Candid CIO

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Bill Gates: A hell of a nice guy but no IT visionary

By Dan McLean

As he fades into the sunset of IT retirement Bill Gates definitely deserves to be remembered as a man of great philanthropy, rather than the IT visionary that many seem to give him credit for.

As an IT journalist for 15 years, I can’t recall one occasion where I thought Bill Gates said anything truly inspiring about IT. Definitely nothing that most of us who followed the industry didn’t already know. Certainly nothing that was exceedingly insightful – something I would have expected to hear from IT’s most famous founding father. The fact is that Bill was mostly pretty dull and seemingly uninspired when discussing IT. He certainly wasn’t dynamic and hardly the overtly passionate tech nerd that he’d often been portrayed as being. Yet Bill is an IT superstar, albeit duller than a butter knife. Over the years, Bill could pack them in like nobody’s business at keynotes, conventions and many other events happening around the globe. During most of his tech diatribes, however, Bill never really had much to say. Read the rest of this entry »

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Can Microsoft speak reliably in the unified communications space?

Would you buy a unified communications solution from Microsoft Corp.?
If the product is anything like the operating system software the company sells, then most definitely not. Unified communications (UC) isn’t something to invest in without some rock-solid guarantees of performance and reliability. There’s no, “we’ll work out the kinks as we go,” with this sort of application. It’s not Windows. It has to work - all the time. There’s nothing more important to a business than its ability to communicate. Read the rest of this entry »

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Private Avaya needs to make some public noise

Upon hearing recently that networking company Avaya Communication is becoming a private company, the thought did occur that perhaps there would finally be an infusion of aggressive competitiveness in what has become a dull, dull company.
Public ownership, among other things, can do that to an organization. Big old companies operate too cautiously, move too slowly towards change, and all too readily accept a decline in status without putting up much of a fight. It’s why, in my opinion, the network communications equipment industry in general has become a wasteland outside of Cisco Systems. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Cisco keeps fighting and has parlayed disaster in the networking equipment business at the turn of the century into \unparalleled dominance. Seems most of the competition - if you want to call them that - weren’t nearly as determined. Most continue to stumble and fumble (think Nortel, 3Com and Enterasys) or they are content to lay low and scurry for the few scraps of business that Cisco doesn’t own or care about. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 1: Overview

Arun Nithyanandam -

When you kick start a project, you’ll begin with the discover phase—sometimes also known as the requirements phase. This initial step frequently involves an exhaustive stakeholder analysis. In our experience, this first phase often determines whether the project will be a success or a nightmare. If a project launches without a proper stakeholder analysis, the system’s requirements will not align with the actual needs of the business users.

Asking Relevant Questions

The stakeholder analysis can be a tricky phase of the project. If you ask relevant questions, you will get the answers you need. More importantly, you will over the stakeholders, and identify the relevant requirements.

However, if you don’t ask relevant questions, you will come across as someone who doesn’t understand the stakeholders and their needs. People will perceive you as unsure of yourself. You may even come across as inexperienced. Read the rest of this entry »

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Green is the new ethics

Had an interesting and enjoyable conversation with Professor Norman Ball recently for the final instalment of a series we’re doing in conjunction with the University of Waterloo. Although the talk veered down many paths, the official discussion was around ethics and governance, and one point Professor Ball made that really jumped out at me was a short and simple one:

“Green is the new ethics.”

It’s hard to disagree. With messages from the likes of David Suzuki finally penetrating the moral conciousness of a large number of North Americans, “saving the planet” and “going green” are convenient mantras for the corporate world to hang its battered ethical hat on. Especially in the hardware market, whose products eat up huge amounts of energy, a green message allows companies to at least look like they care about something other than the bottom line.

Whether there is an earnest interest in the environmental movement amongst this group is cause for skepticism. But at least they are saying, and in many cases doing, some positive things around the environment. Let’s just hope that while they’re talking about planting trees and saving fish, corporate strategists are not forgetting about more traditional ethical matters around finances and good governance.

