cazh1 » Inspiration

Introducing Collaboration Tools? Three Required Personas for Success

Jim MacLennan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:25:36 +0000

An early SharePoint cert test

When introducing collaboration tools to an organization – creating the corporate intranet, defining project sites in Sharepoint, etc. – there are multiple skills you must master – well, at least get better at. You need to capture the ideas and communicate the data such that your target reader understands what you are trying to convey – but you also have to help them locate it in the first place.

Three personas you’ll need to adopt, three sets of skills to master, if you want your stuff to be relevant and get read …

Librarian – Where to start with a big pile of information that needs to be captured and categorized? Consider the typical technical tome – when browsing at the bookstore, how do you pick the one you will buy? I will select the winner by browsing the table of contents, to see how the subject matter lays out – very important stuff. But how do you end up using it? More often than not, I keep going back to the index, to locate a specific word (topic) and find out where the author has stashed the details. The Librarian should know the vocabulary in the book and the surrounding / related areas of knowledge, and fill the index with the key words and phrases that folks keep coming to the information desk to ask about. Sure, most word processors will automate the pagination tasks, but there is some skill and art in choosing the right words – and making sure the document contains those words in all the right places.

Experienced authors who rely on the index to function as their “local Google” will go back to the text and place key words in all the right places. Savvy intranet content producers will anticipate the searcher’s keywords and make sure they are in the document and/or the metadata.

Marketer – There’s more to it then just anticipating the reader’s needs. It’s not enough to write effective prose – you need to create content that wants to be found. Attack the problem like an SEO expert; learn how the search engine indexes content, and what data and metadata gets scanned. The Marketer will understand the local lingo and style of describing things, and make sure to include those words and that style in the text. Be realistic and humble – the vast majority of the planet does not actually think exactly like you do. Think about how you search for stuff on the internet, but also work hard to observe and learn how other folks find and absorb new information.

Completing the document is not enough – success is only achieved when people are actually reading and understanding the material. And they have to find it before they can read it.

Coach – You can document and publish plenty of material, but unless you get folks to actually change their behavior and use the tools, it will sit their like those big fat binders from long-past meetings, lovingly put together for the big event but now gathering dust on the bookshelf in the corner. The key is to find the opinion leaders, the folks who set the standards for the group – and give them extra attention and detailed, task-oriented coaching to change their behavior. Target the experienced hand, the one that folks like to emulate, possibly the one who can dictate the team’s behavior – and get right on the keyboard with them, helping them learn how to use this stuff.

This approach clearly will not scale to a large, geographically dispersed team; but if you can Coach the team leader(s) – teach the right skills and set the right expectations – the rest will follow.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2011. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: coach, Collaboration, collaboration environments, collaboration tools, Documentation, empathy, full text search, Google, intranet, Knowledge Management, librarian, marketer, SharePoint, table of contents, taxonomy, team leader, teams, workgroup

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Change and the Crop Duster

Jim MacLennan — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:06:41 +0000

Drive south through the state of Indiana on I-65, and before you hit Indianapolis you will come across an impressively large array of wind turbines, the new vertical symbols of energy self-reliance and innovation. I remember not so long ago, when this section of the road was just miles of cornfields, as far as the eye could see. The tallest things out here were telephone poles and the occasional power line – but that was then, and this scene is now …

Click for the original ... (Chris Light at en.wikipedia)

Impressive, for sure, and the grid stretched to the horizon … Maybe every 50 yards or so, another flailing prop [of the] plain (sts). And then, as we passed a small airfield where a crop duster was coming in for a landing, I thought of the pilot’s new array of problems – and how truly shocking this change must have been.

Think of it; for years, crop dusters “owned the skies” – not just the soaring heights, but pretty much everything down to the treetops. What freedom they must have felt – seconds after takeoff, you have true aerial pwnership, with absolutely nothing in your way, all the way down to maybe 30-50 feet above deck.

360 degrees of freedom – literally – in the area that you need to operate, dropping whatever they are dusting with. This is a key point – it’s one thing to pursue an avocation (say, flying your private plane around each weekend on local hops), but when you need to really get down to business, relatively few of us have complete freedom to operate. Few fields remain (aiw) that allow performance of key tasks with whatever creativity and flair we might imagine.

But now, innovation and technological progress has introduced change, and a new reality sets in. There is more than one way to use the third dimension above their corn fields, and the farmers know it – they’ve implemented a private grid of wind turbines, generating power that cuts their costs, and an alternative source of income if they are able to sell back to the grid.

