Innovation guru Jeffrey Phillips makes the following statement in You should outsource innovation if…:

“…if you can outsource your payroll, outsource manufacturing and other key elements of your business, why not outsource innovation?”

Phillips has seen too many instances where companies just didn’t have the ability to manage innovation effectively, even though they knew they had to innovate and had the people on staff who could do the job. The problem is, he says, that many just don’t make the time to manage the innovation process effectively. In the process, they fail at being able to generate new ideas and take them through the stages and cycles that are necessary to proving them out. Hence, he suggests that some companies should look at outsourcing the innovation process itself. It’s not about saving money, it’s about getting the job done.

It’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction against this suggestion. Looking beyond the jobs that might be lost through outsourcing, you can begin to see some of the possibilities. For one thing, innovation isn’t all about putting on your thinking cap and waiting for a light bulb to appear over your head. There are methods and processes you can use to enhance the management of the innovation process. Many of these tools and techniques are based on the nitty gritty work associated with sweating the details of design, testing, evaluation, review, risk analysis, and ROI analysis. 

One danger that I see occurs when, in the process of outsourcing a process, the company also outsources part of its responsibility for strategic planning. (I’ve seen situations, for example, where corporations have outsourced a technology-dependent process to an industry- standard outsourcing. In the process, the company lost some of its ability to strategize the appropriate role that information technology could be playing in growing the business.)

Still, Phillips’ ideas is a good one, even if it only forces a company to think about innovation as a manageable process. Ideas are useless unless they are examined critically, nurtured, and given appropriate care and feeding. If outsourcing helps in this respect, why not try it?

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

Partly in response to the volunteer work my wife has been doing here in Alexandria, Virginia I’ve been researching the availability of banners and widgets published by nonprofits and volunteer organizations.

Banners are the clickable images or text blocks that many web sites display that are published and distributed as part of an advertising or promotional campaign. Widgets are small software applications you can add to a web page that can be used to access or display data managed elsewhere on the web.

Here’s what I’ve found so far; I’m sure there are more and would appreciate your contacting me if you know of more:

Red Cross

http://www.redcross.org/psa/bannerorder/all/singular.asp

(Thanks to Wendy Harman.)

World Vision

http://domino-201.worldvision.org/worldvision/comms2.nsf/stable/sponsorship_bann\
ers?OpenDocument

(Thanks to Jamshed Wadia via Linkedin Bloggers.)

Fundraising Thermometer

http://www.fundraiserinsight.org/thermometer/

(Thanks to Suzie Cheel via Linkedin Bloggers.)

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald
  

For the period June 29 through July 6, 2008, the following are this blog’s “top ten” Managing Technology posts, ranked in descending order by the number of unique pageviews recorded by Google Analytics:

1. A Short Definition of “Strategic Planning”
2. Do Real People Care About Disruptive Technologies?
3. What’s the Difference Between Innovation and Creativity?
4. How To Develop a Business-Aligned Social Media & Social Networking Strategy
5. Who Is Better At Making Government Data Useful?
6. Learning to Use Google Analytics
7. Learning to Use Google Analytics, Part 2
8. How Can Collaboration Systems and Social Media Complement Agile Project Management?
9. Questions to Ask Before Replacing Corporate Email
10. Shopping Malls, Facebook, and the Passing of an Era

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

I read the news report Merger of US earth sciences agencies proposed by AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid with mixed feelings. The report describes a proposal to combine two US government agencies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Ordinarily I would applaud an effort to streamline and simplify government operations, especially in a situation where there is a potential overlap or duplication of policy formulation and administrative effort. An important question, however, is whether such a merger might actually promote innovation and creativity among the thousands of researchers and technologists who are employed by these two organizations. 

I don’t really know if the two organizations have a set of well defined operations that can be rationally combined so that functional overlap is reduced. Researchers and technologists employed by these two organizations already have a wide variety of important professional relationships with other domestic and foreign individuals and organizations, both inside and outside the USGS and NOAA spheres. Maintaining such relationships, irrespective of how many organizations are issuing the paychecks, will be critical to the flow of ideas and information.

Merging these two organizations is not going to have a quick or significant impact on these relationships and the likelihood that they will lead to new ideas. Instead, it’s in the areas of policy and infrastructure where I would concentrate. For example, picking up ideas from my post Using Collaboration Technologies to Accelerate Innovation in Federally Funded R&D Programs, I would concentrate administrative energies on increasing the likelihood that departmental employees will communicate and interact with anyone they deem relevant to their work, no matter where.

The individuals and teams in these organizations currently do their work through a large number of departments, professions, associations, R&D agencies, companies, consultants, contractors, and vendors. It therefore makes great sense to encourage people to join and participate in both formal and informal organizations and communities, including those supported by collaboration tools and social networking software.

Making “cross-boundary” communication a priority, and helping it to happen, will have more impact on creativity and innovation than any back-office reorganization.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald . Email me at ddmcd@yahoo.com.

Listen to Radiolab’s City X. It’s a history of shopping malls told through slickly edited sound bites and Muzak.

I listened with morbid fascination based in familiarity. I grew up in the Midwest and watched as malls grew in popularity and killed off the downtowns. Now I hate shopping malls. I dislike random shopping and being cut off from the outside world. Increasingly shabby controlled environments just give me the creeps.

Listening to the Radiolab podcast got me thinking how people will remember our currently evolving online social networks in a few decades. Will they look back with nostalgia on a time when the “Web 1.0” world of static web sites and interactive e-commerce pages was gradually replaced by every online transaction being “socialized” with an opportunity for “sharing” and “relationship development”?

