IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Self-Promotion on the Job

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

It's harder to move up the IT career ladder within your organization these days because the rungs don't stay put.

With downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring and ever-shrinking corporate budgets, IT job slots are often re-named, redefined or replaced. The good news is that industry analysts report the field is healthy despite the rapid-fire changes, and that opportunities in 2007 are plentiful.

How can you make the most of those opportunities and move ahead? According to industry experts, it can be a matter of using smart and tactful self-promotion techniques.

"Self-promotion is truly an art form," says Melanie Robbins, host of "Make It Happen with Mel Robbins," a career coaching program heard on Sirius Satellite Radio, suggests, "If you are too overt, you risk coming across to upper management as an irritant. And if your colleagues see you doing it, you risk alienating them and creating resentment -- it will always look like you are taking credit for their hard work."

But that's not to say a direct approach may not trump more subtle methods. "When I was working my way up the ladder," relates Robert Ardell, managing partner at KoreOne Staffing in San Diego, Calif., "the best advice I received was to schedule a lunch with my boss, and even my boss' boss, and ask them, 'What do I need to do to receive a promotion?' The simpler, the better." (article continues)

Step-by-Step
According to Robbins, there are four simple steps to successful self-promotion:

One added bonus to self-promotion: IT pros can choose to move up the IT ranks or springboard to other departments in the organization, a career choice that did not previously exist. "While employees were once able to start at the bottom and have a fairly easy time following a career path, IT positions may no longer be a necessary or even desirable end point for them," says Laurie Orlov, research director and vice president of Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "Process knowledge and diverse educational backgrounds enable IT workers to move to other functions in the enterprise or into and back from providers in the tech industry," meaning that a career path isn't necessarily pegged to a single company.

In fact, Forrester Research says its CIO and CTO interviewees confirmed that, despite a lingering nerdy image and the fact that it might still be called IT, the role of the IT group has morphed sharply from all back-office work to the front-and center interaction with business unit clients and the customers.

"Therefore, it is very important that IT pros play up their business and other experiences outside the strictly technical role in their self-promotion efforts," says Orlov. (article continues)

Experts agree, however, that self-promotion should not be limited to the confines of your current employment. 

"Most good IT managers are well known because they typically have their own blog. They belong to several user groups, are active in them and are highly regarded within those groups. Most importantly, they have a genuine desire to help others and they act on it," says Ardell.

Experts agree, however, that self promotion should not be limited to the confines of your current employment. Expand your world by looking beyond the borders of your current job function and employer and practicing these three Rs.

Moving to the next level of your career may progress along a well-defined path, but without some help from your own hands, it may not progress at all. Map out a range of possibilities and make known your desires and abilities. Then be ready to move ahead when the opportunity appears.

"To get ahead in the IT environment today, point out your business smarts and people skills, as these are the skills companies are seeking in their top IT people. Interestingly, self-promotion, when done right, illustrates both of those skills," concludes Orlov.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Management For Smarties

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

You've no doubt heard of great college football coaches who couldn't cut it in the NFL, or terrific salespeople who got promoted to sales manager only to find that they were much better at sales. It's the same in IT.

"The IT field is littered with great technologists who are not suited to be managers or failed at some level of management," says R. Gaines Baty, president of R. Gaines Baty Associates, a Dallas-based retained executive search firm specializing in CIO and IT management searches.

Being a good IT manager poses particular challenges to new and experienced managers alike as "there is probably nothing in the business world that changes more frequently and can obsolete itself faster than technology," states Paul Benz, the CIO at Gevity HR, an organization that conducts research into the link between good management practices and business performance.

"Involvement" Versus "Tight Controls"

A recent survey on effective employee management strategies conducted by Cornell University and sponsored by Gevity Institute looked at two common management styles. One was described as management through involvement, or allowing reports to essentially manage themselves. The other was described as management through tight control. Companies with the former management style, whose managers used a consensus-building approach, showed significant growth in revenue and profit. Additionally, the companies that used self-management strategies had much lower employee turnover than those that didn't. (article continues)

What behaviors do bad managers exhibit? According to Baty, they are individuals who:

"Micromanagers, yellers and screamers, people who take credit for what others have done, who sell their employees down the river, point fingers and have an obviously authoritarian style are not popular these days," says Baty.

Improving Your Management Style
"Eighty percent of folks, I have found, will make the effort to be a better manager," says Benz. Most will find it easy to do. Some will require some additional coaching and counseling and the rest will be resistant to change.

According to Baty, "The most successful people, whether CEO, CIO, or C-anything, are the ones that learn from their mistakes." If you are a strategic thinker who can assess a situation and act accordingly, build a consensus and contribute to the bottom line, there's a great opportunity to really grow, make a real difference in a corporation and build a great career.

What are the most common attributes of effective managers? According to Baty and Benz, the good ones:

Until the mid-to-late 1990s, most organizations were not too technologically savvy. As a result, IT managers could often get by on their technical know-how alone. Today, however, with marketing, sales and finance people much savvier about computing, IT managers must not only be knowledgeable about existing and emerging technologies but about dealing and communicating with other departments, as well as senior management.

Clearly, the bar has been raised for IT managers. But for those who take the time to hone their management chops by developing their communication skills and reaching out across the organization to help define and achieve business-wide objectives, the field is wide open.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Can Certification Make a Difference?

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Does industry certification for IT workers still matter? It depends on whom you ask. But most industry experts will tell you that technology skills are just one piece of what employers look for in their workforce.

"Of course certifications matter, but do they matter in the scheme of everything employers are looking for in IT workers? Less than they used to,' says David Foote, CEO and chief research officer of Foote Partners, an IT workforce and compensation research consultancy in New Caanan, Conn.

Before the Internet, IT was in the business of increasing productivity by automating tasks and allowing companies to do things more cheaply and faster. But that has changed as business has increasingly moved to the Web. Technology is "right up against the customer," says Foote, "and Web systems are used to conduct business." That means technology has actually become the product in a lot of companies.

"So when employers look at who to put in those jobs," says Foote, "they think of tech skills, but also how well an applicant knows the customer, his industry experience and maybe even solution experience." For example, a health care company may be willing to train someone on Oracle database if that person has had five to seven years working in the industry.

"If they find that person but they're not certified, they say 'Who cares?' It's not necessary that they have certification,' Foote observes. The importance of certification -- and paying a premium for it -- has diminished over the years because employers are interested in other things in workers, he maintains.

"It's more than just pure technology; it's about the industry experience in addition to technical skills and who is experienced in the type of customers they're selling to," Foote says, "because you're delivering a lot of business over the internet and never talking to people." (article continues)

Matters of Concern
IT workers remain steadfastly concerned about certification. According to results of a biannual survey of more than 1,000 IT workers, just released by tech career site Dice, 82 percent of tech professionals cite the ability to keep their skills up-to-date as a strong area of concern. Further, when asked to assess their employer's encouragement and support of skills development, one-third of tech professionals say it is only "fair" or "poor." Only 26 percent rated their employers' performance in this area as "excellent," with 40 percent of respondents rating it as "good."

"Certification is important still,' says Paul Melde, vice president of technology at Dice, which is based in Des Moines, Iowa. "I'm not sure if the criticality of a few years ago was really as critical as we all thought it was, but I think it's a great way to demonstrate a basic competence in a technology."

A Competitive Issue
Certification has to be backed up with demonstrable work experience, Melde adds. Dice gets a lot of job postings specifying certifications, especially in contract positions, he says. Some of the ones that routinely come up are Microsoft certified engineers (MSCE), Cisco certification (CCIE) and project management certification (PMP), he says.

In terms of pay, "With certification coupled with experience, it would keep you at the upper end of what the market is in your area,' Melde says. "The ongoing education it represents gets back to what tech professionals were discussing in the survey -- keeping skills up to date."

Yet, Foote's research shows that in the last 12 months, pay for non-certified skills is up an average of seven percent, while in the same period, the average pay for certified skills is down 1.2 percent. Non-certified skills may include application development, networking and operating systems. Certified skills include IT security, Web development, and database management, Foote says.

