cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

Introducing buzzword-compliant technology like a wiki, or integrated collaboration spaces like SharePoint, will typically go well with a motivated audience like your internal IT department. But if you really want to understand how this stuff works, try it with "real people" - line employees in sales and marketing, operations, and finance.

Sure, you've heard complaints from these folks (they have better PCs at home, the SAP/Oracle UI is brutal compared to Amazon and AT&T U-Verse, and why can't they just connect their new iPhone to the corporate mail server?). Be warned; demanding users are not necessarily technically savvy when it comes to groupware.

Case in point; we are working a rather large project (many months in length, over 100 people throughout the business) using SharePoint as our collaboration space - and learning an awful lot about what we thought we understood about ease-of-use and intuitive user interfaces. Our collaboration space is a basic SharePoint project site, featuring the usual suspects - a Shared Document library, an Issues list, and an Announcements section. Simple right? Well, maybe not ...

Documents Check In, but they Don't Check Out

Just kidding, the actual check-in / check-out mechanism works fine. It's just very interesting that this basic concept of version control is lost on most end-users.

But let's start with the document library itself - it looks like a really nice version of File Explorer, but becomes very frustrating to folks when they try basic tasks like drag-and-drop. Yes, we found the simple solution - there is an option to open the folder in Windows Explorer, but since this menu option is buried right above the file list, it's hard to find - certainly not "intuitively obvious".

Version control was a difficult thing to explain - thank goodness for the tight integration with Office 2007. We found it easier to show folks how to edit documents with a simple double-click - that works just like their shared folders on the old file server! You can explain the concepts of version control quite easily, but the whole check-in / check-out, keep-a-copy-on-your-local-drive thing just gets too complicated. We did have to deal with the one-time task of checking in a new document after you upload it, but after that, they just open the files directly, and that's it.

There is one feature of Shared Document libraries that I really like - the ability to add custom attributes to documents that can appear as columns in the view. Makes it easier to sort / select / search on documents, and people "get it" relatively quickly. Just go easy on the version control.

... Here's a SharePoint Tissue

I think the most powerful and elegant feature of SharePoint is the flexibility you have with basic list management - even with WSS. Truly, this stuff should cover over half of the "fancy" automation tasks that folks are are asking for. However, I'm still surprised / dismayed by the fact that SharePoint doesn't include a standard graphical indicator - you know, the classic "stoplight" (green is good, yellow warning, red means um, er...). I've written about this one before - why can't I have a simple datatype (vs. putting together a sneaky little script to make it work).

I also have a significant warning / insight about trying to do too much with your Lists. Do you realize that most end-users in a typical SMB have older CRTs? I'll bet you still have a large number of 15" CRTs with slightly foggy tubes, on their last legs (but too expensive to change out for all but the executive staff) (ok, and IT too, sorry). In addition - well, let's just say that I'm not the only one whose eyesight is beginning to fail them; I can't tell you how often I've tried to talk folks into moving their screen resolution higher than 800x600 - but it just doesn't work.

What's my point? Before you put too many columns in your Lists, or too many gadgets on your Site, check with the average user to make sure that it looks okay on their Screen. Heck, before you even begin your design, use SMS or a simple script to poll the user community and find out what kind of screen resolutions have been set. Catering to the lowest common denominator is not a cop-out, especially when the point of a collaboration site is to get people to actually participate!

Push vs. Pull Messaging

(Another opinion:) I think most powerful aspect of collaboration sites is the aggregation of all knowledge about a project into a single, searchable repository. When people send project updates or resolve issues / hold discussions over e-mail, all that knowledge is buried and quickly lost inside people's inboxes. In SharePoint, a typical Announcements web part (yes, I know it's just another kind of List) is quite practical as a messaging medium, because folks can sign up for e-mail alerts.

Don't underestimate the attraction of the e-mail. People are used to getting information delivered to them in their inboxes - it's expected! All I'm saying with my Announcements list is that you have to subscribe to the information and pull it towards yourself (versus expecting me, the project manager, to remember to push it to you - and everybody else that might be interested).

Real-world learning: this concept didn't take long to grab hold in our project. It makes sense, people understand it relatively quickly.

On The Good Side

Don't get me wrong, there is lots of good that's going on. Now that the larger project is getting used to this new collaboration space ...

