Great apps for the iPad

In December, my boss got all of us iPads as an end-of-year gift. Since that time, I have tried to find the right applications that will turn the device into a real business tool. While there are some very large missing pieces, here are a three versatile applications that have made the iPad a worthwhile investment:

Taking Notes: So far, the killer app for note taking is still OneNote, from Microsoft. Unfortunately, the boys from Redmond have not made the application available for any of the Apple devices, including the iPad. Absent that, I use Notes Plus, available from iTunes. It comes with a variety of useful features, most notably a way to zoom in for hand-writing and drawing. I've tried EverNote and PenUltimate, and this app easily betters them.

Instant Messaging: Meebo is an instant messaging application that will give you access to multiple I/M accounts at once. After setting up an account at their website, add log-in credentials for the various I/M tools you use, like G-Mail, Facebook, AIM, MSN Messenger, etc. I don't believe that you can set up a group chat across accounts, but that's it's only shortcoming. Well, that and the fact that the current version is not optimized for the iPad. (I just hit the 2x button to make it easier to see.( They have not announced when an iPad version will be released, though a lot of users have requested it.

Task Management: I have a lot of clients, and remembering deliverables and tasks for all of them is really challenging. So I use Remember the Milk to manage and organize my tasks. After signing up at their website ($25/year subscription), you can manage all kinds of tasks from the web site and from the app on an iPad, iPhone and even a Droid phone. Like Meebo, no iPad-optimized version is yet available, nor have they announced one for release. Even so, it does a great job helping me keep one synchronized list of tasks managed and organized.

WEB SITES FOR ALL THREE APPS:
Notes Plus
Meebo
Remember the Milk

SharePoint: IT still doesn't get it!

Here is a shocking statement of the obvious. It's not the users' fault!

I was speaking with a client the other day and we talked about how deploying SharePoint in his small business ($5MM (US), 40 team members) would cost around $15-20K... but if he wanted to, he could spend 10 times that amount. It is the classic problem of the clean canvas. SharePoint can do so many things, in so many ways, that the simple task of just deciding where to start can be a truly intimidating effort.

Full disclosure ... I am a strong and long-time advocate of SharePoint. I believe that it be a transformational force in a company. But the trick is, and always has been, user adoption.

In a recent post on CIO.com, Shane O'Neill cites a September 2010 uSamp survey of 317 US business email users to claim that the biggest hurdle to SharePoint adoption is the familiarity of old work habits. Namely, they use email to enable document sharing and collaboration instead of SharePoint. Over 80% of the respondents say the prefer to email documents over uploading them to a shared workspace, shared drive or a public folder. If you peruse the comments posted in response to the survey, it is easy to detect a certain tone. It is slightly condescending towards users; wondering why they don't seem to understand and acknowledge that SharePoint is so clearly superior to email.

It seems to me that SharePoint evangelists are by and large missing the point. If SharePoint truly is superior to email for sharing and collaboration, users will adopt it. But it many ways, it isn't.

Consider the following. When a new person is added to the collaboration team, how many steps must a normal business user go through to send them the latest version of the document? Using SharePoint? Request that the site administrator grant their account permission to access the workspace. Wait for response. Check to make sure they have access. Send them an email with a link to the document and the accompanying note. And that assumes that the new person already has general access to the site (which can get tricky if that new person is a contractor or consultant without a network account). Now let's review the email process. Open a new email. Attach the document. Write your accompanying note. Click send. Which is easier? More intuitive? Faster?

If your firm is struggling with SharePoint adoption, then most likely it's because IT is asking users to replace their easy and intuitive process with a clunky and hard-to-learn process. If you want to spur adoption, then you have to do three things:

1. Focus on SharePoint's strengths, not its weaknesses. It's actually very good for dashboards and content that doesn't change frequently.
2. Focus on a specific problem rather than an all-encompassing solution. When users find that truly makes their work easier in one area, they will explore it on their own.
3. Focus on the users that are heavy users of MS Office products, like finance, administrative assistants and project managers. They will find more opportunities to take advantage of the tool's strengths than the more casual user.

SharePoint can be a great solution for the right problem set. But information technology professionals need to understand that users don't care about storage space, workflows, or document indexing. They just want to get their work done. Help them do that, and maybe SharePoint can find a role.

The survey was commissioned by Mainsoft (a company that claims to integrate SharePoint into Outlook and Lotus Notes). Respondents work in sales, marketing, human resources, and legal departments in companies with 100 or more employees.

Is the PMO still useful?