All good – except for our dashing crop duster. These interloping towers have fundamentally and completely changed the pilots’ universe, the rules of engagement, their degrees of freedoms. These windmills stand tall with flailing arms, right in the area where all the action takes place – the near-earth airspace above the corn, where planes must fly at treetop level to get their work done. The grid now defines the flight paths – zero degrees of freedom, your patterns fixed. Heck, I suppose one day they will have unmanned drones doing the dusting, humming through the skies like airborne Roombas, saving time and money- and taking a bit more magic out of life.

Can innovation ever be really lossless? Must we always lose a little in the transition to the future? Maybe – and yes, maybe the overall benefit really is there (else why would they invest all that capital!) – but change will always impact some in the population, and probably not 100% for the good. I’m clearly no Luddite, and there are multiple, obvious, and relevant benefits for most innovation projects. But don’t give short shrift to the cultural impact when implementing process and system change. Find ways to value the old ways, retain the science and maybe just a little of the magic.

Followup Notes: I originally wrote this note as a rambling thought exercise, taking a bit of poetic license without checking into the details. Turns out, a always, that the Whole Story is a bit more intricate …

This isn’t a wildly new observation – folks have been noting the potential impact of this change since 2009 (Can crop dusters and wind farms coexist?, from the Quad City Business Journal).
From another 2009 article (Windmills pose risk to crop dusters, from the Decatur Herald Review), a bit more detail on the dangers.
One solution to the problem, from the crop-dusters – charge farmer’s extra when wind towers come into play. Alas, that durn Law of Unintended Consequences – flyers are applying the surcharge when farmers’ fields are within 1.5 miles of turbines – even if there are no windmills directly on the property.

Ah, another instance where reality overcomplicates a poetic thought.

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Post tags: Change Management, degrees of freedom, Field of Dreams, innovation, pwn, wind turbines, windmills

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Google+ is Active, not Passive, Social Networking

Jim MacLennan — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 19:22:21 +0000

This past week saw the introduction of Google+, the search behemoth’s entry into the social networking fray. A slew of posts, articles, opinion pieces, etc. were sure to flow – and as I settled down with some time and a backlog of links to review, here are my initial thoughts on the service.

Do I need yet another social networking platform? Not really, I’ve got my personal (Facebook) and professional (LinkedIn) networks somewhat segregated, and I am falling a bit behind in regular tweets and blog entries – the value waxes and wanes over time. Still, I’ve been impressed with Google’s overall track record on innovative tools for the “personal cloud” (i.e. how can I run my own life / my start-up / my virtual business sans infrastructure?)

Ahem … Google Wave notwithstanding … but everyone gets a mulligan every once in a while, yes?
In the various reviews / blogs, many call out that Google+ will replace / obviate the need for Google Buzz. Funny, I barely registered that one … a finnegan?

First impression: the basic interface / layout seems unimpressive, just another “skin” over the basic LinkedIn / Facebook layout. The UI tricks in Circles (drag and drop into groups) is cute, and it’s the little “usability” things that get a fair chunk of the universe to salivate … but I’m looking for something insightful …

Sparks just looks like Yet Another take on aggregated, automated search. I can follow news topics in Google News or companies on LinkedIn, subscribe to Google Alerts in eMail or RSS feeds in my feed reader; Sparks is just the Google+ version of an in situ enabler for watching the world go by

Hangouts actually looks promising – a video chat room that allows groups to speak and see each other. The first-time install process was a typical, classy example of well designed, tech savvy, user-empathetic instructions that eludes corporate IT.

Ahem … looking for examples of why folks don’t like corporate IT? Or, suggestions for skill sets and training required in modern IT?

However – to be a real enterprise tool, it desperately needs the ability to screen-share. The majority of my collaborative, video-enabled meetings-at-a-distance typically revolve around a presentation or spreadsheet that we are reviewing.

Active vs Passive: I found that I was looking for ways to incorporate feeds from Twitter and this blog … but I noted what MC Siegler called out in his writeup. Content doesn’t make it into Google+ unless I specifically put it in there; if/when I build up an active, complex nesting of Circles, that editorial tweak has the potential to jack up the overall relevance score, and make Google+ an impactful tool for workgroups in a professional setting. Combine that with the readily-available face-to-face Hangout interaction – it’s a social networking platform that leans a bit more to Active, not Passive, connections. Marshall Kirkpatrick has some very insightful notes on this idea, expanding on the notion that communication needs contextual integrity (a reasonable expectation of the proper level of privacy in this context – or, freedom from worrying about who’s listening in).