I can hear this future Radiolab broadcast now. Here’s an imagined interview in a couple of decades with a future 50-something:

Yeah, I remember things like Facebook. Nowadays all you have to do is think about something and you’re automatically put in touch with a global community of people like you who share the same emotional response. It’s just part of the Web and how the Government keeps watch over terrorists. Back in my day, though, we had to “join” online communities like Facebook and fill out a lot of different forms. They didn’t share anything with any other groups. That made it really hard to jump around. That crumbled when dataportability and open source netvertising took hold. I still smile when I think about Facebook. As cumbersome as it was, I was able to share some things with really close friends, but even that started to wear out when the spammers and scammers took over and the old folks started moving in.

I don’t think it’s too farfetched to compare online social networks with shopping malls. They’re both places where people go to combine socialization, cruising for the opposite sex, and shopping. Some make it harder than others to find parking, and if you go there and find nobody to hang out with, you’re off to the next place. After a while they fall into disrepair, sprout weeds, and sleazy pushcart vendors move in as “anchor” stores close.

The question is, what’s next, after shopping malls and online social networks are past?

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

One of the most interesting blog posts I’ve read recently is 8 Disruptive Technology Changes by Robin Bloor. Here is his list:

1. Multicore Chips
2. The GPU Absorbs the CPU
3. Memory Replacing Disk
4. The Network Infrastructure Absorbs the Servers
5. The Network Becomes Real-Time
6. The Network Gets A Management Circuit
7. Virtualization: Everything goes Virtual
8. Cloud Computing

What Robin’s list suggests to me is that, increasingly, it doesn’t matter where work gets done in a computer system as long as it gets done, you control it, and you can get at the results. Worlds like “virtual” and “cloud” are pointing in that direction. In line with this, the increasing popularity of web-enabled smartphones and ultraportable devices makes it easier for people to keep in touch, work, and communicate with friends and jobs.

It makes sense, though, to distinguish between technologies that are disruptive because they have the potential for fundamentally altering the technology infrastructure surrounding computing, and technologies that are disruptive because they have the potential for changing how people work. The two overlap but are are not necessarily the same.

Processing data more quickly and at a lower temperature, and displaying it more beautifully on a handheld device, does not necessarily change the nature of the use that is being made of that data. Moving away from a spinning disc to solid state memory for storing and accessing digital files may reduce the size and weight of a device, but by itself that won’t alter what is being done with the data. In fact, it may be difficult to convince management to invest in some of these “disruptive” technologies if they have the potential for disrupting — too much and too expensively — the processes by which mixed-platform technology architectures are maintained.

As I pointed out in The Justification of Enterprise Web 2.0 Project Expenditures, it’s one thing to automate manually performed processes, as happened in many cases in the move to client server systems back in the 20th century. It’s another thing entirely to move to fundamentally different architecture that not only alters maintenance costs but which may also have unknown impacts on work and supported business processes.

Still, I think that Robin’s list is not just referring to a “more/better/faster” definition of disruption. Taking the technologies together suggests that, as he states, “From a technology perspective, we are in the most disruptive phase of Information Technology since the computer was born.” The question is, though, how these technologies will impact the things that people use technology to support. We’ve already seen how digital technologies have shaken the structure and business models of the communication, publishing,  and entertainment industries.

My own votes for “disruptive technologies” are not on this list but are substantially enabled by the technologies that are.

My first vote goes for social networking technologies and the ability they give people to communicate and collaborate across many of the traditional boundaries around organizations, neighborhoods, professions, associations, countries, and other traditional ways of organizing work and relationships. It will be interesting to see, for example, if the Chinese government can continue its current level of political control over its population without also increasing control over how people form relationships and interact with each other both socially and professionally.

My second vote goes for genetic technology and the increasing understanding we are developing of how evolution works and how individuals are similar to, or different from, each other. Today’s rapid advances in genetic sciences have been enabled by the application of powerful and tireless computing technologies that perform the countless, complex, and repetitive steps needed to gather and analyze data in ways undreamed of by previous generations that spent untold hours over fruit fly or plant trait inheritance experiments.

What does the term “disruptive technology” mean to you?

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald
  
• Click here to see a Kosmix search for “disruptive technology”

Craig Thomler’s Make government data freely available neatly lays out, from an Australian’s perspective, a discussion of how the public can benefit if government agencies make raw data available for access by individuals and organizations who then analyze or present that data in a useful way. These points are from Thomler’s conclusions:

• Government has a crucial role to play in the collection of data across the country. This is a task well suited to the public sector as it is in the public interest that this be available.
• However government doesn’t have the systems or culture to be best suited to interpret and combine this data or make it useful for individuals and organisations.
• Government should provide interpretations - however it should not hold an artificial monopoly over this. 
• By allow[ing] other organisations to access the raw information innovation in its presentation can occur more rapidly, providing deeper insights for the public good.

Thomler’s discussion is partly based on practicality. That is, government agencies aren’t always equipped to make the best or most innovative use of the information they collect. It therefore makes sense, Thomler says, to involve others in making data useful as long as a “level playing field” exists for people to make use of the data.

The issues that Thomler touches on did not arise overnight based on increasing availability of tools for making data widely and easily available via web based technology and increasingly powerful “mashup” tools. In the United States, at least, private sector republishers of government-sourced data have always existed whose “added value” consisted of indexing, analysis, and publishing services that have arguable made government-sourced data more available and usable than it might otherwise have been if left totally to government efforts.

