All in Knowledge Transfer
Risk, Uncertainty, and Managing Big Data Projects
Anyone who practices project management for a living will recognize this list. It’s certainly not unique to big data analytics project. It is however reasonable to ask whether “big data” projects are unique in some way that exacerbates the probability of failure.
Planning for Big Data: Lessons Learned from Large Energy Utility Projects
What can we learn from working with large energy utilities and their data that will help others plan and manage “big data” projects?
Is the Project Management Office Evolving or Devolving?
If you’ve ever run a PMO, you know how much of your time and energy are devoted to gathering, analyzing, and distributing information. Perhaps we are seeing that the project management organization is changing because how people communicate and share information is also changing.
Collaboration Can Be Messy
Collaboration can be messy. Convincing a group of people to work together to accomplish a common objective, especially when the group contains many people that don’t know each other, requires artful leadership.
On the Need to Tolerate Communication Diversity
IBM’s Luis Suarez’ blog post Social Media at Work presents basic arguments for why organizations, not just individuals, need to adopt social media as a normal part of their communication infrastructure. He suggests that organizations need to adopt social media because their employees and their customers are using social media.
Federal Computer Week recently published my op-ed piece Why best practices won’t fix Federal IT. I’d be very interested in hearing from GovLoop members what they think of it.
Gene L. Dodaro, Acting Comptroller General, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) gave a presentation on November 2010 titled Acquisition Reform Challenges Facing Government. Referring to GAO’s strategic plan, Dodaro’s presentation addressed large-scale acquisitions as “targets of opportunity,” repeating the often-heard criticism that “… much of the government’s major investments have faced persistent cost and schedule growth.” His analysis is a very intelligent review of the challenges involved in reducing acquisition costs. Here I suggest an approach he doesn’t discuss but which is based on concepts he presents.
Promoting Technology Enabled Collaboration in Complex R&D Environments
An important element in a successful R&D effort is effective collaboration. As the complexity of the research, development, and eventual adoption environments increases — as it does with large Federally funded R&D efforts — the importance of the sharing of information, ideas, and goals increases as well.
The Knowledge Management Section of the U.S. Army’s Field Manual FM 6-01.1 is a classic example of the formal structure and organization one can apply to just about any organizational process that requires management.
How Much do People Need to Understand Technology to Manage It?
Jeremiah Owyang’s post Gen Y Enter Stage Left, Baby Boomers Exit Stage Right got me to wondering how much people should understand about technology in order to manage it in an organization.
Social Networking and Elsevier's "Grand Challenge" for Knowledge Enhancement in the Life Sciences
Netherlands-based mega-publisher (and former employer) Elsevier BV has issued a grand challenge:
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out corporate IT manager Jim MacLennan’s RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise blog post.
I recently spoke with Trish Bharwada of The Dow Chemical Company. Trish manages My Dow Network, a web-based online membership service launched in 2007 that targets retirees and former employees of Dow.
Several things stand out based on this interview with Oscar in combination with information gleaned from my previous interviews and research:
The IT Director in a Large Manufacturing Company Discusses "Baby Boomer Brain Drain"
Last week I interviewed “Ferris” (not his real name) about how his company is handling the pending retirement of senior IT staff.
Ferris is the IT Director in a large manufacturing company. Ferris’ company doesn’t have the mix of custom legacy Cobol and Assembler based mainframe systems that Boris the Insurance Company CIO has.
Last week I interviewed “Boris” (not his real name) about his and his company’s handling of the pending retirement of senior IT staff who are critical to the maintenance and operation of a number of his company’s business-critical mainframe legacy systems.
I was initially interested in learning whether Boris thought that modern social networking and collaboration tools might be useful in documenting and transferring the specialised expertise staff needed for maintaining critical systems. Instead, the discussion took a different direction and revealed some underlying issues that go beyond technology enabled knowledge sharing.
Back on July 17 I wrote about the potential impact of pending retirement related “baby boomer brain drain” on IT departments, especially those heavily invested in supporting legacy mainframe systems.
As a followup I asked for research interviews with several CIO’s I know in order to get a better handle on the issue and to find out whether emerging Web 2.0 and social networking and collaboration technologies might be supportive of knowledge transfer to younger staff.