Did The Wall Street Journal sabotage businesses by publishing tips on how to circumvent IT?

In the Monday, July 30, edition of The Wall Street Journal, there was a special section on technology that led with the article “Ten Things Your IT Department Won’t Tell You” by Vauhini Vara. If you haven’t read the article, you should take a look because some of your users may have have already seen it, and as a result they may be engaging in activities that put themselves and your IT department at risk.

The Journal Report front page for Monday, July 30, 2007

Here is the list of the 10 items in Vara’s article:

1. How to send giant files
2. How to use software that your company won’t let you download
3. How to visit the Web sites your company blocks
4. How to clear your tracks on your work laptop
5. How to search for your work documents from home
6. How to store work files online
7. How to keep your privacy when using Web email
8. How to access your work email remotely when your company won’t spring for a BlackBerry
9. How to access your personal email on your BlackBerry
10. How to look like you’re working

Vara breaks down each item into four sections — The Problem, The Trick, The Risk, and How to Stay Safe.

Make no mistake, this article was extremely popular. The Wall Street Journal publishes its list of the Most Viewed and Most Emailed articles on WSJ.com for each day, and for July 30, “Ten Things Your IT Department Won’t Tell You” was one of only two articles that made the top five on both lists. It was No. 1 on both.

Sanity check

The problem is that the information in this article is unequivocally damaging for businesses and their IT departments, as well as for the users that The Wall Street Journal is supposedly trying to serve.

While I am generally a fan of The Wall Street Journal — and its tech coverage is typically rock solid — I was very disappointed by this piece. Although it did not reveal any information that couldn’t be found elsewhere, I don’t like the fact that the Journal spoon-fed a bunch of dangerous tips to users and all but encouraged a quiet revolt against the IT department.

A few of Vara’s tips are fairly innocuous, such as “How to send giant files” and “How to clear your tracks on your work laptop.” In fact, many IT pros could pass those items to users along with some tips of when and how to use them. The large file issue can ease the burden on e-mail attachments and storage and the “clear your tracks” tip can be turned into a good privacy and security practice.

However, several of the other tips are dangerous to the point of idiocy, especially “How to use software that your company blocks,” “How to visit Web sites your company blocks,” “How to search your work documents from home,” and “How to access your work email remotely when your company won’t spring for a BlackBerry.”

The issue of showing users how to access software and sites that the company has filtered is a recipe for disaster. Often the stuff that is banned is banned because it can introduce spyware and malware to the system or it can bog down the computer and/or the network. When users find ways around that, they introduce significant security and privacy risks to the company, and they can potentially decrease their own productivity by clogging up their machines with spyware and adware.

In terms of “How to search your work documents from home,” Vara recommends using Google Desktop to sync documents between a work PC and a home PC. That might be okay for a few consultants and small businesses, but it’s a terrifically bad idea for anyone in the corporate world (The Wall Street Journal’s core audience). The implications for privacy, confidentiality, and compliance are severe and serious, especially if any of the files involved contain customer or financial data. Plus, there are easier ways to handle the issue that preserve security, such as a VPN connection and Remote Desktop from a home PC to a work PC.

And then there’s the issue of “How to access your work email remotely when your company won’t spring for a BlackBerry.” Forwarding work e-mails to personal e-mail accounts and devices — as the Journal article advises — is another potential disaster waiting to happen. It raises the same issues of confidentiality and compliance because when you forward all mail, it is very likely that you’ll end up sending customer data and corporate financial information to your personal accounts.

While the Journal article ostensibly shows some responsibility and restraint by including sections on “The Risks” and “How to Stay Safe” for each of the 10 items, the author either does not fully understand all of the security and compliance risks involved or simply chose to make light of many of them. Either scenario is a strong indictment against the article.

The compliance issues, while mentioned in the article, are much more serious than Vara seems to realize because they can expose a company to major financial risk (in the form of fines, lawsuits, and legal fees). Likewise, the security issues are much more serious than the Journal article presents them. Hackers have gone professional (and in some cases joined forces with organized crime) and are out there looking for employees and companies to steal data from and use for blackmail or money laundering. The TJX security scandal could serve as a sober warning to that effect, once all of the details come to light.

