Posted by admin on March 27, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
I am currently hosting an exchange student from Italy. Yesterday, I picked her up after school and she showed me some extra credit math problems she was working on. There were four problems to work out, and she was having trouble with one of them. (This student is getting an A+ in pre-calculus, so who am I to help???) She explained how she tried all combinations of possible answers, but she couldn’t get the problem to work out correctly. I suggested we write the problem on my white board when we returned home, and ponder the problem together.
As soon as we arrived at the house, my student wrote out the problem on the board. We reviewed the instructions for completing the assignment. Then, she proceeded to explain to me how she worked through each of the possible solutions. I listened to her explanation for a few minutes, and considered how the problem could be solved.
As she explained her thought process in addressing the problem, it occurred to me that she was making an assumption about a portion of the answer. I asked her “Why are you assuming this has to be a single digit? Could the answer actually be a double digit number?”
Once she looked at the problem again, she quickly saw that her assumption about the answer was faulty, and she was easily able to solve the problem.
The moral of this story? When reviewing your current processes:
1) Be careful of the assumptions you are making about what is/is not, or can/cannot be done. Often times we place artificial limitations on ourselves in considering what we could be doing differently.
2) Consider bringing someone in from outside your environment to review what you are doing. This person comes in without preconceived ideas about how things are/should be done. Further, this person is in the ideal position to ask the “stupid” questions about why you are doing something. This fresh perspective often creates an “ah, ha” moment which leads to breakthrough and creative ideas about potential improvements.
Posted by admin on March 25, 2009 under Governance, Technology |
I had an interesting discussion the other day with the former CIO of a major consumer goods manufacturer. We were discussing why we still, after 30 years of talking about it, have such a gap between business and IT.
Part of the problem is that the metrics we use to measure project success in the IT department are not related directly enough to the actual impact on the business. Most of the metrics used to evaluate IT project delivery performance are some form of:
1) did we deliver on schedule
2) did we deliver against the requirements
3) did we deliver on budget?
While these are important project execution metrics, from a business perspective, measuring on these items does not necessarily mean we were successful in delivering “business value”. Witness the number of implementations where the end users complain that the system does not perform as desired/needed.
For IT organizations to deliver truly valuable business solutions, it is critical to understand how the system implementation will:
1) impact top line growth
2) bottom line growth
3) increase liquidity
This responsibility rests not only with the business team, but also the IT team members. Each member of the project team must be able to articulate how they will be directly impacting one of the items listed above. Without that ability, there really is no project.
The challenge then becomes identifying the actual metrics used to measure, post-implementation, the impact of the system. Due to the number of variables that impact the financial performance of a company, it is difficult to attribute the changes to the system implementation. What metrics have you used to measure system implementation impact against business goals?
Posted by admin on March 20, 2009 under Process Improvement, Technology |
This week begins the NCAA college basketball “March Madness”. While many teams have seen their season come to an end, those still in contention are busy preparing their offensive and defensive tactics for their next opponent. They are assessing their playbooks and fine-tuning the plays that provide the greatest potential for winning. Each day, coaches and players are taking steps to improve their performance – even in incremental amounts – knowing that small changes can make the difference and provide big wins.
Here are 5 “offensive tactics” for preparing your “team” for the coming rebound:
· Cross training – Cross-train your employees, giving them opportunities to work in other parts of the organization. Benefits include: keeping employees engaged, improved morale, employee growth and development, promotes innovation of new products, services and processes, and maximizes organizational flexibility to adapt to change.
· Test business process changes – This is a great time to experiment with making those process changes you know are needed. Smaller workloads allow employees to absorb and practice these changes so they are second nature during the busy times.
· Skills development – Provide additional educational opportunities to employees. You’ll realize the maximum return on your training investment if employees can bring their new training back to the job and put it to use right away.
· Evaluate your technology – Take a look at the new technologies available in the marketplace and consider how these would help your organization work more effectively when the boom times return. It is much easier for employees to learn and adopt new technologies now, than when they are overwhelmed with work.
· Re-strategize your investment priorities – Review your strategies and priorities. Determine where it makes the most sense to invest your resources (people, time, money) to position your organization for the future.
What changes are you making in your “playbook” to prepare for the “championship” (future)? (More indepth discussion here.) Please share your best ideas…
