The “New” Management Training for $.99 ($4.99 in HD)

1/30/2012 Contributor - Christopher Ivens, PDS, Senior Project Manager

In our house, thanks to my 5-year old, Angry Birds is known as “the chicken game.”  Like for all working parents, screen time is a curse and a blessing, and along with excerpts of the Lion King movies on YouTube, Angry Birds is in the regular rotation.

So…why do I often give in and let my son play “the chicken game” when he asks?

First, because it is fun and I like to play too.  Second, and I tell myself “most importantly,” it teaches lessons that will serve him well in life.  In fact, it is pretty good management training.  The best managers I’ve had have recognized talents and strengths among their team and used team members in ways that allowed themselves to be most successful.

The right bird for the job

Like people, each angry bird has a specific talent set.  Using a yellow bird to break glass is a waste of talent (yellow birds are good at breaking wood; use the blue birds for glass).  People are like that, too.  Some are strong public speakers or good team leads and some are best left alone to get their work done.  Strong managers will recognize each person’s individual talents and assign those responsibilities and tasks that allow them to use their talent set to maximize their personal contribution and potential for success.

You go to war with the army you have—not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

The birds you get are the birds you have to use (unless you purchase the mighty eagle, but that’s analogous to hiring a hot-shot consultant).  Donald Rumsfeld knew that your team of Angry Birds or people might not be the optimal team for the job, but that you need to make the best of what you have.  This is accomplished by knowing and using your team members based on their individual talents (see above).

Among a strong manager’s talent set is the ability to achieve desired outcomes by figuring out how to use each team members individual skill sets.

All problems have a solution

Some problems are hard.  Some are very hard.  But most real-world problems have solutions.  You might need to be creative in how you attack the problem; either in the approach or in the way you leverage your team’s resources.  Hard problems are more satisfying and provide more reusable results than do easy problems.

Feedback is instructive

Some say success is a lousy teacher, but that may be only when success/failure is binary.  Since success in Angry Birds is graded – earning one to three stars and high score notification - success can teach, and motivate.  Good managers provide deeper, more instructive praise than a simple “good job.”

Is my son learning these lessons?  Hopefully some are sinking in and will serve him well later in life.  For now, I know he is at least having fun.

Thank you 2011 and Nice to Meet You 2012

12/29/2011 Contributor: Jim Brown, PDS, Office of the CTO, Technologist

Here it is, last week of the year.  It’s time to sum it up and look to next year.  From my point of view, 2011 has been a very successful year.  Both personally and in the work PDS is doing.  The measure of success that I am using is the definition proposed by Earl Nightingale more than 50 years ago in his “The Strangest Secret“:  “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

Most of my time at home is aimed towards helping my children grow up to be happy, healthy, and productive people in their community.  This is a task I share equally with my wife and is heavily influenced by their school, church and activities we all pursue together.  I feel we’ve made great progress towards that goal this year.

From a PDS standpoint – this year has been a full step forward in the launch of our multi-year strategy to bring greater value to our client partners and their communities.  In September, we announced the launching of our network of Cloud Extension Centers, making real our intent to bring the Cloud to our partners (rather than our partners having to go to the cloud).  As we go through the development phase of the project and face the day-to-day challenges square on, I do get a feeling of great satisfaction coming from the joy of being something, knowing we are advancing – progressively realizing our worthy ideal.

The confirmation from our clients and vendor partners that we are on the correct path is fueling tremendous momentum.

So, here we are – the end of the year.  And so, on to 2012.  What will we bring to 2012?  PDS has had the same core values throughout our company history.  As we go out about our business, we consistently redirect our focus by asking the right questions of ourselves and our partners:

- How can we help IT become more strategic?  To communicate better with the business, deliver quicker on what the business is going to need, sometimes just as the business understands what their needs are.

- How can we help you compete in your industry?   Being able to help answer that requires us to understand business drivers, industry trends, and other factors so we can make sure that our solutions are really fitting what you really need.

- How will this improve end user satisfaction?  We like to tie things directly back to the clinic, the floor, the classroom, the cube where applications are being used, which is what we see as being the heart of what IT does – enable businesses and users through applications and data.

- And, doing the above three things right, how can we do them in a way that we reduce the overall cost of providing services for the business – reducing the overall TCO for IT?

What are the problems our clients are facing now?  It varies by industry, but I think at the core there several trends to be listed:

1. Agility & Demand – How to change to meet the unrelenting demand for quick solutions to business problems?  How to satisfy demand for greater choice?

