Journyx Project Management Blog

Managing technology projects can be one of the most challenging arenas of project management. Ironically, it is rarely the technology itself that presents obstacles for the technical project manager. Being mindful of the most common traps that await the unsuspecting project manager can help ensure your technical projects don’t end up as financial disasters that don’t deliver expected function, and diminish the reputation of yourself and your technical organization.

1. It is about business process, not the technical tool

The intent of a project is to move the business to a better place. That better place can mean increased efficiency, additional capabilities or an improvement in the accuracy of the business’ output. Regardless of the nature of the business improvement, it is enhanced process that will drive the superior results. It is not necessarily as a result of a tool, a new IT system or improved technology – these are only the catalyst for the improved process which drives business results. Many project managers and their teams mistake the new technology as being the output of the project, rather than the enhanced process that results in conjunction with implementing new technology.

Read on at PM World Today.

My company has rolled out our web-based timesheet software to hundreds of large companies. Usually it is for the use of a department or two, or for one division. Yet as people start to use our technology to understand their costs better, other departments want in on the action and buy licenses too.

When these follow-on departments do their rollouts, it happens in one of two ways:

1. They start all over and do it the way they want it.
2. They have some central and more experienced group roll it out on behalf of the new department.

We’ve found that in many cases the second way works better. In fact, I’d call this a best practice for rolling out successive phases of a large software installation. Have a central team do it so the learning can be captured and processes more easily repeated.

- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO

Yes, O Faithful Reader, it’s time for the next installment of Grumpy IT Guy. Why, you ask, O Sage of Silicon, are you grumpy today? Well, once again I had to deal with a @#$%^&* operating system. Several, in fact.

Am I the only person in the world calling for a change? ZD.Net recently wrote an article on the most annoying software products on the market today, and to paraphrase one of their statements, if I’m even aware of the existence of my operating system, something has already gone horribly, horribly wrong. This is true of every operating system out there today, and it went horribly wrong in the design phase.

Let’s take them one by one, shall we? First, let’s talk about the one I have to use most often: Windows. Windows NT 4.0 was probably the flagship operating system put forth by Microsoft to date. It was pretty darned bullet-proof, and it just sat there and let me “do stuff.” I could easily stop and start services, save, open and print, and it was pretty much running 24×7, once SP6a came around.

Then came Windows XP. Now I’ve got task bars with hidden icons, launch bars, buggy multi-monitor setups, HP printers that consume 100% of resources when they print (which they did NOT do under NT, thank you very much) and popups that tell me that I need to reboot or the update to my update software won’t update. Once I do that, another update starts, and I have to reboot. Then I have to reboot in order to reboot. Then, once that’s done, I’m gonna need to reboot.

Don’t even get me started on Linux. Ubuntu? It just works? Are you kidding me? If by “it just works” you mean “you can’t connect to a VPN” or “you can’t use wireless” or “I will crash when Flash or Java pops up” or “I will get in your face about updates that continually fail to install,” then I guess I have to agree. RedHat tacks the name Enterprise on the end. “Enterprise” apparently means the opposite on the update side, or “you can’t possibly update security errata, because you’re in dependency hell.” Here’s an interesting bit of homework for you. Go install RedHat (pick a version, any version after 3.0) without X Windows and printing support. Right. Go ahead. Yep, now reboot. Wait for it… Yep, that’s X Windows, the package you said “don’t install.” Oh, if you’re on 4.0, I sure hope you set up a non-privileged user on the screen they didn’t give you to do that, because you won’t be able to log into the console as root…

I remember recently setting up a Mac for a new employee here, and while my Crapintosh experience goes back to System 6, it’s been noticeably flagging. So, when I pulled this sleek machine out of the box and got it started up, I yelled across the office to a compatriot, “HOW THE HELL DO I STOP MY CHILDLIKE SENSE OF WONDER?!” He came over and pressed the mute button for me. While I no longer had to listen to Apple’s “Welcome to Your Mac” movie, there was no way out of it. This was a few weeks ago. I think the movie is just about done now. Hopefully my developer will be able to use her machine some time in Q2. Of course, when she does, she’ll have to learn an entirely new “intuitive” operating system. I won’t bother regaling you with stories of the counter-intuitiveness of Apple; I’ll just refer you to the definition of the word ‘intuitive’ and point you to a Mac.

