The Internal IT Salesman

One of the hardest things is to tell the world (or at least the internal management) what you have done and what you are doing. Hard in two senses, one in finding time to break away from the 'doing' and secondly putting the story together in 'non IT' or business speak.
We are all doing some good and innovative projects as well as keeping the ‘lights on’ but if nobody knows about them, then it can be in vain. Lack of awareness doesn’t enhance our reputation and there is a danger that we are just seen as a support department rather than a strategic partner.
Of course there is no one solution and it needs many different approaches and constant attention.
One method I am trying is what I call the salesman’s approach (that is pre PowerPoint!)
This is based on an A4 landscape ring binder easel. (This sits on the desk and allows you to flip over A4 sheets.)
Now you need to develop an elevator speech on paper to put into business language what you have done, what you are doing and the road map going forward.
You should be able to talk to this for no more than 15 minutes.
Run it against a friendly non IT manager and if all goes well, set up a series of meetings with senior and middle managers, arrive with your A4 book, flip it open on the desk and go through the pitch.
This should help to ensure people know what is happening and they will all get the same message plus you may get some useful feedback as well.

Top things in managing an IT department - part 7

I am now pushing on with this series and have just about got to the magic 50 so we are nearly there.
The next 6 things are numbers 37-42 and again they are not necessarily in any order of importance. As always please feedback things that I have missed or just let me know your thoughts.

37. Succession planning
No matter how good you are at looking after your staff people will leave and it is important that you think about who would take over. Sometimes you just have to go external to bring in the right experience but that shouldn’t be the plan. You should plan to have somebody moving towards the ability to take over a position if the current incumbent leaves. Yes there is a danger that you train people and then they leave because the position isn’t available when they feel ready for the next career move but that is better than having no people coming up within the organisation.

38. Production environment
Keep it safe. Build the moat! Make sure your production environment is separated from the test environment and protect it well with technology and process. Also protect it from attack both deliberate and accidental.

39. Testing
Test, test and test again. Testing is the key to a successful implementation. There is a whole career to be made in testing and it is a vast subject with tiers of testing types from ‘unit’ to full ‘integration’ testing and also lots of software to automate the process. Some people will see it as overkill but ignore them and insist on a test plan that is rigorously followed. It will pay off.

40. Innovate
Keep ahead of the game (and the competition). Encourage new ideas from the business and from IT. Create an Ideas bank so it is easy for people to define their thoughts. Link it from the Intranet. Develop a new product development process to make sure that ideas get reviewed and there is feedback to the contributor. Also it is important to identify the need and the value of the idea. Try to get some Research and Development funds in the budget.

41.Push for Data Management
Data is the lifeblood of many organisations but it is not often looked after very well.
Define the data owners and push for the physical stewardship of data to ensure its coherence, availability and accuracy.
Give them the tools to audit and manage the data. Get them involved in system change, data migration, system modifications and the data impact of those events. Build the validation at the gateways and try to keep the rubbish out!

42. Organisational awareness
This is a bit more sophisticated than item 17 where we talked about the customer touch points. That was more specific to the IT service.
Organisational awareness is a bit fluffier but is essential to the well being of what is achieved in IT.
This is about understanding the culture of the organisation so you can swim with the tide. It is about being politically aware of who are the real decision makers and influencers; it is about networking with those people. Create yourself a stakeholder map of the business and use it to your advantage. You and your organisation will be stronger for it.

Digital Rights Management DRM

Digital Rights Management (DRM)
“A system for protecting the copyright of digital data by enabling secure distribution and/or disabling illegal distribution of the data. Typically, a DRM system protects intellectual property by either enctypting the data so that it can only be accessed by authorized users or marking the content with a watermark or similar method so that the content can not be freely distributed.”

Interesting subject when you start to go into it.
I had read about it but hadn’t taken much notice until a conversation I had with someone made me dig a bit deeper.
The worry was that someone could send a document with DRM embedded that we would store and it would then be unreadable at a later date due to a deletion or expiry date in the DRM setting.
It may not be quite that bad as yet because I understand that you need to be registered and have to accept the DRM policy.
But there might be a need for some user awareness here as I am not sure that a user couldn’t accept a DRM document by registering their email address and accepting the policy without us knowing about it.
There seems to be 5 players in this market, Microsoft, Adobe, EMC, Oracle and Liquid M/C.
If anybody has any more information or can provide more clarification, would be worth sharing otherwise it is one to watch particularly in the Vista and beyond territory.

