j e s r u s h . c o m

A friend in IT recently asked me to explain cloud computing to them. It’s a complicated question because 1) personal cloud computing (think Sugar Sync, etc.) is very different from enterprise cloud computing (think Amazon S3, etc.) and 2) The vendors offering cloud services are offering really different products from each other.

I gave my friend the best summary which I could, but later I referred him to this old but excellent summary of the state of cloud computing. It has great great play-by-play on the offerings from each of the major vendors.

Things have shifted a little bit since then, but this is still the best summary I’ve seen on the web. And Amazon is still kickin’ everyone else’s butt with their simple image-based solution.

CIO.com has a good interview with IBM’s CIO Mark Hennessy, “Inside the New Big Blue.” Hennessy talks about global consolidation, virtualization, and web 2.0. However, my favorite part was this tidbit which Hennessy offered when asked how IBM’s new internal blogs, wikis, and collaboration tools:

CIO.com: What are you doing to help optimize the value of the social networking tools you’re using?

HENNESSY: I find it very important to try and understand the value of each of these different tools, and I do that in a number of ways. How many ideas are created by a particular tool? How many get sponsored by somebody that has a budget? How many are collaborated on? How many actually make it to market? What revenue is generated by those ideas? I have a set of tools now that I use to track the ideas and the innovations that come out of the different tools so that I can better align my investments to the tools that are driving the better and more innovative ideas. That’s something that I spend a lot of time with other CIOs around the world talking about — the ROI of social networking.

This is excellent stuff. I love hearing about a CIO who is A) Actively experimenting with edgy social networking tools in a traditional\conservative organization and B) Objectively trying to track the value of these things.

I love to study why some people are more successful and effective than others.  Over the years, I’ve noticed three specific habits commonly employed by effective people, and tried to integrate them into my own work life:

1) Weekly Status Reports. Every Friday send your boss a one page report summarizing your activities over the past week.  This is as much for you as it is for your boss.  It protects you from being over-assigned (they can see how busy you already are).  It prevents the, ‘you did not tell me about this’ situation.  It reminds them of everything you do and how valuable you are (esp. useful during downturns). And it ensures that you are staying on top of your tasks and not forgetting anything. I don’t actually do this every week, but I should, and I’m trying to become more consistent.

2) Follow up every day.   At 4:30pm every day, a reminder automatically pops up on my screen: “Follow up!  Tie up all the loose ends!”  I stop what I’m doing and spend the last 30 minutes of the day doing exactly that.  Reviewing what I did and did not accomplish today.  Notifying others as to the state of those tasks.  Updating calendars and todo lists with anything that came up.

3) Over-prepare –Don’t waste people’s time.  Before you meet with someone (in a professional capacity), spend a few minutes asking some simple questions:  What does this person want to accomplish?  What questions could they conceivably ask me?  Do they have sufficient control and visibility to feel comfortable and make wise decisions?  Send out an agenda beforehand (and ask for comments).  Take meeting notes and send them out immediately afterward to detect any misunderstandings.  This habit is especially important when meeting or working with people over your pay grade.

It’s amazing how far these three little practices go towards making you more competent, organized, and reliable.  I recommend them to everyone.

Cornelius Fitchner has put together another great episode over at the project management podcast, this one is an interview with quality expert Stacy Goff.  Goff has some great insights into how and why project quality suffers and what PMs can do about it.

My favorite nugget came when Fitchner asked Goff whether good processes are the key to good quality.  Goff asked Fitchner to imagine a project where the goal was to bake a great cake.  A fantastic cake recipie was located for the endeavor… it was clear, descriptive, straightforward and produced consistently excellent results.  In other words, the process was a very good one.  However when the cake was actually made, the cook had to use a cheap chocolate because it was the only thing locally available.  They had to use a hand mixer (poor aeration) since there was no counter-top unit in the kitchen.  They followed the process word for word, but the end result was of mediocore quality.

I love this example because it illustrates the need for holistic quality management: Even the best process fails when the inputs are off.

Mark Cuban — billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks — has a fascinating contest going on over at his blog. Apparently he wants to help stimulate the economy, so he’s openly taking business plan ideas for new startups. If he likes the idea, he’s willing to fund it immediately.