• ... our issue tracking list gets better every time someone touches it - and now we have consistent consolidated issue lists for all aspects of the project
• ... we are advancing our state-of-the-art for shared authorship; there is a lot more visibility to who is working on what, and we're getting more participation than a normal project
• ... the combination of all these different pieces - shared documents, issues, announcements, and other things - are massively facilitating communication, and it is noticed by the folks on the team

Yes - these collaboration tools will definitely will bring huge value and streamline communications to your project. Just don't think it's easy or obvious.

Previously ...

• Update on Blogs as PM Tools - Tales from the Front Lines (January 20, 2008)
• Butting In to the Conversation: PM Communication Tools (February 26, 2008)
• The Best Way to get Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise (March 3, 2008)
• Optimizing the Wrong Part of Knowledge Management (March 16, 2008)
• The Innovation Generation and User Interfaces (April 9, 2008)
• The Right Web2.0 Tool for the Audience (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) (May 9, 2008)
• Enterprise 2.1: Exiting the Trough of Disillusionment (July 22, 2008)
• Facilitating Innovation: Establishing an Environment of Possibilities (August 22, 2008)
• Is SharePoint WSS dangerous to SharePoint contractors? (February 4, 2009)
• Low Tech SharePoint Hack: Project Status Indicator (March 14, 2009)

Technorati Tags: collaboration, hands on, Knowledge Management, people management, PMO, project management, technology, Web 2.0, wiki,

Invisible Technorati Tags: cazh1, James P. MacLennan, jpmacl, MacLennan,

When I see / read articles like this, or hear the breathless claims of vendors, pundits, and True Believers, I'll privately chuckle to myself. All of this stuff - social networking, collaboration, and innovation - are 21st century takes on good old Knowledge Management (KM), circa 1998.

Do these sound like presentations from your recent Enterprise 2.0 conference?

• Managing Cultural Change to Create a Knowledge Sharing Environment
• Effectively Managing Information Overload in the Information Age
• Information Content and Security in Document Management Systems
• Using Technology and the Project Management Workbench to Accelerate Product Development Efforts
• Shifting the Burden of Knowledge Sharing to All Employees

I dug up an old copy of the proceedings from a KM conference from 1998; if I did a global replace on "Innovation" for "Knowledge", I could probably get a bunch of folks to sign up today!

Ok, a little sarcasm is fun, but once you realize the similarities, there are other parallels with 1990's KM efforts - not the least of which is the identification of business benefits. Anyone involved with projects back then can testify to the difficulty in predicting hard benefits - clearly quantifiable impact on top line or bottom line, derived in a predictable, measurable manner. Sorry, it just didn't work out that way for KM - and it won't for Social Networks, either! The hype cycle will prevail ...

Hard Benefits of Social Networks Do Not Exist, but ...

Why do people insist on expecting a hard business benefit from social networks, or a payback from a project to implement a funny-sounding technology (wiki/blog/tweet) inside the enterprise? Has anyone ever gotten a quantifiable business benefit from participating on Facebook, LinkedIn, mySpace?

Well, yes, actually - plenty of folks have connected with friends / colleagues, collaborated on business ideas, come up with innovative new approaches - actually monetized all the goofy sounding tools. I myself have written about successes, and have made connections I could never have anticipated. Heck, the old KM conference guide has a couple of case studies as well.

Ah, but do you see the pattern? Business benefits are not predictable, they are always opportunistic and anecdotal. Success is characterized by stories of the home runs (rarely accompanied by comparable stats on strikeouts, by the way). You can't implement a social network within a company or a group, and predict how much and when the profits / savings / growth with start rolling in. You are setting up an environment of opportunity - nothing more.

When I hear people talk about business value or business return of social networks as if they could predict it, I cringe. They're trying to apply financial controls on something that's governed by chance - you can't do it. The incorrect assumption is that you can control good luck - but you can tweak your chances.

Active networkers know - I'm talking about people that have been networking for years, when connections were made face to face. Career coaches would exhort us to get out there and build our professional network - make the office visits, get on their calendar, develop some connections. You have no idea what could happen from any one connection or conversation - nothing might happen or something might happen - you trying to make your own luck.

What is it they say, luck is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration? Social networking is just automation for some of that 90%. And benefits will happen - just don't ask me when.

