I attended the 2008 Intel Science Talent Search Awards gala as Intel’s guest last evening (see the STS page, here http://www.intel.com/education/sts/ ). I can’t begin to describe what an inspiring event this was. These are America’s brightest high school seniors. All but a few of their projects were beyond a layman’s comprehension (that includes me.) Nonetheless, I had the sense that this was very creative work and these were very bright minds. I was lucky enough to sit next to one of the honorees who I understood (mostly.) She studied the effects of public and private funding for small town libraries and confirmed that donors follow the crowd behavior that Professor John F. Nash discovered and for which he won the Nobel prize. (See his 1998 biography, A Beautiful Mind, by Silvia Nasar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_%28book%29 and the 2001 movie by the same name, starring Russell Crowe.) I asked the student for a copy of her paper so that I could inspire my 14 year-old who is also a budding mathematician looking to push the limits.
The student who won the Glenn T. Seaborg Award addressed the audience with a speech that was articulate, witty and wise. He quoted Einstein, one of my heroes, as saying “If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.” (See a list of Einstein quotes, here: http://www.quoteopia.com/famous.php?quotesby=alberteinstein ). I love that play is a part of success. And shutting the mouth means opening the eyes and ears. It also means humility; to discover what is and be open to have your hypotheses proved wrong.[1]
I tell this story for two reasons: first, the need to encourage students to pursue studies and projects in the fields of science, math and technology; second, to make the point that student are our future indicators for technology.
There is a widening gap between the growing demand for IT workers and the pool of qualified candidates. Estimates put unfilled IT positions at about 190,000. The Office of Technology Policy concludes that evidence “suggests that job growth in information technology fields now exceeds the production of talent.” [2] Anecdotal comments about business school students’ interest in IT Management suggests the same gap.
I believe part of the issue is that the off-shoring phenomenon in IT in the last decade was largely misunderstood by students as an indicator that IT was not a career growth sector. No one looked at which IT jobs were going off-shore. These were typically the more commodity IT positions like telephone-based IT support desks. Higher skilled positions, like network engineers are listed by the U.S. Department of Labor as a high growth area for the next decade.[3] In fact, Network Systems positions are expected to grow 53.4% from 2006 to 2016, the highest growth of any of the categories singled out by the Labor Dept.
My conclusion is that we need to do far more to encourage students to pursue careers in technology--hence, one of the strong motivators for me spending a term at Tuck/Dartmouth.
As for students as the future indicators for technology, tune in next time for thoughts on this.
Footnotes
[1] I was also reminded of Steve Jobs quote of The Whole Earth Catalog during his Stanford University commencement address” “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.,” here: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
[2] See the “America’s New Deficit: The Shortage of Information Technology Workers” report at http://www.technology.gov/reports/itsw/itsw.pdf
[3] The Bureau of Labor Statistics table of occupations with the largest job growth forecast, at http://www.bls.gov/emp/emptab3.htm
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Projects and Cots
I attended a kick-off meeting today for a large project at Save the Children (SC.) We are upgrading our donor management system (DMS, for short) and were hosting a senior project team from a major nonprofit software provider. (I'm judiciously avoiding names in this Blog so the focus is on the content rather than the organization, or individual.) We made a major step in this direction with our Capital Campaign project that was launched in August 2006. It was a significant improvement, but still relied on our legacy DMS as the database of record.
We've learned over the long haul that legacy systems become an anchor that gains weight over time; eventually they hold you back while competitors using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software zoom ahead. It is difficult to accelerate when you are carrying lots of baggage. There is no way I've seen yet for a nonprofit--with a modest technology budget--to keep pace with a software vendor. It's not our core business, and it is the vendor's.
There are a number of reasons why COTS is so important. I’d like to emphasize one: that COTS applications represent the best practices across a variety of customers. These vendor-authored applications that have been sold to many customers and enhanced over the years represent an accumulation of best practices across that client base. That implicit knowledge base is greater than the knowledge base of any one customer.
One of the things I like to say at the start of SC project meetings is: “the application needs a seat at the table.” What do I mean by that? Software project models tend to first identify client needs and then design or purchase software that meets those needs. That’s common sense. But there’s a flaw in this approach. It assumes that client needs are best practice, when in fact they may be worst practice. From where will come the challenge to rethink our business practices and therefore redefine our needs? The mature software application may have some things to teach us.
In our meeting with our DMS vendor today, I was reminded of the opportunities of COTS software. After all, one of our strategic plan planks at SC says that we need to be increasingly adaptable. My point here is that vendors, especially larger ones, have the resources to keep pace. Nonprofit IT staffs do not and should not. (The latter is a topic for another day.) Being able to change and enhance software quickly is one side of adaptability. Shorter projects are another. A telling question we've asked of larger projects is: if it takes three to four years to complete, how will it impact a five year strategy? Answer: it won't.
