The Eight Core Components of a Sustainable Digital Business
Can Digital Transformation drive your Sustainability programs? In this article, we provide a simple eight-part framework for understanding your Sustainable Digital Business.
Low Tech SharePoint Hack: Project Status Indicator
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…
Five More Realities for Driving Business Value from Technology
Dennis McDonald's recent post listed Ten Realities of Managing and Using Technology to Generate Business Value. I think a few of these items need some elaboration ... Implementing a technology based solution without understanding the costs is a big mistake ... and most projects only consider TCI - Total Cost of Implementation. This typically includes acquisition, first-year maintenance, and professional services (or internal IT time) to integrate with existing systems. Smart managers will add in Recurring Costs, such as annual…
More on (sic) experience with wikis
no, that's not a typo ... Preamble: This starts out sounding like a diary entry, but some interesting wiki-focused observations are found below - including metrics! Catching up on old items in my feed reader: Back in November, TechCrunch had an item on AboutUs, which at first glance looked at little self-referential, a web site on web sites. Digging in a bit more - we find it's a wiki about web sites, which is still seemed a tiny bit redundant,…
Thoughts on Why Tech Folks Hate Documentation
I've had some flashes of insight on why technical folks don't like to document stuff. Currently, I'm thrashing thru a skunkworks project that is evolving into something that will need to be reasonably available, robust, etc. I'm also trying to lead by example; I ask my teams to build for sustainability and document so they can "walk away". Of course, I'm also lazy - I really don't want to explain things over and over again. However, the time crunch I…
Guidelines for Success with your Skunk Works project
I've been hearing the term skunk works a lot lately, in reference to off-plan projects that are moving forward in all that "free time" people have in the IT department. Sometimes the term sounds slightly perjorative, but I like it when a project I am involved with is referred to in this way. The term's origin is well documented, no need to repeat it here. The Lockheed Martin folks made it famous, when referring to technology projects "on the edge"…