Knowledge Work

If you’re an aggregator “harnessing collective intelligence”, what are you aggregating? If it’s data and information, you’re competing with just about everything–Google searches, reference docs both online and printed, the majority of tech books and articles, etc. But if you’re aggregating up the hierarchy through knowledge, and especially understanding and wisdom, you’re adding huge value to someone’s life.

If you’re in knowledge management, what exactly are you capturing and managing?

If you’re a teacher, what are you teaching? Facts and information, or practical knowledge and understanding? Are you teaching the What and the How but without the Why and the When? More importantly, what are you testing? (Not that in the US most public school teachers have a huge say in this, unfortuntately)

If you’re a tech writer, what are you writing?

Creating Passionate Users: Moving up the wisdom hierarchy

If you’re a frequent Googler (and who isn’t?) then you’ll definitely want to grab the newly-updated, two-page PDF version of the Google Cheat Sheets (Version 1.02).

Print them out, stick them in a plastic sheet protector and keep them near your PC.

The concept of the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is not exceedingly difficult to comprehend, particularly as it applies to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

However, the actual implementation of a CMDB and clearly demonstrating value can introduce subtle complexities as a result of competing business objectives and internal IT requirements.

But as a standard and trusted data source, even the simplest of CMDBs can provide a means for improving internal communications and dialogue with IT customers. Even small-scale CMDB deployments could potentially help IT yield measurable benefits in operational effectiveness, cost efficiencies and improve the overall quality of service.

ITSM Watch: ITIL and the CMDB: Think Small? (April 10, 2006)

Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.

Ben Day blogged his way into a career as a high-earning software consultant while maintaining the freedom to schedule frequent jam sessions and performances as a keyboard player.

Blogging gave him the opportunity to stand out enough to support the life he envisioned for himself. ‘’For your career, a blog is essential,” says Phil van Allen, a faculty member of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

‘’It’s the new public relations and it’s the new home page. Instead of a static home page, you have your blog,” he said. It’s a way to let people know what you are thinking about the field that interests you.

Blogs ‘essential’ to a good career - The Boston Globe (April 16, 2006)

An article geared towards tech support staff, but one that most of us who work in technology would do well to read:

You think you’re a good communicator: You keep your users informed and you listen to their problems. So why is it that no one appears to read your e-mails or seems capable of following your instructions? Are you surprised to learn that the users have been living with computer issues rather than ask you for help? These are all signs of a breakdown in communication–which we, as support techs, frequently misinterpret as user indifference or even stupidity. Before long, we find ourselves on a downward spiral toward complete communications failure.

The 10 worst ways to communicate with end users (TechRepublic)

I have seen the future of management, and it is Indian. Vineet Nayar, president of India’s 30,000-employee HCL Technologies, is creating an IT outsourcing firm where, he says, employees come first and customers second.

“Everybody was aghast the first time I said that,” admits Nayar.

Here are some things I can say about him with confidence: He is good at motivating employees, very committed to building a great team, but a little shaky on getting things done on time. These are not my observations. They are what his employees told him in an extraordinary process of upward evaluation he implemented last year at HCL.

Every employee rates their boss, their boss’ boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see.

Fast Forward: The world’s most modern management is in India - Apr. 14, 2006

A group of systems and software vendors (led by BMC, Fujitsu, IBM and HP) are pushing for standards for the databases that track IT assets and how their configurations change over time:

Such a repository, called a Change and Configuration Management Database (CMDB), is called for by ITIL (IT Infrastructure Libraries), a framework that provides terminology and a way to organize best practices around IT service delivery. CMDBs have been among the most elusive holy grails in optimizing delivery of IT service.The dilemma is that in most companies if these data are stored at all, chances are they reside in multiple, vendor-specific repositories that are difficult, if not impossible, to synchronize. For instance, one system may store desktop and laptop client images or configurations, while other systems may be devoted to servers, storage pools or networks.

Furthermore, existing asset management systems, where they exist, may not always be up to date with the latest changes to infrastructure. The result is that admins and beleaguered help desk representatives may be dealing with dated information when they try to resolve trouble tickets or operational issues.

BMC, Fujitsu, IBM, HP launch CMDB initiative - Computer Business Review

The Big Four accounting firms are rapidly rebuilding their consulting divisions, though these days they’re calling them “business advisory” groups. In the wake of the Andersen scandal, and fearing repercussions from crackdowns on conflicts of interest, three of the Big Four sold their consulting arms to outsiders: PriceWaterhouse sold out to IBM, Ernst & Young sold their consultancy unit to Capgemini, and KPMG sold its European consulting business to Atos Origin. Of the Big Four, only Deloitte fully retained its consulting arm.

And now that it appears that the feared crackdown may not come, the accountants are staffing up with consultants again.