Predictions 2008

My predictions for 2008 are based on the background that companies are looking ahead (and behind them!) in order to ensure they are positioned in an ever competitive and changing market place with still an uncertainty on how some future scenarios may pan out. The Triple Crown of increased profit, improved efficiency and added value remains the goal for a lot of companies.
On that basis I believe that Business Intelligence software will continue to grow in importance as companies try to understand their business in more depth, BPM (business Process Management) software will figure in order to drive efficiency. There is also likely to be more moves towards the less paper office both for efficiency, security and the new mantra of being ‘green’ so we will see increased integrated scanning solutions. Within IT departments, server virtualisation will continue apace with new players such as Microsoft challenging the VMware dominance. Collaboration software such as Microsoft’s Groove will start to be considered as a way to add value with clients and improved mobility for people will be introduced with more services available via handheld or remote devices (Blackberry will still dominate over Microsoft), IP telephony and WiFi. Improved web sites using Web 2.0 will start to emerge as differentiators in the market place.
Customers will increase their demands for efficiency pushing e-billing and electronic communication up the priority list. E-billing will present a major challenge with increased costs due to lack of standardisation at the delivery point.
Sharepoint will still be high on the agenda but the reality will kick in as to what can actually be achieved. Vista will be reviewed but risk adverse sectors will put it back to 2009 except for the brave few! Office 2007 will follow a similar route. Concerns such as DRM (Digital Rights Management) and how that will impact records management and elctronic document sharing will start to be debated.

A-Z of Leadership Behaviours

Attending a recent course on complex projects we discussed the characteristics of a successful leader and came up with an A-Z list (Had to think hard on X and Z!). On returning home I thought I would try to recreate it just for a bit of fun. Some of the key things for me are taking Responsibility, being a Mentor to your team, Honesty (telling it how it is and doing it early (Don’t hide from problems no matter how difficult)), Supportive to the team and individuals and Encouraging (tell them when it’s good).
Here is the list. Am sure you can add a few more!

A - Assertive, Approachable, Accountable
B - Balanced, Brave
C - Creative, Coherent, Curious
D - Decisive, Delegating
E - Enthusiastic, Empowering, Encouraging
F - Focussed, Flexible
G - Goal-Orientated, Governing
H - Honest, Helpful, Happy
I - Intuitive, Intelligent
J - Just
K - Knowledgeable
L - Listener, Lawful
M - Motivational, Mindful, Mentor
N - Nurturing, Noble
O - Objective, Open, Opportunist
P - Perceptive, Progressive, Personable
Q - Questioning
R - Reliable, rational
S - Self motivating, Strategist
T - Trustworthy, Thinker
U - Understanding
V - Versatile, Venerable
W - Willing, Wise
X - Xenophilous
Y - Yearning
Z - Zealous

Business Relationship Managers

I have mentioned before the need to align to the business. It is very important that IT understands the business that we work for and also for them to understand us. I don’t think IT is very good at this but it is important to a successful relationship and a profitable business.

IT can deliver business benefit, without a doubt, but to help in this we do need to understand what makes the business and its clients tick, their drivers and their issues.
One way of achieving this is the role of a Business Relationship Manager (BRM) assigned to specific areas of the business. Larger companies may have the luxury of being able to fund this as a full time role. They are often called Account Managers and sometimes the role is coupled with project management responsibilities.
But in smaller companies this cannot be justified and certainly not until it has proved a value.

One way around the lack of available headcount is to double the role up with existing ones. By this I mean giving each existing IT Manager/ Senior Team leader or other responsible person the additional role of Business Relationship Manager (BRM) for one or more areas.

The BRM would need to allocate some time, within their assigned area(s), getting to know the people and the work they do.

In particular their goal would be to do the following:-
- Relate IT Strategy, direction, projects, and issues to their business area
- Relate the business plan, direction, issues, concerns and needs of their business area back to the IT group.
- Create visibility in the business area
- Identify and meet regularly with key stakeholders in their area. these stakeholders should be a mix of key managers but also influential administration staff.

Hopefully this approach will be a two way benefit with both sides having more knowledge and respect for each other and maybe some new business benefits emerging.

The AKAN Plan

AKAN who?
The Akan are an ancient African tribe. The Akan calendar is based on what the Akan call 'forty days’. Close examination of the cycle reveals forty-two different days, with the forty-third being the same as the first. (So it has inbuilt contingency!)

The objective of the plan is to manage what is to be achieved over the next 40 working days (basically the next two months) so as to get some focus.
The plan I have devised covers high level project status, Tasks and Strategic items. It details what is going to be delivered, when and by whom. We give the projects a risk rating within 1 to 5 based on likelihood of achieving the delivery.

What and when is committed to by the owner and the plan is shared across the department and reviewed regularly. It doesn't replace detailed programme plan or project reviews but gives a higher level view of what is happening.

It's a sort of I Can AKAN.!