While users often get frustrated with the IT department and the restrictions that it puts in place, the answer is not to train people how to make an end run around IT. In many companies, there’s already too much of a disconnect between IT and the rest of the organization because of the fact that IT often plays the role of a police officer — to serve and to protect.

The root problem that The Wall Street Journal was trying to address is that many users want and need to do some personal computing on their work machines and/or access work apps and data from their home machines or devices. That’s a reality that businesses and IT must face, and they must come up with some workable solutions.

Since many of today’s users access their e-mail and work during “off hours,” it’s certainly reasonable that they should also be able to do a little bit of personal computing during company time. There simply needs to be a safe and relatively easy way for them to do it. Some companies have solved this with separate virtual machines, using VMware or Virtual PC or a Web-based solution like G.ho.st. Other solutions need to be explored, and big players such as Apple and Microsoft, as well as small vendors with creative solutions, need to all be involved. This will be an important part of the next generation of operating systems, devices, and a borderless information security strategy.

For The Wall Street Journal, which depicted itself as a “public trust” during its recent acquisition tug-o-war with News Corp, fueling a turf war between IT and its users is not the kind of journalism that meets the high mandate it has set for itself.

For IT departments, the genie is out of the bottle on many of these tips and tricks that allow users to circumvent IT procedures. As a result, IT departments need to aggressively partner with employees, educate them on the severity of security and compliance risks, and find ways to meet the needs of users whose computing experience now overlaps between work and home.

What do you think about The Wall Street Journal’s list? How do you think IT can help users bridge work computing and home computing while still maintaining data security?

courtesy @TechRepublic

Is the U.S. losing its role as the world leader in information technology?

Issue: U.S. as IT leader

The United States is the birthplace of both the personal computer and the Internet. It has written the rules for using business technology to deliver staggering increases in worker productivity. It has given the world major innovations in the microprocessors that power computing and electronics devices of all sizes and functions.

The U.S. has quite simply served as the undisputed leader and catalyst of the global IT industry for the past 40 years. Yet the landscape has changed rapidly over the past decade, and especially in the past five years, as the U.S. is now facing challenges across the board from nimble innovators in Europe and Asia.

In the past several months, many journalists and commentators in the U.S. have made bold assertions and dire predictions about America’s decline as a force in technology. Below is a list of some of the more prominent (and most dire) reports, including links and some quotes that provide a brief synopsis of each one.

US Losing Its IT Chops (TechNewsWorld)

“The United States has fallen to seventh place among 122 economies in its network readiness, or ability to leverage the opportunities of IT, according to a report … by the World Economic Forum [sponsored by Cisco]. Denmark supplanted the U.S. at the top of the list thanks in part to its regulatory environment, government leadership and vision in leveraging IT for growth.”

“I’m surprised we were in the No. 1 spot in 2006,” said Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst with Piper Jaffray. “The fact is, as much as we don’t like to admit it, we are not the leading edge of Internet and wireless technologies. Part of the reason has to do with our economy and lack of government support; it’s also a byproduct of the extremely competitive market.”

U.S. Technology Deployment Leadership Threatened by Emerging Economies (Info-Tech)

“The world’s emerging economies are narrowing the technology deployment gap with the U.S. and other developed countries, says a new global study conducted by Info-Tech Research Group and KnowledgeStorm. While the U.S. is still the global leader in the implementation of technology-enabled business solutions, adoption of these systems by enterprises within regions such as India, Africa, Asia and Latin America is growing due to confidence in the ability of technology to transform business…

“Emerging economies can play catch-up quickly because of the ability of these countries to adopt the latest versions of technology that’s already been tried, tested and improved in established economies. From an Information Technology (IT) solutions perspective, India has already joined the ranks of established economies because of the willingness of its IT managers to embrace sophisticated solutions.”

Study: US Lags Behind in Broadband Speeds (PC World)

“The U.S. is lagging behind other industrialized nations in the availability and use of high-speed broadband connections, according to a report [by] Washington-based Communications Workers of America… According to the report, the U.S. is 16th in the world in deployment and availability of high-speed networks…

“The U.S. [also] lags behind other nations when it comes to cost of broadband access… Speeds of 50Mbit/sec., which is not available to residential consumers in [the U.S.], is available to Japanese consumers for roughly US$30 per month. U.S. consumers typically pay $20 for about 1Mbit/sec. service and $30 to $40 for about 4Mbit/sec. service.”