2. Value - How to be transparent and measure value?  The question or perspective varies – but it really comes down to how well is IT meeting the needs of its customers and how well do their customers understand what IT does, how it does it and why it costs what it costs.

3. Innovation & Solutions – How to reduce costs of supporting IT so investments can be directed to solving business problems?

4. Efficiency - How and where to increase operational efficiency?

2012 Year of Integration

Keeping these in mind, when I think about 2012, I believe that we will make more progress towards our goal, make more progress this year through integration.  I believe 2012 is going to be a year where the lines between IT and the business rapidly dissolve, where cross-functional teams led by either business or IT work together to solve problems.

Integration = Performance

When a system needs greater performance, when performance is not good enough, greater integration is needed.   Most of our clients have a strong desire for developing effective teams and improving project results, but most have serious barriers to working together.  I think that some of it can be traced back to a fundamental conflict between efficiency and effectiveness that goes like this:  Both IT and business have cultures of making the most efficient use of each other’s time, with an emphasis on saving costs.  This makes sense from an operations stand point – we have to be efficient with resources as we go about our daily business. (Side note:  Much of this type of efficiency can be accomplished with automation - and in IT, as funny as this might sound – we have a long way to go with automation of these types of tasks.)  However, with project work, if you try to be efficient up front and your emphasis is on not wasting resources you will not be successful.

Instead, an emphasis on communicating, innovating and co-creating should be your primary focus.  Especially for transformational type of projects – the ultimate view of efficiency should be adjusted to take in a much longer horizon.  Over the long haul, it is very inefficient to save time up front by running through requirements quickly, being efficient on resources while you are trying to explore new territory.  There are better ways to be efficient or good stewards of resources such as having a more gated, elaborative process for project work.

…Sorry… got lost on the soapbox there.

So for 2012, I believe an emphasis on integration and automation will be worthwhile:

- Integration of your project teams and business operational groups so that they can communicate, collaborate and enable their community to progressively realize their worthy ideal.

- Automation for efficiency on those tasks where IT is only getting in the way or not adding value to their own team or their customers.

So, thank you 2011 and here’s to 2012!  Please take time early on and build relationships, decide or reaffirm what your worthy ideal is, pursue that with a whole heart and commit to automating the rest.

Happy Holidays and see you Next Year!

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To view more of Jim Brown’s blog posts, visit the IT Leadership archive.

Justifying Technology Investments: Running a Project for Success | Part 4 of 5

12/20/2011 Guest Contributor: Richard D. Janezic, TBG Security, VP Sales, Marketing & Business Development

In part 1 of this series, we discussed the mindset of senior executives for evaluating and approving requests for capital expenditures.  In part 2, we looked at the business case as a document to communicate and justify the need and value of change and in part 3, I spoke to the effects of the investment on the organization.

In part 4, we will discuss challenges and strategies for running and leading a successful project. 

Part 4: Running a Project for Success

Your business case made performance promises to your executive team and it is those promises that they purchased:  improved levels of operational and financial performance.  It is now your responsibility to assure this promise is delivered.

Undoubtedly, you will run into challenges.  Each year, there are reports of the frequency and costs of IT and IT related projects that fail.  While the risks of investments not performing as expected are a business reality, higher levels of scrutiny, inspection and analysis are applied when business cycles are flat or weak (as we are now experiencing).  Furthermore, elements including news articles of IT failures and publications such as “IT Doesn’t Matter” by Nicholas Carr, add to executive concern and skepticism.  Moreover, change is difficult.  Many IT projects are quite complicated, requiring care and quality in planning, expertise and business and technical integration.  What strategies can you use to avoid failure and ensure success?

While each project, team and situation is unique, there are common themes and actions that can help. 

Three Themes of Failure

An obvious strategy in success is to avoid failure.  When people refer to project failure, what are they actually describing?  Your business case made three important promises: benefits, time and cost.  A missed expectation in any of these can be considered a failure that affects the entire project.  Missed expectations can include:

- not delivering the promised improvements in performance.

- not meeting the time or delivery date commitments .

- not meeting the cost commitments made in your business case.

Your objective to achieve project success will be to assure that you meet or exceed these three promises.