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Project management’s dirty little secret

In speaking with Michael Sheppard, a PhD student at the University of Waterloo and a veteran IT project manager, I heard a refreshing bit of insight into the minefield that is the art of project management. Sheppard pointed out, quite matter-of-factly, that a big part of a team’s responsiblity lies not just in ensuring the successful completion of the project, but also in managing expectations and putting an appropriate spin on things when they break down.

Speaking of his own experiences, Sheppard commented, “It may sound a bit manipulative, but in a sense, we often have made failures into succeses by readjusting expectations and good corporate communications.”

That means mentioning the deployment of 500 new laptops on time even though the new software deployment is a month behind schedule. It means sending the right message to ensure mass panic does not set in amongst decision makers. It means keeping partnerships as healthy as they can be. And it is a dirty little secret about project management that most managers have faced and which they must be prepared to handle in most situations.

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BI consolodation continues

With the announcement of IBM’s forthcoming purchase of Ottawa business intelligence vendor Cognos Inc., the consolodation of the BI market continues its unabated march. According to a survey from The 451 Group on the topic, some respondents see a simple case of supply and demand as being a key factor in the slimming down effect we’ve been witnessing of late.

Wrote one: “There is simply too much technology (supply) chasing too few buyers (demand) with need for the technology. Niche technologies offer opportunities for tuck-in deals for suppliers of truly whole product solutions with established distribution and market access.”

For more on the report, see this article from Thomas Wailgum in CIO Magazine.

The report, “Strategic acquirers to ramp up M&A activity in the coming year”, is available to 451 Group clients at the company’s site.

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Sell Business to Business Users – Part 3: The Exception

Arun Nithyanandam -

This is a series of posts, if you haven’t read the earlier ones, please read it here.
Sell Business to Business Users – Part 1: The Need
Sell Business to Business Users – Part 2: The Design & Execution

When All Else Fails

There are times when, despite your best efforts, you can’t get buy-in. People miss meetings; they show little interest in the solution; they find excuses to evade their commitments. If this happens, there are probably underlying tensions within the company and its groups.

Be especially careful when relying on executives to provide a top-down message for change without an underlying consensus from the user community. For example, the COO can send out an e-mail to all of the stakeholders that dictates the company’s vision and direction for the project. Such a message will dutifully be addressed by all of the communities within the company; however, you’re likely to see begrudging resistance. Read the rest of this entry »

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Sell Business to Business Users – Part 2: The Design & Execution

Arun Nithyanandam -

This is a series of posts, if you haven’t read the earlier ones, please read it here.
Sell Business to Business Users – Part 1: The Need

Let’s look at a few ways that you can sell the system to the users:

Planning

* Identify Your Champions
Identify the heads of departments, key stakeholders or users who will champion the project. You should work upfront to get their buy in, take care and address their concerns. It is always helpful if the directive to use the system comes from the department heads.

* Identify Your Evangelists
Your evangelists will be the people who conceived the project, people who attributed to the concept getting critical mass, and people who are very directly benefitted by implementing the new system. As with the champions, you should get your evangelists on board upfront, and involve them in your design process. These people will eventually evangelize the system, talk about it with passion and enthusiasm and sway the other users to adopt and use the new system.

Design

Empower the users to get involved during the design process. If it is logically not possible to get the entire user base, which could very well go into a large number based on the complexity and size of the project, you could pick out certain key users and get them involved. The users that you pick should be influencers, people who are looked up to in their respective domains, Subject Matter Experts. In our experience, we have always seen, users are committed to what they helped build.

Development Read the rest of this entry »

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(6 votes, average: 9.67 out of 10)

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Sell Business to Business Users – Part 1: The Need

Arun Nithyanandam -

Frequently, CIO’s and primary project sponsors ask a tough question. How do we sell the business (the system) to the business users? These businesspeople have been habituated to the current ecosystem. They are accustomed to doing their tasks in a certain ways. A new system disrupts those patterns. Most likely, people will be resistant to learning new things and modifying their existing behaviors.

We can establish good processes and procedures. We can even implement the best systems, but they are all no good if people don’t embrace the system. Systems must serve the users’ needs. Read the rest of this entry »