Perspective: America’s tech moment of truth (CNET)

“In the past few years, other nations have caught up with, and in many ways surpassed, the United States in reaching important milestones, and the future is probably going to get worse… A decade or so ago, roughly 35 percent of the investments in leading-edge chip technologies were made in the United States. In the last five years, only about 10 percent to 12 percent of those investments landed stateside… Many of these overseas investments are made by U.S. corporations.”

Turning Our Backs on Tech: Corporate America has to make IT jobs sexy again (Fortune)

“In the global battle for infotech supremacy, is America surrendering? Recent evidence suggests that the U.S. is at least thinking about giving up. I’m talking not just about America’s ability to produce the fastest chip or most popular software but also about something potentially even more serious: the ability of all businesses to be world-class users of information technology…

“The more worrisome problem is what’s happening with the kids. Moving herdlike, as usual, they’ve decided that IT is excruciatingly uncool. Of course it was the coolest thing on the planet just seven years ago, when interest in computer science as an undergraduate major hit a 20-year high. But then a lot of things happened. The dot-com boom went bust at just the time companies stopped hiring staff to fix Y2K problems. More important, the pop culture image of infotech workers flipped from dot-com billionaires in Gulfstreams to Dilbertesque drones writing code in cubicles and Third World masses working for pennies an hour.”

Sanity check

After reading those articles, it’s easy to get pessimistic about the current state of IT in the U.S., but I would caution against concluding that the U.S. is doomed to tech mediocrity for the following four reasons:

1.) The U.S. is at a tactical disadvantage at the moment — Since many of today’s latest technologies (in virtually every field) are simpler to use and implement, have more features, and are much cheaper than their predecessors, international upstarts have a big advantage right out of the gates when they establish their internal IT infrastructure. These upstarts get to build their infrastructure from scratch, unlike many of their U.S. rivals, which don’t have the luxury of a clean slate but have to face the difficulties of data migration and staff retraining when upgrading or migrating to the latest technologies. That means new rivals have the advantages of new technologies. However, this advantage will even out and disappear over time as the upstarts become entrenched in their current systems. The irony is that the technology itself — much of it created by U.S. companies and often including major innovations in recent years — can be one of the major factors that allows startups to quickly make up ground on incumbents.

2.) This was bound to happen as IT helped accelerate globalization — One of the most significant changes that has come with the rapid advancement of computers and networks has been the world-changing developments in communications technology. Just think of it … you can now make a good-quality Skype video call from the U.S. to China and be connected for over an hour, and it’s free! These changes have connected people more quickly and cohesively than ever before, have spread new ideas and developments across the planet, and have driven the powerful forces of economic globalization. With all of these forces at work, it was only a matter of time before more people from new parts of the globe got involved in the technology sector and helped drive it forward in new directions.

3.) Silicon Valley is still the epicenter of the technology world — Clearly, not all of the best ideas in technology are hatched from that overpriced stretch of real estate from San Jose to San Francisco, California. Companies such as Vidoop (in Tulsa, Oklahoma) and Zoho (with its product teams in India) have proven that. Nevertheless, there are still more new and innovative tech ideas concentrated in Silicon Valley than anywhere else on earth. And with Google, Intel, Yahoo, Apple, and so many other tech giants anchored in Silicon Valley, nothing is going to change that fact anytime soon. More of the greatest innovations in technology are coming out of the U.S. than anywhere else.

4.) The sleeping giant hasn’t woken up yet — The U.S. can never go back to having the kind of unparalleled tech leadership position that it enjoyed a decade ago. That genie will never go back in the bottle. There are simply too many players involved now and too much competition. However, the sleeping giant does need to wake up and acknowledge that it is under attack from various competitors. Many of the problems that the IT industry faces in the U.S are due to complacency, and that’s fixable. The U.S. tech industry must shake off that complacency and work toward creating a better regulatory atmosphere for tech companies to flourish here (with help from the U.S. government, of course), a better approach to reigniting interest in tech education, and a better sense of the areas where the competition is winning and where there are still opportunities for U.S. companies and workers to take the lead in today’s multinational IT industry.