"What's interesting is we have not seen, on a quarterly basis, certification losing value since 2004. So, it's a big deal that for first time in two years in this last quarter, certification skills are negative numbers; they're going in the other direction,' Foote says. (article continues)

While some certifications are "so easy to get it's laughable," Foote concurs with Melde that certifications from Cisco and The Project Management Institute absolutely guarantee a bump in pay.  Similarly, security certifications such as CISSP and CISP, and some of the certifications offered by Novell and Oracle are likely to draw increased compensation.

For the past seven years, rapid application development/extreme programming is the highest paying skill, whether certified or non-certified, according to the Foote Partners' 3rd Quarter 2006 Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index survey of pay for 253 IT skills, which included 55,000 U.S. and Canadian IT workers.

But overall, Foote emphasizes that "more and more companies are finding they have to pay the individual, not the job."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

IT and the Ivory Tower

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

The perennial problem with teaching technology in an academic setting is that by the time cutting-edge applications reach the classroom, they're often past their prime. IT professionals blame the distance between the ivory tower and the real world. The teachers "are mostly full-time professors and have no link to industry," explains Pieter Dorsman, Amsterdam-based product marketing manager for T-Systems, a 100% subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

Educators respond that it's not fair to tar all institutions with the same brush. "I think there are regional colleges and universities that keep pace better than others," says Stuart Wasilowski, vice president of Workforce Development at South Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, N.C. "This is due in part to the funding formulas, business demand for trained workforce and most importantly, leadership personnel that allows this progress. When these stars line up, you have the possibility for an institution to be 'up to speed'."

Principle versus Practice
Much of the debate about the right way to prepare students for the real-world needs of enterprise IT centers on a fundamental question: Is it better to teach critical thinking or practice applications?

"Higher education's purpose is to teach principles," says San Francisco-based Greg Skinner, a former Alta Vista Principal Software Engineer and M.I.T. graduate. "It cannot keep up with technology, and it isn't in its best interest to try. The best that it can and should do is to provide as strong a foundation as possible so that students can apply it to current technologies and possibly develop new technologies."

But what about enterprise's need to have fresh graduates on the ground running from day one? "There will always be a delay in adopting newer technologies in universities, unless they create the technology themselves and it becomes a (article continues)

market standard immediately. The question is: Is this really important?" says Robert De Loght, IT management consultant/owner, RDL Consult in Brussels, Belgium. "I think that companies have the permanent responsibility to pay attention to training their personnel. Prior education just paves the way to absorb even more material."

"Training students on one particular tool or programming language is meaningless because technology changes so rapidly," agrees Wuchun "George" Shen, director, Business Intelligence Consulting at AnswerThink in Boston, Mass. "Higher education should instead teach students problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, scientific and innovative approaches and methodologies."

Building Blocks or Bulldozers?
But should universities limit themselves to providing the building blocks? Or should they bulldoze their way to the frontlines?

"I think universities will be forced to hire or work in collaboration with third-party e-learning and instructor-led firms -- or perhaps the companies that actually develop the products -- that are more easily able to adapt and train [students in] new technologies," says Steve Johnson, e-Learning Designer at Pacific Life Insurance in Los Angeles, Calif.

"If they don't, I think the online degrees that people used to scoff at may actually become the best resource for the latest technology training, while [traditional] universities continue to lag further and further behind, graduating students with outdated skills by the time they receive their diploma," he adds.

Universities are well aware of the challenge and are doing their best to respond. "We're not up to speed universally across our whole campus yet, but we're getting there," says Ray Miller, Adjunct Assistant Professor, College of Applied Science -- MET, University of Cincinnati. "With 36,000 students, it is a challenge." (article continues)

Academia Doesn't Pay
It may be unrealistic to expect universities to ever match their enterprise peers. "Universities are large bureaucratic organizations that have very limited resources. With technology changing so rapidly, they just don't have the budget to buy the latest hardware or software technology as it emerges -- particularly because it's always more expensive when it first comes out," says Johnson. "Since they don't have the budget to purchase the latest technology, they don't have the ability to develop a curriculum around it, and they can't teach it."

Nor are commercial companies likely to lend a hand in sharing cutting-edge technology. "Research is no longer funded when it does not have some kind of predictable short- or medium-term return. As a result, most discoveries are made in commercial companies that share their developments no sooner than when they are certain they can make money with it," explains Dorsman.

Dorsman notes that proprietary interests prevent him from releasing information on his own research developments. "If I were doing the same [research] at a university, I would have published at least five white papers over the past five years," he says. "Sadly, no university would fund this."

The fundamental fact is, while the mind is not limited by resources, academic institutions are. Expecting colleges and universities to replace employee training entirely is an outdated notion. It is not even possible to impart all the latest knowledge in a specific domain.

Instead, says De Loght, "higher education should prepare people for flexible and permanent, life-long learning. Even if you spend five years or so at university, you still have 40 years to go in your professional life. It would be better to focus on the 40 years."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Project Management Tools for IT Executives

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Blackberries, Web 2.0 tools and other nifty widgets may make life easier, but they don't change the primary responsibility of a senior IT executive. The basic job description still involves overseeing all the resources -- personnel, financial budgets, software and equipment -- invested in various projects, whether they are temporary or one-time projects whose goal is to create a unique product or service, or permanent ongoing operational work performed to create the same product or service repeatedly.

Although hands-on project management tasks are usually delegated to someone lower in the IT organization, senior IT executives still need tools to manage resources. A new generation of software is being developed to provide managers with a complete picture of all the ongoing projects in their organization and help them better monitor and manage them.

What's Going On: The Widescreen Version
Dave Garrett, president and CEO of Washington, DC-based gantthead, a site devoted to project management, says that senior IT executives generally need to concentrate on four main tasks related to project-management:

Much of the time, these tasks can be overseen individually using standard (article continues)

off-the-shelf project management software. However, leading vendors such as Microsoft and Daptiv are moving toward offering project management software that monitors all work, not just project work.

After all, IT managers are usually engaged in both project management and running day-to-day operations within the business. So when software only tracks project work, you only have a partial picture of what people are working on. "Monitoring all work gives you a more relevant and manageable picture of resource usage and more management control," says Garrett. "The idea is that, in the end, you can focus people on the tasks that will really move you forward as a company."

From Project to Portfolio
Some experts argue that IT executives don't need project management software so much as they need project portfolio management, which treats individual projects as part of an overall investment portfolio. By establishing values, metrics and technologies that drive visibility across projects and measure process improvements, project portfolio management tools help executives manage a whole series of projects from beginning to end.

With project portfolio management, the goal is to implement effective resource allocation across projects, spot when schedules are slipping and flag where costs are exceeding budget. "Most senior IT executives focus on the vision and the (article continues)

strategy aspect of projects. Portfolio management straddles the line between that and the actual execution of individual projects," says Joseph Phillips, director of education at Project Seminars Inc., a project management consulting firm based in Indianapolis, Ind.

Another way to put it is that project management is about "doing things right" and that portfolio management is about "doing the right things." Garrett says, "If you just manage projects individually, you might be doing the wrong things exceedingly well -- which doesn't really get you anywhere. If you do both project management and portfolio management, hopefully you are 'doing the right things right.'"

Complex Jobs Need Complex Tools
IT is infamous for the exceedingly high rate of change. Whether you are installing a network, building a new data center or developing or upgrading an application, it is "guaranteed that things will change between today and tomorrow," says Phillips. "There will be viruses and bugs and software upgrades and new hardware devices, and vendors entering and leaving the market. IT is extraordinarily difficult to manage as a result."

IT executives frequently make the mistake of planning for the long term but settling for short-term results. What's needed, says Phillips, is a more granular view across the board. "IT is radically different from manufacturing or construction -- executives who move from other functions to IT are astounded at the rate of change," says Phillips. "It needs to be managed accordingly using the right tools."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Keeping Projects On Time and On Budget

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

IT managers walk a fine line between profits and productivity, but never more than when launching a new enterprise project. Tight budgets, paper-thin staffing or a misstep in scheduling employees or allocating resources can lead to blown budgets and bungled projects.

"Salaries are money, time is money and technology is money," says Wallace Jackson, CEO of Mind Taffy Design, a media content design and optimization management consultancy firm based in Santa Barbara, Calif. "Everything comes down to the almighty dollar."

