IT Consulting Cincinnati

This topic is not specific for Application Development, but it sure does apply. Does this sound familiar? “Let’s have a meeting to discuss how to handle meetings”. Some of you already have had this one.  You may not have the power to stop meetings, but you can try these tips to minimize their affect on your development timeline.  Some of these tips dovetail nicely with tips discussed here and here.

Weekly status – Management wants regular updates on your status. Don’t forget that your boss has a boss who needs updating too. Instead of the weekly status meeting, a team update could suffice. It has all of the information you boss needs, and it is in soft copy.

Make an agenda – If anyone wants a meeting, make sure you set an agenda. This sets the scope of the items to discuss. If other issues arise, you can tackle them at a later date.

Set time for yourself – If you are truly crunched for time, don’t forget to set aside a block of busy time on your calendar. I find that the hours between 9:00AM and 11:00 AM are my most productive time. Use this technique sparingly for time increments over 30 minutes.

Summarize – I have talked about this before, but it really works! Send a summary of the items discussed, and the action items created for the participants. I have found that people who are Like a lot of meetings don’t have as many if they think they will get “homework”.

Meet face to face – If I have a question or issue, I would rather talk to the person directly. I get more detailed information, and I can communicate the latest updates informally.

Remember, meetings are for the transfer of information. Upper management wants to know how middle management and application development are supporting the business. I have noticed that application development teams are more interested in solving the technical issue than communicating their resolution. If you can be more proactive in distributing your information, you may be cured of meetingitis.

This morning during my 31 mile commute to work I was thinking that with the global energy crisis that these types of commutes are going to become less frequent and workers are going to have to change their work environments.   People will have to contend with either working from home or moving closer to where they work.

Pardon the interruption but workers lives are about to change if they have not started to change already.  I know in my case I already had to give up my large SUV for a smaller automobile simply because my monthly car payment and fuel people started to resemble a house payment!  I could not live with it any longer.  A fellow worker had to do the same thing.

My organization is involved in technology and computer consulting and much what we do such as business application development, IT outsourcing and staffing can be done remotely and we can save the application integration and IT infrastructure jobs until we are ready to do the actual integration of either an application or system integration.  Our organization is going to have to re-think the way that we approach our business.  Sales calls may have to accomplish our first meeting via the web on a webinar before we actually meet with a client because we need to be prudent with how we spend our fuel dollars.

So all of this got me to thinking if other organizations are thinking the same way?  Well, indeed they are.  Recently I watch a piece on the news that showed how it cost American Airlines $77,000 every time they fuel a large aircraft.  They have become very methodical and cost conscience on how they spend their fuel money and they curb additional weight wherever they can to save on fuel costs.

Recently I found an article by Merdith Leviinson where he examines Chorus, a small software company that is saving money, reducing employee stress and improving productivity and customer satisfaction by closing its offices and going virtual.  Take a look at the first part of his three part series at:
http://cxolyris.cxomedia.com/t/2207413/105281620/24857/0/

Pardon the interruption to your work environment  but I believe the work place regardless of what industry one is in is about to change?  What do you think?

With gas prices over $4 per gallon across America now, one would think that telecommuting would be on a tremendous upswing.  The fact of the matter is that telecommuting is still growing in America as it has over the past 5 year, but it is showing only a slightly higher growth these past few months than in the past 5 years.  So the high price of gas has not sparked a spike in the telecommuting area.  However, it remains a strong Information Technology Strategy for many organizations.  “If a company was dead set against this a year ago, then the fact that employees now are paying $4 a gallon isn’t really enough to make them start doing telecommuting, unless they are at a point where they are losing employees for this reason. In that case, pain is a tremendous motivator to get employers to rethink this,” says Gil Gordon of Gordon Associates, a telecommuting and virtual office consultancy.

“Over the years there has been so much growth in telecommuting and mobile work in general, and so many people use laptops and cells, that it isn’t as huge a jump for more people to begin doing it, whether the [immediate] reason is gas prices, hurricanes or a bridge being out. Certainly, it is something that smart employers are looking at to ease some employees’ pain. But it is more a case of companies expanding what they already are doing rather than starting from scratch” adds Gordon.

Telecommuting is increasingly becoming an option for IT staffing, just as it is for their business peers. A new survey from Robert Half Technology shows that 21% of 1,400 CIOs in companies with more than 100 employees say there is more telecommuting among IT staff than there was five years ago.

"That's pretty significant," says John Estes, VP at the Information Technology staffing firm. "People resisted it for so long - there were issues of control, productivity, security and all that. But more companies are trying to think of creative ways to attract and retain staff."  Providing workers the option to work at home one day a week or more is one way to do that, because it helps workers in an employee-driven market enjoy a better work-life balance, he says.

So if you wish to convince your boss that telecommuting is a good IT strategy for your work environment, remember the company wants to know the benefits telecommuting can provide the company, not the employee.  Those will be the best selling points on which you need to base your proposal:

• Cost savings – office overhead is the main cost savings.  Less office space needed, means future office expansions can be delayed and fewer lights will be used.
• Increased productivity – increases of 10% - 40% have been reported from telecommuting workers and their managers.  Less commuting time, less office distractions and favorable response from workers for the company’s signal of trust are reasons cited for this productivity increase.
• Improved motivation – again from the company’s signal of trust and the adoption of a flexible work environment.
• Skills retention – employees less likely to leave for jobs that do not offer telecommuting when they already have this benefit.  Also workers may stay with the company when the family moves because another family member changes jobs and does not have telecommuting available.
• Organizational flexibility – in the event of restructuring or reorganization workers can continue to work with less disruption into their personal lives.  Workers work in disperse teams that can be assembled and reassembled as the organizational needs change.  Working time can be adjusted to match peaks and valleys in workload.
• Enhanced customer service – customer service can be extended beyond normal work day hours or the work week without the cost of overtime or the staff to work or travel at unsocial hours.
• Green is the word – As Michael noted as one of IT Management Challenges for ’08, less cars on the road, less pollution, less energy to light offices, possibly less server capacity needed means less climate control facilities required.

Telecommuting provides the employee benefits of cost and time savings of travel, less disruption of family life, better work-family life balance, greater employer loyalty, participation in local community and flexible hours.

Telecommuting or telework may not be an effective IT strategy for every organization.  Some jobs are better suited than others to be carried out at home, as well. Sorry, network administrators and network engineers. IT staffers who might have better luck getting the boss to let them work at home include those with titles such as documentation specialist, programmers, and in some cases help and support desk personnel.  If your organization has never looked at this IT strategy, it is worth a look.

Now I've done it.  In my blog, yesterday I talked about instant messaging and some may have gotten the impression that I am anti-IM.   I'm actually not, as a matter of fact, I love IM.  It can be a real timesaver.  I actually had two other points and I just ran out of time to complete them (pardon the pun). 

First point was that if no one has time to talk to anyone from outside their organization, how can they get a different perspective?  Someone once told me, that being in IT consulting is like being a doctor.  You have to ask lots of questions in order to eventually come to a diagnosis.  You have to have a conversation, in order to understand the customer’s issue and make the right recommendation. 

I certainly get plenty of calls about IT services and I don't take every call it comes in.  If I do take call from someone, I will usually have a conversation long enough to determine if it's important enough to have a face-to-face meeting.  I've gotten some great perspective from those meetings and of course, I have ones that were a total waste of time, but I didn't know that going into them. 

The second point was about internal communication, but I'm out of time, (again) so we'll chat about that tomorrow.