Is stress incurable for IT pros?

I found this in an article on the PubMed web site: "In a study of the bodily, mental, and psychophysiological reactions of employees involved in the design of advanced telecommunications systems and of office employees using regular video display technology, several stress-related psychosomatic disorders have been identified." Those disorders include:

• Sleep disturbances
• Psychophysiological stress (I looked this up and got this definition — the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. Now if I only knew what that means.)
• Somatic complaints (headaches, chest pains, nausea, lower back pain, etc.)

So, okay, the fact that IT design people are more prone to stress is not such a big surprise. The depressing part is that the same group performed a controlled experiment with 116 advanced telecommunication systems design employees to see how well stress reduction techniques worked on them. Their conclusion?

"The type of stress-reduction programs chosen and intensity of participation did not significantly impact results."

Wow. That's certainly an uplifting bit of data. I wonder how closely that mirrors the IT society as a whole?

Save time and money, and deliver a better product: Build quality into your IT project from the ground up

Overview: If you think the rigorous processes required to deliver high quality results are too expensive, just think about the long-term costs of delivering poor quality. These costs are often dismissed in the planning stages of a project, but they include redoing a project, losing customers, bad press for the company, and negative career repercussions for the project team. An IT project manager's goal, therefore, should always be to deliver the absolute highest quality result possible within the constraints of a project. This doesn't necessarily mean the absolute highest quality of all time, but the highest quality within the boundaries of the specific project. Explore how you can improve IT project quality to the highest reasonable degree given limited time, resources, and money in this sample chapter from How to Cheat at IT Project Management. Investigate the concept of quality and how quality is built into an IT project via three key components: planning, monitoring, and testing. Look at ways you can build quality into your project without implementing an additional quality management program. Applying these methods consistently with your team will help you do a better job at each step of your IT project and deliver, time after time, higher quality results at lower cost.

download or you can see it from here....

10 ways to effectively estimate and control project costs

Building a better bottom line is just as important for an IT department as it is for the whole organization at the enterprise level. It involves an understanding of the main drivers of IT costs, aligning IT spending plans with overall business strategy, using financial resources efficiently, viewing IT expenditures as investments and having procedures to track their performance, and implementing sound processes for making IT investment decisions..

1. Control baseline costs
Nondiscretionary money spent maintaining established IT systems is referred to as baseline costs. These are the “grin and bear it” costs, those required just to keep things going. Baseline costs constitute around 70 percent of all IT spending for the average organization, so this is a good place to start. These costs tend to creep over time due to the addition of new systems, meaning there’s less money available for discretionary project work. Worse yet, this creep gives the appearance that IT costs are rising while the value derived from IT investments stays the same or actually goes down.
Fortunately, baseline costs can be easily controlled. Renegotiate vendor contracts, reexamine service levels, manage assets effectively, consolidate servers, sunset older applications, maintain a solid enterprise architecture, and practice good project and resource management. By so doing you can lower the percentage of the IT budget allocated to baseline costs and keep them in line, avoiding problems with opportunity costs. Think of IT projects as an investment portfolio; the idea is to maximize value and appreciation. Baseline costs are food, clothing, and shelter; we have to spend the money but it doesn’t have to overwhelm the budget.

2. Acknowledge hidden IT spending impacts
Gartner estimates more than 10 percent of corporate technology spending occurs in business units, beyond the control of IT. Several factors contribute to increasing hidden IT spending:
• Flat organizational models more difficult to rein in and control
• Virtual enterprise structures ostensibly set up as nimble, agile organizational constructs but without regard for policy and procedure
• Changing organizational authority where business unit managers are given (or take) responsibility for decentralized technology spending
• Selective IT outsourcing, in which a business unit will independently decide it doesn’t need to participate in overall enterprise architecture to fulfill its departmental mission
The impact of all this hidden technology spending can be profound and prevents IT from being able to control project costs. Architectural pollution from rogue projects can delay change, resulting in cost overruns and lost opportunities. Business unit-sponsored systems eventually become the responsibility of IT, increasing the cost of support and maintenance (there are those baseline costs again). Cultural biases in business units may conflict with overall strategic goals, increasing costs and resulting in the destabilization of information and knowledge. This is just as important for small companies as well as large; fundamental business decision-making is driven by solid information, and if we don’t have it we can’t do it.