A few years back, the Project Management Office was the hot trend in business, especially among enterprises on the large side of the mid-sized spectrum. Clearly, these firms saw the benefits of investing in the discipline of project management and of standardizing best practices across their companies. Graphs like this actually mattered to people. A PMO that didn't have the right cultural fit would really impede progress against important initiatives.

But who still has a PMO?
Are there any firms under $500M (US) that can afford the overhead?
Does the value generated by a PMO even come close to covering its costs?

The mega-enterprise clearly gains sufficient value from a PMO. Just having a standardized, predictable reporting methodology is probably worth the cost. But I can't see a medium-sized firm getting enough benefits to justify the expense of at least 3 FTEs, supporting software and the added project costs.

What do you think?

Project Management is taking a hit

New research recently published by Josh Nankivel indicates that, "Nearly 30% of project managers have seen a cutback in investment or projects as a result of the current economic climate."

Rather than repeat the whole post, I'll just link to it on the Project Management Tips website.

Here is the link: New research: the state of project management

BI for Open Source

There seems to be no shortage of Business Intelligence offerings, even as the industry continues to consolidate. One BI firm, Actuate (NSDQ: ACTU) has put its chips on the open source end of the table. Their next release, v 10, is targeted for shipment in the next two months, and it promises enhanced support for the Eclipse Foundation project called BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools).

The company announced that more than 5 million copies of BIRT were downloaded during the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2008. This tells me that small and mid-sized firms are actively pursuing ways to exploit BI without the enormous upfront costs that Oracle and IBM require.

Of course, downloading the software is not the same as using the software, and firms will still need professional assistance to access and integrate the data. Inexpensive software will not absolve executives from the need to understand what BI can and cannot do, and to guide the initiatives accordingly. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about the benefits of BI and the steps you should take to get the most out of this exciting technology.

More information on the BIRT Project: BIRT on Wikipedia
The BIRT Homepage: The BIRT Project

Technology Leadership during tough times

What is your firm's response to the dark economic clouds that have made their way from their horizon to just over head? Is it coming in the form of across-the-board budget reductions? Have you discontinued the use of contract labor and consultants? Are you putting off maintenance? Is the firm's response targeted on specific initiatives?

Because IT can be complex (needlessly so, at times), generalized actions often become the easy way out. They are easy to define and are so vague as to defy criticism. But they tend to cause more problems than they solve. That's because smart projects get cut just as heavily as more speculative efforts.
Discontinuing the use of contract labor is simply a different form of a generalized response. Although it is less painful than cutting staff, it often blocks the firm from executing on sound strategy for want of skilled resources.

Fortunately, the days of purely speculative projects are past us. There are exceptions, of course, but they tend to be found in situations where the decision makers face inadequate scrutiny (relatives of the owners or other favored positions). So that means that projects that promised positive ROI should not be abandoned, but they should be re-examined. Be sure that the assumptions on which the project ROI was based, especially financing costs and sales projections, are still valid. Renegotiate ongoing project expenses and rethink the timeline.

If the strategy is still sound, then forge ahead in executing it. When the clouds break -- and they will -- you'll be in better shape to take advantage of the sunshine.

Project success measures

Gartner is starting to advise IT leaders that technology projects need to get smaller and faster. It seems to me to be an extension of the Agile software-development methodology.

According to an article on SearchCIO.com, a Gartner analyst proposed this line of thinking at a recent conference in Boston. Her analysis implies that PMO's get whacked because of the administrative burden that they put on to the organization. What would create this impression? Most likely, it's the notion that formal Project Management practices are often perceived as bureaucratic over-reaching. Whether they are or not is largely a function of implementation, because everyone agrees that good project management is critical to project success. But after reading the article, I'm not sure how scaling down or speeding up projects is going to change this perception.

But about halfway down the article, the author reveals some excellent insights from analyst. Here are some quotes:

The line people use, including Gartner, 'There are no IT projects, they're all business projects?' Well, forget it, they're all IT projects, because if they fail, you take the hit.
Another fact of project management that sometimes eludes IT is that project success correlates with user adoption

Certainly CRM success is almost entirely dependent upon user adoption. And if users don't adopt it, they will blame IT. And what the analyst seems to be saying is that this same factor applies to ERP systems, HR systems, and payroll systems. But do users have the option to not adopt these kinds of applications? If a payroll clerk doesn't like the new payroll system and decides not to use it, do they get paid?

I have tremendous respect for Gartner. At the same time, it seems that they are not really covering new ground.

The article on SearchCIO.com can be found here:
Project management needs to think smaller, faster .... By Linda Tucci