When did operating systems become so invasive? Why do they have to do so much? I long for a return to the days of DOS when my O/S just sat there and waited for me to do something, then smiled happily and let me get on with my life. If I actually trusted Google, I’d revert to a thin client that ran nothing but a web browser, and I’d use nothing but online applications. It’s not that I don’t trust Google, it’s just that right after I wrote that sentence, I got an email from them asking why I didn’t trust them, along with several sidebar ads about anger management and zen. Creepy.

Of course, if I did that, I’d just have to choose between IE 7’s infernal nonstop javascript errors or Firefox’s 14 hour load time and constant 20 second interruptions…err… “notifications” that there’s a new version out…

- The Grumpy Journyx IT Guy

In 1999, the then CEO of Sun Microsystems said something that infuriated a huge number of people. “You have zero privacy anyway,” Scott McNealy told a group of reporters and analysts. “Get over it.” Competitors chose this moment to attack everything Sun had ever done or thought of doing as obviously nefarious in light of this comment. Isn’t competition fun?

Well, that was way back in the dark ages in 1999, and Scott probably never considered what Google would know about you in the distant future of 2008. If you go to Google Web History and login with your Google ID, you can go through a calendar that shows you all the terms you’ve searched on and what results you clicked. The data goes back very far.

If you could get this data on another person, you’d really learn a lot about them. I suppose Google could theoretically look at this data for new hires if they wanted to. Though that might be flying in the face of the “Don’t be evil” mantra, whatever that means. Or maybe it’s not evil to use technology and data to succeed for your old widow stockholders, I’m not sure. Some things are more obviously evil than others.

The level of detail here is kind of scary, in my opinion. Like all powerful tools, Google can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO

Yes, children, once again it’s time to hear from the Grumpy IT Guy. This one is actually being written the day after the last one reached your avid ears; that’s how grumpy I am right now. You want to know why? Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be readin’ my little piece here, now would ya?

So there I was, at the request of one of the executives, trying to download and install some sort of log analyzer for something he was doing, when the product site told me, “Hey, bonehead! You’re using Internet Explorer. We like Firefox. Nannynannybooboo!”

Alright, it didn’t really say “bonehead” or “nannynannybooboo,” but I sure felt it. I went ballistic.

This was the third time this week that I experienced what I like to call “Developer knows best.” If there are any developers out there, please listen up, alright? You don’t. That’s all there is to it. To force me to use a tool which I have not selected as being the best tool for my particular job because:

a) It’s easier for you to write in that one
b) You just “don’t like” the other prevalent tools in the arena
c) You’re trying to make some hippie statement about increasing market share

…is entirely wrong. I have, for a variety of reasons, chosen Internet Explorer 7. I’m not going to argue about Firecrap being better or worse than Internet Exploder. That’s your thing, not mine. I’m going to tell you quite simply that it is the tool I choose to use.

By the way, once I got the software installed, I saw no difference in usage. Yes, I checked.

Recently, a multi-protocol chat client we’ll call “Pidgin” ran into a similar situation. The developers decided that the auto-resize of a text window based on how much you’re typing is “much cooler” (or whatever idiot reason they chose) than the “manual resize” feature, so THEY TOOK OUT THE MANUAL RESIZE FEATURE.

Well, guys, people were using it. We were happy. If I wanted your application to auto-size, I’d turn it on. I don’t. Now, however, I can’t do anything but that. Oh, wait, I can uninstall it, which is what I did. Technically, I can ban it from use at my company. I think I’ll do that!

Actually, if I did that, I’d be inflicting my personal viewpoints on a base of users, wouldn’t I? I have people here using Outlook, Thunderbird, our web client, and some other tools I don’t know about to check their mail. Some folks use OpenOffice, some use Google Docs, some use Star Office, some use Microsoft Office. It’s the tool that makes them feel the most comfortable doing their job. I let them use it. Rather, more properly, I do not inflict rules and strictures upon them because I have some ill-conceived notion that my choice is better than theirs.

