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Change Management
Change and the Crop Duster
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 [...]
Design and Change Management
I have developed a few strongly-held architectural beliefs, and one came up in conversation last week, during a spirited discussion on minimal quality requirements for a[ny] data mart. I hold that the data copied from source to destination must be provably correct and complete with little effort. When agile-ly rolling staged deliverables into production, I [...]
Managing Change: Inspiration, Art, Science, and Execution
Often, when trying to figure out how to “make things happen”, your focus switches between multiple targets. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? And How can I get the others to understand what I am doing? Real change happens along a continuum that stretches from The Big Idea to Real Results, and [...]
Managing Change: Knowing, Understanding, Empathizing
Do you know your job, or do you really understand your job? One difficult part of change is getting people to see the difference. Of course, this is seriously delicate stuff – you can’t just walk in and ask people if they understand what they are doing. You know you’d be insulted if someone asked [...]
Managing Change: Pick Something, and Do It Well
This is the first in an series of posts on Managing Change … look for more over the course of the next few weeks … A common way of expressing the holistic nature of a project is to talk about “People, Process, and Technology”. I’m not sure who came up with this little gem, or [...]
Real Business Users and SharePoint
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 [...]
Over / Under Communication for Project Managers
It is often said that you can’t over-communicate, but I’m willing to bet most folks – and especially your project sponsors – underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning – and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management. Media [...]
When is a project a Project? How to prevent the buildup of backlogged requests
I just wrote something up (internal wiki) that I thought was common knowledge, but I think it’s one of those soft-skills things that makes total sense once you hear about it – but somebody needs to tell you. I think of one of the reasons that IT (at times) intimidates the business – or why [...]
There ain’t much IT in IT Management
This morning, I caught myself looking back at the last week of meetings, e-mails, and conference calls, and I experienced a minor epiphany. If I published a detailed diary of the ebb & flow of proposals, debates, and commitments from the past few days, I could successfully deflate the management aspirations of 80-90% of the [...]
The Innovation Generation – Communication Styles
I’ve seen many articles in recent weeks about the tech-savvy Millennials and their impact on future work. I concede, even welcome the changes that business will need to introduce in response to these new expectations, but I don’t see the massive change that some writers seem to think is inevitable. The world will not change [...]
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