Tensions have arisen, though, when the prices of commercially developed tools appeared to place the availability of government data out of the hands of many taxpayers. Various rules and policies have arisen to help ensure — not always successfully — that government sourced data should always be available in some form to all.

A practical concern is how to create a “level playing field” such as the one described by Thomler. On the one hand, we want to provide an incentive for the private sector to innovate in how government sourced data are made available. On the other, we don’t want to skew the system so much that such innovations effectively restrict access to those who can afford such access. 

In general, I support Thomler’s view. I’m all for making government sourced data widely available (as long as privacy and security concerns are protected, of course). But one concern that should be addressed is how we make sure that government agencies do not artificially restrict their ability to carry out their legal mandates by stopping short of providing services that do require complete access to the data they collect.

For example, consider an agency that is responsible for providing assistance to poor citizens. Assume further that the process the agency follows in determining eligibility and in the provision of services requires access to income and geographically based cost data related to the service. Assume further that the data needed by the agency has traditionally been available in published tables and individual computerized spreadsheets that are difficult to maintain and use.

What if the most efficient system for accessing the needed data is a database application developed by a private sector firm that uses government sourced data to perform calculations and its own software in the performance of retrieval and calculation functions? Should the agency continue to use its hard-to-use “manual” resources? Or should it avail itself of the more easy-to-use — and accurate — commercially available source of the same data that is available for a price?

It’s easy to see how a situation like this can devolve into an argument about profiteering, outsourcing, and privatization. Such arguments have arisen around situations where there is an interface between public sector data and private sector publishing and distribution, as was the case recently when public availability of government funded research via professional journals became a public topic of discussion. (See my blog post How Involved Should the U.S. Government Be in the Scholarly Journal Publishing Business?)

One common refrain about data access is, “The public paid for it (the data) so the public should be able to have it.”  This is a pretty strong argument. At the same time, a practical result of using such an argument should not be the refusal or inability for a government agency to perform a mandated public service. Nor should a government agency be put into a situation where it lacks the knowledge and expertise necessary to manage the creation and use of the data it needs to carry out its mission.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald 

I’m using the Faviki bookmarking service to manage bookmarks related to my “technological literacy” research. Faviki uses a database of Wikipedia terms as a guide for standardizing tags. I’ve added the RSS feed for items I’ve tagged in Faviki with the tag “Technological literacy” to my FriendFeed page. You can also see the feed below on this page via a custom Grazr widget:

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

In How Much do People Need to Understand Technology to Manage It? I discussed “technological literacy” from the perspective of management. I expressed some skepticism about whether heavy users of popular communications and computer technology necessarily understood enough to effectively manage that technology in an organizational setting.

I’ve started some research on the topic of technological literacy. Initially I’m looking for definitions. So far I’ve found several useful items to review:

• National Academies Press, Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy. This definition is included: “Technological literacy is an understanding of technology at a level that enables effective functioning in a modern technological society.” A major point made here is that technology involves more than computers.
  
• American Association for the Advancement of Science, Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy. Project 2061 is a “… long-term AAAS initiative to advance literacy in Science, Mathematics, and Technology.” Of particular interest to me is Chapter 3, The Nature of Technology.
  
• Kosmix Search, Technological Literacy. Kozmix is a “horizontal search engine” that organizes web search findings in a logical and accessible manner. Check out the “related terms” on the right side of the page.
• If readers are interested in reading about how fast (computer) technology changes, I suggest reading Robin Bloor’s 8 Disruptive Technology Changes blog post. There are some gems buried in this list that have some real “land mine” potential for changing corporate IT governance policies and practices.
  

This last item raises the question, how can something curriculum-driven that you learn about technology in grade school, high school, or college prepare you for a technology management role later in life?

These are just a few items but they are a start. I’ve noticed that much of the “science literacy” and “technology literacy” information I’ve seen so far is curriculum-related. I’ll be interested in seeing what I find when I start to look at the literature of management.

My next post in this series will address bookmarking and tagging. For now I’m using the tag “Technological Literacy” here but I will be using a social bookmark system (either del.icio.us or Faviki) to publish relevant links.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald
  

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.

In his post Jeremiah commented on the eventual departure of “baby boomers” from organizations through retirement and how this “departure of expertise” would impact those organizations. The possible role that social networking might play in helping manage the transfer of knowledge form older to younger workers has interested me for some time, particularly in relation to corporate IT departments.

One question is, who will take over managing corporate technology services? Here’s part of a comment I left on Jeremiah’s post:

The good thing about today’s technology environment is how second nature its use has become. But that hasn’t extended to how technology is managed, which has lagged behind.

One question is, how much do people need to understand technology in order to manage its use? In the old days (you know, last week) we had “IT departments,” but as technology and its use has become much more pervasive, the distinction between managing and using technology has become much more fuzzy.

I wonder if it is possible to really effectively manage technology without understanding how it operates? This might be one of the weaknesses of “younger generations” who take technology for granted without understanding the basics of technology. They’re very fast at adopting and putting technology to use, but does that mean they know enough to make informed decisions about how it should be used and managed economically and effectively in an organization? Or am I over-generalizing based on my own limited experience?

I’m the first to admit that it’s not necessary to understand the inner workings of a machine in order to make productive use of it. Automobiles, computers, televisions, and cellphones are good examples.

Buying these types of tools as a consumer is one thing. What it you’re in charge of procuring such technology and associated development and support services for a corporation? Can you evaluate the trade offs among different vendors without understanding the underlying systems and processes involved in a technological product? Can you begin to compare an open source content management system with a commercially available tool without having some understanding about how such tools are structured, used, and supported?