What’s the catch? You have to post your biz idea publicly where it can be copied and stolen. Mark actually wants it to be copied and stolen, he wants good ideas to take off and begin generating jobs and product. The other major caveat is that the business must break even within 60 days!

Hundreds of clever ideas have already been submitted. I added four ideas here.

Meanwhile, Seth Godin and friends were inspired by the contest to come up with 999 business ideas, and they’re actually pretty good! Of course, ideas are easy, it’s the execution which matters.

I wanted to share a handy little tool which I picked up awhile back: The PIECES framework. This short checklist is simply a list of things to think/worry about when designing, building, or implementing a system or application.

I suppose there are a lot of frameworks and checklists floating around out there, but this one happens to be really good. I use it not only for design, but also for change management to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. I have no idea who created it, but I’m forever in their debt!

Performance
   -Throughput
   -Response Time
Information (and Data)
   -Outputs
      +Lack of any information
      +Lack of necessary information
      +Lack of relevant information
      +Too much information – information overload
      +Information that is not in a useful format
      +Information that is not accurate
      +Information that is difficult to produce
      +Information that is not timely to its subsequent use
   -Inputs
      +Data is not captured
      +Data is not captured in time to be useful
      +Data is not accurately captured – contains errors
      +Data is difficult to capture
      +Data us captured redundantly – same data is captured more than once
      +Too much data is captured
      +Illegal data is captured
   -Stored Data
      +Data is stored redundantly in multiple files and/or databases
      +Stored data is not accurate
      +Data is not secure from accident or vandalism
      +Data is not well organized
      +Data is not flexible – cant meet new info needs from stored data
      +Data is not accessible
Economics
   -Costs
      +Costs are unknown
      +Costs are untraceable
      +Costs are too high
   -Profits
      +New markets can be explored
      +Current marketing can be improved
Control (and Security)
   -Too little security or control
      +Input data is not adequately edited
      +Crimes (e.g. fraud, embezzlement) can be committed against data
      +Ethics are breached: data or info gets to unauthorized people
      +Redundantly stored data is inconsistent in different files or databases
      +Data privacy regulations or guidelines are being (or can be) violated
      +Processing errors are occurring (people, machines, or software)
      +Decision- making errors are occurring
   -Too much control or security
      +Bureaucratic red tape slows the system
      +Controls inconvenience customers or employees
      +Excessive controls cause processing delays
Efficiency
   -People, machines, or computers waste time
      +Data is redundantly input or copied
      +Data is redundantly processed
      +Information is redundantly generated
   -People, machines, or computers waste materials and suppliers
      +Effort required for tasks is excessive
      +Materials required for tasks is excessive
Service
   -The system produces inaccurate results
   -The system produces inconsistent results
   -The system produces unreliable results
   -The system is not easy to learn
   -The system is not easy to use
   -The system is awkward to use
   -The system is inflexible to new or exceptional situations
   -The system is inflexible to change
   -The system is incompatible with other systems
   -The system is not coordinated with other systems

Patty Azzarello — career mentor extraordinaire — has a great post this week on the issue of liking your job. Does it really matter whether you like your job? And more importantly, if not, what can you do about it?

As usual, her advice is on target. If you don’t like your job, you need to “tune it” over time:

Imagine two different project managers in this same situation, with two different sets of gifts and dislikes. (Notice how the content of the business and the technology itself, don’t factor into either the problem or the solution.)

Person #1: You have a gift for analysis, and are a good writer. You do not like giving presentations or arguing with people. You hate your job because you have to deal with annoying people all the time.

Person #2: You have a gift for empathy and engaging and motivating people. You are not very detail oriented, and do not care to publish documents. You hate your job because you are stuck dealing with detailed project plans, and technology issues.

Tune your job to suit your strengths, and minimize your dislikes.

Person #1: Think about negotiating with your manager over time to take on a broader role to support all the project managers by improving the overall process, creating templates and workflows, managing data, etc. Build on your analysis and writing strengths, spend less time fighting dragons, and add real value to the business by creating infrastructure, process, and efficiencies.

