CIO

The IT Worker Telecommuting

Somehow or another in spite of my best efforts to escape computer-speak when I’m not actively at work it seems that even my personal “life” is laced with computer and IT geeks.  Of course, as I’ve blogged about previously, I don’t really try to separate my “life” into a “work-life” and “personal” life — but I find it interesting that so many of the new people that I’ve met in the past year are associated with computing to some extent or another.  (Of course living in New England with its high concentration of “techies” probably contributes greatly to my experience!)

At any rate, I found myself engaged in a couple of interesting conversations this weekend about working from home, the economy, job environment and IT careers in general.  Of particular interest in those conversations was the subject of “the home office” and “working from home”, and in particular the challenges that are presented with the “home” environment.  Not all of us engaged in the conversation were currently working from home, but a number of us have had the experience and could easily relate to the “stories” and experiences of others.

One of the topics which constantly came up (with associated “stories” ) was the experiences of the “worker” with their “family” during “work” time.  The number one issue that came up was related to the need when “working”, to be left undisturbed, as if they had driven off to an office somewhere.  Of course, for this to truly work for all of the relationships concerned, telecommuting from home cannot be a 24/7 operation.  Clear boundaries have to be set.

However, this is more easily said than done it seems.  Many of the participants in the conversation were feeling especially insecure about their current employment status — and the general consensus is that with such insecurity in the background, there is a tendency to try to work 24/7.  This does not work!  It was suggested by one participant that he thought perhaps that was what the company hoped for when they allowed him to telecommute!

Having employees who work from home certainly can save a company money.  The full-time telecommuter doesn’t require office space, the part-time telecommuter can often share office space — less office space required, less expense.  If on top of that savings the employer then gets greater productivity from the employee - it’s a win!

Beware of the “By the Way”,s

They often start with the statement “By the Way…”, or another flavor is the “While you’re here…”, or maybe the “I was thinking…” flavor — they are in a class of communication sometimes laced with peril, sometimes opportunity, and sometimes just a lot of work — but ALWAYS revealing!  In my experience I find that after a barrage of “By the Way”,s at a clients it takes me a bit to recover.  “What just happened?” is running through my mind, followed by “Did I get everything done that I needed to?” Usually I need to reflect upon the “By the Ways” after a period of decompression.

Today I spent 5 hours at a client site and since I was prepared for the inevitable “By the ways” I was not taken by surprise when they came.  One thing I love about “By the Ways” is how the question or comments following them reveal the needs or desires of the client user community!  These expressed “By the ways” may indicate shortcomings with the network, application or processes themselves.  Regardless of their nature on any given visit, it presents an opportunity for the service provider who is keyed into hearing the needs of the client their servicing.

A provider can leave a “hero” — who wouldn’t want that?  For the developer hero they may provide new work as the “I’ve been thinking…” becomes a “Let’s do it!”  Perhaps a better title for this post would have been “Be Aware of the “By the Way”,s

Reporting, Reporting, Reporting

My subject for this post - Reporting! (Perhaps you guessed! )

A few days ago I posted about “Green IT” and reporting methods and considerations to utilize less “paper”.  My post today regarding reporting is simply this — I posit that it is reporting which provides the greatest value of any business IT system.  Given this position I further venture to say that in this economic climate there will be an ever increasing demand for reporting which previously was neither desired, requested or dreamed of!  Just within my limited client base I have seen an increased interest in looking at new ways to report the wealth of information contained within client systems.

In addition, I have also seen that in some cases to get the information now being asked for will require additional input - (being of course that if data isn’t available it cannot be reported ).  This presents an interesting mix of work, application maintenance and report building - just what the doctor ordered for an otherwise “slow” time.

Through my years in IT and application development I have experienced many times the frustration of users regarding the presentation of their “data” in meaningful ways, or worse yet, their frustration knowing that data useful to them is simply “inaccessible” - “locked up” within the database somewhere.  During times such as these management becomes more interested in the “finer points” of their operations - “What does this cost us? … How about that? …Can we look at …?”.  During the busier times there seems to be a fear of having “too much” information, and surely “information overload” is easy to accomplish!  But in these tight times the value of specific pin-pointed reporting cannot be overlooked. 

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to be looking at what we can do in reporting to help our companies to succeed during this economic downturn.  Wherever possible it seems appropriate that we application developers “suggest” reporting that will add value.  Heck, it might also mean some job security

This probably isn’t the time, however, to suggest starting on implementing a new BI system, although wouldn’t that be nice?