This is not the same as a concern I have expressed elsewhere about the maintenance of legacy systems as older IT workers retire. Expertise crunches may occur with respect to the maintenance of poorly documented older “legacy” systems. I see few alternative to expensive approaches such as replacement, outsourcing, and crash projects to document. And in some cases, an alternative will be hiring back retired workers in a part time or full time consulting capacity. These are expensive solutions that software designed to support “knowledge transfer” can only partly alleviate.

Still, performing the development and support of specific systems requires a different set of skills from managing a department that provides technology support for a variety of inside- and outside-facing software, data management, and other technology support functions. Today’s younger generations, raised in the midst of a digital culture with all the entertainment, information, communication, and (now) relationship enhancement opportunities technology provides, may actually have very little understanding of the inner workings of the devices they rely on.

As consumers that may be irrelevant, but as managers of business processes that rely on such constantly changing technologies, that ignorance may cause problems as well as opportunities.

The opportunities are clear. Younger people who have grown up with expectations of access to digital technologies will readily see the way such technologies can support business processes. We already see this taking place as younger workers readily integrate social networking technologies into their places of employment.

The problems may come as they take on management positions that require them to evaluate, select, and implement new technologies. Accustomed to self sufficiency and peer support in the selection and use of technology, will they know enough to seek out the support of specialty departments such as Information Technology? Or, by the time they reach management levels will digital technologies be so integrated with business operations that technology support will be so standardized and pervasive that hardware and software are nearly disposable and no longer a source for business differentiation or competitive advantage?

Perhaps I’m being “old school,” but I’m of the philosophy that it’s to one’s advantage to understand something about how hardware, software, and databases operate. The more you know, the more opportunities you can bring to light. The question is, how much is enough information?

I don’t have a good answer to that, but I do intend to look into this question in the weeks head, starting with getting some familiarity with concepts such as technology literacy, technology competency, and computer skills. Having served on a school board when my children were younger I have some familiarity with curriculum development issues in grade schools and am well aware of the complexity of the topic. I’ve also watched as my own children have grown up with expectations of access to information, the web, and communications, so I’m also aware of how important personality, intellectual curiosity, and self-discipline are in shaping a young person’s approach to using and managing technology. I’m sure, for example, that role models are as important in shaping attitudes about technology as they are in shaping attitudes about reading and basic literacy, so that’s another thing I’ll be looking into.

If you have suggestions for possible sources of information I should be looking at, please use the comment form below or email me at ddmcd@yahoo.com. Thanks!

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald 

At last night’s Meeting VI of the Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group, convened at New Target in Alexandria, Virginia, Maddie Grant raised the topic of RSS feeds. She’s tried a number of readers and now she uses Google Reader. Still, she complains about the problems with setting up readers and especially the challenges of explaining the process to other users. In her mind, RSS has not lived up to its promise.

My take is a bit different. My use of RSS has also changed over the years. I have ended up using it both as an aid to “current awareness” and to my own publishing.

With respect to current awareness, I too have tried a variety of readers and have settled on a Firefox add on called Wizz. A while back I dutifully went through and organized my several hundred feed subscriptions into categories in Wizz, which shows up as a bookmark extension in a vertical window on the left side of the Firefox browser. I also methodically un-subscribed from all the email newsletters and announcements I had been getting in an effort to simplify my email life.

As it turns out, though, I don’t scan my different feeds as religiously as I used to. Instead, I use Wizz to generate and maintain a master OPML file containing all my feed subscriptions that I use as the basis for a My Megite page. Megite as a news aggregator uses my OPML files as the basis for its scan of daily news items. It regularly discovers new items from the people whose RSS feed information is included in my OPML file as well as related items that Megite determines may also interest me. It’s an efficient system that kills two birds with one stone:

1. Megite makes me aware of new stuff published by people in my RSS subscription list.
2. It also incorporates new and related tech news items.

It’s one of the first things I check each morning.

My second use of RSS is as an aid to my own blog publishing. My blog service Squarespace generates a separate RSS (or Atom) feed for just about every organized object in my blog, including separate feeds for each individual tag. I also use del.icio.us to save and tag web based bookmarks, and del.icio.us generates an RSS feed for each tag as well. I take these feeds and, using the Grazr widget service, generate a within-page list of links. Here’s a list of links based on my own blog posts tagged with the term RSS:

Here’s a list of del.icio.us links tagged with “RSS”:

I use these displays throughout my blog and am very pleased at the way they are automatically updated.

Now, I’m not saying that RSS is perfect. In fact, I would not want to have to explain all the variations that are available to organizing and reading them. When I’m in a position to recommend a feed strategy to a  client, for example, I recommend both the process for generating the feed (and its associated filtering) as well as the reader strategy; the two have to be handled together, especially in situations where user audiences have a great variability in technical sophistication.

Still, Maddie is justified in her frustration. RSS is still more complex than it needs to be. In my view, the more “invisible” it becomes, the better — as long as it can continued to be used to generate and manage discrete user managed data streams.

• Copyright (2008) by Dennis D. McDonald
  

Jeremiah Owyang’s LiveBlog: What’s Wrong with the White Label Social Networking Industry?, especially if you read the comments, delivers a good snapshot of the gaps that still exist between product evangelism and the realities of implementing specialized online social networks.

In a nutshell, the participants at this “unconference” event seem to be saying that there is a gap between the selling of online social networking products by vendors and the actual implementation over time by the customer of services using that product.