With these thoughts in mind, I've challenged the DMS team to comply with a number of design and implementation principles. I want to call out two here: (1) Identify project value points that can be realized sooner than later (i.e., deliver user value throughout the project rather than solely at the end), and (2) Identify the minimum product implementation with which we can go live and add components later. This may be counter intuitive when trying to maximize meeting user needs, but is essential to long-term success.
For further reading, I recommend comparing the open letter Convio posted last fall to NTEN members on the NTEN web site at http://nten.org/blog/2007/10/23/an-open-letter-to-the-nten-community
I think that’s enough for one day. I’ll come back to some of these issues again. A number of them apply to some of the research I’ll be doing at Tuck.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Yardsticks
In my last post, I talked about uncovering the yardsticks that senior managers use to make decisions. So what were the factors I used for making decisions at Save the Children? I felt this was an important thing to communicate to my team, especially if I was not going to be around to help making decisions. In the letter I wrote to my IT managers, I mentioned the five principles that I use for my yardsticks. There are some things specific to Save, but I think you'll get the point. Here they are:
1) Take risks. We may need to protect our base of infrastructure like it was our hard-earned savings account. But we also need to have experiments, some risky ventures, that are out on the edge, at the top of the pyramid--even some things that fail. We have found that those experiments, like our PDA venture, can soon become mainline. When taking risks, look to the future. Challenge the present with the future. Ask how a project or purchase or training will help us be where we need to be in three or more years, not just for today.
2) Hedge your bets. When you make plans, think about and include a "b-plan" with your "a-plan." If the a-plan starts to go south, push forward the b-plan. This is diversifying the portfolio. Remember, we most often don’t know how things are going to turn out! What will you do if things change?
3) Don't build up in-house what is better done by others. If it's a standard function, a “commodity,” use the off-the-shelf, standard solution, don't build it. If it's a basic process, partner with someone to do it, don't do it ourselves. We have more to learn here, but ultimately we will realize that the best protection for our jobs and our team by focusing on the truly value-added things, like integrating services and applications, not on the basic, commodity things that others can do better than we can ever hope to do. Ask what this means for email for example.
4) Start small and keep it simple. Again and again, we have found that small is beautiful. What you will learn from the pilot will be so important to planning the big project, revealing what will work and what won't--and how to keep it simple, pragmatic. We are a nonprofit; we don't take the gold-plated route to anything. We are the kings and queens of the pragmatic solution.
5) Get the return. Ask how this will benefit children before asking how it will benefit the agency or IS. Ask about where the connection to children is. If we can't draw the line from the project to the benefit for children, question the project! Remember that if you are not working for a child, you are working for someone who is.
I then said that if we follow these five principles, I know we will move the department and the agency forward in the way I would if I were here. These five may compete with each other, but remember than truth comes from the dialog. Talk about it, debate it, but make a decision and go forward with confidence!
God may be in the details, but I'm trusting my team to be Solomon.
1) Take risks. We may need to protect our base of infrastructure like it was our hard-earned savings account. But we also need to have experiments, some risky ventures, that are out on the edge, at the top of the pyramid--even some things that fail. We have found that those experiments, like our PDA venture, can soon become mainline. When taking risks, look to the future. Challenge the present with the future. Ask how a project or purchase or training will help us be where we need to be in three or more years, not just for today.
2) Hedge your bets. When you make plans, think about and include a "b-plan" with your "a-plan." If the a-plan starts to go south, push forward the b-plan. This is diversifying the portfolio. Remember, we most often don’t know how things are going to turn out! What will you do if things change?
3) Don't build up in-house what is better done by others. If it's a standard function, a “commodity,” use the off-the-shelf, standard solution, don't build it. If it's a basic process, partner with someone to do it, don't do it ourselves. We have more to learn here, but ultimately we will realize that the best protection for our jobs and our team by focusing on the truly value-added things, like integrating services and applications, not on the basic, commodity things that others can do better than we can ever hope to do. Ask what this means for email for example.
4) Start small and keep it simple. Again and again, we have found that small is beautiful. What you will learn from the pilot will be so important to planning the big project, revealing what will work and what won't--and how to keep it simple, pragmatic. We are a nonprofit; we don't take the gold-plated route to anything. We are the kings and queens of the pragmatic solution.
5) Get the return. Ask how this will benefit children before asking how it will benefit the agency or IS. Ask about where the connection to children is. If we can't draw the line from the project to the benefit for children, question the project! Remember that if you are not working for a child, you are working for someone who is.
I then said that if we follow these five principles, I know we will move the department and the agency forward in the way I would if I were here. These five may compete with each other, but remember than truth comes from the dialog. Talk about it, debate it, but make a decision and go forward with confidence!
