Failure Has Some Options

Everyone fails at one time or another. Every organization can point to a program or project that jsut didn't go well at all. One of the big steps is admitting the problem in the first place. Another big step is figuring out what to do about it. There are three main options: do nothing; add resources; scrap the project. For many years, the federal government has only take the first two tacks; now it's going to try the third. According to an article in 'nextgov' magazine, the White House will review and post the health of all government IT projects. You can find that link at
http://it.usaspending.gov/.

While some of us might enjoy the handy pie chart and deep red color of these stats, there is so much more to know. By what measure is a particular project failing? Will this project succeed given more time and other resources? Is it worth it? Are there particular people to blame? Yes, I know it's popular to say that no one is at fault, or everyone is, which means the same thing for accountability. Starting with the project requirements, it's useful to look at the history of the whole effort. It's entirely possible that the project in question was never going to meet the organizational goals in the first place, especially if there are no goals.

What's nice about adding accountability to these IT projects is that contractors who don't meet the timeline or requirements will no longer be rewarded with more money, at least the really bad ones won't. Those bad projects are a huge time and resource suck, and I for one can think of all sorts of valuable ways that money can be spent. Even if the project is set to continue, it can be done under another contractor. As you've read previously, I'm pretty big on accountability and consequences, and this IT health monitor is set to deliver plenty of both. I'll be watching to see what happens.

Snail Mail < Email < Web 2.0

When I was a kid, I loved getting mail. I got holiday and birthday cards, packages, letters from friends and family. As I got older, the quality of my mail shifted lower and lower until I receive only bills and junk mail, with the occasional Netflix disc thrown in. The same thing happened with email, but instead of bills, I get "tasks" (and no Netflix). Postal mail and email have another similarity: they are both passive media. They get sent to you whether you like it or not, and your participation is minimal until you want to send a return message. For the past few years, I have been engaged in "Web 2.0," which is a much more active, engaging medium. Through FaceBook and LinkedIn, I can reconnect with friends and colleagues at many different levels, from reading status updates to email, chat, and even a phone call or two. In daily work, SharePoint fills the same need, but it can take some getting used to.

One of the first things I had to learn about SharePoint was balancing quality and quantity. It is so easy to be inundated with alerts for announcements, file updates, status changes, etc. If I'm actively managing a project, I might want immediate or daily alerts from the system. If not, weekly alerts or none at all are just fine. Another new idea was "pulling" information I wanted. I was so used to being "told" by email, phone calls, meetings, etc, I had to learn what was actually important for me to know and then find it. When I figured it out, I saved all kinds of time. The next big thing was collaboration. Once I started to upload draft documents and work on them with a group, I started to feel the power of Web 2.0. No more emailing endless drafts around in a circle and having to consolidate all the changes. In addition, I began using discussion groups for different aspects of a project. No endless emails and conference calls, no emails. Once I got my clients used to it, they wanted a discussion group for everything.

There are some down sides to the Web 2.0 experience, but most of them can be fixed by training. For example, security: someone needs to be the gatekeeper for the site, library, or list. That person should have the authority to grant read or edit access at will. People do rotate among projects, there are new hires, and upper management may want to look at the team's progress. Another down side is access: SharePoint, LinkedIn, and FaceBook are all designed for access outside the firewall. Users should be able to get to SharePoint from anywhere. Often, unfortunately, organizations prevent outside access, even though they allow outside email access. Strange but true.

For those of you who are dealing with SharePoint, keep in mind that you have a deeper individual responsibility for SharePoint compared to a network share, but that's a good thing. You also have more control and much greater flexibility. I invite anyone with specific questions to put them in the comments. I promise I won't answer like a typical IT guy, because I'm not one. I reserve belittling people for my private life.

How To Lose A Week In Ten Days

Warning: the following blog entry contains math!

I have come to realize that I only enjoy snow in the abstract. The idea of it is fun and enchanting from the living room window, but the cold hard reality of snow from the driveway is all blood, sweat, and tears. If you live in the DC area and don't have a flying car, you were probably stuck at home for much of the "Snowpocalypse last year." If you were prepared, you had food and activities. If you were lucky, you had uninterrupted electricity, cable, Internet, and you got paid.
With 300,000 federal government employees in the DC metro area according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and an average salary of about $71,000 according to USA Today, every lost hour of work costs the taxpayer about $10.5 million. The government was basically closed for an entire week, but some workers had access to email or brought some work home with them. Some others may have teleworked. Let's figure 30 hours lost over the snow emergency, which therefore cost a whopping $315 million. Keep in mind, that's only a direct cost, which doesn't count lost productivity by people working out of the area who couldn't communicate with DC people.

Now, I know what you're thinking: the number sounds big, but it's a drop in the federal bucket. Fair enough, but we received zero for it. Nada, zilch, niente. And the government will never make up that productivity over the fiscal year. Is this situation preventable somehow?

Well of course it is, with telework. According to telework.gov's 2009 Annual Report, 102,900 federal employees are teleworking out of 2 million total, which is about 5 percent. The problem is that about half of agencies have not put telework into their Continuity of Operations (COOP) planning in a meaningful way. According to the report, the biggest stumbling blocks aren't IT or security, they are "office coverage" and management resistance.

In a snowstorm, there's no need for office coverage, because nobody's there anyway. For the managers, they should ask whether it's better to encourage telework and put a real plan in place or to watch their human capital budget go down the storm drain. Thanks to technologies like Microsoft SharePoint, any worker with Internet access can work on documents, engage in discussion groups, and schedule meetings much more efficiently than with Outlook. Best of all, documents can stay on a server managed by IT rather than being saved on a home computer. Even if teleworking isn't practical for everyone on a regular basis, it's a great way to ensure that the people's business gets done.

OGI DIY OMG

I try to be handy around the house. I can do some of the smaller projects like faucet replacement, running electrical circuits, and the like. I had limited success with room renovation, so I started hiring experts. OK, I really messed up one project, and I had to get outside help. Despite my setbacks, I found that my experience with small projects helped me evaluate contractors and help with planning and technical decisions. I could understand the need for prep work, and I usually knew why things were done in a certain order.

Why am I spending valuable pixels talking about home projects? My experience as a homeowner seems very similar to what some high-level IT folks in the federal government are discovering with document management. In last week's entry, I mentioned how one department was clearly taking on a monumental conversion project with untrained staff and inadequate equipment. Instead of meeting the demands of the administration, the department has implemented a solution that's a couple orders of magnitude below what's needed. In the mighty triad of money, quality, and time, they have chosen low money, no quality, and infinite time.

What this department will find, as I did, is that doing it once the right way is a lot cheaper, faster, and better than doing it twice. It's even better than doing it once and being totally unsatisfied. Once again, putting the benefit ahead of the means can save a lot of headache. I'm a big fan of experts. I can't always take their advice, but I have modified my plans many times based on the knowledge that comes from their profession. I hope this department, and others like it, will solicit advice on document management from experts like, well, me. It's not rocket science, and if it is, that's what rocket scientists are for.