At this point, however, it’s very tough to get real interactions going – I need to get folks that I know – and would actively participate – to join Google+. I got my invite through a Lifehacker forum last week, and the person that kindly sent me an invite hasn’t even completed their profile yet.

Social Networking for the Enterprise: The really interesting notes come from folks like Dennis Howlett and R. “Ray” Wang, longtime commenters on the enterprise IT scene. Howlett’s writeup on Google+ in the Enterprise is a bit breathless, but I suspect this comes from years of wading through the so-called Enterprise 2.0 offerings from other quarters; he also notes the contextual power of Circles (when done right). Wang writes about the Google+ and the consumerization of IT – where I (above) call out the usability, he is stressing his five pillars of Consumer Tech and how Google’s approach lines up so nicely with what the consumer market has been trained to expect.

But don’t take my word for it – check out these writeups, my link list for the topic (hey, I even tagged and shared ‘em via Google Reader … and the

Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker gives a quick tour here – best place to go for the mildly curious
MC Siegler at TechCrunch captures his thoughts, including the seed of the Active vs. Passive idea
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb on the intricacies of Circles – and an XKCD comic
A threat to Facebook? David Cohen at All Facebook weighs in with his alternaview
Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb writes on her “stress test” of Circles – and shares the findings of Florian Rohrweck on possible future offerings for Google+

At this time, Google+ is still invite only – last weekend, there was quite a rush of wannabe early adopters, so I am not in a position to give out invites – but if you are interested, let me know, and I will send out invites as soon as I am enabled!

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Post tags: collaboration environments, Dennis Howlett, effective design, Facebook, Google, Google Plus, Lifehacker, LinkedIn, personal cloud, R. "Ray" Wang, social networking, Wave, Web 2.0, YouTube

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The Hegemony of Large Numbers – Ignoring Common Sense

Jim MacLennan — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:32:28 +0000

Ok, maybe I’m stretching the meaning there, but that’s a cool sounding title, and what I see as an interesting phenomenon. People get excited about Large Numbers, and think they have meaning and importance simply because they are Large Numbers.

The Law of Large Numbers ...

Big Errors

For example – years ago, when an application manager was whirling around the office in a minor uproar, worrying that that someone accidentally keyed in a $1B line item on an invoice.

That’s $1,000,000,000,000 – for the Unit Price.

Well, come on, that number is so ludicrously high, the error condition sticks out like a sore thumb. A single order like that is 1000 times our annual sales, for goodness sake – no one would let an error like that get all the way through to the month-end closing documents, or the daily sales report, or the AR reports. And no one would believe it if they saw it there.

So just calm down and reverse the error – maybe add a little data entry validation to prevent another such “catastrophic event”. (Note – this was in the days of the S/36 and the AS/400 – the user tabbed out of the data entry field, didn’t use field exit).

We should be more afraid of the small data errors – what if you mistakenly introduced a 10% error by transposing a few numbers – what happens then? Cranky customers, lots of backing out, and a difficult needle in the haystack to find.

Big Benefits

Projects these days need lots of business justification to prioritize above the many others vying for attention. But a benefits statement that claims $100M in costs aren’t getting allocated correctly? Where’s the real benefit here? Not $100M, but making the overall profitability of the products or customers in question more accurate. Not a lot of quantifiable benefit there – but $100,000,0000 looks so impressive.

Or maybe the classic “sales force automation” justifier. If I can make my sales reps just 1% more productive, and annual sales are $100M, then surely we can justify spending $1,000,000 on the Fancy Software System. The big numers make for compelling math – but will you get the sales force to commit to the incremental revenue? A difficult task, typically.

Common Sense Helps

Everyone is busy, everyone working hard and trying to make things happen – and unplanned interruptions or competition for scarce resources (including time!) can lead to interesting reactions to such Large Numbers. Unfortunately, most folks also do not have enough time to pause and reflect on the reality that those numbers are trying to express. Realistic? Rarely.

Just count to 10 … slowly …
(that’s not too large of a number …)

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Post tags: benefit, business savvy, errors

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Twitter and the First Amendment

Jim MacLennan — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:05:59 +0000

Here lies Dobby ...