Lessons to be Learned

This morning I overheard GMA making reference to the case of Julie Amero which was the subject of my blog in December titled “Unsavory Justice - Julie Amero vs Connecticut“.  The ABC News story “Wrong Computer Click Ruined My Life” doesn’t present any new facts in the case, but does present the case before perhaps a much different audience than it might have received previously.  The aforementioned links provide the background which I will not expand upon.

However, what I do want to suggest is that there are lessons to be learned from this:

• The need for training (…over and over again I see training as the number one need!)  Those of us who are computer literate make many false assumptions regarding users — we need to rid ourselves of those assumptions.  I’ve always told users that I was training that “You’re trainable”, but that doesn’t mean they’re trained!  The training MUST be on-going.
• The IT department perhaps was not well enough trained either – OR – the proper precautions that would have prevented the site accesses would have been in place.  (NOTE that this does make the assumption that IF they knew what to do they would have done it - which assumption could be erroneous since there is a cost associated with doing the “right” thing!).
• Leaving a system unattended can lead to mischief or mishaps - whether it’s a school classroom or a business environment, whether it’s a “dumb” use, or an intentional misuse.  If you leave a computer that you’re responsible for, log off!

I’m sure that there are other lessons to gain from this as well, and certainly a variety of actions that can be taken.  I just couldn’t let this sit today, even though I’ve blogged on it before!  The case is unsettling to me!

Application Design for Green Reporting

Perhaps the phrase “Green IT” and various variations of same is over-used, however I suspect that its prevalence does cause us to think “green”, even if we’re sick of doing so.  When I chose “Application Design for Green Reporting” perhaps you wondered why I might have chosen such a title.  Good question

Seriously though, my reasoning is simple - and that is my belief that we as developers can and should do everything we can to ensure an appropriate use of resources - and in those resources I would include not only the obvious paper, but also disk space  (since inefficient disk usage may result in the need for added disks, and thus more energy used). 

Saving paper is certainly the easiest way to design for green, and we as developers have the opportunity to affect paper usage in a dramatic way - those steps may include:

• Offering on-screen views in lieu of paper
• Offering ability to print to a document such as PDF
• Designing reports using minimal header and footer margins
• Working with users to ensure ALL data printed is used
• Working with different font sizes to reduce paper needs
• Reviewing sub-total lines, are they used or just there because…?
• Reviewing page breaks - Are ALL page breaks required?

Additional Notes:

• Printing to PDF documents is great, but … here is an area where disk usage should be considered and an appropriate way to maintain (delete) out-dated or no longer needed “printouts”
• Margins in general require review with a critical eye.  Header and footer areas should contain only information useful to the users.  Use one liners wherever feasible.
• If a report will be going only to a laser printer, pages required for printing a report can sometimes be significantly reduced by going from two-lines per record to a single line per record - all with the same information only by changing to landscape mode
• A proper mix of font sizes can also significantly reduce paper use, while at the same time ooften producing a much more readable report!
• I have found many an opportunity to eliminate sub-total lines which has resulted in great paper savings
• Page break review might be a situation such as providing an alternative to printing the report with a page break at each customer change - or not.  Providing an option rather than forcing the page break can make a hugh difference.  Make the default to the “green” choice of no page-break.

How many pages have you saved today?

2009 Delivered — Now What?

Here we are at the start of a New Year and by all accounts and most crystal balls we can look forward to another year of challenges. Actually though, it may not be a year much different than any other in that there are always challenges with IT technology.  We have much to look forward to — I believe that current economic conditions will accelerate the identification and implementation of systems and processes that will allow us in IT to become more efficient, and provide our users with more effective applications with which to work.  

Earlier this morning I read “A CIO’s Five Rules for Managing Through Tough Times”posted on CIO Insight.  I believe that each of the points made in that brief post are pretty much what I would consider to be generally sound management principles — regardless of the business area.  There has been much written during hard economic times about the risks of not planning for the future, as well as the advantage which can be gained through maintaining some level of work toward the time when the economy improves.  His first point “Maintain focus on key projects that will yield long-term business advantage” is, in my opinion, somewhat of a no-brainer, although I have seen over-and-over again the “long-term business advantage” projects either shelved indefinitely or canceled.  I believe that unless the company started the project for all the wrong reasons that this is a grave mistake.

Particulary in the area of custom applications, timing is everything.  This is a good time!

The “Paperless” Office — Myth or Real Possibility?

Let’s face it — paper is not going away!  The “Paperless” office is a myth!  However, what is a real possibility is the office with “less paper” — and there are many indications that it is happening.  I just can’t imagine a time when managers that I’ve worked with will not want their “hard copy” of a report — “just in case…” — of what?  Who knows? …but “just in case…”! 