When Jackson adds up the potential touch points that can knock a project off course and off budget he singles out time, e.g., deadlines, as the most important. Talent, e.g., employees and/or consultants, runs a close second. Technology -- hardware, or processing capability, and software, or user interface optimization -- is also significant. "All of these relate back to time, as more talent equals less time spent; more processing power equals less time waiting; and fewer bugs equals less time reworking."

Build a Breathing Blueprint
Every project needs a plan. But not all plans are created equal when it comes to preventing problems for the long-haul.

The blueprint should spell out precise project needs, not just elaborate on the project description. "Clearly defined and agreed-upon project plans enable stakeholders to be involved in the project where necessary, yet not 'gum up the works' in areas outside the boundaries of their expertise," says Matthew Gallagher, proprietor of Maka's Surf Shop, an Orlando, Fla.-based independent boutique web design studio.

A well-considered blueprint can also prevent scope creep, what Gallagher calls "the bane of any manager over any project." Defining what is being developed is only half of the battle. "Determining what the project is not will keep all members focused on building towards that common goal," Gallagher says.

Paying for the Right People
Money pits within any project can derail the best of budget planning. One of the deepest pits lurks in the talent pool. "I honestly don't believe you get what you pay for these days," says Ranjith V. Balakrishnan, Senior Project Manager at Los Angeles, Calif. -based Professional Interactive Entertainment dba Global Gaming. "Unfortunately, demand for resources supersedes actual quality of work. But it doesn't change the fact that cost is a big factor that either makes or breaks a project."

Allocate funds for quality talent, rather than choosing cheap talent or assigning tasks to staff based solely on time availability. "Many times the required skill set is not readily available simply because it is not cost effective to maintain a full-time employee," says Balakrishnan. "And, sadly, the reality is that people who do not possess the required skill set are given tasks just because there isn't anyone else readily available to do the job."

Monitor skill-sets rather than bodies and plan to add and delete consultants accordingly. Hiring better talent, or even adding contracted expertise, may actually reduce the overall project costs.

Beware of Cost Creep
Hidden costs throughout the life of the project can also sink a budget. "The project cost is important, but during the project phase I also evaluate the expected recurring costs, such as license, maintenance cost and people over time," says Francois Mignot, IS manager at Sanofi-Aventis, an international pharmaceutical company based in Dijon, France.

For example, one hidden cost can emerge when deadlines are moved up. "An accelerated deadline date will result in more consultant usage," says Columbus-based Mike Buglioli, IT Senior Manager at insurance giant Aflac. "Having the right skill sets in-house will reduce consultant use."

Don't let expertise be limited to a few key people. Either rotate the staff or distribute the work to deepen your bench strength and to ensure the success of the project is not vulnerable to employee turn-over.

"IT is a mind game. If a critical resource is lost the project can go off schedule," counsels Gautam Gupta, Group Leader, Amdocs in Cyprus. "So in every scheduling, I always keep rotating the roles in a round robin manner."

Mind the Clock
Prior to initiating a project, determine crucial checkpoints in the timeline and weigh the availability, productivity and cost of preventing each potential pitfall at each checkpoint. That way, you can get an early jump on the need for additional resources and ensure that deadlines and budgets will be met.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Collaboration with Control

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

No organization is an island. To be sufficiently agile and survive in today's fiercely competitive markets, you must work closely with partners, suppliers and customers. Not only will collaboration result in significant cost savings and process efficiencies; it will allow you to boost customer service and create a significant competitive edge.

"Effectively running a business today involves working with multiple organizations and with multiple departments within those organizations," says Nari Viswanathan, research director, supply chain and logistics, at the Aberdeen Group, in Boston, Mass. "That can only happen if traditional silos are broken down."

Yet wholesale collaboration can be too much of a good thing. Without proper organizational, you risk losing focus or slowing progress on strategic objectives in an attempt to satisfy too many demands. Without proper technological controls, you're in danger of giving away proprietary information.

How can you maintain a happy medium when collaborating? Here are four best practices that enable you to work closely with others without losing sight of your own goals:

Get buy-in from the very top of all relevant organizations Directives to work with others must be mandated by leaders at all organizational levels or effective collaboration simply won't happen. This doesn't just mean executives in the C-suites of all separate businesses involved, but the senior managers within each functional department of each business. At the same time, guidelines and rules for keeping out the "noise" of requests or suggestions from partners and customers must be set and communicated throughout the enterprise to avoid employees being distracted by conflicting demands. (article continues)

Align everyone's incentives to meet strategic goals People who talk the talk may not always walk the walk. "Unless people understand what's in it for them, they won't truly participate," says Jan Twombly, president of The Rhythm of Business Inc., a consulting firm specializing in collaboration based in Newton, Mass. "Collaboration is all about 'give and get.'" This means making sure that people are rewarded for acting to further the aims of the enterprise in general rather than just their own particular profit. "If a sales person has the incentive to push for volume only, he or she might not be thinking about whether the products being sold are the most profitable," says Viswanathan.

Drive mutual decisions through agreed-upon metrics "Different strokes for different folks" may be a nice management mantra, but to collaborate successfully, all parties must agree to one shared standard of what is being measured and how it is measured. Is it the overall profitability of the business? Is it keeping customer service levels high? Is it minimizing inventory? "You have to think about the kinds of actions you want to encourage and put the metrics in place to change behaviors," says Viswanathan.

Install the right infrastructure to protect valuable data Some types of collaboration can leave organizations vulnerable by providing competitors with insight into proprietary operations or strategies. "When you open up your systems to an external organization, you are taking risks," says Sam Pullar, founder and executive partner in the Cumberland Partners Inc., a consulting firm based in Suwanee, Ga., that provides manufacturing firms with distribution and logistics services. "You must put the appropriate technical controls in place to guard against those risks." Twombly agrees that, "Most enterprises already have security systems in place that authorize certain internal people to access certain kinds of information. With external partnerships, you need to slice and dice those access rights even further." (article continues)

There are innumerable benefits to collaborating across organizational boundaries -- both inside and outside the four walls of the enterprise. For example, by bringing together all participants in the supply chain -- from internal manufacturing and distribution functions to external partners such as raw-goods suppliers, wholesalers or retailers -- businesses can dramatically reduce inventory and slice the amount of overall working capital that is tied up in the supply chain at any one time. Likewise, internal collaboration between formerly siloed functions or departments can drive efficiency and result in tangible bottom-line benefits.

"It really comes down to entrepreneurial thinking," says Twombly. "If you think about it, the chief job of an entrepreneur is to rally people around a vision -- most particularly, those people that you might not have authority over. You must constantly be thinking of ways to get them to pay attention to your particular needs. Simultaneously, the controls must be in place to make sure you aren't serving their objectives at the expense of your own."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Wikis in the Enterprise

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Thanks to the explosive popularity of Wikipedia, many consumers are familiar with the concept of a wiki, a collaborative web page which can be viewed and edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Corporate adoption, however, has been much slower. Only 37% of enterprises currently use wikis, according to a recent study by The Nemertes Research Group Inc. in Mokena, Ill.

But while large organizations are concerned about security, management and compliance in a wiki world, smaller businesses are intrigued by what these infinitely customizable online databases can offer. Proponents claim wikis can improve productivity, reduce email overload, cut down on meetings and promote better knowledge-sharing. 

"Users need space to collaborate with other employees globally who are mobile and don't have the means to do so in the current IT infrastructure," says Jonathan Edwards, a research associate at Yankee Group, in Boston, Mass. "They're resorting to [wikis] because they are easy to use." (article continues)

Catching the Wiki Wave
"A lot of wiki use is still bottom-up. Someone -- often in IT -- sets one up and then people start to use it,' explains Ben Gross, an analyst at San Francisco, Calif.-based Ferris Research.

For those interested in officially deploying a wiki at work, Edwards suggests starting with a small pilot group of people addressing a specific business problem. He cautions that it may take a while for wiki use to catch on. "It's a very different way to work," he says.

Technology is rarely the stumbling block. Wiki vendors, including Atlassian Software Systems, Socialtext, MindTouch and Media Wiki (the software that runs Wikipedia) offer onsite deployment within the firewall as well as hosted models.

