IT project management

Advantages and disadvantages of managing a small firm

Managing a small firm is nothing like managing at corporate level with hundreds or even thousands of employees.

Imagine moving from a large metropolitan city to live in the country side, you will miss many services that you were accustomed to. The dry cleaner is not down the road, the major grocery store is about 20 min away, it may take few days before a plumber would show up, the broadband speed may not be at level you feel comfortable with, etc, etc.

The above scenario, may be exaggerated a bit, shows how I felt when I started to work for a small company. Although technology making it easier to work and move around, I found many disadvantages of working for a small firm.

1-Lake of good infrastructure: good infrastructur such as (ample office space, latest hardware and software, well written manuals, long term vision and goals, etc) may not always be available in small firm environment.
2-Constant changes in vision and in goals: in some small firms, change in vision and in goals is so prevailing it makes it impossible for managers to put in place a long term strategy.
3-Limited budget: as a manager in a small firm, you may have to work with a small budget which will limit your ability to solve problems and create new strategies
4-Lake of experience: since you will be working with a small number of people, the total over all experience of the firm may be limited and in certain cases you will have to look outside the firm for help.

After I talked about some of the disadvantages of working for small firm, are there any good incentives to work for a small firm? The answer is yes.

1-Limited hierarchy: decisions can be reached quickly since there is a limited number of people involved in the decision making process
2-Ease of communication: in a small firm, you almost can meet every on the payroll in one day , you will have more time to talk to each of your staff members
3-Your ideas will be recognized: if you come up with a good solution, your idea will resonate throughout the company and you will be recognized quickly.
4-Challenging environment: if you love challenges and want to know what it means to think on your feet, than a small company may provide you with that challenge.

If you like to see dreams come true, than I believe working for small firm may grant you your wish. After all, many multi-national corporations we see today started as a small business.

Managing in a different culture Part 2

Since my last blog entry, I am overwhelmed with ever changing circumstances that make having a solid plan to work with a tough task. Since I started to work with this firm about two months ago, I spent most of my time with the staff, learning and leading. The staff I work with is responsive to my inputs and they are willing to take on new challenges, but only if I am constantly pressuring them. Having spent considerable time with the staff, didn’t leave me time to work on more pressing issues, such as (securing new contracts, marketing, budgeting, facing new challenges, quality control, etc.)

In my last blog I mentioned seven areas where I wanted to see changes:

• Absence of general management: I resolved this issue by taking two steps:

1-assigning the duties of the general manager to the most senior and experienced
Staff member.
2-having a weekly meeting (more than once a week if necessary) with the general manager and his immediate assistance.

I have made may expectations very clear to the general manager and his immediate assistance, I have micro managed them and coached them well enough in order for them to handle daily management issues that don’t require the attention of the upper management. As a project Manager, I had to keep in mind to always have my replacement be ready to move in as I move out. Someone in the staff must be ready to take charges of my current responsibilities in order for me to move to the next task where my skills are needed.

• The compensation system was not adequate: the staff members had no clear idea of the compensation system, the pay worked on standards that would change frequently. I had a separate meeting with each employee to hear their point of view on a fair pay system. They didn’t have a clear idea on how they wanted to be paid. With the current system, there was no clear policy on tardiness or no show no call issues nor did they have time reporting system. When an employee is late or doesn’t show up for work, a brief meeting follows with the manager which usually results in a pay deduction from the employee’s salary, the same rules apply for good work or overtime, when an employee does a good work or works overtime, a meeting follows with the manager on duty and usually concludes with extra pay for that work period.

The above system is not practical, it doesn’t have control system built in it, and the management doesn’t have a fair and balanced system to use to reward or punish employees. The employees wanted a pay rise and they wanted to work on per hour pay system. Since the company didn’t have any record keeping system, I was not able to authorize and immediate pay increase. The employees didn’t have a clear idea about how hourly pay system works, they wanted to get paid per hour and at the same time wanted to keep the benefits of the salary based system. In Saudi Arabia, per hour pay system in not widely used, so many workers may have heard about it, but they don’t know the details of the system.