We who manage IT have a responsibility to conserve resources wherever we can - it is both good business as well as good for the environment.  One need not do much more than watch most offices in operation for a couple of hours to identify wasteful and unnecessary paper usage.  There is much that we can contribute to improve office procedures to use “less paper”.

From the software design standpoint, a critical review of reports which get run regularly might indicate that certain data is never used, and by eliminating the data paper volume may be reduced as much as 60% — that’s a serious savings over time, and probably well worth the investment to change the report.  Also with regard to reports — has the capability to print to disk, pdf or maybe fax been made available for the report?  How many times I’ve seen reports first printed to the laser printer, then brought to the fax machine to be sent!  (Then the report put into the waste paper basket!).  Another IT suggestion may be the investment required to provide duplexing printers — using half the paper per print job!  What a concept!  Yet another possible contribution to “less paper” can be incorporating a document imaging system or scanning into an application.

I suspect there are many opportunites that you can identify in your organization where a little bit of creative IT (Intuitive Thinking) can result in the “less paper” office — but paperless?  Forget it!.

Observations from my 2009 Crystal Ball

I figure I might as well join the ranks of the forecasters for the upcoming year – heck, what good is a New Year if not to look ahead at what might be?  My 2009 crystal ball is multi-colored and multi-dimensional, pointing to the need for IT talent with a wide range of skills.  Given the current (and projected) economic climate, it seems only natural that an individual with broad experience will find their opportunities less limited than the narrowly focused and experienced individual.  Just because the economic climate is poor doesn’t really eliminate many real needs that companies have and are looking for from their IT departments.  Multi-talented individuals can help the department do more with less if that individual is used to potential.

In 2009 I see more attention being paid to training existing IT staff in new areas rather than looking to hire from the outside.  There is no argument that budgets will be tight to non-existent.  Management will certainly  be looking to chop costs anywhere they can without risking failure of the operations.  I suspect that IT departments who to this point have been reluctant to join the virtualization bandwagon will be forced to train staff and begin implementing virtualized systems.  There have been many case stories showing that huge savings can be achieved - not only with hardware savings, but also support and staff.

My crystal ball does show a lot of activity — like a storm at sea, there is churning of the waters and constant change.  Certainly there will be loss of IT jobs as projects get canceled.  What I see for the future is that many will find they have to get training that perhaps they do not yet have.  I suspect that 2009 will see more hiring from the smaller companies than the large ones - which will mean fewer hires overall and more unemployment.  Some IT workers used to large operations may have to be satisfied working in smaller environments and keeping much busier than they’re used to. 

Accelerated ERP Implementation Risks

To this day (…and possibly forever) I remember August 1, 1999 not with fond memories, but rather with a complex set of emotions which begin a churning upset in my stomach.  The day was, without a doubt, one of the most memorable days of my life for its stress level.  It was the perfect example of an ERP implementation gone wrong!  In retrospect it is understandable that it was.

What has brought this infamous day to mind was reading a white paper entitled “ERP at the Speed of Light“, an excellent white paper which I discovered this morning as the result of an email. Looking back for me as I read the white paper’s list of “key risks” of an accelerated implementation, we experienced each of the risks outlined in the paper, as well as a few more not mentioned — not the least of which was “buggy” and incomplete software.  While we made every effort to work with the “out-of-the-box” processes offered, they just didn’t work.

The article states that “…in any scenario, there is a certain level of disruption of existing operations in the course of an ERP engagement…”, and we certainly experienced that to the utmost!  Our implementation accomplished only one primary goal in its early stages — our unmanageable different applications inherited during growth through acquisition were replaced — as a company we were now all “on the same page”, the page hating the new software.  We had in fact been united!

Power and Dollar Savings for IT

Green IT — the very name for me conjurs up images of a lush field in Vermont on a sunny day — the air is clear and clean — just a beautiful sight!  Then from there my images go to the “long green” currencies which I’ve had in my hand, and surely the saving of the “long green” speaks loud and clear to any well managed IT department.  Yes Virginia, there is a green IT — and it can save the green of the fields, and the green cash in the company coffers.

There have been a number of articles published recently about green IT and saving power.  Certainly the increasingly popular use of server virtualization where multiple physical servers are replaced by a single physical server running multiple virtual servers can produce a dramatic energy savings.  I suspect that one possibly over-looked area of potential savings exists by replacing existing “old” computers with up-to-date energy efficient systems.

A recent article in January’s Microsoft TechNet Magazine by Jim Lynch of Techsoup.org got me thinking green again.  The article “What On Earth Is Green IT?” is available on-line.  Available on-line at Techsoup is a useful 1 page list entitled “10 Green Technology Resolutions for 2009“.  Both are worth taking a look at.