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| Volume 8, Issue 11 |
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In This Issue:
 Would you fire this person?
Why your project management practices are failing
8 reasons CIOs think developers are clueless
Does a tech manager need to be tech-savvy?
Facebook: How to keep some things private
 The secret to getting value from outsiders
12 unnecessary Vista features you can disable right now
Second Seinfeld-Gates TV commercial: 3 times longer, 3 times funnier?
 Top 10 ways to improve power performance in your datacenter
 San Francisico hunts for mystery device on city network
 The 30 skills every IT person should have
 Six steps to better sales forecasting and demand planning
Seven steps to successful BI competency centers
 IWeek: Web 2.0, globalization, virtualization, intelligent and more
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Would you fire this person?
In this case study, we ask you if you'd keep a problem employee on staff, or if you'd invite him to "explore other career opportunities." The people who make a manager's life difficult aren't the ones who are incompetent. You can spot them and
eliminate them without angst. It's semicompetent people who keep their managers awake at night.
No manager wants to fire anyone, least of all when the individual's work can be good—but just isn't often enough. The problem with these employees is that they exhaust your management skills; they can bring down the morale of the rest of your staff; and they can distract the team from achieving its real goals. But firing them
isn't always the easy answer. Maybe you don't have any clear-cut reason to fire the person, because you fear harming your and your company's reputation or because the next person to get the job will be even worse. It's at these times that you feel like the subject of one of those advice columns, "Can this marriage be saved?" There's a
point, though, at which any manager says, "That does it." How do you know when you've reached it? Can you ever be sure you made the right decision? Well, today you can. Because in this article, you'll read about a real employee (we call him Eric) whose
work was below par, from his manager's point of view. Given the data here, you decide whether you would fire Eric. At the end of the article, you'll learn his actual fate...
Read the article. Back to top
Why your project management practices are failing
Traditional project management practices work well for stable business environments, but they're too rigid and bureaucratic for today's rapidly changing business world. Here's how to make your IT project management practices more flexible and responsive to business needs.
IT project management practices are stuck in the mud, and they're hindering IT departments' ability to deliver projects successfully. That's the conclusion of a recent Forrester report, "Stretching Your Project Management Muscles," which was published in July. Mary Gerush, author of the report (and a former IT project manager
herself), notes that the project management discipline has not kept up with the pace of change in business or in IT. Gerush writes that while IT departments have adopted service oriented architecture (SOA) and Agile software development practices to become more responsive to business needs, the project management discipline has remained
largely focused on methodology. And traditional project management methodologies are proving to be too rigid, cumbersome and bureaucratic for today's mercurial and competitive business environment. In fact, Gerush notes, these methodologies can work against IT departments...
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8 reasons CIOs think developers are clueless
Sure, CIOs can be clueless. But so can the programming staff. It's time for the other side of the story: CIOs and IT managers explain just how out-of-it their application development staff can be.
CIO.com has published several stories that examined the sometimes volatile, often misunderstood and never dull relationship between CIOs and application developers—from "9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless" to "8 Reasons Why a Developer Would NEVER Want To Be a CIO" to
"Getting Clueful: 7 Things CIOs Should Know About Agile Development." Those articles were presented solely from the programmer's viewpoint, however. We wanted to give the bosses—CIOs and IT leaders who perhaps were irked by the "clueless" label—a chance to respond. Because, certainly, developers can be out-of-touch too—just in different
ways. CIO.com asked IT leaders what they wish developers knew so that the programmers don't appear clueless to the rest of the organization. The bosses' responses, gathered from eight CIOs and IT managers and which have been anonymously condensed, show that many developers need to gain the bigger-picture view of their organizations to
appreciate the challenges of those "clueless" CIOs. "It turns out that the concepts of business strategy bear repeating," observes one IT director. "Developers get so heads-down in the minutiae of coding that they forget about the 40,000-foot view of the business." 1. Developers Don't Think Practically...
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Does a tech manager need to be tech-savvy?
To listen to the techies, any IT manager ought to have deep technical knowledge. Or so the prevailing wisdom goes. When push comes to shove, though, your techies would far prefer that you fine-tune your management skills than compete with them on technical know-how.
To work in IT you have to have a tech background, right? Nope. With the right set of management skills, even a nontechnical person can make it as a successful manager. Sure, it helps to understand the bits and-bytes of each employee's area of expertise. If nothing else, it means the manager can appreciate what the staff does right and
recognize weaknesses. But how can managers accurately evaluate team performance or assign tasks when they know little or nothing about what the individual does? According to some technical employees, the answer is...
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Facebook: How to keep some things private
When it comes to privacy, Facebook learned from its mistakes with the Beacon advertising incident, which alarmed privacy advocates who
complained the move automatically broadcast users' activities outside the site to other users.
Facebook has since rolled out one of the most robust security systems for any social network, which allows users to control who sees what information about them with great specificity. The stakes are high: Facebook's future growth will depend on people
feeling safe to share lots of information (about their personal and professional interests) with others. Take a look at Facebook's privacy features and how to set yours...
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The secret to getting value from outsiders
This summer marks my 20th year as an IT consultant. I've been fortunate enough to work with more than 100 companies, big and small, public and private, on three continents.
I've had the opportunity to observe how organizations derive value from outsiders, and how those relationships can enhance effectiveness and be cost-efficient. I've also seen that they can be useless or even destructive. There are probably few readers of this column who can't tell a tale of thousands or millions of dollars wasted by their
employers on outsiders' services. So I thought that I'd share a simple secret I've learned about getting the best value from your services budget. Here it is:...
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12 unnecessary Vista features you can disable right now
Tired of Vista's bloat? Reclaim your PC's performance by turning off a dozen wasteful features. Vista, thy name is bloat!