I made up my mind to use the per hour pay system, and on the meeting with the staff, I explained to them how the system will work, I sensed a bit of disappointment of the benefits they will lose with the new system., but I had to stick with my plans since with the old system, there was so much productivity loss due to tardiness and no show for work..

As thank you gesture, I issued a pay rise to all staff in order to ease the transaction to the new pay system.

The new pay system:

1-workers, excluding management, will be paid based on per hour pay.
2-there will be overtime pay for work done outside the normal business hours.
3-there will be performance review every three month and any pay rise will be based on the performance report.
4-there will be bounces giving on celebrated public holidays, in Saudi Arabia and in most of the Muslim world, that would be after the month of fasting (the holy month of Ramadan).

We will see how this new pay system will work. See you later as I continue my work trip

Management Information Systems, Skills needed by IT Managers

What is the difference between Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Information Systems (CIS)? MIS is a business major based on IT curriculum deigned to equip students with the latest skills in programming and networking coupled with business skills to manage modern work place.

CIS is 100% technical; it’s designed to give students the necessary programming, networking, hardware designing and troubleshooting skills.

Most CIS graduates spend their careers working on technical fields and never advanced to management positions, while most MIS graduates move quickly to management positions.

In general, MIS majors start with a higher salary than CIS majors and that because of the lack of management training for CIS majors.

In today’s corporate environment, IT managers must have the necessary management skills to run their department; MIS is the way to go for those who want to make it to the leadership positions in IT industry.

Basic IT solutions are still needed in many places

I am a subscriber to many IT and business newsletters, most of these letters focus on the latest advancement in technology and business solutions, which is great, but they don’t address a large population that still lack the basic IT services such as (access to high-speed internet or access to professional online services.)

Working in US and in other parts of the world, I saw first hand that not everyone is familiar with the latest IT technology or even heard about it, many people, including businesses, are still ignorant of what IT solutions are available for them.

I have visited many businesses, including some IT related businesses, who still don’t have a business website or have a professional business e-mail or have simple backup solution or have adequate hardware and software.

Web 2.0, Could Computing, Social websites, mobile internet is the road ahead, but millions of people are still in need for the basic IT services.

US maintains its leading role in IT Industry, Sept 2009

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual study, sponsored by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), reveals that countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe are taking deliberate steps to improve their technology environments, although the U.S. remains the
Leader in providing the most competitive conditions for the information
technology (IT) industry.

Some interesting finding of the study:

Despite economic slow down, the IT industry remains strong in the US and around the world and broadband networks availability is a critical part of IT industry success. (I have always believed that having high-speed internet access is a necessity rather than added advantage in today’s work environment.)

India, China and Brazil are still far behind in broadband penetration and the growth rate still not adequate to support IT growth (this is disappointing finding considering the ambitious IT industries these countries have.)

The ever persisting problem of labor movement, especially to the US, IT is a global industry and growth could be hindered by restrictions on labor movements. (the US has lost thousands of IT workers on the last few years due to limitations on Visas or due to the difficulty faced by foreign IT workers to remain in the country permanently.)

What business are you in, IT or Customer service?

In his book “The Truth about Green Business”, Gil Friend writes about how railroads companies for many years considered themselves in the railroads industry rather than in transportation industry.

When I used to work as help desk support representative for a major hardware manufacturer the emphasis was on providing great customer service rather than fixing technical problems, we were trained to think as service agents rather than technicians.

Unfortunately, many customers cannot distinguish between the customer service rep and a technician. When I used to make on-site visits to fix technical problems, many customers would expect me to help them with customer service related issues in addition to fixing their technical problems.

It’s becoming harder to distinguish between the duties of customer service agent and support technician, especially at first level support, companies usually combine the jobs of the two into one position to streamline operation and cut costs.

I think it’s important for IT companies to define the industry they belong to, airlines, hotels and restaurants can be classified as service industries, but IT is clearly not all about customer service, but rather it’s about technical services.

Per hour or per job, how should you charge?

As an independent consultant, do you prefer to get paid per hour or per job? What is fair to the client? I have started my career in IT doing jobs that paid per hour and eventually I started to work on my own and I started to charge per job.

