March, 2009

During economic slow down, management has the upper hand

During this time of global recession management has the upper hand when it comes to salary negotiation, supply is exceeding demand and there are more applicants than there are jobs.

What would you do if your company asks you to take a pay cut or lose your job? Would you be willing to work for less than what you worth? You may have spent a large sum of money in your education and training and to see the company trying to take advantage of you is really defeating.

What to do when your company tries to take advantage of you?

Many people would rather wait for the economy to get better before they quite their current jobs even if they feel they are been taken advantage of. I am really against this approach, although individual cases may very, but I wont put up with a company taking advantage of me thinking I may not be able to find another job if they fire me. Even in these bad times, many companies are looking for good talents and they are willing to pay reasonable pay for good work so look around.

If I have my free will, I would never give my services to a company who, during bad economic times, takes advantage if its’ employees.

Turn computer off or leave it on at the end of the day!!!!

• Everyday 156 million employees in US, UK and Germany make a decision at the end of their work day to turn off their computers or not.

• 50% of employed adults in the US don’t turn off their PCs after work
• Companies in the US are wasting $2.8 Billions and emitting 20 million tons of carbon dioxide annually

• 56% of employees in the UK and Germany always shut down their PCs and the end of work day

• In Germany and the UK, 285,000 Euros and 168000 pounds are wasted each year, respectively, by a company with 10,000 PC’s

These interesting finding about the wasted power of left on PCs and more can be found on the report published by 1E at:
http://www.1e.com/

The short comes of centralized management

In the last few days I have been trying to lease some apartments for few of our clients through a real estate agent, but each time we visit some locations and make a decision on certain units, the real estate agent would tell us he will have to call his boss before he can gives us a final price. This delay in decision making cost us time and cost us losing some units we liked because by the time we get the answer from the boss, those units would be leased to someone else.

This type of centralized management style is prevalent in some parts of the world, for me, it only serves to add extra work load to already busy managers and serves to limit the ability of the staff to think of their on feet.

In my daily work as manager, I have made it clear to my staff that I will not interfere in their work as long as they follow the broad guidelines I set for them. This policy gives me the time to focus on more important issues and also train the staff to think and make proper decisions in case I am out of reach.

How do you feel seeing you data leaving your computer!!!!!!!

The latest online backup service comes from mozy; it gives you up to 2GB of free data backup for home computer users.

I visited the website and almost signed up for the service, but stopped at the last moment and changed my mind. I wanted to backup some important personal files and the idea of seeing these files leave my computer and traveling over the internet to reside in someone else server didn’t feel so good to me.

I know sooner or later online backup will be the standard backup tool for the masses and I also know lots of our personal data are already stored somewhere in the cyber space, but seeing my data leave my computer is still not very convincing to me.

Application Portfolio Management

DETROIT–March 31, 2009–Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ: CPWR) today announced that it is jump-starting Application Portfolio Management (APM) initiatives by offering a pre-configured version of its market-leading IT portfolio management solution, Changepoint.

IT organizations recognize that APM holds great promise for reducing the costs and improving the margins of application portfolios. However, challenges in identifying inventory, collecting the right metrics and applying the resulting analysis toward decision making can make starting an APM initiative difficult. Changepoint and the APM Accelerator, key components of Compuware’s Business Service Delivery approach, enable IT to get started quickly, using pre-defined metrics and industry best-practices to understand inventory, collect accurate data and assess portfolio roadmap.

“APM processes fill gaps in a company’s knowledge about the costs, risks and business value of deployed applications,” wrote Jim Duggan, Research Vice President at Gartner, Inc., in the research report titled: Planning for IT Modernization: Start From the Top With APM.(i) “Filling those gaps improves consistency of IT modernization analysis and flags opportunities to reduce total cost and risk. Without disciplined APM processes, enterprises will be dependent on poorly documented guesswork, and often will be unable to overcome institutional inertia.”

Compuware’s Business Service Delivery (BSD) approach ensures that applications work well and deliver value by providing visibility into the cost, value and risks of the application portfolio. Changepoint’s APM Accelerator achieves these goals by speeding APM adoption through:

–Metrics focused on strategic alignment, technology compliance, the financial perspective and the vendor perspective to assess application health. Metrics can be user entered, calculated, populated by Changepoint or external systems, or driven by Changepoint’s integrated survey engine.

