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links for 2006-07-18 July 18, 2006


Into the future… July 17, 2006

Browsing through TechMeme last night, I came across a few mentions of articles in Computerworld, on how the IT employment world is going to look in 2010. Interesting stuff always, and timely right now as I consider my next position (my current position will be “downsized” at the end of March 2007).

The first article is “The IT Profession: 2010″, and that’s followed by “Hot Skills, Cold Skills”, which was the piece that initially caught my eye.  It’s tagline is “The IT worker of 2010 won’t be a technology guru but rather a ‘versatilist.’”.  Something to think about.  Key point:

The nuts-and-bolts programming and easy-to-document support jobs will have all gone to third-party providers in the U.S. or abroad. Instead, IT departments will be populated with “versatilists” — those with a technology background who also know the business sector inside and out, can architect and carry out IT plans that will add business value, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.

Did I mention my job was coming to an end? ;)   I’m not actually losing my position to out-sourcing, although others at my current company have, but it’s obvious that this is happening even more so.  When I was asked what I do for a living, I used to reply “computer engineer” - it was never entirely factually accurate, but it was a quick way of answering, and contextually understandable by “non-techies”.  These days, I usually go with “I’m a manager”, or “technology architect”, and we can usually leave it at that.  I was missing working “hands-on” in technology, but it appears that having gone down the generalist route might actually turn out to have been a good thing.  One can but hope…

For more reading on the above, Marshall Sponder at WebMetricsGuru, has broken the story down into comment-sized chunks, but the original article is pretty easy to scan through to see what “the survey said” about which positions may be “safe” or “hot”, and which may need to be rethought.


Reveille July 15, 2006

I came across this - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2487638612433437293&q=Vet
and it deserves sharing.

US Flag


Working Backwards? July 12, 2006

Catching up on my reading, and there’s an article in the July 2006 issues of Business 2.0 about the changes that have been made at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and the underlying process - you can read the article yourself by clicking on the magazine image over on the right.

The part that caught my eye was this:

Moving forward by working backward Aziz’s secret is a counterintuitive management practice - nicknamed “working backward” - that he invented on his arrival at the Grand. The strategy calculates the maximum revenue that each business or space could generate in a perfect world - that is, if every customer spent the most the market could bear and if traffic reached its physical limits.

Aziz then subtracts actual sales from that hypothetical number and calls the difference a loss, even if the venue is making money. His formula for closing the gap usually starts with a jackhammer.

That’s 180 degrees from the way most U.S. companies do things, which is to benchmark based on existing sales: Microsoft, for instance, is aiming for 12 to 14 percent growth next year on about $44 billion in revenue.

Once you think about it, it falls into that category of “well, duh!  That’s obvious!”.  Well, yes, I suppose, but not until you’ve thought about it that first time.  And it readily applies to service orientated issues as well - assume a service level of 100% as the ideal (in some areas, perhaps over 100%?), and then map against actual service delivered.  Delivering less than the target is a failure.

It’s just another tool to add to the collection - ITIL, standard business methodologies, Six Disciplines, project management — anything that adds knowledge and rigor of process is a good thing, in my mind.


links for 2006-07-08 July 8, 2006


Random Work Sample - Server Consolidation/Virtualization July 7, 2006


For whatever reasons, I’ve explained to a few people the last couple of days “what I do”. Or at least, I’ve tried to! That made me think of a piece of work I did a few days back, and I thought I’d throw it up here.

What I do, mostly, is manage technologists, engineers and so forth, and act as the man in the middle (I was going to say “interface”, but let’s not play “Bingo!” today…) between the pure technical folks, and the pure business folks.

Wearing that hat, I was having a conversation with a former colleague who’s taken on a new role with a different company. One of the first things he’s been asked to do is deploy virtual servers, thus consolidating servers. My first question to him was “Why?”. Not implying that this was a bad road to be going down, just that there had to be a “why” behind it, and that understanding that was going to be important to deliver the “how” properly. We talked it through - and yes, we partook of a couple of cold adult beverages at the same time! - and I ran through a sample of the kind of questions I’d be asking if I was in his shoes. The attached is a representation of that. For what it’s worth, it took me about ten or fifteen minutes to generate in MindJet MindManager, and then another couple to export to PDF, Word and PowerPoint format (I’m working with the MS Office 2007 Beta, and I wanted to make sure that my colleague could read at least one document that I sent him!).

If you’re looking at the document, it’d be useful to keep this in mind - this is a very high-level view, with the intent of prompting discussion. It’s by no means an indepth technical plan, assessment, or such, and nor is it complete. But it’s a starter.

If you want the actual Mindmap, you can download it here.


Back on Track? July 5, 2006

So, I’m getting back on track with a number of things. Particularly hard to do when my home office has a window through which all I can see is deep blue sky, not a cloud in sight…

Anyway - first thing I’m doing is working my way through the Manager Tools podcasts on Time Management; not “Time Management” in the sense that we normally think about it, and that I still have pretty much under control through GTD, but more the “bigger picture” stuff, and sorting out some of my overall priorities. This entry comes while I wait for coffee to brew, and I take a quick break in between the two parts ;)

I also note on their site that Mark Horstman, who’s management writings I learn a lot from, has posted that he’ll be posting more regularly - specifically, on “Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays”. THE first thought through my mind, I must confess, was “Buffett fan?”. Mark wrote a post yesterday commenting that no-one had guessed the reason he picked that blogging schedule - I’ve just left my “guess” there. I guess we’ll see.

I have the album queued up for playing later - there’s not a hope of my getting any work done if I start playing beach music right now, though!

OK - back to work I go!


Happy Fourth! July 4, 2006


American Flag

Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk.

Happy Fourth of July, Independence Day, to one and all, from an Englishman very happy to be living in the United States.

(and I really like Thomas Hawk’s work).