Strategies for Success

Every project is unique, so your strategy for leading and managing a successful project should begin with a realistic, fact-based inventory and assessment of your objectives, assets and risks.  The following are elements and strategies to consider as you develop and manage your plan for success:

- It’s About the Business, Not the Technology  Aside from your technical team, most executives are less concerned with your technology choices, and more concerned about how well your choices support the business.  A technical success without a business success can be considered a project failure.  Make sure that your project and your team are focused on the correct objectives – making the business better.

- Right Recipe  Project methodology is a “recipe” for achieving a desired, successful outcome.  Most popular methodologies can be successful, but the choice of method has no inherent magic.  As you make your choice of method, consider your team’s ability and readiness to follow it, its fitness for your particular project, your ability to use it successfully and how well it addresses the necessary risks and requirements.

- Communication  Effective communication with your project team and executive project sponsors is a crucial strategy for any project; particularly for high cost and/or high risk projects.  When the news is bad, communicate it quickly and develop a prompt “get-well plan” to resolve it.  When the news is good, celebrate it and use the success to keep the team focused and back to work.

- Team  Carefully select your team members based on capability, communication skills, commitment and chemistry.  A failure in any of these elements can put your project at peril quickly yet quietly.  You must be highly aware and well engaged to understand if and when there is a problem and also be ready and willing to act if and when change is necessary.

- Vendor Support  If vendors (hardware, software and/or services) are part of your project, assure they are as committed to success as you and your organization.  They are, by extension, members of your team and should be held to the same expectations of capability, communication skills, commitment and chemistry.  Review the vendors before you select them and hold them accountable after you have them as a member of your delivery team.

- Get (and keep) the Business on Your Team  As mentioned earlier, projects are approved and delivered because they help the business perform better.  Select members of the business as part of your project team to ensure that your strategies, actions and “in-flight” results are in sync with the needs and intentions of the business.  This can help assure that your results will be effectively socialized and supported outside of the project team to sponsors and senior executives.

- Get It Right Before You Get It Great  As professionals, we have pride in our work, and want to do the best job possible.  It’s important your team understands that cost, performance and meeting the commitments on time are paramount and must be achieved before spending precious time improving.  Meeting objectives can give your team the necessary “air cover” for additional time, resources or capital to make desirable project improvements.

Part 5

In the final segment of this 5-part series, we’ll examine all of the elements together and consider the various interactions to help you not just develop a winning business case, but deliver a project that matches what you promised to your executive team.

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Richard Janezic is VP Sales, Marketing and Business Development for Boston-based TBG Security. Rick has worked with and for organizations from startup stage to Fortune® 500 enterprises, and has held senior leadership roles in general management, sales, marketing and technology. His focus is on helping organizations improve competitiveness through business and technology change and transformation. You can follow his 5-part blog series “Justifying Technology Investments” here.  Rick is also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Justifying Technology Investments: Making a winning business case to senior executives | Part 3 of 5

12/1/2011 Guest Contributor: Richard D. Janezic, TBG Security, VP Sales, Marketing & Business Development

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the mindset of senior executives regarding evaluating and approving requests for capital expenditures.  In Part 2, we discussed the business case as important documents for communicating, and more importantly, justifying and proving the need and value of change.  In Part 3, we will examine the effects of the investment on the organization.

Part 3: Effects of an Investment

As a brief review, recall that executives make financial investments (spend money) to achieve desired financial results (make money and or save money).  This applies to technology investments as well as other capital investments.

Turn Potential and Promises into Dollars and Deliverable Performance

It’s worth noting that for technology expenditures, senior executives often discount or ignore technological merits and advantages unless those merits can be converted into defensible and measurable financial advantages.  If they are not clearly translated to dollars in the business case, they are likely to not be considered for “counting” in financial analysis.  For this reason, investments that may be “neat,” “cool,” “cutting edge” or “next generation” to the technology team may not be approved by the executive team if they are not linked and related into specific financial, strategic, risk and operational advantages.  Further, executives measure and consider investments and initiatives in terms of how likely they will cover costs and help the business become better (stronger, faster, less error prone, etc), not how they could or may perform.

A wealth of models exist that can help envision and manage the process of bringing new investments and initiatives into an organization.  One useful process model is a 4-stage process: Think, Spend, Change and Run. Let’s briefly examine each stage.

Think

The Think stage considers if there is a need for change.  It involves elements including: understanding and testing that there is a problem; validating the true source(s) of problem; validating that the problem is worth solving; evaluating solutions and alternatives; building the business case.  Note that this stage is not without cost.  It can be long in duration and distract team
members from other important activities; as the Think effort costs the organization time, capital and attention.