I think charging per job is both fair to the client and to the consultant, the client shouldn’t have to worry about how long will it take to finish a job and the consultant should be paid based on his experience and his ability to finish the job.

I still remember when I first started to provide on-site service for wireless LAN setup, some of the equipments were new to me and it would take me hours to configure them but as I became more experienced with the equipments, my time on-site dropped significantly ,in both cases, I charged the client the same. It was not the client fault that I was slow and he shouldn’t have to pay me for time I have to spend getting familiar with new technology, but at the same time as I improved my speed, I should not have been paid per hour for jobs I can finish in mush less time.

One time I was working on client’s wireless network and I was able to finish the whole setup and less than an hour, so he was surprised and said to me “did I pay all that money for less than an hour of work”, so I replied to him “It took me hundreds of training hours to reach to this speed”.

The Issue with American “Date” Format

In the US, the Month always comes before the day, so, February 25-2009 would be written 3-25-2009. I am not aware of any other country that uses the same format; I don’t know what is the history behind it.

But using this date format could create serious problem when dealing with international customers. In my work outside of the US, we have to send various types of documents back to US companies and not knowing the exact due date on some document lead to serious performance issues.

Also some software developed in the US have the same issue. Currently I am using a vehicles maintenance software that I bought from a US Company and the date format in it is based on US standards, although I will continue using the software, I have to inform all users about the problem with date format.

In order for US software development companies to make their product more appealing to international customers, software development standards in the US must be aware of these small but important issues.

Batch processing and ActiveBatch 7.0

If you are a business manager or IT consultant, you know that there is not enough time, time is your biggest killer, so many tasks that need to be executed in the shortest possible time.

The concept of batch processing (in its simplest form) is to have a software program (script) run a task for you. For example: each morning you launch your web browser and navigate your way to your chosen financial broker website to get the latest activities on a stock, with batch processing, you can automate this daily activity so at certain hour of the day, you will have the stock(s) activities displayed on your screen or even e-mailed to you.

Batch processing is to automate repetitive tasks by writing scripts (codes.) In my early programming days, I had to write scripts to run tests on website, they idea was to have the script send thothands of page requests to a particular website, to simulate the actual users. Writing the script was time consuming and error prone.

Since that time, lots of improvement is being made in the automation of batch processing. Several software vendors are offering solutions to ease task creation under batch processing. One the vendors’ solutions that I had the privilege to review was Activebatch 7.0 by Advanced Systems Concepts. Using tele-conferning and web conferencing, Jim Manias from Advanced Systems Concepts, gave me a great overview of the new ActiveBatch 7.0 release.

On of the main features of ActiveBatch 7.0 (which I try to discuss more in the coming posts), is significantly reducing the need to write scripts, most of scripts writing is already done for you, you only have to chose the task and click.

In the next several posts, I will try to get into more details of ActiveBatch 7.0 features.

Management lessons learned from the US presidential campaign

What is the first thing comes to mind when the current US presidential camping is mentioned? I think most readers will agree with me that the first thing come to mind is the personal attacks that each candidate is waging and the time each candidate is spending on finding the faults of his opponent. What benefits the voters will gain from this?

If I were to vote, I don’t know yet which candidate to vote for, I cant tell which candidate is better for the country. Both candidates spend considerable amount of time on attacking each rather then spending time on telling the voters about their plans to lead the country for the next four years.

If your company were in the process to change the management team, what would you want to hear from the new (potential) managers? Would you want to waste your time listening to each candidate for the job talk about how bad the other applicants are or would you want all the applicants talk about how they will provide better management plans than the previous management team?

In the last few months, I have been working with one of our major contractors, our contract with them was up and it come to a renew, the renewal process included a bid that we had to submit (with other bidders) to win another year with them.

Throughout the bidding process, all bidders were submitting their proposals that showed their ability to do the job, no bidder wasted their time telling the customer how bad the other bidders were, they all focused on showing the customer that they were fit for the job.

Don’t waste my time telling me how bad the other guy is, tell me how good you are.