The key to a wiki's success is user participation. "All too often when corporations look at Web 2.0 technologies, they think they have to get them, but wikis too often (article continues)

are left to rot because people aren't used to them," Edwards observes. "The cultural change is 90 percent; the technology is only 10 percent."

Gross agrees, saying the biggest barrier he has seen is user hesitation to create both structure and concept. "It's a shift for the users and managers because of the degree of openness, and because of the idea that you have a web page and you make changes on it and it's live."

Making Wikis Work
When are wikis a logical solution? Edwards recommends talking to employees about problems they're having with their current collaboration tools and discussing whether wikis might provide the answer. In order to encourage use, he also recommends putting work content on the wiki so that employees are forced to interact on the wiki rather than through e-mail.

Before creating a corporate wiki, Gross advises looking at examples of successful wikis. They tend to be used more by groups that work well together, he says. Including employees in the pilot process will help convince them that working on a wiki will be comfortable and productive. (article continues)

Newer wikis offer more access control in order to limit who can edit what. They are also getting better at letting users input content with standard HTML. Content that is highly formatted, like a complex Word document or spreadsheet, is not a great fit for a wiki. But a corporate-wide policies and procedures document that needs frequent updating is almost tailor-made for wiki technology.

Because their free-form nature can be off-putting and occasionally impractical, wikis need to be "groomed and linked well" in order to make information easy to find, says Gross. He suggests designating an employee to be responsible for ensuring the wiki is easy to navigate "because that doesn't always happen organically."

"Historically, it's been hard for people to edit web pages and keep them together,' says Gross. "That's what wikis do well." Adds Edwards, "Once people realize how easy wikis are to use, they say 'Now I get it.'"

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

CRM Applications Go Internal

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

As enterprises become more adept at using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems to enhance customer relations, the buzz is beginning to build around using these same tools to recruit and retain top IT talent. The question is, will CRM for internal use be the next big bang in IT or will it simply fizzle?

"There is some validity to the concept, but I don't see a one-to-one correspondence between the care and feeding of IT people and the needs of a customer," says Donna Fitzgerald, an analyst at the esteemed Gartner Research firm in Stamford, Conn.

Perhaps the lack of a direct correlation is merely due to the newness of the idea. To be sure, all the kinks have yet to be ironed out. As a result, reactions range across the entire spectrum.

Some enterprises are already on the bandwagon. "We use our CRM software quite successfully to track our staff as well as our customers," confides Jeff Pelletier, owner and executive producer of Basetwo Media Inc., one of Canada's leading video production companies, based in Vancouver, BC. "'Highrise,' by 37signals, has an option to create 'cases.' We use these 'cases' to keep notes on sick days, days off and any personal or performance issues that may arise. Access to these files is restricted to management who can then comment in the message threads if there are any ongoing issues." (article continues)

For every positive reaction, though, there's adamant criticism that using CRM for internal IT staffing purposes is a bad idea. "As a manager, I find it appalling and hope never to hear of companies actually adopting this as a primary perspective to take toward their workforce," laments Fitzgerald. "Human beings are complex systems -- they are, by their very nature, 'high touch.'"

In between the adopters and the antagonists, though, are plenty who have yet to consider the idea. "This isn't a connection that is spoken of a great deal in the HR/talent management market and I've not heard it spoken of directly having to do with managing IT staff," says Lisa Rowan, program manager in HR and Talent Management Services at IDC in Framingham, Mass.

The Human Factor
There are still plenty of questions about how well CRM software would adapt to talent management.

Fitzgerald cautions would-be users to remember that the goal of a CRM system is to capture information that leverages a one-to-many relationship between salespeople and customers. "There is, in general, no correspondence between the ratio of salespeople to customers and the ratio of management to IT staff -- meaning the software isn't designed to solve the problem," she says.

Human factors raise further doubts. "Who would be maintaining the system, i.e., operating in the traditional role of sales? Certainly not the business units. Staff elsewhere in the organization is interchangeable to them," exclaims Fitzgerald. "Would it be the IT management staff? If so, this begs the question of why they can't achieve the same benefit in a more personal manner." (article continues)

Among the CRM-like applications favored by HR pros, contact management appears to have the edge, but is mainly used for recruitment purposes rather than retention. "I have seen an increase in the correlation between contact management and recruiting," says Rowan. She cites PeopleClick as one example of a contact management system designed for recruitment; it recently announced a contact management system expressly to be used to keep in touch with and manage candidates for open. "This is a good use for CRM/contact management, as getting new recruits in the door is itself a sales proposition," says Rowan.

CRM vs. Everything Else
Still, when it comes to actually managing staff, other technologies are considered much more useful.

"Products like SharePoint are becoming excellent collaborative platforms and can support collaboration, knowledge management, some limited social networking and workflow. A tool like this has enormously more efficacy than a CRM tool," says Fitzgerald.

"I see lots of applications for social networking software in the workplace," she adds. "There are applications for career planning/skills software and there are applications for blogging and collaborative software. These are good ideas as long as they are used to enhance human interaction and not replace it."

However you choose to manage your staff, IT is the best place to try out any new system. "IT staff is generally comfortable with applications and might serve as a good pilot group to try out general workforce management applications," says Fitzgerald. "In general, if you can't sell the value of the application to someone who loves software, you will never get the rest of your workforce to adopt it."

For now, though, it looks as if CRM for internal staffing purposes is getting the pink slip.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Streamlining Performance Reviews

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

How productive are your employees? That's every organization's big question. Employee performance management systems aim to provide an answer. But do their metrics measure what truly matters?

By evaluating employees' degree of engagement, a performance management system can "definitely impact the productivity you get from your workforce in many dimensions" and enhance your ability to retain talent, says Jim Holincheck, a research vice president at Gartner Group, in Chicago, Ill. But, he warns, "It can be a double-edged sword. If you don't use it right, it could de-motivate people and you'll have performance and productivity decline."

Getting Your Money's Worth
Depending on the industry, companies are spending between 20 percent and 70 percent of their budgets on people-related costs, Holincheck says. They obviously want to improve the return on their investment.

Typically in larger companies, "both the manager and the company want to see that they're getting the bang for their buck and make sure they're getting maximum performance from each person," concurs Cathy Shepard, principal in the human capital practice at Mercer, in Los Angeles, Calif.

Performance management systems are especially useful at keeping track of who gets paid what, so companies are able to easily assess whether the people getting higher salaries are performing the best. (article continues)

Customized Appraisals
At many companies, the appraisal process is unwieldy and in need of streamlining. Managers often still write up performance appraisals in Microsoft Word documents, then route the file via e-mail for approvals. Organizations typically don't have a central repository for storing the appraisals, making it difficult for the human resources department to track whether the appraisals are even getting done.

A lack of clear metrics can adversely affect employees' performance. "If results are not properly linked to rewards, the process can de-motivate the workforce," Holincheck says. Conversely, a company may have a process that rates its people and recommends rewards, but may not be rating them on right areas.

Furthermore, notes Holincheck, "It's difficult in Word to do things like goal alignment and cascading of goals and objectives from company to department so you get additional capabilities beyond the original form."

Automated performance management systems were once avoided because they had a reputation for delivering one-size-fits-all appraisals. But a new generation of applications lets companies define the criteria for an employee appraisal. The review may have sections on goals and objectives and developmental planning, as well as sections that allow a manager to rate an employee's proficiency in certain competencies.

"In one sense, it's a shell and you can put whatever you want in the form," says Holincheck. But it's important to customize the review with the right (article continues)

competencies for the right person in order to help develop the person's abilities and get the most value from the system.

Performance management systems vendors, such as Success Factors and Halogen Software, let managers load up appraisal forms with goals and objectives that can be drilled down for further detail, as well as sections that assess competency and recommend further development.

Some systems also have mechanisms that help the supervisors who are preparing reviews. Q&As and a reporting mechanism enable supervisor to keep track of their progress in the periodic flood of performance reviews.

Same Time Next ... Month?
Managers and employees alike tend to dread the annual review. It's a huge time choke for managers and a source of anxiety for employees. Automated review systems make it easy for managers and employees to take the pulse of their performance more frequently and with less at stake.

