Technology is a thankless service.

Let’s try maintenance and support – the part most of us would rather be done by someone else. If we do our job correctly, we make it look far too easy and people rarely know it is happening. The business result of these efforts? Uptime and lots of it.  Stability and [...]]]>

Technology is a thankless service.

Let’s try maintenance and support – the part most of us would rather be done by someone else. If we do our job correctly, we make it look far too easy and people rarely know it is happening. The business result of these efforts? Uptime and lots of it.  Stability and reliability – how often do you think about breathing? The cultural results of these efforts? Well it would not be the first time that some CFO wonders what “all of those people” do down there all day.

Let’s try new functionality. Time to market is always longer than what someone wants it to be. Additionally, as soon as it makes production (70% of IT projects never make it to production) its resulting impact is typically not managed and measured thus its overall impact to the organization is typically not understood or realized.  No wonder some organizations deliver the exact same functionality with 32 developers what other organizations deliver with 12.  Who knows the difference?

You do. 

Let’s not play the victim here.  And please, let’s keep our professional immaturity in check.  We are paid well for this “miserable plight” we are forced to contend with and we ought not need a pat on the back every day or exhaustive training to go along with our high salaries.  70% of the nation makes less than your average technician with just 3 years of experience. 

The top and the best and the greatest are often led by an internal drive and driven by a force not clearly understood by others.  Whatever you may want to call it (that in and of itself could raise a 3 hour debate with IS folks) re-capture, renew and re-energize more of it within yourself because you are going to need it.  Don’t expect your boss to get what you do and don’t expect the CEO to value your contribution over the contributory efforts of the most average (defined here as the median not the emotional lexicon of average) salesperson.

In amazement, I have watched a local not-for-profit organization suffer from [...]]]> A colleague once called it dying from the “ism’s”: nepotism, seniority-ism, boy’s club-ism, best friend-ism and the like.  I know you have seen it before.  Organizations sometimes suffer from this cancer – undiagnosed in their self-diagnosis (outsiders can see it and call it fairly easily). 

In amazement, I have watched a local not-for-profit organization suffer from these ills.  At first I thought it was this strange lack-of-profit model and its inherent motivation (or lack thereof) that defined this organizations challenge.  Until this weekend, when a CFO friend explained that the “Midas Rule – He who has the gold makes the rule” can apply to all organizations large and small, with and without profit goals. 

I have watched as 2 guys have operated above the law and rule on decisions as long as it satisfies their own agenda as opposed to that which is best for the organization.  I have watched as these two rationalized and justified each and every decision against each and every question or challenge to their decisions.  I have watched them systematically eliminate anyone that would dare challenge their decision with the most innocent of reasoning shielding their true agenda – to rule; because it defines them; because without the ability to rule, they themselves become irrelevant.    

Proper approaches, industry best practices and industry standards do not require a moral defense.  Transparent models and exposed business practices do not need spin and rationalization.  Fairness does not have any use for secrets and closed door shady deals. 

Luckily, I have nothing to lose or gain in this equation. I am simply watching from the sidelines.  But an entire community is losing and losing badly.  When logic does not apply and reality is ignored and politics rein the organization and in this case the community it serves, is the one that suffers.  And suffer for years.  You see, a community does not have quarterly objectives to serve as traffic signals to where it is versus where it should be.  A community does not cater to monthly profit projections as a warning sign of reckless leadership and boardroom ADHD.  A community is not forced to publish an annual report such that its shareholders – its citizens – can reward great performance or opt for change.  So it fails to notice as it slowly diminishes into a ghost town and a “remember what used to be there …” town.

Did I mention, the very purpose of this, organization (for lack of a better word), is to cater to the needs of about one thousand kids every year? 

Your children. 

The ism’s – are a cancer.

I live for this!  Ok, I rather enjoy when posed with a seemingly indefensible position [...]]]> A question was posed to me that this “consultese” was overused and lacked meaning.  I was asked what it really meant; and what was the true, demonstrable and quantifiable impact on the delivery of technology to the hands of the business.

I live for this!  Ok, I rather enjoy when posed with a seemingly indefensible position – a strategic approach indeed but mired in flaws as the question in and of itself wreaks of defensiveness and an inferiority complex.  But what I enjoy is this – this question forces me to be exact, specific and avoid the shortcut – the quick answer.

The industry vertical:  An app is an app is an app – or is it?  There are many business scenarios to be learned from a multitude of industries.  Working in the healthcare industry for 10 years writing stored proc after stored proc may or may not be as rich as writing in healthcare and in retail and in financial and manufacturing.  There is a little something to be learned from actually performing in these varying industries is there not?