Apparently, 2011 is the year when Twitter, Facebook, and smartphone videos are graduating from Social Networking toys to evolutionary, revolutionary Sociology tools. Can they be controlled by governments or big business? It’s been argued that any such controls might run afoul of Amendment No. 1 from our Bill of Rights … how amazing for a clever hack that originated in a daylong brainstorming session.

Freedom of Speech, Assembly, and the Press

What is a tweet? 140 characters – one or two sentences. (Feel the need to shout? Use capital letters)

What is a Twitter account but a three dimensional megaphone? Where Speech used to be spoken and printed, but ephemeral and land locked, we now have written and permanent, multi-lingual, globally available, and permanently, stubbornly, indeliby saved for repeated viewing.

And what is a twitter #hashtag but a thread to connect one or more people into a continuous stream of sentences. A conversation. A “flash mob”. An Assembly.

What happens when blog authors are accused of being less-than-professional journalists? Well, they’ve already been granted the title, now we’re negotiating …

WIIFM?

I don’t know, I just like noticing the arc of the storyline for these Internet innovations. Who would have thought that something starting out as a “short burst of inconsequential information” …

… would morph into a haven for publicity hounds and the traffic-obsessed

… and continue to evolve as a facilitator of planned group meetings

… to something that was an instigator and planner of, well, really big group meetings?

The framers would have loved Twitter and Facebook, and how they evolved into the new tools for political and social change. Thank goodness creative and imaginative folks started playing around with them.

So what interesting, different, and strange technology have you tried to apply to your business today? Hopefully something that you have no idea how it might possibly be applicable to the [business] world that you know.

You might find that it takes you in a direction you never thought possible.

(with thanks to Harry and the Whale …)

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Post tags: bill of rights, Facebook, freedom, group meetings, internet innovations, social networking, Twitter

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Market Driven Data Quality (Data Darwinism)

Jim MacLennan — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 01:15:46 +0000

Just trying a little contrarian thought this week …

Have you ever noticed how much time and energy goes in to data validation? I think it stems from visual forms development and the wide variety of clever data entry controls that are available – everyone wants to write an app that gets the oooo, cool! vote of approval. But how much of that energy spills over from value-added to feature creep?

Regex complexity at its finest ...

When your IT peers are showing off their internally developed tools, or when internal departments put so much creativity into their departmental data collection apps, try stepping back for a moment and taking a look at the amount of development, documentation, training, and maintenance work that gets generated. These amazing, subtle, and visually compelling methods for gathering and validating data can become complex validation rules that try to guarantee that only pristine data is ever added to the list.

Is all of this really necessary? Is there real value-add to this approach? Often times the coding of validation rules is so complex that the code becomes fragile, and burdensome on future maintenance programmers. Another common problem – many specialized, departmental, and/or narrowly vertical applications have broad ranges of acceptable data – and the rules for permissible values need to be wildly flexible and adaptive.

But how about NOT validating the input? Why not let “market forces” take over?

I am talking about instances where people are trying to get data into a System That Makes Some Problem Visible – for example, a database of projects or technical resource requests that have to be prioritized, or financial data that has to successfully post into a centralized data collection / aggregation system.

It might be easier to just document the requirements for the data, and then let the best quality data survive …

For your Project / Resource Prioritization application, a project will not get added to the prioritization list until all the data is complete and correct. Even if it is complete, it helps to make the project description easy to understand, compelling, and business relevant – or else someone else will get the resources.

Your monthly data submission has to conform to these [data structure] rules. If it does not conform, it will be kicked out / flagged with errors. You are responsible for getting your data cleaned up and compliant with the specification, and your data submitted by [the deadline] – else your submission will be late.

Now, this does put pressure on us to document the data formats and requirements clearly – but this is probably faster and easier than creating a gallery of automated rule checkers to validate input. And, when the document is proven to be complete, correct, and sufficient (i.e. not too complex), it would make a pretty good spec for an automated data validation program.

Just a wacky idea – as system designers, we don’t have to control the world. Try making market forces work in your favor, just like content struggling for readership on the internet or new products looking for sales …

… may the cleanest data win!

thanks to ex-parrot for the regex from the illustration

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2011. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: corporate information systems, data management, internal development, maintenance, master data management, PMO, portfolio management, Requirements, software maintenance, software testing

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Vintage Technology

Jim MacLennan — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 03:29:03 +0000

Here’s one of those videos making the rounds via eMail. I found this in my inbox at work, from an observant friend who apparently likes the same web sites I do (although I had originally this as a great example of minimalist site design).

