What is a Mission Statement?

In many occasions (probably during the last 30 to 35 years) the industry has focused on defining What is the Mission Statement. It is commonly said that “A mission statement outlines what the company is now“, or that it is “A statement of purpose an organization is to carry out”, or even worse, The mission statement should be a clear and succinct representation of the enterprise’s purpose for existence. For more definitions, see Wikipedia, Google and BusinessPlans.

The best definition I’ve seen is “The Mission Statement is what the organization does now“.

Now, think of when was the last time somebody explained what is the Mission Statement useful for?

Probably never, right?

In plain English, the Mission Statement should guide the employees in every action they take. It should guide management’s decisions. It should also dictate what NOT to do.

Have you asked yourself this? In theory, the purpose of the Mission Statement is to provide the organization with an identity. In plain English, the Mission Statement should guide the employees in every action they take. It should guide management’s decisions. It should also dictate what NOT to do.

Let’s take a look at a couple of Mission Statements (I highlighted the buzzwords on bold):

1. FedEx

FedEx will produce superior financial returns for shareowners by providing high value-added supply chain, transportation, business and related information services through focused operating companies. Customer requirements will be met in the highest quality manner appropriate to each market segment served. FedEx  will strive to develop mutually rewarding relationships with its employees, partners and suppliers. Safety will be the first consideration in all operations. Corporate activities will be conducted to the highest ethical and professional standards.

2. Virgin Atlantic:

To grow a profitable airline…
Where people love to fly…
And where people love to work.

Now, let’s suppose you are the CIO for one of these two companies. Based on these Mission Statements, would you know how to act in every case that a new situation arises?

Assuming that you can even remember FedEx’s Mission Statement, the chances are that given its complexity, you wouldn’t even bother trying to see how a new decision would affect the company’s mission.

In the Virgin Atlantic’s case, it should be easier. If the decision does not make or maintain the company profitable, or it makes the flying experience not lovable anymore, or the environment for the employees gets affected, you will probably won’t move ahead. Thanks to its simplicity and clarity, the Mission Statement will tell you whether it is the right decision for the company.

Now that you have experienced this mental exercise, I’m hoping that you decide to go ahead now and revise your organization’s Mission Statement, to make sure it is not worthless but it also helps you guide your I.T. Department to better serve the organization.

Technorati Tags: IT Strategy, Mission, Mission Statement

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