Previously ...

• RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise (May 1, 2008)
• Enterprise 2.1: Exiting the Trough of Disillusionment (July 22, 2008)
• Facilitating Innovation: Establishing an Environment of Possibilities (August 22, 2008)
• Dueling Collaboration Portals (November 23, 2008)
• Practical Applications of Twitter in Manufacturing? (April 5, 2009)

Technorati Tags: business value of IT, collaboration, innovation, Knowledge Management, LinkedIn, Social Networks, twitter, Web 2.0, wiki

Invisible Technorati Tags: cazh1, James P. MacLennan, jpmacl, MacLennan,

I'm doing a little hacking in SharePoint that is pulling together a few ideas from the past:

• Keeping my tech skills sharp
• Knowing when to search for the answer (vs. stubbornly sticking with DIY)
• Communicating status tersely but effectively

Apparently, I'm also trying to answer a question that is meaningful to many others, as it is used as an example in the Help files for Microsoft's online SharePoint guides, the add-on Web Parts we use here, and many other places. Why doesn't Microsoft make something like this a standard feature?

Note that I had some fairly specific requirements in mind for something that I would consider "low tech". this should be an approach that the average (read: non-IT) SharePoint site admin could use. I don't want to require third-party controls, nor do I want to require the use of SharePoint Designer. I'm also shying away from image files - little GIFs to show red, green, and yellow icons; I have established a style for displaying project status in that works great with PowerPoint and Excel, and I want to use the same images consistently on the collaboration space.

Of course, I wanted to get to a solution in a reasonable amount of time (ie. Speed to Value, or being proactively lazy). A few Google searches turned up a number of resources with different approaches. The best resource was this site, loaded with excellent SharePoint hacks - including one simple concept that requires me to tweak my ground rules, just a bit. To get this to work, I have to include a JavaScript routine on the page; however, I learned a nifty trick, one of those things that is fairly straightforward, but still has to be pointed out to you before you "get it".

The JavaScript Trick

You don't need SharePoint Designer to install JavaScript routines or special CSS on the page. All you need to do is install a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) somewhere on the same page as your list. You can bring up the Source Editor and insert any scripts, you want, nothing will display about the routines will be available to the other controls / web parts on the same page. I'm not going to copy the code here - these guys deserve the web traffic for their work, so, go to this page to copy the script.

A Lot of HTML for a Little Indicator

The actual HTML for the "green" indicator (~) looks like this: .

Unfortunately the font changes based on which indicator you need - this table shows the various components for all of the status indicators.

Status	Code	Font	Color	Result
Green	˜	Wingdings 2	green
Yellow	p	Wingdings 3	#FFCC00
Red	n	Wingdings	#DC143C
Complete	ü	Wingdings	black

My solution adds three calculated columns to the list. Why three? Well, yes, you could do the whole thing with one computed column, but the nested IF statements would be brutally complex, and I was hoping for something "self-documenting" (ie. clear and simple).

The SharePoint list in question is a typical Issue Tracker - and the first step is to define what the different statuses (statii?) are going to be. Here, I am only allowing Open (Red, Yellow, Green) and Closed - nothing like resolved or in process or proposed - we'tll keep it simple.

I then added three Calculated columns, and defined the formulas like this:

Status_Char = IF([Issue Status]="Open - Green","˜",IF([Issue Status]="Open - Yellow","p",IF([Issue Status]="Open - Red","n","ü")))

Status_Font = IF([Issue Status]="Open - Green","Wingdings 2",IF([Issue Status]="Open - Yellow","Wingdings 3",IF([Issue Status]="Open - Red","Wingdings","Wingdings")))

Status_Color = IF ([Issue Status]="Open - Green","green",IF([Issue Status]="Open - Yellow","#FFCC00",IF([Issue Status]="Open - Red","#DC143C","black")))

I've tweaked the colors - standard yellow and red don't look good with a white background. (I burned at least 30 minutes fiddling with the color tones, to make something that was visibly yet subtle. Gotta know when to go fast and when to dither over the details ...).

Add a fourth column for the actual status indicator; we use the CONCATENATE function to build the HTML string as specified above. The surrounding <DIV> is used by our borrowed JavaScript function to signal the browser to turn this little bit into true HTML.