3. Understand long-term application costs
As a general rule, ongoing application costs are about 40 percent to 60 percent of the original development cost for each year in an application’s life cycle. Sound like a lot? These are the costs associated with application support, maintenance, operations, software licenses, infrastructure, and allocated help desk and operational staff. Controlling these ongoing costs is critical; as a component of baseline costs, they’re necessary evils. Collect and maintain information about all new development work underway throughout the entire enterprise and actively participate in all projects as a value-added business partner. Communicate effectively and relentlessly; report to senior management anticipated costs both at the start of projects and at appropriate intervals thereafter. Don’t forget to maintain a historical record of all costs.

4. Understand IT cost estimation truths
How good an estimator of project costs are you? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no matter how good you think you are, you’re not that good. None of us is; your crystal ball is just as cloudy as anyone else’s. This is the single biggest reason IT projects have such a high failure rate. Remember: The cost of IT initiatives will typically exceed original estimates by an average of 100 percent.
Institutional knowledge is lacking as to the result of major intitiatives, the advice and counsel of IT is routinely omitted or ignored, and business process change relies too heavily on IT ownership of those business processes. How often have you been called upon to estimate, if not virtually guarantee, a project cost before the scope has been fully defined?
As an IT professional, whatever your role on a project, you must provide business managers with parameters for setting funding expectations and force those business managers to explain why their assumptions are valid. If you’re an IT manager, track all major development efforts throughout the enterprise and regardless of your role, participate in the creation of a knowledge base of maintenance and support costs to drive future verifiable and credible estimation. Don’t underestimate the future costs of maintenance and support and whatever you do, don’t make the classic cardinal error: Do not, under any circumstances, pad budgets in anticipation of an underestimation. Keep track of project costs as the project unfolds and communicate, immediately and vociferously, the instant you detect even the potential for an overrun.

5. Leverage current system investments
Applications, purchased software, networks, infrastructure, and any IT investment should all be regularly reviewed, at least on an annual basis, to ensure maximum value is being extracted and that original ROI goals are being met. Start with the original requirements and review them to ensure return on investment goals were delivered. Examine changes in the business and review new requests to determine whether they fit with the existing systems. Consider business reengineering. Review embedded processes to determine whether they’re consistent with new organizational models and make changes where necessary. Review vendor and product features, making sure they still fit within the organization. Enterprise architecture is organic; it’s not once and done. It changes over time. Keeping up with those changes allows for adjustments either at the periphery or by making modifications to existing components. This is an effective way to control overall costs.

6. Implement short-term cost cutting measures
Often we can control costs by putting in place tactical solutions. Short-term thinking can also be an effective tool in project cost estimation, in that it focuses us on the details. Getting from New York to Tokyo involves a fairly long flight, but we can’t forget that we still have to figure out how we’re going to get to the airport to begin with.
Try to postpone capital purchases as long as possible. This may not only provide time to negotiate better costs, but an idea for a less expensive solution may present itself after the project has begun. Always control project scope. Come to agreement as quickly as possible with business unit customers and sponsors as to the overall project scope and put that in writing. Have an effective change management process for the inevitable “just one more thing” discussions, which will limit or postpone until after project delivery the single biggest reason for cost overruns.
Try to control human resource spending. There are only two reasons to use external consultants--to fill a knowledge gap (we don’t know how to do something) and to fill a resource gap (we have too few to complete the project on time). Negotiate the best possible rates and where possible, use fixed-price agreements rather than T&M (time and materials).

7. Implement long-term cost cutting measures
Be tactical, but don’t forget to be strategic at the same time. Make sure there’s an enterprise architecture; it’s hard to put the puzzle together when you have no picture on the front of the box to go by. Eliminate duplicate processes and systems, eliminating unnecessary costs in the process. Reprioritize and rejustify all IT projects on a regular basis. Just because something made sense in January doesn’t mean it still does in August, so why waste the budget? And outsource selectively. These are the costs that typically are the most controllable yet too often lead to the highest cost overruns.