"One of the opportunities with a tool is to have more regular feedback for employees. When you have a conversation with someone, you can capture that," says Holincheck. By enabling -- and even encouraging -- managers to keep tabs throughout the year, an automated system will provide an accurate picture of an employee's performance in a manner that's as pain-free as possible.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

The Semantic Web: Finally Becoming Enterprise-Ready

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

The Semantic Web was first envisioned in the late 1990s as the ultimate tool to harness the Internet's ever-accelerating growth of data. Then and today, information searches are limited by the keywords people manually enter; if you don't know the right keyword, you may miss ferreting out the information you need. Rather than restricting searches to information stored in a traditional folder hierarchy, Semantic Web technology allows companies to navigate through all the resources in an organization -- not just digital, but also social and human resources as well -- by making logical inferences that previously only humans could make.

"The Semantic Web promises to organize the world's information in a much more logical way," says Marc Fawsi, an analyst at Evolving Trends in San Francisco. "And once machines can understand and use information, the world will never be the same."

Semantics in Action
Today, Semantic Web technology is seeping into corporations and government agencies to build sophisticated knowledge bases and knowledge management systems, says Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, in San Francisco. "Government agencies as well as firms like Eli Lilly and Oracle are using it to improve discovery of what exists in unstructured documents and data collections scattered through their organizations."

For example, say a pharmaceutical company wanted to find all information related to a certain disease, including all the drugs and treatments and conditions related to that disease. Previously, a search would bring up only those documents or database records that contained the keywords specified by the (article continues)

human searcher. With the Semantic Web, however, the machine could make inferences: because a certain drug is commonly used to treat that disease, or because a specific symptom is typically associated with that disease, any information that contained references to those drugs or symptoms would also be retrieved, even if the disease wasn't mentioned by name.

A Bit of a Disconnect
Many corporations are already making use of Semantic Web technology -- but often management isn't aware of it because it is being used by employees in unauthorized ways, according to Scott Abel, CEO of Indianapolis-based The Content Wrangler. He points to the ways that some enterprise customer call centers are beginning to use tagging services like del.icio.us to help them better organize their reference materials. "Call center representatives are often challenged by having to look through massive amounts of online resources provided by the corporation to answer customer questions. This can include technical manuals, training manuals and lists of frequently asked questions (FAQ)," says Abel.

Unfortunately, the way these resources are organized doesn't really correspond to the way the employees must use them. But by "tagging" various pieces of this online content with such things as the name of the customer who needed it, or the specific problems customers were having that were solved by it, the call center can begin to compile a knowledge base that corresponds more closely to organizing the information the way its employees use it. "For example, a customer representative can do a quick retrieval of all the specific instances when a particular customer called in to complain about the battery life of a product," says Abel.

This helps the corporation in many ways, "not the least of which is that when a customer calls in, the representative is likely to be able to respond more quickly and accurately," says Abel. (article continues)

Mixing and Mashing Disconnected Sources
Another example of corporate use of the Semantic Web involves "mash ups," or the act of bringing together and consolidating information from different online sources into a single integrated experience. For example, a technology company could mash up internally generated documentation with information provided by customers on a user forum to come up with a more comprehensive -- and user friendly -- source of data about products for customers. "In these forums, you have users helping users, and it adds up to these huge libraries of valuable information that companies can leverage to better serve all customers," says Abel. "The Semantic Web allows companies to integrate this information much more easily than a traditional database could."

Agrees Spivack, "You could think of the Semantic Web as a new kind of middleware in which you can do data integration without having to go through application integration."

For now, most corporations are making only limited forays into the Semantic Web. For example, many firms are using Semantic Web technologies internally but confine their implementations to information stored within the corporation, rather than venturing out onto the Web itself. "This turns out to be much easier than what people are struggling with in the larger world, because they have control over all the elements and don't have to worry about all the different technologies and standards that currently are competing with each other on the Web," says Fawsi. However, he predicts, "As standards begin to become established, that will change."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Does Your Staff Have the Skills to Succeed?

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

When food and beverage maker Welch's was preparing to deploy a complicated Oracle ERP system, the IT group responsible for the implementation wanted to make sure their staff had the right skills needed for the job. Wayne Lemmerhirt, former group manager of applications development at Welch's, in Concord, Mass., held a series of meetings with his direct reports and identified four different sets of necessary skills, tools and languages. When matched against each IT employee, the resulting matrix clearly showed which staff member had which talents.

Next, the managers rated the people for each skill on a scale from one to five, says Lemmerhirt now a partner with OnDemand Services, a managed services consultancy in Burlington, Mass. The team also included such non-technical areas as leadership and project management skills. The result was a clear picture of each employee's talents, enabling Lemmerhirt and his team to pinpoint which skills were missing and to decide whether to train existing employees or hire outside consultants.

What's In Your Talent Warehouse?
Making sure you have the right talent in-house is important for several reasons. It ensures not only that project implementations will go smoother but that you can anticipate your long-term needs, manage any skills gap and reduce the enterprise risk associated with IT business initiatives.

"Knowing what you have in-house, who the people are and the skills they have is a terrific way of managing and mitigating enterprise-level risk associated with information technology," says Diane Morello, a vice president and fellow at IT research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc., in Stamford, Conn. (article continues)

Morello recommends two approaches to streamlining IT talent management. Software competency models identify consistent behaviors and demonstrable practices to indicate if a person has particular skills and at what level. Automated resource management and portfolio management tools help track people's skills, as well as their availability and project assignments. Which choice is best depends on how geographically dispersed the organization is.

"If you're an organization that has 10 people and you know everyone sitting there, you can probably [manage skill sets] on an Excel spreadsheet,' Morello says. "But if your organization stretches across cities and continents and time zones, then the more automated the process is, the more visible it will be to people in different areas so you can capitalize on what skills exist in different locations."

Brian Domenick, the director of IS and Technology at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., begins to develop a clear understanding of the skills of each member of his 10-person staff during the interview/hiring process. "The key is communication from the start to figure out who is best suited for what tasks," says Dominick. "Over time it becomes apparent who has what tasks and what skills match. When a project comes up, I have no question in my mind who should do it."

Domenick gets very involved in the interview process. "Even though I have managers underneath me, I like to converse with people periodically. That keeps me abreast of who does what." (article continues)

In Search of the Right Skills
With technology expanding so rapidly, Domenick says it can be a real challenge to incorporate all the skills an organization needs on staff. One solution: powerful partnerships. FDU has formed collaborative relationships with other colleges and universities in New Jersey. If one institution doesn't have an employee with a particular skill, the IT group can borrow a person with the necessary talent and pay them as a consultant.

For Welch's Oracle implementation, Lemmerhirt didn't have the budget to bring in consultants skilled in Java, Perl and XML. His team chose Java as their coding language and focused on training certain staff members.

"We looked at whether anyone with the older skills could easily transition to object-oriented programming or Java and Perl,' Lemmerhirt says. "We found some people who could pick up similar technologies," such as programmers who could transition from RPG to Java. Because Lemmerhirt knew that other staffers wouldn't learn the new skills as easily, he relied on the first wave to undergo the transition to mentor the others. This, he says, turned out to be a good strategy.

Any IT managers looking to get a handle on their staff's capabilities, whether in preparation for a specific project or just in general, should follow these three steps:

"Decide where you want to go,' says Lemmerhirt. "Then work on a plan to get people there."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Blurring the Borders

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Today's new technologies have enabled employees to bring work home. But they have also made it easier for people to bring their personal life to work. While most organizations understand the need for flexibility, they are also well aware that increased access can cut both ways.

Pedro Forment, a lawyer working out of Ford & Harrison's Miami office, has seen plenty of employee misconduct during his career. The shenanigans of upper management at one of his clients, a California IT company, could have supplied a soap opera scribe with a year's worth of plotlines.  "One guy was soliciting prostitutes," says Forment. "There were all these e-mails when he would go on business trips saying, 'What services will I get for 190 roses?' 'Roses' was a euphemism for dollars."