God may be in the details, but I'm trusting my team to be Solomon.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The planning begins in earnest.
Within thirty days of my trip north, I'm gathering and planting the seeds of what needs to grow while I'm gone. There are a myriad of details from how do we move our strategy forward to who signs my timesheet?
An advisor suggested beginning with an exercise. Write a letter to your team, she said, on the most important things you want them to know. Make these about the how of what you do and not the what. And write it as if you are leaving in ten minutes. Go!
Nothing like an impossible deadline to focus the mind. So what's most important? Yardsticks.
When I was a consultant, a Wall Street client asked if we could help get their software projects on track. It became apparent that the key issue was too many projects that were all "immediate" needs. Through a series of exercises, we sequenced the projects over a three-year horizon. What was important about the exercise was not as much about creating a more realistic project plan as it was about clarifying a number of implied decision rules senior managers were using. Things like, "will it increase near-term sales" or "does it meet a new regulatory requirement" or is it a "client special request?"
The goal of developing a company's yardsticks is to enable managers and staff at all levels to (a) make decisions about projects and activities with a more senior management mind-set, and (b) to constructively question the priority of all projects and activities to assess whether they are aligned with the organization's key bets, or strategic goals. When the goals and rules of the game clear, it is possible for teams to be empowered to accomplish objectives with a high sense of mission and ownership.
So that's the goal for this week; communicate the yardsticks. And also figure out which books need to get packed in backseat of my car.
Ed
p.s. The press release of this fellowship has been posted on the Dartmouth web site, here: http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/news/releases/pr20080215_cds.html
Also check out the "RadioTuck" interview I did during my visit to the Tuck School last fall, here: http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/digital/RadioTuck20/MediaPages/NetHope.html
An advisor suggested beginning with an exercise. Write a letter to your team, she said, on the most important things you want them to know. Make these about the how of what you do and not the what. And write it as if you are leaving in ten minutes. Go!
Nothing like an impossible deadline to focus the mind. So what's most important? Yardsticks.
When I was a consultant, a Wall Street client asked if we could help get their software projects on track. It became apparent that the key issue was too many projects that were all "immediate" needs. Through a series of exercises, we sequenced the projects over a three-year horizon. What was important about the exercise was not as much about creating a more realistic project plan as it was about clarifying a number of implied decision rules senior managers were using. Things like, "will it increase near-term sales" or "does it meet a new regulatory requirement" or is it a "client special request?"
The goal of developing a company's yardsticks is to enable managers and staff at all levels to (a) make decisions about projects and activities with a more senior management mind-set, and (b) to constructively question the priority of all projects and activities to assess whether they are aligned with the organization's key bets, or strategic goals. When the goals and rules of the game clear, it is possible for teams to be empowered to accomplish objectives with a high sense of mission and ownership.
So that's the goal for this week; communicate the yardsticks. And also figure out which books need to get packed in backseat of my car.
Ed
p.s. The press release of this fellowship has been posted on the Dartmouth web site, here: http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/news/releases/pr20080215_cds.html
Also check out the "RadioTuck" interview I did during my visit to the Tuck School last fall, here: http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/digital/RadioTuck20/MediaPages/NetHope.html
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Welcome
Where to begin? Lewis Carroll suggested to "Begin at the beginning...and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Imagine a Blog with a beginning and an end!
This adventure began with a dinner in Hanover, NH in late October. I was asking my host for recommendations for professors with whom I could partner in my part of the Connecticut woods. Save the Children offers its long-term employees a sabbatical, and I was looking to teach and learn (and write). "Why not consider Dartmouth?" he asked. "Why not?" I said. In hindsight I'm reminded of the adage, "be careful what you wish for; you just might get it!" I soon had a formal invitation, and the planning began.
At this point, it is customary to say what you intend to do in this bit of writing. For the on-line media it may include a commitment to frequency, topics to cover, places to visit, goals to achieve. I will resist all of that. If I have something worth saying, I'll say it. Otherwise expect nothing. You just may get it.
Ed
This adventure began with a dinner in Hanover, NH in late October. I was asking my host for recommendations for professors with whom I could partner in my part of the Connecticut woods. Save the Children offers its long-term employees a sabbatical, and I was looking to teach and learn (and write). "Why not consider Dartmouth?" he asked. "Why not?" I said. In hindsight I'm reminded of the adage, "be careful what you wish for; you just might get it!" I soon had a formal invitation, and the planning began.
At this point, it is customary to say what you intend to do in this bit of writing. For the on-line media it may include a commitment to frequency, topics to cover, places to visit, goals to achieve. I will resist all of that. If I have something worth saying, I'll say it. Otherwise expect nothing. You just may get it.
Ed
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