8. Implement pricing and chargeback mechanisms
I once worked for a CIO at a Fortune 500 company who decided an internal chargeback process was needed to make business units more accountable for technology costs. He successfully implemented the new approach and was credited with saving the corporation many millions of dollars. He was also fired, because this approach is the one most fraught with political peril.
Absent a chargeback mechanism, business units tend to look upon IT as a giant free toystore. Put one in place and those same business units feel free to go to the outside to get more competitive technology pricing, and IT loses control and becomes marginalized.
If your company is going to consider this, there are ways to achieve both goals: making the business units accountable and maintaining central technology architectural control. Internal IT must be competitlve with external service providers. Periodic benchmarking exercises are key. Don’t underestimate the substantial resources needed to effectively administer chargeback mechanisms to ensure that business units have all the information they need and no one feels at a disadvantage. IT must have a clear understanding of all costs and manage the demand appropriately. Use client satisfaction surveys and service level agreements (a good idea no matter what the circumstances) and always show a balance between costs and benefits.

9. Use governance to drive IT investment decisions
Too many organizations fly blind, with little synergy between IT and the business. In most organizations, IT is a discretionary expense center; there’s a fundamental framework (baseline costs again) but most, if not all, of what’s required beyond that isn’t necessarily mission critical.
Enlightened organizations understand that IT is a value-added strategic business partner, and a successful collaboration between IT and the business drives significantly increased stakeholder value. Establish, or if one exists become a participant of, a strategy council to examine enterprise-level issues of strategy, politics, priorities, and funding. Set up a business council to define priorities, oversee projects, and measure (and communicate) project success across business units. This group must, of course, have the courage to cancel projects when that becomes necessary; not everything that starts must finish. Put together a technical council to develop guidelines and principles for technology standards and practices. These are three very different organizational constructs, and while there may be some overlap in terms of participation, the mission of each is mutually exclusive

10. Quantify the value/benefit proposition for IT investments
Why do we do what we do? That’s not an existential or rhetorical question. IT exists to provide value, to participate in the achievement of organizational strategic goals. How can we prove we’ve done so? Just because we’ve built a thing, that doesn’t mean much. Does the thing work? Does the thing provide value? Is that value measurable and consistent with the corporate mission?
Some quantifiable benefits of IT work can be improved operating efficiencies, enhanced personal productivity, enhanced decision quality, and/or enabling or supporting organizational strategic initiatives. What’s most critical is to ensure the credibility of any measurements used to justify IT investments and provide after-the-fact valuations. You may be working on a project that will reduce a process from five person-days' worth of work to two. Does that mean three people are going to be fired, with the resulting compensation cost saving attributable to your project? Probably not. Those folks will most likely be reassigned, so don’t take credit for expense reductions that aren’t going to happen.

courtesy @TechRepublic

Nineteen words that don't belong in your resume

Overview: Career coaches or head hunters may have told you that creating an effective resume means punching it up with jazzy verbs and adjectives. Not so, say IT hiring managers. In fact, if you're using glitzy modifiers, you could be doing your resume more harm than good. Here's a look at some recruiters' "favorite-hate" resume verbiage.

It’s hard to believe that a few words could irritate someone enough to make them stop reading your resume, but it’s true. Some hiring managers and recruiters admit that they have their own mental lists of words that annoy them. Resume how-to books may recommend that you pack your resume full of as many verbs, adjectives, and adverbs as you can. But if you aren't careful, you could turn off more prospective employers than you entice. Effective word choice is what really appeals to hiring managers—not action verbs and glittery modifiers. Here's a rundown of some words that hiring managers say detract from the persuasiveness of resumes they see.

Term: Assist, assisted
Reasons to avoid : Hiring managers want to know what you did, not how you helped. If you're familiar enough with a task to put it on your resume, you can choose a better word than assist.
Example: Assisted marketing director by researching PDAs.
Possible rephrasing: Researched PDAs for marketing department.

Term: Experiment
Reasons to avoid : No one wants to hear about what you tried to do—only what you have accomplished.
Example: Experimented with new LAN management software.
Possible rephrasing: Tested and evaluated new LAN management software.