More seriously, the same connections and technologies that enable employees to pay their bills, blog, shop, surf the Web and e-mail during work hours also enable employers to ask workers to do more work at home or on the road. Most of the time, that pen drive will hold information and documents needed to do legitimate work away from the office, the cell phone will enable employers to easily contact employees and the Internet virtually replicates workplace resources at home or on a laptop. But when employees routinely take work home, they may be carrying reams of confidential, crucial and valuable information that can inadvertently be accessed by people all over the world.

How can employers manage the proper use of technology? (article continues)

Do the Right Thing
Steve Rubel, a marketing strategist who is a senior vice president at the Edelman PR agency located in New York, N.Y., faces an increasingly common work/personal life challenge: how to blog about your personal interests when your personal interests overlap, to a great extent, with the work you do.

Rubel was hired by Edelman in part on the strength of Micro Persuasion, Rubel's enormously popular website that serves as a source for information and opinion on the intersection of technology, media and marketing. "Edelman has a very comprehensive policy and it's been recently expanded to include some systems by which if you want to blog about a client, we're encouraged to seek out the person who works for that client and ask them if it's okay," he says. However, he notes, "I just usually don't do that, because it takes a long time, and usually when I have an idea I want to post it."

In any case, he adds, "the company does not really have any direct control over the blog. Nobody's checking it every day. But at the same time, you have to be careful what you say, because it can have ramifications."

The Policies of Persuasion
Despite the murky boundaries of this new world, there are common sense -- and legally smart -- policies and procedures that employers can put into place to protect themselves and their employees from liability. (article continues)

Employers should be especially careful not to pry into employees' personal lives -- or, more accurately, not punishing employees for engaging in lawful activities outside the workplace, even if those activities are distasteful to the employer, says Richard Block, a partner at The Employment Law Group of Block Bernstein & Lagasse, part of Dreier LLP, located in New York, N.Y.

Employers also need to be cautious when seeking out information about prospective job candidates on the Web. "When recruiters see information related to topics covered by discrimination laws, they should be cautious," Block says. Since hiring decisions based on an applicant's disability can be construed as biased, an employer is in a better legal position if they are unaware of the disability.

On the flip side, Forment and Rubel agree that companies need to have a strict policy, or set of policies, about the personal use of the employer's technology. They also need to be clear that at work, employees should have no expectation of privacy. That means e-mails can be read and Web surfing monitored.

"Simply having a policy is never going to be enough if you're turning a blind eye to what's happening," says Forment. "But if you have an effective policy that's fairly thorough and you're not turning a blind eye when issues come up, you're going to have pretty good protection."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

How to Win the Talent War

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Times are good for technology workers looking for a new job or just entering the workforce. Already one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S. economy, the tech sector will continue to expand, thanks to the ongoing innovation in computer systems design.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of computer programmers and information systems experts is expected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through the year 2014. Consequently, the demand for managers to oversee these workers and systems administrators will also increase.

In addition, replacements will be needed for info-tech workers who retire or move into other occupations. Unemployment for skilled IT professionals is currently less than 2 percent, experts say, and situation will only tighten over the next 10 to 15 years as baby boomers retire from the workforce.

The Coming Talent Gap
At the same time, there has been a marked decrease in the number of people graduating from school with technology degrees since 2000, studies show. "My hypothesis is that IT has been less of an attractive area after the dotcom bubble burst," observes Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology, a staffing firm in Menlo Park, Calif.

"It is absolutely getting more challenging -- not only in the identification of the right talent but the attraction," says David Bair, national vice president of KForce Technology Staffing in Tampa, Fla. "The reality is, the number of individuals available to do the jobs is not enough. There continue to be gaps."
Tory Soli, president and senior managing partner at I.T. Staffing Services in Phoenix, Ariz., offers another theory on the unsatisfied demand for IT workers. "A lot of companies outsourced to India and got cheap labor, but found it wasn't working [that well] and are taking things back in-house,"' says Soli. (article continues)

Attracting the Best and the Brightest
IT managers are already preparing for the coming talent war. Interestingly, while money is an obvious lure, it's not an automatic deal-clincher. The winning strategies to attract the best and the brightest are more varied than you might think:

Don't just round up the usual suspects. Look for talented workers by leveraging current staff who belong to user groups and key professional organizations. "It behooves you to have people in your organization who can network and identify those individuals who may be looking," says Bair. Offer referral bonuses as well. (article continues)

Strengthen Retention Strategies
Turnover is expensive. According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, the fully loaded cost of replacing a worker who leaves (excluding lost productivity) is typically 1.5 to 2.5 times the worker's annual salary. In a tight job market, companies can't afford environments that people don't want to work in.

There are three primary reasons people stay with an employer:

Another way to retain good people is to create an environment that is fun and makes their overall life easier, which can be done for little or no cost. Google is frequently cited as an example of a company that offers free food, transportation, flexible hours and the ability to telecommute -- not to mention a coin-free laundry room in the Mountain View, Calif., office. Having Ping-Pong tables and latte machines at the office can't hurt, either. Even if you can't pay competitive salaries, Soli suggests offering potential employees extra vacation time.

As the IT talent war heats up, companies will need incentives to attract and retain the right people. Don't underestimate the power of painting a positive picture of the functional and business skills the person can gain by working for your organization and how the experience will lead to greater opportunities in the future. Just be sure to turn that rosy picture into reality. Broken promises are the surest way to lose your talent today -- and leave you in the lurch tomorrow.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Boost the Chances of IT Budget Approval

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Successfully surviving the budget process requires more than just shouldering past competing departments and technologies. To hit the jackpot in a steadily dwindling pool of IT funds demands a different way of thinking. In addition to determining a cogent list of reasons to get what is needed, you also must learn to deconstruct the drivers behind the process.

Chief Considerations
You need to learn what pressures drive your CEO's, CFO's and CIO's funding decisions, then propose ways to relieve those pressures. "Find out where the biggest constraints exist," counsels Kevin Verde, CIO, Jason's Deli in Dallas, Texas.  "Is it staffing? Is it mindshare or focus? Is it dollars? Is it server-sprawl? Is it risk tolerance? Is it complexity? Ask questions and know your CEO, CFO and CIO well. Then, appeal to those perceived constraints within the request."

The priorities of the CIO, CFO and CEO may differ. It's vital that your budget strategy take account of all three and incorporate them into a solid, focused proposal. "Find the common ground, which is an understanding of the business, the business strategies, and the goals and objectives of the corporation," advises Bahija Noell, vice president of the Business Partnership Management Office in the Information Technology Division of Aflac, the insurance giant headquartered in Columbus, Ga.

As long as the CIO and the business leaders agree that technology initiatives must align with the corporate business strategies and bring value to the (article continues)

shareholders, customers, field force and employees, then gaining support to move forward with technology initiatives and securing a place on the business project roadmap becomes relatively easier to achieve, adds Noell.

Find Allies
Aligning IT initiatives with enterprise goals, however, is only one part of a successful budget strategy. Interpersonal communications and relationships can boost you to the front of the line - or boot you to the end - quicker than the time it takes to present your business case.

Measuring the pulse of the organization calls for effective communication between IT and other departments. "Because technology investments often involve large expenditures, the trend is for more shared governance over the decision-making process," says Jennifer Pitts, assistant professor of Computer Information Systems Management at the Turner College of Business at Columbus State University in Columbus, Ga.

With business managers as well as IT managers justifying the value of technology investments, relationship building must occur across several disciplines. The good news: "This trend has helped overcome some of the challenges commonly associated with technology decisions being driven by politics versus strategy," says Pitts.

Weigh Hard and Soft Costs
Although interdepartmental relationships are a key factor in clearing budget hurdles, they do not trump the importance of a fundamental business case. "Technology projects that cannot be cost-justified or are not aligned with the company's strategy are generally not resourced in terms of funding or personnel, regardless of the corporate politics," warns Pitts. (article continues)

A continuous and iterative dialog between the CIO and the IT and business managers helps articulate underlying budgetary considerations and head off unpleasant surprises. An unexpected bonus: While some of the ideas brought forward may not come to fruition, discussing them enables everyone to have a better understanding of the organization's financial situation and to move a step closer to learning what is likely to be approved, says Noell.

