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Archive for January, 2009

Jan 5

Staffing Challenges and IT Spending and Priorities

A friend forwarded me a link to this Gartner article. Although it’s almost a year old, 2 sections caught my interest: CIO Staffing Challenges and IT Spending and Priorities.

Although the global economic situation was much different at the time the CIOs answered the survey, it is interesting to see what they highlighted as areas of concern.

CIO Staffing Challenges

“Two-thirds of IT organizations that do not meet business expectations claim that skills are at the core of their performance issue”. So far we haven’t seen massive lay-off in the IT sector but the current situation certainly increases pressure on organizations to cut costs. Although it makes sense to control expenses in an economic down-turn, it is key to determine which line of expense should be impacted.

For many service organizations, salaries and people related expenses represent the bulk of the expenses and rightfully come under more scrutiny. In many instances, it makes perfect sense to challenge these expenses as long as there is a strategy to retain the core skills required by the organization to successfully navigate through these difficult times.

Knowing what the core competencies of an organization are implies that an assessment has been made prior to the down-turn. If not, it might be useful to complete such an exercise before making critical decisions. Slashing 10% across the board is often easier for a CFO to call but certainly lacks a strategic perspective.

IT Spending and Priorities

“Business intelligence was the No. 1 technology priority for the third year in a row”. Gartner reconfirmed that information during their Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 and in the Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 press release.

In addition to being good news for consulting organizations like ours who offer BI consulting services, this statement also confirms the fact that CIOs do see the value offered by this technology.

Unfortunately, BI ranks no.1 in “technology priority” and not in “business priority” which demonstrates the need to reinforce the business value of this technology and re-emphasize the joint responsibility between IT and business to continue investing in this critical technology.

Let’s see what the next version of the survey tells us.

Jan 4

The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Jeff posted yesterday what seems to be an email he received a few weeks ago. In Scrum Makes You Feel Better, the author of the email (Nancy Van Schooenderwoert) associates the following paragraph taken from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience …

“The types of activities which people all over the world consistently report as most rewarding – that is, which make them feel best – involve a clear objective, a need for concentration so intense that no attention is left over, a lack of interruptions and distractions, clear and immediate feedback on progress toward the objective, and a sense of challenge – the perception that one’s skills are adequate, but just adequate, to cope with the task at hand.“

… with test-driven-development claiming that “This gives an indication of why test driven development is so compelling for people once they know the basic technique”.

Although the statement can be used to promote test driven development, I believe it is probably a better selling statement for SCRUM overall as it encompasses the philosophy behind self-managed teams.

Isn’t this the type of environment we aim to achieve with SCRUM self-managed teams?

Jan 3

My Virtual Bookshelves

Here’s a list of books on my bookshelves.


Category: Agile Software Development

Category: Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, and Data Mining

Category: Consulting, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation

Category: Globalization and Anthropology

Category: Internet Marketing, Social Networks, and Web 2.0

Category: Leadership, Team Management, and Organizational Development

Category: Memoirs and Biographies

Category: Psychology, Negotiation, and Communication

Category: Usability and Dashboards

Jan 2

Real Teamwork


I tried dog sledding for the first time today and I must say it was an amazing experience. From the moment we got off the bus until the time we got back to the dog center, the guides were dedicated to making this a really great afternoon for all of us.

This post is not about promoting the tour operator [drop me an email if you would like more information about the dog sledding tours] but about an interesting analogy that I thought about once the tour was over. I apologize ahead of time as I do not mean to discriminate the dogs by comparing them to humans ;-) .

As a consulting organization we are often asked to help companies with their adoption of the Agile project management methods. One of the first paradigm we have to deal with is team self-management and for many reasons, seeing these dogs in action triggered the following thoughts:

  • each of these dog had a specific role to play and each dog knew what was expected of them;
  • without collaboration the 5 dogs would not be able to pull the weight of the sled and its riders;
  • every time the sled came to a complete stop, the dogs knew to get some rest and eat snow (i.e. drink);
  • after a few minutes, they knew it was time to get going so they all started barking – I was told it was a sign they were happy to start pulling again;
  • one of the dog was responsible to notify the others when it was time to start pulling again;
  • at the end of the ride, the dogs seemed happy to have accomplished their duty and expected nothing more than a biscuit and to be petted.

Humans are obviously much more evolved and cohesive team dynamics is certainly more difficult to achieve but the results of collaboration and self-managed team can be as impressive as these dogs pulling our sled.

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Jan 1

New Year’s Resolution

I was hearing people around me this morning talk about their resolutions for the new year. The traditional resolutions came up: lose weight, exercise more, spend more time with the family, etc. As I listened a thought crossed my mind – why do people bother with resolutions when most people cannot stick with their resolution for more than a few days… Then a question popped up, why do people try to plan for a whole year ahead of them?

Needless to say, this post is not about resolutions.

Let’s do a small experiment. Can you plan the meals you will have in October this year? Shouldn’t you be able to do this since you know what you ate last October? What about how much money you will spend the 3rd week of July? No… OK, let’s try something you are familiar with. How much time will you will spend shopping for clothes this year?

My point is the following, if we cannot plan 6 months ahead of time for tasks we routinely do, so how can we expect end users to decide which features they expect from their new application 6 months before we start development? Even more challenging is the documentation of the user requirements. Priorities change, business constraints appear and disappear over time so how can someone know how to anticipate situations so much time ahead?

The beauty with an Agile development process is that end users define at a very high level what they want the application to accomplish and get into the details when it becomes necessary – usually a few weeks before development starts. In addition, the Agile development is iterative with short cycles.

Let’s go back to our experiment. Can you predict how much money you will spend next week? That should be easier.

Just like with money or weight loss, you have better chances of achieving your objective if you define a high level target to achieve and iteratively and frequently determine the short term actions to take to reach the goal. Agile is a good approach to use.

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