Term: Skillfully, effectively, carefully, quickly, expert, mastered
Reasons to avoid : Hiring managers often object to words that describe how well you do a particular task. In many cases, it comes across as boastful—and it's unnecessary. “If you aren’t good at it, why are you putting it on your resume?” one recruiter said.
Example: Skillfully managed transition from Windows NT to Windows Server 2003
Possible rephrasing: Migrated organization from Windows NT to Windows Server 2003 with no downtime during business hours.

Term: Cutting-edge, detail-oriented; coordinate, facilitate, transform; proven ability, synergy, and liaison
Reasons to avoid : Hiring managers say such words take up space without communicating much. They've seen them so often that the words have lost their original energy. Provide details and substance, not tired business jargon.
Example: Detail-oriented manager with proven ability to oversee day-to-day network operations and to implement major technology initiatives.
Possible rephrasing: Supervised an eight-member IS staff; completed two full-scale platform migrations; consolidated equipment and resources following facilities move.

Term: Responsible for…
Reasons to avoid : You’re a manager, so of course you’re responsible for something. Specify exactly what your responsibilities are and work in a few numbers to convey the scope of what you do.
Example: Responsible for managing inventory, overseeing network operations, making new equipment purchases, troubleshooting workstation issues.
Possible rephrasing: Supervised the support of 70 users running Windows XP and two servers running Windows Server 2003; implemented asset management plan for inventorying equipment; built a network operations team responsible for the internal infrastructure.

courtesy @TechRepublic

Geeks and communication skills

It is a commonly held belief that geeks do not need to be able to communicate outside of Nerdland. In fact, it is an outright expectation. Programmers who gets nervous around pretty girls, systems administrators who cannot give a presentation to more than two people at a time, and DBAs that stutter unless they are discussing Dungeons and Dragons are what many people envision when they think of IT professionals. These are all common stereotypes of IT professionals. Sad to say, many IT professionals buy into this idea, and sometimes even actively encourage it!

I am not going to pretend to be surprised by this. Up until the age of sixteen or so, reaching Level 4 as a bard seemed more important than reaching first base with a woman. Weird Al Yankovich was “romantic” in my mind and a “nice wardrobe” meant a closet full of shirts from hardware and software vendors, preferable ones with multiple years’ worth of pizza stains on them to prove my “authenticity”. I thought that if people did not understand me, it was because they were stupid, not that I was unable to communicate with them.

Thankfully, I changed. Mostly. I still think Weird Al is funny on occasion, and the ratty shirts are still there (though they now tend to be Metallica and Mr. Bungle shirts from my post-ubergeek years). The biggest change was that my communication skills improved significantly. I took classes in high school such as AFJROTC and Mock Trial that taught me how to speak to an audience, with or without notes. My classes in college (I will merely admit that I double majored in “cannot-get-a-job-ology” which is code for “the liberal arts”) involved few tests, but endless amounts of paper writing. What few tests there were tended to be essay questions. In other words, I was learning a lot about communication skills.

What does this have to do with the IT industry? Plenty. If you want to know why your manager seems to be a “grinning idiot” with no clue what your job is instead of someone with technical skills, take a look at what that manager brings to the table. That manager is very likely to have an MBA or maybe an MIS degree. Their external learning is probably in “risk management” or Six Sigma, not the Cisco or Red Hat certification you just earned. The manager’s job is to interface between “the suits” and the IT people. The manager does not actually need to know how to do your job if you communicate your needs to him properly. What manager does need to know is how your job relates to the business.

It has been my experience since I started blogging about IT issues on TechRepublic, that the majority of the time when I receive heavy criticism, it is because I failed to write clearly and properly communicate my message. Sure, there have been instances where someone climbed all over me for using one bad example or analogy in a 3,000 word post, or where someone was obviously unable to comprehend the topic at hand. But by and large, when I receive negative feedback, it is my own fault for not writing clearly.

At my current position, my manager does not understand much programming (he knows some VBA), systems administration, database administration, networking, computer repair, or any of the other tasks I do. He knows how to run the company, deal with customers, and so on. He really does not need to know the gritty details of what the project is hung up on; he just needs to know how long the delay will be. He does not care what brand of motherboard I buy or what CPU I select; he needs to know the price and business justification for the expenditure.