At the end of the day, in one example I’ve heard in my own research, the social network manager has to deal with the recalcitrant VP who refuses to give up emailed attachments even in the face of waves of employees using more efficient collaborative tools. “Resistance to adoption” has many such components.

Depending on your vantage point, such resistance factors can make a lot of sense to those involved, even though they drive up the complexity and costs of the adoption process.

One hobby-horse of mine is the need to understand the costs of what is being implemented. Some vendors — and evangelists — are fond of saying “…how inexpensive social networking software and services are in relation to other enterprise level systems.”

Oh, yeah? The following fictional pie chart is from a slide I use when I’m presenting on social media in large organizations. The total circle represents costs, and the breakdown is between  technology related costs (e.g., what the vendor charges you for the product or service) and the process related costs (e.g., the cost of staff time — yours or the vendor’s integration charges — needed to get the product implemented and into operation):

One of the problems is that this breakdown is going to differ from implementation to implementation. It’s one of those situations where “one size does not fit all.” Everyone seems to have a different perspective on what goes into each numerator and denominator.

One reason for this complexity is that the industry is still at a point where it’s common to compare apples and oranges. An excellent example is presented in Carlos Caballero’s post titled Evernote: new collaboration modality emerging or just note taking? What is your workspace vision? The author outlines how approaches to social networking technology in the enterprise can differ so much:

So, we can see that several patterns emerge as we differentiate philosophies of workspaces:

• Interaction modalities – Rich, abundant, complex, or mostly asynchronous
• Attention focus – Individually produced documents, collaborative documents, and users
• How is content created – Mostly individually, on the desktop, or collectively, on line.

Given my longstanding interest in copyright, I’ve been following the AP anti-fair-use story with some interest (e.g., see this by Jason Kintzler, or this by Julian Baldwin; there’s also an interesting discussion thread ongoing at the Linkedin Bloggers group on Yahoo! Groups).

While I agree the initial AP stance sounds like an attempt to re-write copyright law by defining away Fair Use, I probably wouldn’t fault AP were it to go after organizations that consistently republish AP content for commercial gain without formal licensing terms.

The anti-AP argument in this current case typically is that AP is protecting a dying business model by biting the hands that feed it, i.e, by threatening blogs that republish its content which are generating links and publicity for AP content.

My feeling is that the AP, if it operates within the law, has the right to pursue any legal business model it wants to, including a business model that appears (to us bloggers, at least) to undervalue the economic and social value of web links and internet traffic.

So be it. The AP shares the quandary that many publishers face — how to monetize traditional specialty editorial content (in AP’s case, news stories) in the face of so many competing online sources. I don’t envy them.

Still, I  have to admit some sympathy for the AP position when I think about how easy it is for a web publisher to republish someone else’s content.

Full text Atom and RSS XML feeds are a case in point. My blog is pretty typical. The publishing system I use (Squarespace) automatically generates a number of feeds. I have chosen to make the feeds full-text (as opposed to summaries) based on my desire to make it as easy as possible for people to access my content. I also regularly embed numerous links to other items from my blog so that a link-back possibility exists even if the reader is satisfied with reading the full text feed somewhere else.

I have given some online aggregators explicit permission to selectively republish items from my Managing Technology feed  (e.g., Social Media Today). I have also added my Managing Technology feed as a “note” to my Facebook page. I don’t make any money off such republishing since my goal with my blog is to advertise myself, my interests, and my services. The more the merrier, I say.

However, I admit some chagrin at the patently commercial and unauthorized re-use of my feed. By “commercial” I am referring to the use of my full text feed to help generate ad revenue that is not shared with me. Examples are feed aggregators that appear to be no more than Google ad sales sites. To add insult to injury, some of these sites even sell advertising links that add links to the internal text of the article and make it appear that I included those ads in the original source. One such site also makes it impossible to remove a feed once it is added. Should I be happy at the traffic such sites generate to my own web site and let it go at that? Or should I demand that my feed be removed?

In another case, a commercial web site that specializes in training and HR concerns occasionally picks up relevant articles from my blog and republishes them in a section “sponsored” by one of the web sites commercial sponsors. None of my content is changed, and the inclusion of my posts is relevant to the topics and categories covered by the web site, but it’s not immediately apparent that a non-subscriber to this web site can get access to my content without going through the membership sign up process. Again, should I just be satisfied with the exposure this gives, even though I’m not sharing in any of the direct advertising or membership revenue generated by this site?

Which gets me back to the AP situation. In some ways the public web is still like “the wild west;” everybody’s trying to make a buck. Usually those of us who choose to make a buck one way are able to get along with those who have chosen a different path. Currently the Associated Press is working through how it can “get along” with the modern world. I wish them well.

Still, I have no sympathy for people who take the full text of AP stories and republish them without seeking permission, just as I have no sympathy with those who commercially republish the full text of my own blog posts without seeking my permission. It’s not just that the principle of Fair Use doesn’t seem to extend to such wholesale republishing. It’s also my belief that, in web based as well as traditional publishing, the rights of the author should be respected, and this extends to asking permission to re-use the author’s content for commercial purposes.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald 

For the past few months one of the most popular posts on my blog has been A Short Definition of “Strategic Planning.”

I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because the term “short definition” is in the title. Why read a “long definition” if a “short definition” is available?

Maybe it’s because Spring is the time of the year when thoughts turn to strategic planning. (I have noticed that the post usually shows up on the first page of a Google search for the term definition of strategic planning, so that probably explains a lot of the popularity.)