For example, finances may not be the deciding factor in okaying an IT project. "For me, dollars are not the only thing that must be budgeted. For every request, I have to factor in any new project's impact on our departmental focus," says Verde.

If your proposal is truly based on a strong business argument that addresses upper management concerns, it is more likely to be included in the budget without delay. But even if it gets shelved, a well-researched approach may make future budget requests more successful. "Clear-cut, bottom-line thinking -- the slam-dunk case to save money or improve how we can serve our customers -- wins every time," says Verde. "Back up the case with hard facts and prove the results afterwards, and future requests will likely be met with less resistance."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Hire Your Replacement

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Succession planning is a long-honored practice in human resources (HR) circles. But although it's standard for organizations wishing to buffer themselves against the untimely departure of their most senior IT executives, it's a relatively rare action for enterprises to take on behalf of their low- or mid-management IT positions.

Why not initiate your own personal succession planning? That's right -- actually finding, hiring (if necessary) and training your own replacement. Although that might have seemed like a risky proposition 12 months ago when IT jobs were scarce and pay raises seemed like little more than rounding errors, today it might be the best thing you can do to advance your career." Given today's shortage of qualified IT workers, grooming your replacement is a very solid strategy," says Mark McManus, vice president of IT research at consulting firm Computer Economics in Irvine, Calif.

Show What You Know
Training a protg makes sense for a variety of reasons, all of which demonstrate that you are thinking strategically:

It removes potential barriers to promotion Ironically, being too good at your job in a time of scarce personnel resources could actually work against you. "It's a candidates' market for IT jobs," says Tim Bosse, executive vice president of recruiting giant Hudson's IT and Telecommunications Practice, in Philadelphia, Pa. As a result, your company may be having trouble finding high-caliber people who possess the right mix of technology, managerial and people skills that you do. (article continues)

This can make it difficult for your boss to consider promoting you out of your current position. "If no one else has the right skills, this could definitely cause your career to stagnate," says Bosse.

A related issue: Because recruiters are having so much trouble luring new IT talent to your organization, they may offer an outsider a higher level position -- one that should have rightly been yours -- to entice a candidate to sign up.

It makes your own organization run more smoothly If you've got a unique combination of experience and a skill that makes you invaluable to your organization, chances are good that you're stretched a little thin. This can make it difficult to take much-needed vacations, attend off-site meetings, travel on business or attend conferences where you can expand your network and industry knowledge. Having a successor-in-training to substitute in your absence can do a lot toward lifting this kind of professional weight from your shoulders.

It gives you time to develop your own skills "You can be so busy doing your own job that you risk not getting the skills you need to move into your next position," warns McManus. "That could lead to you being passed over when something opens up." Shifting core responsibilities to your replacement can free up time for you to take an in-house training course, sign up for external educational classes or otherwise prepare for your own professional advancement. (article continues)

It shows management you are a true team player Every well-run IT organization is careful to ensure that its employee base has "depth." By taking a proactive role in developing the skill sets of others within the organization, you are demonstrating that you understand the urgency of maintaining a competitive edge on the technical personnel front.

Reach for Your Own Next Rung
It goes without saying that you should look to present yourself not just as a talent groomer but as a "talent groomee." Don't be shy about discussing your desire to enhance your career with your manager; describe your ideas for training a replacement and ask what else you should do to secure a place in the promotion pipeline.

If your company doesn't seem interested in enabling you to acquire the skills to advance to the next level, then it's probably time for you to look for a job elsewhere. The good news, says Bosse: "Today there are more options for IT professionals than there have been for a number of years. These opportunities exist on all sorts of levels -- both technical and managerial. So if you're not getting anywhere in your current organization, you can easily go elsewhere."

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Five Measures of Management

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Too little management can leave IT stalled; too much can choke it to a standstill. The trick is to find that magic balance that enables the whole IT department to chug steadily forward like a well-oiled machine.

Historically, IT departments tended to be organized in layers. "That model doesn't much exist anymore," says Colleen Young, vice president/distinguished analyst at industry analyst Gartner, in Stamford, Conn., mainly because the layers typically were top-heavy, suffocating the workers beneath.

Young advises mid-sized businesses to have no more than three to five people reporting directly to the CIO; large or global businesses should cap the number at five to eight direct reports. Each of those reports can optimally supervise between 15 to 20 workers, or up to 35 workers per supervisor in multi-disciplinary teams. "Beyond the 1:35 ratio, you are in danger of imploding," she says.

Flattening the layers may not weed out every obstacle IT has to trudge through, but a streamlined structure leads to fewer snarls. "The flatter the organization, the better. And smaller teams work better as well," says Bobby Cameron, vice president and principal, IT Management, at Forrester Research in Boston, Mass. (article continues)

That's because smaller IT teams often take a more entrepreneurial approach to problem solving. The IT department of Jason's Deli, a multi-million dollar, multi-state chain of restaurants headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is composed of a CIO and 11 staff members. "Each person is essential to the business and the group is very much on its game," says Lee Greer, marketing director. "For example, when one of our delis loses its Internet connection and can't get customers' online orders for delivery, our IT staff is immediately aware of the problem, and will either send the orders to the affected deli's fax machine or call them in. They make sure nothing interrupts our business."

Young says this is the ultimate advantage of the newer management structures. "A flat but multi-disciplinary structure allows you to have line-of-sight to results. It means fewer managers, self-empowered teams and more seamless operations."

The New World Is Flat
There are three basic structures in this new IT world: centralized, decentralized and federated. Each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The solely centralized model runs the risk that new developments can disappear into the black hole of a functional silo, while the typical decentralized model often spawns repetitive functions and concomitant costs. "The federated model tends to have the new development function spread out across the firm with infrastructure operations increasingly becoming a central/shared service and with a line from local-to-central IT for strategic functions like the CTO and the office of the CIO," explains Cameron.

IT managers needn't be bound to one specific structure. There is an infinite number of combinations blending characteristics from all three. (article continues)

What is the ideal management structure for your organization? Young, Cameron and Greer agree that the best IT management structure parallels the business structure. "The management model defines what is optimized, what innovation is emphasized and where the revenue will be optimized," notes Young.

No matter which structure you choose, it should encompass five fundamental IT practices: infrastructure operations; new technology development; IT relationship management; architecture, planning and strategy; and the responsibilities of the office of the CIO -- human resources, finance and training.

Don't fall into the trap of making management structural decisions based on personalities. "The tendency in small-to-medium firms is to organize based on personalities instead of by role or IT process," warns Cameron. "Placing all architecture under the infrastructure operations manager makes it so that development has to come to ops for direction. This results in strange accumulations of responsibilities that create poor flow of work."

Five Measurements That Matter
There are five measurements that management can use to evaluate and plan IT staffing, regardless of the model:

In the end, good IT management boils down to adopting a structure that enables the entire department to distinguish busywork from profitable production. "You must be flexible enough to be able to react quickly to situations, but structured enough that nothing falls through the cracks," says Greer.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Purchases, Negotiations and You

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

In the IT world these days, creativity frequently caves to pragmatism. To survive and profit from the converging and merging evolution of IT advancements, in-house proprietary and legacy systems have largely succumbed to out-of-the-box and off-the-shelf solutions. This situation is increasingly forcing IT pros out from behind their computer screens and over to the bargaining table.

Does that mean the process must be combative in an attempt to achieve the desired results? Not if you really want to get what you need. 

"Negotiation is not a game of war, or tic-tac-toe, or one-upmanship," says Anthony Bosco, vice president and CIO of Day & Zimmermann, a Philadelphia, Pa.-based business services company. "You don't need to strong-arm the guys across the table. They do not have the power to make the decision anyway. Instead, arm them with information -- ammo really -- so they can take it back to their bosses and get what you actually need."

Build a Team
Many top CIOs believe that the negotiation process is about forming a team all around the table. According to Scott Griffin, vice president and CIO of Boeing Information Technology in Seattle, Wash., "A good strategic partner wins as much in the deal as you do, and you both are happy." (article continues)

That is not to say, however, that all vendors will approach the bargaining table with an equal sense of benevolence. "If they lack passion for all things past the sale, or they insist on peddling their products and services as-is rather than help you make it work from your perspective, you probably need to walk away," advises Bosco. "Competition is so strong today that you should be able to find a quality vendor that will truly help you."