Many of the IT people that I have worked with simply do not understand this. They fill a proposal with technical details, and expect the person reading it to understand the benefit of the proposal from the technical information. In other cases, they write an email that is littered with typos and spelling mistakes. These types of mistakes do not help the recipient to understand why they should approve your request or give your project more resources, or otherwise help you with whatever goal it is that you are trying to accomplish. Tailor your message for the audience. If the recipient is a technical person, make it technical. If they are a non-technical person, use language that a non-technical person can understand. As I often do for programs that I have written, I pass it through the “Mom test.” In other words, I ask my mother to review it. She is about as non-technical as it gets. If my mother can understand what I have written to the point where she can make an educated business decision, then it is a good communication.

Many of the IT people out there seem to think that this is degrading. These are the same types of IT people who make web sites that only display in one particular web browser, or require you to go find some funky external library, or insist that you recompile the application yourself without providing any documentation. These are the IT people that may be excellent at their jobs, but are hated by everyone that their job touches. You do not need to go this route. No one will criticize you or complain if you learn to effectively communicate with non-technical people. In fact, they will appreciate you even more. My experience has been that improved communications skills leads to better opportunities in life and in my career. If a manager is evaluating two candidates for a promotion, they are more likely to pick someone with less technical skills who communicates well than a more technical person who does not communicate well. Why? Because the person with good communication skills is able to show that they know what they are talking about, while the person without those skills simply cannot be understood.

If you feel that your communication skills may be lacking, there are things that you can do to help them improve. One suggestion is to read more books and magazines. If you already ready books and magazines, escalate the difficulty level of your readings or try reading about topics that you are not familiar with. I have found that crossword puzzles are great tools to expand your vocabulary. Try your hand at writing something, whether it be short fiction, how-to articles, or poetry. If you can, try to go to new places or talk to different people; sometimes we find ourselves in cliques with a shared mindset that makes it difficult to learn how to communicate outside of that group. There are lots of different ways to improve communications skills, but at the end of the day, they all amount to “increase the frequency of your communications, the diversity of the mediums, and the people that you communicate with.”

courtesy @Techrepublic

Are you always on?

I just finished reading a very interesting article in CIO magazine that details the condition of the “always on” employee. Although the article, “The Extreme CIO,” focuses strictly on CIOs, its message can apply to all IT workers. The “always on” individual works 70 to 80 hour weeks, is often on the road, is responding to crises 24/7, is a stranger to their family, is never disconnected from the organization, etc.

Matt Villano, the author of the article, states that what makes CIOs extreme is that “they are at the nexus of three forces driving business today: a global economy, the ability to be in touch 24/7, and the increasing reliance of business on IT.” These forces according to Villano foster an extreme work style.

I don’t disagree that those factors drive people into this lifestyle because it’s been ingrained in many of us that in order to get more work done, you have to work longer and harder. I also know that the reliance on IT for mission critical applications places a stress on all who are associated with supporting them even when things are running correctly - kind of a free-floating anxiety while we wait for the next crisis.

But I also think there are other factors that contribute to the “extremeness” of IT and that they play a larger role in creating the problem. I think the organization is to blame and therefore should be part of the solution.

Working with greatly reduced staff increases the amount of responsibility for the remaining positions. Organizations have pushed the whole doing-more-with-less scenario so far that it’s reached a point where it actually erodes efficiency. Working in this style causes more errors, reduces proactive behavior, and leads people to work continuously in a crisis mentality. Thus people are working in an extreme fashion just to keep up.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when staff are so thin that they’re working themselves to death, either the organization needs to spend money on hiring or acquire the technology needed to automate more of the work. Spending on IT above and beyond what it takes to actually keep the wheels on will save the organization money in the long run, by creating better processes, allowing proactive behavior, and keeping employees happier and healthier.

The expectation that one should be available at all times is something that can be handled culturally in any organization. We must accommodate legitimate 24-hour operational needs, but this doesn’t mean everyone needs to be available at all times. The organization needs to actively discourage the practice of its staff members being available at all times. This can’t happen if management is acting in a crisis mode at all times. Smart organizations have to figure this out if they want to remain successful.


courtesy @TechRepublic