Not surprisingly, they’re going after people who used to work for them in the first place. (Ah, the comfort of familiarity.)

KPMG has poached the head of Atos Consulting, the French group that bought its advisory business in 2002, as part of a concerted new push into the consulting market.

Bernard Brown, a former KPMG partner, is to rejoin the accounting giant in October. He left when the firm sold its British and Dutch consulting business to Atos Origin for £420m.

Mr Brown’s defection is the latest in a series of senior departures at Atos, many of whom are former KPMG partners returning to the firm. Atos has been so rocked it has agreed to waive a non-compete agreement due to stand until August on the condition that KPMG does not hire any more of its staff.

Daily Telegraph (UK): Big Four rebuild advisory divisions

Outsourcing of information technology and business services delivers average cost savings of 15 percent, a survey found on Thursday, disproving market claims that outsourcing can reduce costs by more than 60 percent.

After professional fees, severance pay and governance costs, savings range between 10 percent and 39 percent, with the average level at 15 percent when contracts are first let, according to outsourcing advisory firm TPI.

“This research proves that the promise of massive operational savings is unrealistic when you take into account the costs of procurement and ongoing contract management,” Duncan Aitchison, TPI’s managing director, said in a statement.

Survey: Outsourcing saves less than claimed | Tech News on ZDNet

MONEY Magazine’s Best Jobs: #13 - Technical writer

When a Sunnyvale tech company laid off the manager and most of his colleagues in its reliability testing group a year and a half ago, the manager said a few employees were spared — younger, foreign workers on H-1B visas.

The laid-off manager was infuriated that as an American citizen, he wasn’t given priority over the H-1B employees. The H-1B visa program allows employers to hire skilled foreign workers when there’s a shortage of available American workers.

“The law does not protect American workers at all,'’ said Frank, a 45-year-old Chinese-American who was out of work for five months, and who insisted his last name and the name of his former company not be published because he fears repercussions from potential employers. “It only helps American businesses and technology companies keep their costs low while sacrificing American workforce. That’s not right.'’

MercuryNews.com | 04/07/2006 | H-1B visa law criticized

NASA project manager Jerry Madden, the Associate Director of the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was a legend in his field. He began collecting and assembling a set of rules for project managers early in his career; after Jerry retired in 1995, others maintained and updated the list.

Two caveats:

(1) Much of this stuff is what a friend of mine calls “advanced common sense,” and most experienced managers wouldn’t find much to disagree with here.
(2) Some of it deals specifically with government-contracting situations, and may not be directly applicable to what you do (if you do something else.)

As a quick, readable reminder of What’s Really Important, though, it almost can’t be beat.

A few of Mr. Madden’s rules:

Rule #12: Don’t get too egotistical so that you can’t change your position, especially if your personnel tell you that you are wrong. You should cultivate an attitude on the project where your personnel know they can tell you of wrong decisions.

Rule #24: One must pay close attention to workaholics—if they get going in the wrong direction, they can do a lot of damage in a short time. It is possible to overload them and cause premature burnout but hard to determine if the load is too much, since much of it is self generated. It is important to make sure such people take enough time off and that the workload does not exceed 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 times what is normal.

Rule #33: If you have a problem that requires additional people to solve, you should approach putting people on like a cook who has under-salted the food.

Rule #40: A working meeting has about six people attending. Meetings larger than this are for information transfer (management science has shown that, in a group greater than twelve, some are wasting their time).

Rule #66: Don’t assume you know why senior management has done something. If you feel you need to know, ask. You get some amazing answers that will astonish you.

Rule #83: Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. It is also occasionally the best help you can give. Just listening is all that is needed on many occasions. You may be the boss, but if you constantly have to solve someone’s problems, you are working for him.

Rule #89: Whoever said beggars can’t be choosers doesn’t understand project management, although many times it is better to trust to luck than to get poor support.

One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

(Note: The version of “100 Rules” at the NASA site is different, and is now up to 128!)

“If you do not assume responsibility for breaking the system in the way you want it broken and then integrating it to a better plateau, it will break by itself to a worse plateau. So inaction does not save you; it gives the power of your demise to outside forces.”

Ichak Adizes, Managing Corporate Lifecycles

Pink Elephant today announced it has become the first organisation to receive worldwide accreditation for a new integrated ITIL® certification course that will enable practitioners to effectively manage, organise and optimise the Support and Restore processes, and minimise the adverse effects of Incidents and Problems, within the Service Desk function.

Pink Elephant was the first in the industry to introduce specialised, role-based certification courses and its ITIL Practitioner: Service Desk, Incident and Problem Management course has been designed for process managers, co-ordinators and other specialists operating in the Service Desk function, as well as IT, Network and System Managers.