There can also be legal ramifications that can upset a deal, so you'll want to be sure that what is written matches what is spoken. "Value added services are the most important thing to look for in a deal," says Ben Finley, senior partner of Finley & Buckley, P.C., a law firm located in Atlanta, Ga. "Just make sure all those promises make it to the paperwork."

IT professionals who routinely win at the negotiation table and avoid bottom-line blunders know that success centers more on "buying in" than buying bargains. "It's about getting the best value for the company, which does not always mean the lowest unit price. It means lowest cost of ownership," says Boeing's Griffin. "We had a supplier win a contract by coming up with the best bid for cost of ownership. We were able to get a lower cost of ownership, and they were able to get more revenue." (article continues)

Know the Right Moves
Here are top tips for having a successful negotiation regardless of which technology you're shopping for:

Remember that negotiation is a method of problem solving and a means to add much needed products, services and resources to your IT arsenal.

"At the end of the day, both sides have to have exactly what they need to stay in business," says Bosco. "If you force a vendor too low, they won't be there to service your account later and so you will only have hurt yourself." And you'll only find yourself at the bargaining table again -- perhaps way too soon.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Project Management Best Practices

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

The individual who was born to be a project manager is a rarity. If you've been given the title (and the responsibilities that go along with it), you may have had little or no prior training. Your expertise may be in traditional management or the specific subject matter or technical knowledge needed for the project at hand. Some quick studying, a little consulting and some common sense would probably allow you to muddle through the project management process.

But there are other actions you can take to be truly effective. The following represent best practices for meeting project challenges head on -- and emerging victorious.

Build a Solid Team
According to Scott Berkun, a former Microsoft program manager who's now a consultant based in Seattle, Wash., the best way to manage a project and complete it successfully is to select an "all-star" team. "You do always want stars -- provided they are stars that will fit with the team," he says. "If you can't find a star that fits the team, you want the best possible person that does fit."

But Jeff Davidson, executive director of the Breathing Space Institute in Chapel Hill, N.C., has a different view. "The best single measure to ensure that team members stay on track and on time is really to assemble a team composed of individuals who have a demonstrated history of doing just that," he says.

Chart Your Progress
In most cases, however, your team is assigned to you, and the best method for keeping a team on track -- and communicating clearly -- is to post a graph that shows project progress and has each person's progress charted in some way. This way, says Davidson, "everyone can look up on the chart and see what everyone else is doing."

But this method only works when the project manager has already plotted out realistic assessments of what each team member can offer, says Davidson. In this way, goals and milestones are achievable. (article continues)

Keep in Touch
According to Davidson, the project manager must meet with each team member on a regular basis to achieve this. Every team member must be asked what roadblocks they anticipate, if they're on track with goals and milestones, and what kind of support they need. "The onus is on the team member to ask for support, and to pick up the slack if they didn't ask for support and are creating a roadblock," he says.

A chart that plots the entire project "works so well that you don't have to even talk about needing to stay on track," Davidson says. He cautions that when working with talented people, project managers should be on the lookout for overconfidence, which may lead team members to understate the amount of time a task will take. The best method for addressing this tendency is to allocate about 25 percent more time than the team member(s) estimate. "If they think it's going to take ten hours, you should budget twelve-and-a-half hours," he says.

Create a Risk Plan
Rick Brenner of Chaco Canyon Consulting in Cambridge, Mass., argues that the key factor in developing a plan and ensuring that the team members will stay on track and on time is a good risk plan. A risk plan is an examination of what could go wrong during the project, and the costs in time and money to correct for those things.

"You hardly ever see one," says Brenner. "There's a certain reluctance to look at the dark side, and project managers are uncomfortable thinking about risk in general." The risk plan will, most importantly, factor in turnover effects -- the impact, for example, of unexpectedly needing to train new personnel or outsource tasks or positions. (article continues)

Achieve Consensus
David Maxfield, the vice president of research at Vitalsmarts in Provo, Utah, believes that communication is the key to a team's success, and it all starts with buy-in. "Everyone on the team must agree on and share the business case, and feel there's a clear business imperative," he says. Part of the agreement must also center around the roles of team members -- their responsibilities and the steps needed to complete their deliverables on time.

Davidson agrees that being in on the groundwork is key for participants. But how do you get buy-in? You may not, but you can get consensus on the project plan. "If you have one person who is reticent, you ask them to go along with you and when indicators emerge, you'll take action based on their forewarning," says Davidson. "You can even have a contingency plan."

But after that initial step, says Maxfield, "The challenge is discussing your concerns early and often enough to catch problems before they get out of hand. You need to have frequent crucial conversations. Don't wait for concerns to get big." Crucial conversations aren't part of a formal process, but they can be the most critical tool for keeping a project on track and on time. "If you don't have these conversations, no amount of structure can save you," he says.

Discussing areas of conflict can be daunting, but that doesn't mean the conversations shouldn't be encouraged. "Project managers can make it clear that they are approachable, and let team members know they'll be talking to them frequently to offer support, check up on status, etc." And along the way, they can encourage team members to bring concerns to the project manager, says Maxfield.

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IT Business Insider: Enterprise Edge

Self-Promotion on the Job

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

It's harder to move up the IT career ladder within your organization these days because the rungs don't stay put.

With downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring and ever-shrinking corporate budgets, IT job slots are often re-named, redefined or replaced. The good news is that industry analysts report the field is healthy despite the rapid-fire changes, and that opportunities in 2007 are plentiful.

How can you make the most of those opportunities and move ahead? According to industry experts, it can be a matter of using smart and tactful self-promotion techniques.

"Self-promotion is truly an art form," says Melanie Robbins, host of "Make It Happen with Mel Robbins," a career coaching program heard on Sirius Satellite Radio, suggests, "If you are too overt, you risk coming across to upper management as an irritant. And if your colleagues see you doing it, you risk alienating them and creating resentment -- it will always look like you are taking credit for their hard work."

But that's not to say a direct approach may not trump more subtle methods. "When I was working my way up the ladder," relates Robert Ardell, managing partner at KoreOne Staffing in San Diego, Calif., "the best advice I received was to schedule a lunch with my boss, and even my boss' boss, and ask them, 'What do I need to do to receive a promotion?' The simpler, the better." (article continues)

Step-by-Step
According to Robbins, there are four simple steps to successful self-promotion:

One added bonus to self-promotion: IT pros can choose to move up the IT ranks or springboard to other departments in the organization, a career choice that did not previously exist. "While employees were once able to start at the bottom and have a fairly easy time following a career path, IT positions may no longer be a necessary or even desirable end point for them," says Laurie Orlov, research director and vice president of Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "Process knowledge and diverse educational backgrounds enable IT workers to move to other functions in the enterprise or into and back from providers in the tech industry," meaning that a career path isn't necessarily pegged to a single company.

In fact, Forrester Research says its CIO and CTO interviewees confirmed that, despite a lingering nerdy image and the fact that it might still be called IT, the role of the IT group has morphed sharply from all back-office work to the front-and center interaction with business unit clients and the customers.

"Therefore, it is very important that IT pros play up their business and other experiences outside the strictly technical role in their self-promotion efforts," says Orlov. (article continues)

Experts agree, however, that self-promotion should not be limited to the confines of your current employment. 

"Most good IT managers are well known because they typically have their own blog. They belong to several user groups, are active in them and are highly regarded within those groups. Most importantly, they have a genuine desire to help others and they act on it," says Ardell.

Experts agree, however, that self promotion should not be limited to the confines of your current employment. Expand your world by looking beyond the borders of your current job function and employer and practicing these three Rs.

Moving to the next level of your career may progress along a well-defined path, but without some help from your own hands, it may not progress at all. Map out a range of possibilities and make known your desires and abilities. Then be ready to move ahead when the opportunity appears.

"To get ahead in the IT environment today, point out your business smarts and people skills, as these are the skills companies are seeking in their top IT people. Interestingly, self-promotion, when done right, illustrates both of those skills," concludes Orlov.

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