While I am a firm believer in the value of strategic planning, I also think there are some common mistakes that people make in connection with it. I discuss some of these below. 

Who owns the process?

One mistake has to do with how a strategic planning project is conducted. As noted elsewhere, management shouldn’t assign staff or hire a consultant to “go away and create a plan” if management isn’t going to be involved. 

A strategic planning process should involve both executive management as well as the people who will be putting the strategic planning into effect. Without that type of involvement and the “buy in” it helps generate, a strategic planning process has a real danger of ending up as a bound three ring binder gathering dust on someone’s shelf. I’ve seen that happen before and it’s a waste of time and money. People need to be involved.

Don’t stop before implementation.

Another mistake is not to make the transition from plan into action. It’s one thing to identify strategic business goals and target metrics such as revenue or customer growth, sales, or some other strategically defined numeric target. It’s another thing to actually roll up your sleeves and figure out what needs to be done to make things happen – and then to do them.

If you don’t include an “action step” in the process where you prioritize and talk realistically about moving or allocating schedule and resource requirements, nothing is going to happen. You need to move from goals and objectives, to concrete plans, to actual implementation of initiatives that involve real change.

Don’t let the process become an excuse for temporary inaction.

One problem I’ve seen arise is that departments or functions that are not directly involved with the planning put their own decision making “on hold” while the plan is “under development.” You might hear someone say, “Oh, we can’t do anything about that until the strategic plan is finished.”

A related problem is that other departments or functions can’t put their own planning on hold. “We can’t wait to do X till the plan comes out – we’re already in our budget cycle and if we don’t move now we’ll lose our funding!”

Remember – they call it “strategic” for a reason. The plan should convincingly describe how what you do now will impact the future. The plan should also recognize how different departments and functions are impacted and how this might result in necessary changes.

Don’t hide the process “behind closed doors.”

Whether you think of strategic planning as a dedicated project with a beginning, middle, and end, or as a process that is permanent and ongoing, it needs to be managed collaboratively.  By that I mean that many people may be involved from different parts and levels of the organization. They all need to understand something about the process and what it’s trying to accomplish.

Partly this involvement is necessary to obtain “buy-in” from the different “stakeholders” spread throughout the organization. (This may also involve key players outside the organization as well, such as suppliers, customers, and members.) For the process and its results to have credibility, people need to understand what’s going on and how their own contributions and needs are being considered.

I’m also coming to believe that collaboration should be a key element in a strategic planning process. People shouldn’t just be surveyed for their input, they should also feel an involvement and sense of ownership over the process. This collaboration should not just be limited in a discrete set of time bounded tasks but should, if possible, extend throughout the duration of the process.

One way to accomplish this sense of collaboration, regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn, is that the tools of social media and social networking can be used in support of the strategic planning process. Examples are securely managed blogs, wikis, and discussion forums.

Use of collaborative tools will help make the process more open and transparent. This doesn’t mean, of course, that sensitive, personal, or competitive information should be openly published and discussed. But it does mean that strategic planners should use modern media to involve more people in discussions of where the organization is going and how it should get there.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald
• For a list of all this blog’s posts related to strategic planning, click here.
  

Introduction

I recently met with Thad Scheer, President of Sphere of Influence, Inc. Thad’s company specializes in agile and lean project management methods.

During our meeting Thad and I discussed some of the changes occurring in project management methods and practices. Thad recommended I read an article by his colleague Erik Stein titled “Innovation: Agile with Intent.” Stein’s article was published in the October 2007 issues of the subscription-only Cutter IT Journal and starts like this:

In and of themselves, agile practices do not foster innovation. In fact, left untended in product development situations, they are quite likely to become obstacles to innovation.

1. Software development is not the same as product development.

Stein distinguishes between software development and product development.

In product development, Stein says, innovation is frequently desired and rewarded. Risks are involved, but tolerated. A software development project, even when run using an agile approach in place of a more traditional “waterfall” model, is more concerned with managing and reducing risk than with creating and inventing new requirements and features.

According to Stein, when agile techniques are employed in a software development project and a series of “timeboxed” short-duration development periods are followed in order to maximize releases and user feedback, research and experimentation are minimized.

Stein does say that innovation in the process of managing software development using agile techniques may actually be promoted, even if this does not carry over to the delivered software itself. Agile effectively reduces risk by focusing on only the most high priority requirements in short term time periods and on maximum responsiveness to frequent client review.

While there is no doubt in my mind that collaboration tools and social media would be useful in a product development effort that spans many individuals and locations, its applicability to a tightly controlled agile software development project, especially one involving a small self contained team, may be questionable.

The tools I’m referring to here include enterprise-secure blogs and wikis, collaboration tools with workflow and group collaboration features, group chat and messaging, document sharing, “people pages” and search features that simplify tracking down and locating expertise, and bookmark and link sharing tools.

Use of such tools in an agile software development environment may prove to be a distraction if they are used randomly or not in a fashion consciously directed towards the software under development. They might also detract from the one-on-one and face to face meetings favored by many agile practitioners. For example, given the controlled access an agile framework provides for user review of incremental releases, adding more opportunities for the client to “lean over the shoulders” of the developers might actually prove distracting.

On the other hand, use of such tools among the developers themselves might actually strengthen the development process by focusing more efficient attention on the actual development process; this might reinforce what Stein says about agile’s support for innovation in the management process itself.