Person #2: Ask for new projects that span organizations, need publicity, and have within them, more technical people and support you can rely on. Build on your people strengths, spend less time in the weeds, and help the business achieve significant outcomes on the biggest, messiest programs, that require lot’s of hand-holding and finesse with people.

People who like their jobs work harder so it benefits the organization as well!

CIO has a good Harvard Business Review article about people transitioning into leadership roles. The most interesting part is Van Buren’s response to the question of, ‘What is the most common mistake new leaders make?’

Almost universally, we saw the one mistake that seems most pernicious is having an excessive focus on details. It’s important for managers to know the ins and outs of the projects they may be managing, but if it becomes excessive, they lose sight of the bigger picture of what’s going on in the organization, and they lose the ability to prioritize. The urgent often outweighs the important. This is often true of IT leaders; heavy emphasis on details can be their greatest weakness. Given the highly detail-oriented nature of IT work, it’s very hard not to be constantly supervising.

How true. I’m regularly amazed by the inappropriately high level of interest which organizational leaders take in operational details. I think much of this stems from simple distrust: Leaders don’t trust their teams to properly execute the work. Occasionally this distrust might be truly justified, but usually it’s just paranoia and micromanagement.

Scott Staples as a nice article over at CIO.com about revisiting outsourcing arrangements to save additional money. My favorite point:

People-based outsourcing contracts are the equivalent of paying rent. The rent is due each month regardless of use. In a “rental agreement” there is no mechanism or incentive to drive productivity improvements, efficiencies, higher-value-add-services, faster time-to-market, and deeper cost cutting efforts.

Amen.

Janet Rae-Dupree has a good article over at the NY Times about the problems of modern health care and the promise of integrated technology. She writes:

Two main causes of the system’s ills are century-old business models, for the general hospital and the physician’s practice, both of which are based on treating illness, not promoting wellness. Hospitals and doctors are paid by insurers and the government for the health care equivalent of piecework: hospitals profit from full beds and doctors profit from repeat visits. There is no financial incentive to keep patients healthy.

But technology is changing that.

Some health care suppliers have set up fixed-fee integrated systems, and accept monthly payments from members in exchange for a promise of cradle-to-grave health care. Each usually also charges a small co-payment for treatment. Routine cases are handled through lower-cost facilities, leaving more complicated cases to higher-cost hospitals and specialists. Such systems include Kaiser Permanente, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, the Mayo Clinic, the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and the Veterans Health Administration.

By creating a continuum of care that follows patients wherever they go within an integrated system, says the Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt, care providers can stay on top of what preventive measures and therapies are most effective. Tests aren’t needlessly duplicated, competing medications aren’t prescribed by different doctors, and everyone knows what therapies a patient has received. As a result, integrated systems like Kaiser’s provide 22 percent greater cost efficiency than competing systems, according to a 2007 study by Hewitt Associates.

Beautiful. The bones of KP’s system is Epic.

PowerPoint — originally a mac application — was purchased by Microsoft in the late 80’s or early 90’s and reached its tipping point around 1993. It became ubiquitous in schools and businesses and it wasn’t long before the term ‘death by Powerpoint’ entered the common vocabulary.

The problem with Powerpoint is that people use it as a kind of big screen word document. They fill the slides with bullet points and company logos. The text closely follows the presenter’s spoken word.

However research has consistently shown that it is much more difficult to understand information being communicated audibly and in writing at the same time (Patty, Anna [2007]. Researcher points finger at Powerpoint. Sydney Morning Herald).

Enter Pecha-Kucha, a valiant attempt to restore order to the presentation world. Pecha-Kucha is a worldwide movement started in the far east, it involves giving presentations in a very particular format: 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds (and automatically advanced). It’s kind of like Haiku for Toastmasters.

The effect of Pecha-Kucha, is that it forces you to tell a story verbally, and support it (rather than mirror it) with your slides. Effectively, the slides end up being pictures or illustrations with little or no text. They reinforce (rather than replace) what the speaker is saying with sticky, creative images that stay with you after the presentation.

The Pecha-Kucha folks aren’t saying that all business presentations should be seven minutes or less, but they are saying that most of us have the whole Powerpoint thing backwards.

Find a Pecha-Kucha gathering near you and get some practice!