Awarded by EXIN, the Netherlands-based Examination Institute for Information Science, the accreditation is intended to guarantee and promote the quality of ITIL courses and the companies who deliver them. EXIN is one of two independent examination bodies responsible for managing ITIL accreditation.

Some major acquisitions activity, possibly presaging a trend towards consolidation, in the Indian offshore/outsourcing space.  EDS has apparently just picked up a big chunk (in excess of 40%) of Mphasis:

The EDS-Mphasis deal is part of an ongoing trend that has software and BPO firms shifting large parts of their operations to India. IBM Global, in the last four years, has built its India base from scratch to 40,000 employees—more than a quarter of its estimated 150,000 US workforce. Accenture’s count of its India hands is at 20,000.

The rest among the industry leaders have lagged behind. EDS, Capgemini and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) had 3,000 to 5,000-strong offshore teams in India. “Apart from IBM and Accenture, all of them took their eyes off the ball,” says Ganesh Natarajan, deputy chairman and managing director at Zensar Technologies.

If the EDS buy of Mphasis goes through, it will grow its India presence nearly four times adding the target’s 11,000 workers in India and another 1,000 elsewhere to its rolls. “This helps our service delivery and brings in new software application development skills,” says an EDS spokesman In addition, having Mphasis in its stable will allow to bid for contracts less than $100 million, a size it has traditionally stayed away from.

The Great Indian Tech Sale (Financial Express, Bombay, India)

A great question over at MetaTalk brings the BBSers out of the woodwork: “Were you a BBSer? Did you run a BBS?” The person asking the question has noted some similarities between BBS culture and blog culture, and I think that’s a very good observation.

For those of you who weren’t around or weren’t paying attention in the early 1980s to mid-1990s, a computer Bulletin Board System (BBS) was

…a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, playing games, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users. During their heyday (from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s), many BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the “SysOp” (system operator), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access.

(Thanks, Wikipedia! Like many of their articles on technical topics, the Wikipedia article on BBSes is almost mindsnappingly good and extremely detailed.)

I must confess that I was a rabid BBS user back in the day, and wound up owning and running not one but *two* of the beasts. I ran Homestead BBS, a Wildcat board, out of my apartment in Chapel Hill, NC for a couple of years in the late 1980s, and then I ran one of the first public Usenet boards in North Carolina, “Chatham Host,” after sweet-talking a friend at Duke University into providing me with a Usenet feed.

“Were you a BBSer? Did you ever run a BBS?” | MetaTalk

The 2007 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” has just come out; if you’ve been thinking about adding a graduate degree to your resume, you’ll want to give this comprehensive ranking of the best programs in the United States at least a quick once-over.

USNews.com: America’s Best Graduate Schools 2007

A plan to boost the number of temporary visas is facing obstacles in the U.S. Congress, despite the plan’s popularity with technology companies and foreign workers.

Supporters of H-1B visas–reserved for highly skilled guest workers–applauded a move Monday by a U.S. Senate committee to nearly double the cap from 65,000 to 115,000 visas next year, and President Bush has endorsed the idea too. But by the end of the week, it became apparent that the House of Representatives may not follow suit.

H-1B visas hit roadblock in Congress | CNET News.com

Is the layoff the great American wound? In Louis Uchitelle’s account, it seems a wound in triplicate. It hollows out companies so they can’t compete. It hollows out the country by removing middle-class jobs. It hollows out the middle-class employees who are laid off and then too often drop permanently to a demeaning, low-wage way of life. To Mr. Uchitelle, who reports on economics for The New York Times, corporate America’s addiction to the layoff has gone past the point of economic rationality. In this fascinating book he tries to tell the history of the United States in our time as the unchecked rise of layoffs.

[…]

The layoff, Mr. Uchitelle argues, has transformed the nation. At least 30 million full-time American employees have gotten pink slips since the Labor Department belatedly started to count them in 1984. But add in the early retirees, the “quits” who saw the layoffs coming, and the number is much higher — a whole ghost nation trekking into what for most will be lower-wage work. This is the Dust Bowl in our Golden Bowl, and to Mr. Uchitelle, layoffs in one way are worse than the unemployment of the 1930’s. At least then, most of the jobless came back to better-paid, more secure jobs. Those laid off in our time almost never will.

‘The Disposable American,’ by Louis Uchitelle - New York Times

Many who blame outsourcing providers when things go wrong don’t have the maturity to understand their own responsibilities.

[…]

A well thought-through and managed outsourcing relationship should obviate the need for recourse to contracts, says Jeremy Tipper, managing director of Capital Consulting. And the process should start by the client thinking long and hard about whether it should be outsourcing at all.

Human Resources Magazine - HR Outsourcing: Outsourcing for grown ups