Use of collaboration and social media tools in support of product development, where risk is tolerated and creativity and innovation are promoted, might be more appropriate, given the ability such tools have for improving collaboration and for promoting the fast and efficient exchange of ideas among a potentially larger group of people.

Of course, not all product development efforts involve innovation and creativity. Some product development efforts are “me too” exercises designed to fill out a catalog or product line for standard or commodity type products. Even there, however, when product features are not innovative, the process by which the product is developed (and manufactured, distributed, and supported), can be the focus of collaborative efforts aimed at creatively reducing or controlling costs as a key competitive weapon. Social media and networking tools can support such collaboration.

2. Agile practices emphasize risk reduction, not innovation.

Stein lists the following four elements of agile software development and emphasizes how they reduce risk:

1. Timeboxed iteration (encourages task completion in a defined time period)
2. Prioritization of requirements (ensures that high valued features are addressed first)
3. Concurrent engineering (when possible, tasks are performed in parallel not one after the other)
4. Timely, invested customer/end user feedback (helps ensure that the software does what the client needs it to do)
   

Stein takes each of these agile characteristics and shows how they actually work against innovation. He also makes the point that controlling variability in a process is something that is very important in a manufacturing type of situation. Since innovation increases variability and uncertainty, removing the need (or opportunity) for innovation improves process repeatability and control.

While I agree with what Stein says with respect to software development, it is also useful to point out that collaboration technologies and social media are relevant both to process oriented as well as innovation oriented operations. Collaboration, which I define as “people working together to achieve a common goal,” occurs in a wide range of operations, not just in white-collar, knowledge intensive, creative, or artistic endeavors such as software development.

Collaboration is performed by assembly line workers, call center representatives, and repetitive document processing and coding operations. Even though the fundamental activities of these operations may be highly repetitive, the social relationships and communications surrounding how they are performed are an important mechanism for training, dissemination of changes. solicitation of feedback, and performance evaluation.

In other words, even though there is an apparent lack of opportunity for innovation in the performance of basic “manufacturing” or process-type operations, there is still a workgroup need to share information, especially if there is constant turnover in a workforce. Collaboration tools and social media, I would argue, can be just as important in these “repetitive process” situations as in more “knowledge based” activities that require and reward creation and innovation.

3. Innovation can occur within the software development process itself.

Stein makes the point, “Regardless of what is being built, the process itself can be incrementally improved each iteration.” In other words, even though the software being developed may not turn out to be innovative, the developers may have freedom in the context of the agile process to make continuous changes to the way the development process itself is managed.

This parallels what was said in the previous section. Even though the underlying product (software) or repetitive process (e.g., call center operations) may itself “resist” innovation due to various controls, there might still be opportunities to adopt and use collaboration tools and social media in support of the management process itself.

How realistic this is would be at least partly dependent on the scale of the project or operation. If agile software development is being employed in a small team setting consisting of people all located within the same area, there may be no need or opportunity to adopt additional tools to support improved collaboration.

If the team is large or is distributed across multiple locations, departments, and functions, collaboration tools and social media might make good sense to improve communication and collaboration effectiveness.

4. Employ concurrent engineering to reduce development times.

Stein suggests that doing work in parallel — for example, simultaneously developing both infrastructure and tools as well the product itself — can save time. That’s hard to argue with, as long as the cost of managing dependencies across concurrent tasks can be efficiently managed.

The benefit of tasks performed in parallel is not unique to agile project management. It’s not unusual to optimize a traditional “waterfall” type project schedule by implementing parallel tracks where possible. In both cases, using both management attention as well as collaboration tools to keep teams synchronized instead of waiting till the end of a time period to check performance seems to make sense. Modern tools such as instant messaging, web based conferencing, and even mobile tools that track geographic location of smartphone users can contribute to continuous cross-team communication and collaboration.

5. Separate innovation-driven from production activities.

This is another example where agile and traditional waterfall project management techniques are similar. Anyone who has managed a large or complex project will understand this need to adapt management techniques. Some high-risk tasks may require creativity and innovation. Other low risk tasks in the same project may require mind-numbing repetition. The people, processes, and systems associated with these tasks may need to be managed differently.

Because variations exist in the types of controls appropriate for different types of tasks (e.g., concepts such as “milestone” and “deliverable” may differ) I would suggest that, at minimum, the project’s communication infrastructure should be unified and transparent. People should have one place they can go to to view, discuss, and report on their own set of tasks, they should be able to see what others are doing, and they should be able to put their own work into an overall context that allows them to see how what they do impacts “the big picture.”

The value of this type of transparent communication infrastructure is one of the reasons I have been researching the adoption and use of tools such as blogs as project management tools. Such tools can supplement specialized project management tools and techniques by making it easier to publishing information centrally and by making it easier to engage in conversations and discussions that are visible to all. (An added bonus is that collaboration tools and social media can reduce dependency on email and meetings.)

6. Don’t re-invent the wheel.

Stein emphasizes the need to make every feature of software justify its existence; don’t waste time developing features that people don’t need, he says.

This argues, he says, for close collaboration with all important stakeholders, not just those who represent the hands-on users of the application being developed.

In my opinion, this is one of the great potential applications for social media and collaboration tools in a project management environment: expanding the sources of feedback in a controlled environment. While there is no substitute to sitting down with a “real user” and walking through how an application is used, the ability to open up and engage in discussions with a wide ranging groups of stakeholders seems an ideal way to make sure that only needed features get developed.

7. Optimize the length of the release cycle.

In agile project management the length of the release cycle is critical. Make it too short and not enough useful functionality will be provided to users for the all important feedback. Make it too long and a tendency for “feature-itis” might start to creep in.