Spend

The Spend stage occurs once executives have considered and provided approval for the initiative and have committed the resources required for success (people, capital, etc).  This is when the fun – and the work – begins in earnest.

Change

The Change stage is typically the most complicated.  It involves additional Think time for activities and efforts such as planning, process changes and improvements, configuration, integration, training, customization and communications.  The Change stage also carries the greatest organizational risk.  Change is difficult, not just in the technical aspects, but in the organizational pivoting and resistance to change.  If the initial Think stages were well conceived, evaluated, validated and communicated, the risks of executing Change can be reduced.

Run

The Run stage is when the Think, Spend and Change stages finally come together and begin contributing to improve operational and financial performance (as was suggested and illustrated promised in the business case).  Up to the Run stage, all of the effort has been expense.  If the business case was correct, the choice was appropriate, and the Change process has been accomplished as planned, the Run phase will begin to deliver the expected benefits back to the organization.

Chart 1 provides a graphical representation of an investment in action:

Figure 1.  Typical investment project, financial view (graphical representation)

The blue line represents the “target” metric – the measurement of the business (which could be productivity, profitability, reliability, etc) which is problematic or targeted for improvement.  NOTE: the target metric shows a degradation over time, which can relate to degrading performance, or performance or cost level which is inadequate to remain competitive in the market.  The red line represents those activities in which the investment is in a loss position and the green line is how the investment performs once the Think, Spend and Change stages are paid for and the Run operation begins to produce value to the business in excess of the target metric.

This chart is a generalization but is a helpful model to view how executives “see” an investment project.  One company may include elements in a project that another company may ignore.  Each project will have its unique characteristics.  As with a vehicle’s fuel efficiency, your mileage may vary.

Part 4

In the fourth part of this 5-part series, we will examine the challenges and opportunities of running an investment project, including the steps and strategies required to assure your business case matches the investment performance.

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Richard Janezic is VP Sales, Marketing and Business Development for Boston-based TBG Security. Rick has worked with and for organizations from startup stage to Fortune® 500 enterprises, and has held senior leadership roles in general management, sales, marketing and technology. His focus is on helping organizations improve competitiveness through business and technology change and transformation. You can follow his 5-part blog series “Justifying Technology Investments” here.  Rick is also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Justifying Technology Investments: Making a winning business case to senior executives | Part 2 of 5

11/3/2011 Guest Contributor: Richard D. Janezic, TBG Security, VP Sales, Marketing & Business Development

In the first part of this series, we discussed how senior executives consider, evaluate and approve requests for capital expenditures.  In part two of the series, we’ll explore a key document to communicate the need for change: the business case.

Part 2: An Introduction to the Business Case

Every project that gets approved in an organization will require some level of review and approval.  Small, fast, low cost and low risk projects may require nothing more than a hallway conversation to get a “green light” to proceed.  As the size, time, complexity, resource and capital requirements of a project increase, a greater level of consideration and scrutiny will be used by your organization before approval.

Depending on the size and sophistication of your organization, and the size of your proposed project, a document called a business case may be required.  Even if your organization’s request for capital approval process does not require a business case, or if the size of your request does not exceed a certain threshold, understanding the business case, how and why it is constructed, and its value in executive decision making will help you be more effective in communicating the project and its rationale with your executive team.

Briefly, a business case is a document that answers the question of “why change.” It tells a story of conditions that exist in an organization that are not adequate (for the moment, let’s call them the “problem”), or not meeting expectations and requirements, and thereby are preventing the business from achieving a desired level of success either now, or in the future, or both.

Overview of the business and defining “the problem”

The business case has a key mission: provide and explain the “case” for change.  The case can include items such as a brief background of the operation that has a problem to be solved.  Please note that a case for change could be an item that is a) absent or non-existent, b) present, but not well functioning, c)  an improvement to the existing manner of performing the function.  Please also note that this case for change can be offensive or defensive in nature.  The proposed change can be to capture or enable new opportunities that the business was not fulfilling (offensive, as in scoring more points) or, it can be to prevent or lessen problems or challenges (defensive, as in avoiding or reducing cost, risk, or time).  The “case” is a rational, fact-based set of reasons that provide evidence that supports the need for change, and, summarizes how the change will improve the business such that the executives understand the need and the reasons to approve the project.