The SDLC horizontal:  Be it waterfall or RAD or Agile or Lean or SCRUM (I know, I know – just trying to be buzzword compliant) there is a different set of related competencies at use in the varying phases of the SDLC.  Can we not learn a little more about the depth of our industry if we spend some time learning and developing our capabilities in the scope phase or honing our skills in the requirements development arena (come on – what developer has not complained about requirements or the lack thereof)?  Do we not enjoy the frequent and in-depth bashing of architects “not responsible for staying around and coding their lofty ideas”?  Would we not learn a new appreciation from performing that role or would we “finally be the only one to do it correctly”?  And clearly, beyond the development role, would we not understand the thoroughness of requirements traceability and could we not enhance the richness of our expertise by being the one responsible for those test scenarios?  And who could forget the actual operationalization of the elegant code we wrote – would we not see things differently if we were the one responsible for turning it on and actually operating the P&L on a day-to-day basis with the actual tools just written by another competent developer?

The technological dimension: Where have I spent my one year?  Have I spent it in the UI versus the DB or the services layer versus the infrastructural layer?  Maybe I spent 1 of those years in the reporting area deploying the hard and fast parameter-driven reporting platform with a little BI embedding in the application itself.  OR maybe I spent 10 years in the ETL layer bouncing translation files from app to app and from consumer to consumer and from subscriber to subscriber. 

The business functional galaxy:  If you know not a credit from a debit or the purpose of a clearing account how can you design and develop accounting solutions?  Knowing the different drivers behind sales confidence and commission models may or may not enhance the ability to design and code lead management automation. 

For me, I would prefer to cram as much in-depth richness and experience into ten years as I can.  The more depth the more contributory value I can create and deliver to the organization.  And in a results driven economy, delivered value is priced at a premium.

I was speaking with a colleague from Finance about Customer Service: yep – Finance … Customer service. She was remembering how her father had his own company and how they (the kids) were well trained on how to answer the phone politely and with respect and how her mother would be in the middle of [...]]]>

I was speaking with a colleague from Finance about Customer Service: yep – Finance … Customer service. She was remembering how her father had his own company and how they (the kids) were well trained on how to answer the phone politely and with respect and how her mother would be in the middle of “ripping them” (ripping is what parents used to do when parenting was the in thing) but quickly convert to Customer Service 101 when the phone rang. Just to proceed to uninterrupted “ripping” when she hung up the phone. I loved it and I loved from whence it came – Finance needs customer service too.

In technology we always have 2 sets of customers – internal and external customers. And if finance is working on their customer service skills then why not technology? Are we above the need to listen to our customers and exercise a little or a “lottle” patience and understanding when dealing with our internal customers? And why do we treat our external customers with such grace and finesse and tear apart our internal “children of a lesser god”? Is it beneath us to use complete sentences and elongated paragraphs when communicating with our customers? Is the extra time really that much of a drain on our overall productivity?

I have heard a lot of the “reasons” for how we treat our customers and the reality is this – if we don’t treat our customers like customers, someone else will and they will not be our customers anymore. And yes, that applies to our internal customers as well. It is simply blocking and tackling. I was watching the Monday night game last week and the announcers were discussing Bill Belichick’s practice and how they cover every detail. What does he get for that? 4 Super Bowl appearances in 10 years with 3 wins and the only team to ever go undefeated in the regular season – ever. Yes they did lose the Super Bowl that year but that is completely irrelevant – you cannot ignore the only team to ever go undefeated in the history of the NFL.

Customer service is like blocking and tackling – if you do it well – and by well I mean do a fantastic job at it religiously and fanatically – you will every opportunity to impress the world with your elegant technical architectural designs and efficient code writing and scalable infrastructure. If you do not do it well, no one will ever know how great you really are.

I was recently made aware of an applicant for a development position that declined the opportunity to interview due to the dress code [...]]]> Like all of you I have read and heard the overwhelming fear-based projections surrounding the next or the X or Y generation and their seemingly consistent … attributes (to be fair).

I was recently made aware of an applicant for a development position that declined the opportunity to interview due to the dress code (business formal) of the potential employer. It reminded of “this” generation and what I see as their simple lack of maturity. It also reminded me of every generation and our tendency to be narcissistic at times. In fact, it reminded me of me.

Here was a position that represented a developers dream. Or, at least what I would have constituted as a dream when I actually did the fun stuff – writing code. The position? First, the position involved full horizontal involvement and responsibilities throughout the entire lifecycle from vision to scope to requirements to BPR to design to development to UAT to deployment. Secondly, the position involved full vertical involvement and responsibilities throughout the technical spectrum from data integration/EDI to reporting and OLAP/MOLAP to UI technologies (the latest by the way) to middleware SOA development to database design/development. The intersection of these competency paths is pure gold. I would have waited overnight in line for this position – or would I?

The fact is at different stages of my maturity I probably made equally bad decisions. You could not have made me fly until I grew wings. You could not have made me think until I learned reason. Sometimes, looking for Ms. Right is a futile effort until you become Mr. Right.

From Lebron to the board room everyone is efforting to master the ability to build and manage the highest producing team. One of its core building blocks just may be the simplest (as in straight-forward as opposed to easy) of all – developing the professional maturity of the individual.