Status_Color = CONCATENATE("<DIV><font size=4 color=",Status_Color," face='",Status_Font,"'>",Status_Char,"</font></DIV>")

Effectiveness Testing

Yes, this could have been done with a single calculated field - it's just a little bit easier to debug this way. In any event, it s a relatively large amount of code for a fairly simple effect - was it worth the effort? The ultimate test came when reviewing the list of open issues with the project team - and folks understood what was being communicated immediately. No explanation necessary - the conversation focused on the item marked "red" right away. If we just displayed the words "green", "yellow", or "red", it would take a bit more mental effort to understand what was being communicated. I really want folks to think about the solutions, and not waste brain power trying to understand the problems. A little extra effort in the code is just right.

Previously ....

• The good and the bad about being a hands-on tech manager (January 25, 2005)
• Continuing Education Pareto Principle (50/30/20) (February 13, 2007)
• Project Status Dashboards Best Practice (and a PowerPoint trick) (May 3, 2007)
• Excel 2007 is a BOB system (Bag'O'Bugs) (October 5, 2008)
• Is SharePoint WSS dangerous to SharePoint contractors? (February 4, 2009)

Technorati Tags: development, hands on, PMO, presentations, project management, SharePoint, tech management

Invisible Technorati Tags: cazh1, James P. MacLennan, jpmacl, MacLennan

Firing Up Internal Opportunity

It was true last year, but even more so now; SharePoint is very important for corporate IT, both strategically (medium- and long-term) and tactically (short-term). Sure, it's a terrific way to iterate on collaboration, internal portals, document management, etc. - "enabling innovation" in every buzzword-compliant sense. But there is solid benefit for even short-sighted, plodding, tactical IT - and it's all about staff retention.

SharePoint WSS represents a nice opportunity for folks in IT to get some hands-on experience, building relevant (if small) applications with some "cutting edge" technology. Staying "cutting edge" is important for most IT folks, but let’s face it – most of us don't work in software development houses. The typical manufacturing company spends <3% of revenue on IT; on top of that, the current economy has everyone focused on cash flow. I was speaking with a vendor yesterday evening, who told of his interactions with IT management in multiple companies over the past few weeks - and the primary concerns all had to do with system availability and cost cutting.

This nuclear winter environment, freezing spend on training & tools, would typically drive all your best IT talent away - we all want to work on latest and greatest, and experience non-trivial growth in our skills. So, how might you feed this "edge mentality", with little or no cash?

SharePoint provides both sizzle and steak ** - it’s got market hype, it looks and feels significantly different than your current, boring green screen stuff, and it’s fast twitch (small projects, lower priority, low risk if something messes up). With all that going for it, it should be easy to get internal folks to work on the new, quick and dirty stuff that the business wants.

** Ok, maybe not Morton's, but it's not Steak and Shake, either!

Drying Up External Demand

Unfortunately, I think this leaves SharePoint consulting houses bereft of good opportunities. Cash-hoarding businesses turn inward for their development needs - and this time, they can get good-looking results!

I remember when .Net came out a few years ago - had a very enlightening conversation with a typical small-firm rep. Microsoft's new technology platform was great for sales, the story went, because the projects all took 30% less time than before (such a deal!) Unfortunately, the other shoe soon dropped, and the sales team had to generate 30% more business just to keep the pipeline full and billable hours flat to the previous year. The downward pressure on rates wasn't a help, either.

Stable [end-user] companies may not fear large turnover in the current economic client, but the good ones will continue to stress internal training and new technology skills. I see plenty of SharePoint interest (and resulting bandwidth) from internal IT - where will this leave the contractors?

Previously ...

• The Best Way to get Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise (March 3, 2008)
• Stretching Your User Interface Design Muscles (April 16, 2008)
• Facilitating Innovation: Establishing an Environment of Possibilities (August 22, 2008)
• Agile Methods in a Waterfall World: Speaking In Code (September 29, 2008)
• Field Notes: Lean Times for IT Services (November 29, 2008)
• Hacking the Google Chart API from Excel (January 17, 2009)

Technorati Tags: application, collaboration, design, development, hands on, innovation,
SharePoint, Social Networks, technology, Web 2.0

Invisible Technorati Tags: cazh1, James P. MacLennan,
jpmacl, MacLennan,