Let me explain a truism of programming to you. This is most recently attributed to Colin Powell, but actually comes from Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder). No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. How does that apply, you wonder? Well, it’s quite simple. No matter how good you are at writing software, you can’t possibly take all my needs into consideration. You can call your software “feature complete” if you like, but that doesn’t mean it does what the bulk of people want it to do in the way they want it done. You MUST, therefore, be open to input on how to make it useful for those of us who will be using it.

When a developer makes a decision to enforce strictures on his users, he is playing God. He might know more about writing the particular software than I do, but I can guarantee that I know how to do MY job better than he does. I wouldn’t tell a developer that they had to use a certain editor to write their code; they shouldn’t tell me I have to use a certain browser to see it.

Wake up, guys. You’re just becoming the cliché that you really didn’t want to be. Get over your God Complex, or get out of the field and go teach in a public school where your dogmatic insistence on opinions disguised as fact is an accepted norm.

- The Grumpy Journyx IT Guy

Ten years ago, the finance department’s quest to identify solutions that could automate and streamline operations and maximize cash flow was an expensive and arduous one. Not only did finance managers need to navigate the overwhelming array of then-unproven solution options, they also needed to overcome growing resistance from internal IT departments that were intent on standardizing on a single Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendor.

On the one hand, who could blame IT for being reluctant to adopt best-of-breed software? The typical enterprise software installation involved lengthy rollouts of 18-to-24-months, cost millions of dollars in hardware and required countless hours of IT resources to deploy and maintain on-site. So, limiting deployment of non-ERP systems seems a logical way to standardize and limit burdens on already scarce IT resources.

Unfortunately, as increasingly frustrated finance directors learned first-hand, IT’s unwavering stance on system consolidation often failed to support the needs and business objectives of finance or any other functional department. As a result, finance’s productivity and performance was often hindered – not helped – by the company’s overarching IT strategy.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has changed all this. By delivering application functionality as a globally accessible, Web-based service, SaaS – or On Demand – has bridged the gap between business and IT – enabling finance directors and other business line executives to access the functionality required to meet and exceed their goals while still toeing the line on corporate IT strategy.

Read the rest at the IT-Finance Connection.

My company sells timesheet software. If I want to figure out which keywords I should be working my SEO magic on, one of the first questions to ask is “How often do people use that search term?”

Google Trends offers an answer. Here is a graph of the keywords for “time tracking” vs. “timesheet” vs. “time sheet.”

You can also figure out which of several companies are searched for more often, say Nike vs. Reebok vs. Converse (for shoes). If a company has more people searching for it, then it probably has more customers. Alexa is another great tool that acts like AC Nielsen, except for websites instead of TV shows. All else being equal, more traffic to a company’s site probably means more customers. This may influence your purchasing decisions.

Another tool I like a lot is provided free by Yahoo. It provides related keyword suggestions. It’s usually a bit slow, so be patient.

These tools can help you know where to aim your SEO efforts. Some SEO consultants will quickly make you strong on irrelevant keywords and claim victory. For example, although we’re very successful with architectural firms, I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of effort to do well on the term “architect timesheet” because nobody ever thinks to search for that term.

Have fun out there…

- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO

Spreadsheet errors can happen to the best of us. As a result, many public companies and government organizations are trying to wean themselves off their reliance on spreadsheets for complex and critical financial transactions.

Of course, to achieve such a goal, organizations need all the help they can get. Most businesses today rely on spreadsheets in some way. The multi-celled document is used heavily for finance and accounting, as well as supply chain, customer relationship and sales functions.

However, recent financial regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, have had a huge impact on how companies manage changes and controls in financial documents, such as spreadsheets. Because of their preponderance and the amount of digital fingertips that can touch these documents, spreadsheets have come under a lot of fire. In particular, companies lack the appropriate controls and repeatable processes to mitigate the risks.

[...]