Causes and Effects

The overview section is, in essence, an expanded view of an executive summary.  If your executive team agrees with your assessment of the problem and its significance for your organization (in other words, that it is a problem worth solving), they will want to know what the causes, reasons, and effects of the problem.  This section explains the magnitude of the problem and its effect on organizational performance (offensively, defensively, or perhaps both).  The foundations section should help your executive team answer in their minds two questions:

1. How do you know this matter is a problem?

2. How do you know it is a problem worth solving?

This will be one of the “heavy lifting” sections in which you will have to do some homework.  You’ll need to discover, validate, and be ready to prove your data and analyses are correct.  The current costs, projected future costs, risks, performance and constraints of the current situation (sometimes referred to as the “as is” state) should be among the facts contained in this section.

If your business case is more offensive in nature (that is, what your proposed change will enable your team or organization to do or accomplish that it does not currently do), you will likely have even more homework. If you’re attempting to capture new markets or clients, you will need to assess and validate your beliefs about probability of matters such as acceptance, risk of acceptance/rejection, sensitivity testing – those things that could affect (particularly if they are dramatic changes) your estimates.

Options

Once you can convey a clear definition of the problem, and you can specifically outline and explain the causes of the problem and its effects, it’s time to review possible options that could successfully address the problems.

Performing a basic cost-benefit analysis (we’ll cover that in an upcoming post) at this point will help you sort out reasonable and eligible options to compare and contrast.  Generally, was a recommendation to cost $1M, it should deliver at least that amount in overall, combined benefits over the period of time measured (Note: payback periods vary from across organizations, but 3 years is common. Further, there are circumstances in which costs are less important than benefits; however, that is generally not the case).

Options should consider such elements as costs (so called “hard” and “soft” costs), benefits to be realized from the option, time(from the beginning of selection to the time to achieve full operational value), risks (which can include design, deployment, integration, reliability, product/service fitness and performance, et al) and the organizational capacity and readiness for the option and the changes that will be required for success.

Your Recommendations

Your recommendation should come from your list of eligible and situationally suitable options, with a comparison and explanation of why you selected your recommendation.  The options matrix you create may have a  clear “winner,” or it may be such that you have identified several highly suitable options which have advantages and disadvantages for which any choice would be acceptable and suitable.  In such a circumstance, be prepared to be challenged on your recommendation and, similarly, be prepared to defend your selection.

How the business is changed and improved by your recommendations

This section should focus on clearly and specifically answering the question that your executive team will want to know:
1. What does the business get in benefits from the cost of your recommendation?

2. What is critical to answer here is not what   is possible in a general sense; rather, what is probable and specific to your
organization?

3. What will the changes and improvement be in critical areas such as performance, quality, responsiveness, reliability, continuing operational costs, reductions in headcount, reduced  risk, and as applicable, new capabilities?

Requirements

An important theme throughout the business case is to be as clear, precise, and specific as possible such that there are few surprises.  As the author of the business case, your name is on it and your commitment should be to provide as much accuracy as possible and to be as forthcoming as you can in identifying and defining what will be required of the organization for the benefits and improvements to be realized, including:

1. How long will it require for the entire project?

2. How many people (existing employees, contractors and/or consultants, new employees) and how much of their time will be required to do both their current work, as well as participating in the change project you recommend?

3. What training will be required?  What are the integration risks?  What are your contingency plans?

4. Are there new compliance, disaster recovery, contractual, policy, HR or other teams or changes and requirements that will be necessary?

5. What will be the continuing support requirements?  What is the vendor’s capability and strength?

The clarity with which you can visualize the project will help reduce the number of considerations you could overlook, and help reduce those elements which could go wrong.  The result will be a more complete and more credible business case.

Purpose

The business case helps tell a more encompassing story about the case for, and the value from making a change that you recommend.  It also helps your executive approval team to more clearly understand the issues, as well as understand the depth, breadth and completeness of your proposed initiative.

A well written and well constructed business case can help provoke deeper conversations with the executive approval team, such that your proposal can be reshaped in ways which could actually expand the initiative, as well as your role in leading it.

Part 3

In the third part of this 5-part series, we will examine how to visualize the financial and economic aspects of technology projects and investments from a senior-level executive vantage point.

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Richard Janezic is VP Sales, Marketing and Business Development for Boston-based TBG Security.  Rick has worked with and for organizations from startup stage to Fortune® 500 enterprises, and has held senior leadership roles in general management, sales, marketing and technology.  His focus is on helping organizations improve competitiveness through business and technology change and transformation.  You can follow his 5-part blog series “Justifying Technology Investments” here.  Rick is also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.