The latest Windows packs a lot of code -- more than any version of Windows ever -- and some of it is just plain unnecessary. All of that excess code has a way of slowing down an operating system. You can regain some PC performance by removing unneeded features. I've identified a dozen Vista features that you can turn off right now. Some
are shiny baubles that slow down graphics performance, while others are optional utilities that hog memory when they shouldn't. A few can actually be quite useful, though they play a major role in bogging down your PC. Should you really turn off all of the following features right this minute? That depends on your computer, your work
habits and your tastes. (I've turned off only seven and a half on my PC, because while none of these features is required for Vista to function, some are still kind of nice and my computer is fast enough to handle them.) [I list the features in the order that makes them easiest to turn off. For instance, I've put features that you can remove in the same dialog box next to each other...]
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Second Seinfeld-Gates TV commercial: 3 times longer, 3 times funnier?
Jerry and Bill try to connect with a typical suburban family. The second Windows commercial starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates showed up on YouTube last night at a length of four and a half minutes -- normal for a pop song, long for a TV commercial.
Possibly stung by criticism that last week's commercial, which ran for a minute-and-a-half, was obtuse and difficult to understand, Microsoft Corp. uploaded the entire two-part commercial, entitled "New Family --Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates
(Long Version)," at 8 p.m. Eastern, during the CBS reality show, Big Brother. The commercial can be seen below. The plot, as it were, goes like this:...
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Top 10 ways to improve power performance in your datacenter
Cut back your energy bills by making your datacenter more efficient.
It’s time to get serious about improving performance in the datacenter. A Gartner Inc. report released this week predicts that in the next five years, most U.S. enterprise datacenters can expect to spend as much on energy as they do on hardware
infrastructure. By 2011, Gartner analysts predict that 70 percent of datacenters will experience disruptions related to energy consumption and the associated costs. [These simple steps will help you boost your power efficiency and cut your costs]...
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San Francisico hunts for mystery device on city network
With costs related to a rogue network administrator's hijacking of the city's network now estimated at $1 million, city officials say they are searching for a mysterious networking device hidden somewhere on the network.
The device, referred to as a "terminal server" in court documents, appears to be a router that was installed to provide remote access to the city's Fiber WAN network, which connects municipal computer and telecommunication systems throughout the city. City officials haven't been able to log in to the device, however, because they do not
have the username and password. In fact, the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) isn't even certain where the device is located, court filings state. Read the latest WhitePaper - Maximizing Site Visitor Trust Using
Extended Validation SSLThe router was discovered on Aug. 28. When investigators attempted to...
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The 30 skills every IT person should have
An IT manager's guide on how to be better at what you do, no matter how experienced you are.
On MSN the other day, I noticed an article called "75 skills every man should master." It included some skills I have and some I don't. For example, I can tie a knot and hammer a nail, but frankly I can't recite a poem from memory, and bow ties still confuse me. It was an interesting read and made me realize I could be more
well-rounded than I am. To be honest, we all could be. So in the spirit of personal growth, I developed a list of skills every IT person should have...
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Six steps to better sales forecasting and demand planning
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Most companies are immature and uncoordinated when it comes to sales forecasting and demand planning. Follow these six steps to increase forecast accuracy, speed planning cycles, reduce inventory costs, end stockouts and increase customer satisfaction.
Few activities are as important to the success of a company as sales forecasting and demand planning. The difference between adequate and excellent sales forecasting and demand planning can make a significant difference in a company's competitiveness and market position. Yet for most companies, excellence in these core business functions
remains out of reach. This article is based on a recent Ventana Research study entitled "Sales forecasting and Demand Planning: Setting the Agenda for Improving Core Processes." Sharing the study's top-level results, this executive summary details mistakes companies make, capabilities they lack and obstacles executives encounter as
they seek to improve their sales forecasting and demand planning efforts. It also explores the people, process, information and technology foundations of sales forecasting and demand planning (SF/DP), and it concludes with a recommended six-step SF/DP improvement program...
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Seven steps to successful BI competency centers
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From setting a strategic vision and gaining C-level support to promoting successes and responding to emergencies, follow these seven suggestions for developing BICCs that boost business performance.
Maturity and success often go hand in hand. That's as true for business intelligence (BI) deployments as it is for people. In a recent survey of 358 business technology professionals conducted by InformationWeek and Intelligent Enterprise.com, two thirds of the respondents who rated their BI deployments as "very successful" (see "BI
Improves Business Performance" chart) also said those deployments are "mature" or at least "centralized" in their approach. In contrast, three quarters of those who reported less success ranked their deployments as either "just moving toward centralization" or stuck in "decentralized deployments with little or no coordination
of practices and investments" (see "Maturity Equals Better BI Success" chart). How do you move toward a mature BI deployment — one in which proven practices as well as technologies are shared across the organization?...
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InformationWeek 500 trends: Web 2.0, globalization, virtualization, intelligent and more
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What the InformationWeek 500 data tells us about the use of emerging technologies. You gotta try it; everyone's doing it.
That's how it feels sometimes with business technology, where the buzz around a new idea (virtualization, social networking, cloud computing) can get so loud it leaves a CIO wondering (and perhaps a CEO asking), "Are we the only ones not doing this yet?" At times like this, it's good to have 500 innovative friends to be able to ask about
their strategies. That's what our InformationWeek 500 delivers, as we ask companies detailed questions about what's going on in their technology organizations so that we can produce our ranking of the most innovative ones. We're intrigued by the huge range of strategies companies use to excel. Web 2.0 is one of the trendiest ideas in tech,
for instance, but there are entire industries where not one company in our survey cites it as a top productivity improver. Meantime, adoption of some more tactical technologies, such as WAN optimization, has exploded in the last year. The InformationWeek 500 research shows...
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