It’s interesting to note how the magical becomes the mundane. I did find it interesting that certain “timeless” concepts (a deck of cards? a marbles game?) have more resonance than these artifacts of a bygone age.

Yet we are still surprised when new technology comes along, with the younger generation and their newfangled ideas supplanting our familiar, tried and true tools that we use every day. Not many music fans want to go back to 8-tracks – so why do we resist the next version upgrade, the next user interface paradigm?

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Post tags: generational diversity, Technology, video, YouTube

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Chargebacks vs. Allocations – Defining IT’s Relationship with the Business

Jim MacLennan — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:37:52 +0000

Some IT departments prefer chargebacks, while others do not. My own preference is to allocate IT costs to the business units, based on some reasonable balance of simplicity and accuracy. General services could be allocated by headcount, COGs, or revenues, with each business unit taking their proportional share. Some easily identifiable items might be allocated more directly – maintenance costs for specialized engineering, warehouse management, or financial systems, for example, could be allocated more directly to those departments.

What did I get for this project?

I’ve written before about my opinions in this area – the important strike against chargebacks is that they create a relationship between IT and the business that is confrontational, not collaborative – not the best way to bring value to my employer.

More reasons to consider annual allocations:

Increases IT and Business Agility: Specific projects can start and stop as requirements change, without having to renegotiate costs and resources. This would also help shift thinking from Projects to Programs – fluid collections of deliverables, with teams that can quickly flex when needed.
Shifts the conversation from Costs to Benefits: Instead of scrimping on component costs, business can focus on the benefits they are targeting.
Bolsters the Case for Integrated ERP: A reasonably complete allocation model will put all costs for siloed systems on the business areas that use them; typically, integrated ERP with common technology and less handoffs should streamline this overhead and reduce those costs.

But I know that change can be difficult; I would approach the challenge quantitatively and qualitatively:

How much overhead does this cost negotiation process add? – Make sure project teams record time spent on cost identification and justification, the calendar delays when individual projects are held up for review and approval, and the effort time required to charge the time back to the appropriate cost centers.
How much accuracy does all this chargeback process deliver? – Develop an allocation methodology, and retroactively compute IT allocations for the past 2-3 years; then, compare to the actual charges.
How fluid can a project list become when allowed to respond to demand? – Compare project pipelines between IT organizations of companies that allocate vs. charge back, and the changes over time.

Again, the best reason for allocations is that they shift the IT / Business relationship. When the focus is business outcomes, we are working as Partners, not as Vendor/Customers.

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Post tags: business alignment, business benefits, business value, chargebacks

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Fun with Ngrams – Art, Science, Programming

Jim MacLennan — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 03:42:50 +0000

A recent gift from Google Labs – the NGram viewer, a fascinating tool that searches the Google Books database for words and phrases, and charts their relative frequency. For example – let’s take some of the themes of this blog …

Click to enlarge ...

Apparently, Art and Science have grown closer, and enjoy a somewhat parallel existence together. Design (Inspiration) started strong, had a bit of a lull, but is enjoying a bit of a renaissance (as it were). And unfortunately, “management” is spiking in recent year – not sure if that’s good or bad.

Sense of Self

Code jockeys generally don’t like the term coder, that’s for sure – but it looks like after a peak in the mid-80′s, Programmers are losing their mojo to the Developers.

Click to enlarge ...

Although I was a little surprised at the results of this one – who knew Pascal was apparently still going strong? Nothing on this page made me think I am suffering from some ambient data noise …

Click to enlarge ...

Buzzword Bingo

Here’s an interesting one; LinkedIn recently published a list of over-used profile buzzwords; I wondered how recent these buzzwords truly were. Dynamic appears to be the outlier …

Click to enlarge ...

… so we toss that one out to see that innovation is a child of the 60′s, and entrepreneurs are apparently less common than we might think.

Click to enlarge ...

More Examples

A number of other folks have been publishing insightful comparisons over the last few days …

Information is Beautiful shows The spirit of inquiry over the ages (what, when, why, how), The Battle of the Brains (Plato vs. Aristotle), and others.

Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media gets into some interesting insights into the nature of language.

Scott Berkun investigates Innovation vs. Usability, and then descends into the inevitable blue humor.