Of key importance, according to Stein, is establishing the release cycle so that it is synchronized with the team’s creative processes, not just with the needs of the overall production process. Another consideration is the need to synchronize performance across groups.

What the project team must decide is how long it will take, given project resources, to create a release that provides a measurable increase in functionality. This functionality should be significant enough from the user’s perspective to constitute a meaningful difference from the prior release.

While there there may be no simple formula for calculating what constitutes an optimal release cycle length, Stein does suggest that defining cycle length is the product of considering many factors. If as suggested in the previous section using collaboration tools and social media is one way to increase involvement of more stakeholders in the project, perhaps we might also be justified in asking whether to consider modifications in the definition of a “release” that takes into account the continuing popularity of “beta ” releases being so widely — and permanently — available on the web. In other words, why wait until the end of a release cycle to bring in the users?

Why not make continued release an ongoing process where user participants can dip in and provide feedback at any time without waiting till a formal release version has been decreed?

OK, I’m half kidding. I understand how critical timeboxing, release cycle, and user feedback are in the agile project management world. Purposely throwing away the concept of successive releases by making ongoing — and potentially minimally differentiated — versions available in an ongoing basis sets this agile formalism on its ear. But it would be one response to the realities of how public the software development lifecycle has become in our “web 2.0” world. It might also be a way to accommodate a project that has established the need for innovation and its resulting difficulty of defining, at least early on, how long the release cycle should be.

8. Define project off-ramps.

Stein distinguishes between an agile project’s normal deliverables and assessment checkpoints where a decision is made whether or not to continue with the project. He points out the need to communicate to staff and management the difference between the two.

Such go/no-go decisions are not unusual in traditional waterfall type projects, especially in projects where a long or complex series of steps must be accomplished to reach a desirable end point. An example of such a project would be consolidation of two large databases where there are many intermediate steps that must be accomplished in order to convert data from a source to a target format. If part of the conversion process fails the entire project may be stopped since there is no sense going forward with faulty data.

The comparable situation in an agile project would be where a decision to initiate the project was made even though uncertainty existed about project success without development of significant creative or innovative solutions. Relying on the ability of the project team to create such innovative approaches could be thought of as a high-risk situation that required periodic checkpoints to formally decide whether or not proceed.

Regarding how to apply collaborative tools or social media in such a situation: shutting down a project can be a traumatic situation for all involved. Making the go/no-go decision criteria known to the project team is a communication objective that can be accomplished a variety of ways. Collaborative tools could also be used to allow project staff to participate at some level in the decision of whether or not to proceed.

Observations

I have some personal experience with collaboration systems, social media, and — as a self-taught project manager — with both “traditional” and “agile” project management approaches. I’m a firm believer that project managers need to select techniques that fit the needs of the client and the project. This includes mixing and matching agile and waterfall techniques within the same project, if that makes sense.

I also know it’s easy to get caught up in the almost religious arguments that surround project management methodologies. Let’s just say, therefore, that I’m a pragmatist when it comes to managing projects. That said, here are some observations:

1. Projects that are “pure software development” are rare.
   
2. Project management skills should not be limited to the IT department.
3. Collaboration systems and social media should be standardized and part of the infrastructure.
   

1. Projects that are “pure software development” are rare.

In his article Stein distinguishes between “product development” and “software development” projects. While I agree they are different, in my experience in project management and consulting I have found that “software development projects” usually, if not always, consist of more than just “software development.”

Especially when it comes to implementing a new application within an organization, overall success (and project completion) are usually also dependent on staff hours devoted to non-development activities such as communications, management oversight, training, quality control, and other business and management related activities.

This is especially the case in “web 2.0” situations where a remotely hosted application is not developed in-house but is procured as a service. In such situations the cost of the software may be insignificant compared with the other  projects. While software-as-a-service evangelists may wish to soft-peddle this reality in order to minimize the true costs of implementing an application and its associated business process changes, management still needs to take into account the practical realities and costs of reaching a point at which the new system is helping to generate real benefits.

2. Project management skills should not be limited to the IT department.

In my experience the project management skills of the IT staff usually outweigh the project management skills of non-IT staff. This is true even in situations where a new software project involves significant business process changes within the client business unit.

Recently I’ve noticed availability of an increasing number of software tools, many remotely hosted, that provide certain project and task management capabilities that were previously only associated with “formal” project management software applications such as Microsoft Project.  While some of these tools might be considered “lightweight” from the vantage point of a grizzled IT project management veteran [you know who you are], I see great benefits to extending access to project management tools and concepts beyond the IT staff into business areas .

Given the IT department’s expertise in project management, I would suggest that one possible role for IT should be to assist business units in learning and using project management tools and techniques. That should include not only training users on formal tools such as MS Project as well as more user-friendly tools such as the “lightweight” tools I referred to earlier, but  also when to seek out “high ceremony” versus “low ceremony” project management approaches such as traditional waterfall or agile techniques.

3. Collaboration systems and social media should be standardized and part of the infrastructure.

The last thing a fast moving project team should have to do is spend time learning a new or unique communication tool just to support a single project. This is one of the reasons I believe that collaboration systems and social media tools should be standardized and generally available to any group within the organization that needs collaboration support.

Such tools should also integrate well with the specialized approaches and applications used within the project in question. The ability to make such an assessment calls, I believe, for direct involvement of the IT department, even if the tools are being remotely hosted.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald.
• To comment on or discuss this article email the author at ddmcd@yahoo.com or use the form below.