–Application scorecards to drive high-level visibility, with the opportunity to drill through to low-level detail for each application.

–TIME views to drive assessment and roadmap building (based on Gartner’s TIME triage framework – Tolerate, Invest, Migrate and Eliminate).(ii)

–Visibility into the application portfolios at an executive level from a client, financial, resource, life cycle and technical perspective.

“Ultimately, IT must deliver business value and drive competitive differentiation for the business. However, the costs of ‘keeping the lights on’ are increasing at the expense of investment in strategic technology initiatives,” said Lori Ellsworth, Vice President of Changepoint Solutions. “Changepoint’s Application Portfolio Management capabilities and Accelerator give IT a sustainable view into application portfolio health, enabling informed decisions that reduce the number of applications, drive costs down and better align resource investment and better serve the business.”

Compuware Changepoint is a business-centric IT management solution that enables IT executives to take a comprehensive approach to managing supply and demand–unlocking the potential of an IT organization to effectively meet the needs of the business. Using Changepoint, CIOs can deliver maximum business value through enhanced IT performance, improved collaboration between IT and business leadership, closer alignment of resources and activities with the business strategy, increased responsiveness to changing business needs and more effective life cycle management of the entire IT portfolio. http://www.compuware.com/solutions/it-portfolio-management.htm

Fire with grace

Few days ago, I had to fire one of our newest employees, it was hard decision in these slow times, but it had to be done.

She was hired based on her resume and her interview, but on her job she was not able to deliver what she promised. So I let other female employees in our company consult her and offer her help and advice on how she can fine another job.

Then later on, I brought her into my office and explained to her in great details why we had to make the decision to let her go, I talked with her at length and offered her our company resources which she could use to look for another job.

Firing someone is a really hard decision, so do it with grace.

A lesson in project management I just learned

Couple of friends stopped by my office today for a quick brief on a project we are working on, one of these friends is a senior project manager for a major telecom company.

He was telling us a little about his management style and how he likes to communicate with his project team only when he needs them and only with a single person at a time. He had to debate this style with his boss who thought it was not the best style for managing a project. His boss asked him to change his management style and to start to have more meetings with his team members and meet them all at once.

My friend asked his boss “have I ever failed you in any project before?” and the answer was “No”, then, asked my friend, “Why you want me to change?”

My friend told us “I had to options, either I let my ego get in the way or listen to my boss and adopt his ways” and he decided to adopt.

He decided to let his ego down and go along with his boss. As a manager, I find it hard sometimes to see management changing the way I manage projects and sometimes I let my ego go unchecked but today I learned that sometimes it is OK to let your ego down and it may be the best for everyone.

How to Improve Business Process?

When we think about business process management improvement, we usually think about software and automation; we focus on how to automate a manual process or how to improve a current process,

Many areas of business process can be improved by fixing little problem spot in the organizations.

In my daily work as a manager of a small company, I walk around and stop by the desks of my employees, I spend few minutes with each employee, in this few minutes I try to answer questions or resolve issues that otherwise are not brought to management attention. This little talk with employees each day helps in:

1-Give the immediate support to each employee
2-Give an immediate solution which otherwise may take days to resolve

So business process improvement doesn’t always have to involve sophisticated solutions, it could be a simple act of talking to an employee for few minutes.

Should you have an open door Policy?

Many organizations promote open door policy as a way to create more productive work environment, open and free communications between management and employees is a vital component of management-employees relationship.

But should you always maintain an open door policy? There are times when the manager needs to isolate himself to his office to focus on important issues. In my work place, I have always followed open door policy in order to resolve issues on the spot and give the employees the support they needed. But lately, I really had to close my door in order for me to focus on more pressing issues facing me, I had to restrict the time I spent with employees.

Restricting my time with employees led them to feel un-supported and they started to get frustrated with issues they wanted to discuss with me.

New policy: keep open door policy in place, but have few hours a day where my door must be closed and employees must understand that management needs time to focus on some other issues that they may not be aware of.

Arab Outsourcing Conference, Dubai April 26-29, 2009

Arab Outsourcing Conference will be held in Dubai from April 26-29, 2009. Why you should care? In this time of economic slowdown, companies must look for every opportunity to make profit. Companies in the Middle East are new to the outsourcing market and the outsourcing industry is sill establishing itself in the region. For global companies, this is a good market to enter.

For more information about this Conference please check the link:

http://www.arab-outsourcing.com/about.htm