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Post tags: ambient data, books database, data, data mining, design inspiration, Google, Google Labs, LinkedIn, Science, Scott Berkun, text mining, visualization

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External Radiance Projection 2010: A Christmas / Upgrade Story

Jim MacLennan — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:21:14 +0000

No, I’m not a Christmas fanatic – but when you live in Chicago, you learn to look for nice weather in the weeks approaching Thanksgiving, to put up the lights before the wind and cold conspire to make it a painful experience. Basically, I gotta burn a vacation day – but why not? It’s an opportunity to get away from the hassles of work in Corporate IT …

… except this year, I finally had to deal with my outdated Christmas light hanging system – a set of rigid plastic elements that I installed 12 years ago, providing features that I considered very important back then – and still do today …

fast installation before Christmas – I can get the whole house done in about an hour
makes all the lights line up perfectly straight, square, and true
fast tear down afterward – I can pull this stuff down in about 30 minutes

A fine system, hits my requirements perfectly – and it was a ton of work to set up in the first place. I remember “go-live weekend” – it took two whole days to get it all installed and configured. A real pain – I swore I would never go through that experience again. I noted that I didn’t need to hire outside contractors to help with the implementation – did it all myself, with very inexpensive Christmas light technology – state of the art (for it’s time).

And for many years, everything went exactly as I expected. I don’t know if I ever consciously thought that the system would last forever; in the back of my mind, I knew it wouldn’t. Still, I am a practical man, and there was always some new Christmas decoration requirement that got higher priority. Also – my family was growing, and demands on our time were changing. Newer, fancier methods for lighting your house would come out, and fashions might change in the neighborhood, but this was good, reliable technology, and there was no solid Christmas reason to make a technology change.

Where are the quantifiable benefits?

Oh sure – through the years, the “system” started showing it’s age. It was reasonably priced stuff at the time of implementation, so while I did pick up some spare parts (pre-paid xmas light maintenance, as it were), it became tougher and tougher to keep things together. The plastic was spending months out in the cold every year – it was turning this ugly shade of yellow, and really looked bad against my freshly painted white house. Bulbs blew out every year, but that’s planned maintenance. And yes, I didn’t follow my own “standard work processes” – sometimes I wrapped things up neatly before storing, sometimes I just tossed the stuff up in the attic. Of course, I paid for it later – occasional autumn breakage while untangling the previous season’s laziness, things like that.

All calculated “risks” – I knew this stuff couldn’t last, but soon the cost of change became a deterrent. Or at least, the perceived cost of change – because I could only see myself replacing like-for-like. I have a system and a mindset for hanging Christmas lights that works just fine – have used it for years, looks great all lit up at night – why change?

At least, that was my push back against the update proposals that kept coming from my Chief Imagination Officer – my wife, who wanted to address the ugly yellow plastic stuck to the front of the house. And my own set of Millennials (1 and 2) were pushing this new green technology – LED light sets, better for the environment, and just looked better, more stylish.

So, when I started this morning, I finally had to admit the old technology was shot. No replacement parts, and I couldn’t find the same technology to replace what I had with new or equivalent. I finally decided to use what the CIO and the Gen-Y ladies were pushing for, acquiescing to the internal demand – even though I wasn’t sure they were listening to my basic requirements. In the end, it was a group decision, but I did hold an override vote on any specific technology and implementation approach that they brought to the table. I’m glad I listened to their ideas – the new stuff is marginally better – just not as earth shattering as the demo. I think the family was a bit more disappointed than I was – something I found mildly interesting, given the technology ardor that brought this all on.

Also, I have had to give up on some of my requirements … but the family got some new benefits that we weren’t expecting …

installation is slower – takes about 1.5 hours
the lights are not perfectly lined up – they are up there, just not square and true like before
I had to cut back on the total linear feet of roof edge that I could cover, based of the way the new stuff hooks to the house – lost about 15% of the total lights
I still can pull the lights down quickly – definitely in less time than last year
It’s much easier to store this stuff for the winter

My Chief Imagination Officer and the Millennials had to learn some lessons here, too … a bit of empathy, and some realism when listing out the benefits. We all lost a bit on the original requirements, but gained some nice, unplanned benefits, which made the project, for the most part, OK.

Well, for them at least – they have already moved on to the next exciting new Christmas decoration technology, while I am left working out the bugs in the new external lights. I wonder if they will be surprised when I resist working on any new projects until next year.

Ok, enough of this pre-holiday “fun”! It’s back to work tomorrow, where I’ll be diving once again into the plans and internal justifications for the coming ERP upgrade. It never ceases to amaze me how much effort I have to put into the project communications, and the education and planning with the Business. They are so wedded to their legacy systems …

…

… wait a second …

…

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