1. Fidelity’s “Minus Sign Mistake”

“There was a big flap recently over Fidelity’s Magellan fund estimating in November that they would make a $4.32/share distribution at the end of year, and then not doing so. A letter of explanation was sent to the shareholders…from J. Gary Burkhead, the President of Fidelity, including the following pertinent items: During the estimating process, a tax accountant is required to transcribe the net realized gain or loss from the fund’s financial records (which were correct at all times) to a separate spreadsheet, where additional calculations are performed. The error occurred when the accountant omitted the minus sign on a net capital loss of $1.3 billion and incorrectly treated it as a net capital gain on this separate spreadsheet. This meant that the dividend estimate spreadsheet was off by $2.6 billion…”

Read the rest at CIO.com, and for those of you who missed it, our CEO Curt Finch addressed this very subject here at the Project Management Blog earlier this month.

Happy Hallmark Card Day, everyone. Err…Hallmark Store Day? Err…That Day That Guys Don’t Get to Watch Sports Day? Yeah. That day. Every man reading this post knows to which day I’m referring, and every guy out there feels my pain. My little bit is the Grumpy IT Guy, so let me tell you a little about how that Most Annoying Day (okay, it’s not really, but it should be) has started to cost you more, and why they’re blaming it on technology and our guys.

I love my wife very much. Very much. I like to buy her roses. I really do. It makes everyone else in her office very jealous. I can call my local florist in the morning and have a couple dozen roses that last for a week delivered that very day on most days. Yeah, you know where this is going.

Being The Guy Who Does His Christmas Shopping on Christmas Eve, let’s just say it was the morning of February 13th, and there I was trying to send my girl the standard chocolates + roses thing. I had seen three different ads from three online vendors on television during sporting events espousing their abilities to send at the last minute and promising prices well below $92,145 for a dozen roses. Anything below $10,000 is okay on VD.

I booted my “trusty” PC that morning (I literally had to kick it to wake it up), blithely ignoring all the work ahead of me because, well, I’m in IT, and I don’t really like to do anything; I just want to surf the ‘net all day. I browse over to each of these sites, and surprise, surprise! The prices for the roses are just as advertised! Wow. Each of these sites had advertised 12-18 roses for between $25 and $50. Delivered. I’m in. Watch the love meter rise enormously for me as my wife gushes at the pretty flowers and makes everyone in her office jealous, again! Score.

Proceeding naively to checkout, I found my bill suddenly expanded to the $120 range. For $30 roses. Hmm. Opening my cart I wondered what other little goodies they shoved in without telling me anything. Nothing. Where were the fees? Delivery. Perturbed, I went to the second site. Same thing. Then the third. Guess what? $150.00 at the third.

Alright now guys, here’s the thing. You sell roses all the time. I guarantee on May 21st, there’s no extra delivery fee. I can guarantee it because I’ve done it before - on a normal Wednesday for Thursday delivery, you don’t hit me with a $35 “rush” charge. I’ll even accept the $5.00 VD fee, since you’re probably passing it on from the local delivery guys, but come on.

1. You sell flowers for delivery. It’s what you do. The prices did NOT go up. You’re just gouging me because you can.

2. Your online transaction fees did not go up from last week for today. I promise. So, we’re gonna call your $20.00 processing fee that wasn’t even included the last time I did this what it is, and guys, that smells remarkably like what comes out the south end of a north-facing Longhorn.

3. Your rush charge is completely ridiculous, and you know it. You’re pocketing all that money. I know because I called a few florists that I know who were way overbooked, and while they offered to squeeze me in, they wouldn’t take an offered bribe of $50.00 to put me higher on the list.

Stop blaming technology, stop charging me “transaction fees” for the lowest per-transaction cost-based system in the world (the Internet), and stop telling me that they might not be there on time because “the system is overloaded and being slow.”

-The Grumpy Journyx IT Guy

The senior White House IT official, Karen Evans, said she believes software as a service (SaaS) can improve government IT projects and systems.

Evans made her remarks during a talk at the Saas/GOV 2008 conference. From InfoWorld:

“Our track record is clear — we are not very good at delivering our own software in the time frame set,” Evans said at the conference. “We’re also not very good at managing large projects.”

Some agencies haven’t embraced the service approach, often because they want hands-on control of software development, Evans said. But government agencies can’t afford to keep developing their own software without sharing with other agencies, she said.

“We can’t continue to maintain all of the things we have,” she added. “We have to start shutting down some of our legacy systems. We really have to move to a … service-oriented market.”

Read more at IT Project Failures.