Sooner or later every organization is faced with a technology or organization change project in trouble. Most times we find out when the money is gone or when it’s too late to do anything beyond surviving the outcome. Very often project sponsors see project reporting as a routine process that only requires selecting the right project manager, outsourced systems integrator or systems provider. Experience tells us this perception is far from valid. Those of us who have run projects or supervised the work of project managers recognize four realities:

• Good projects led by strong project managers sometimes go bad
• Project Managers are under tremendous pressure to show progress
• Most reporting is after a problem surfaces, rather than leading in anticipation of a problem
• In large projects and multi-project programs, key communications and expectations are often missed or misinterpreted

These realities led us to look at a two-phase approach to look at project health/status reporting that goes beyond the typical, cost, schedule, and issue reporting.

The first step is to apply a type of 360° assessment to strategic projects. In this approach, input is collected from key project players — half on the management or customer side and half on the in-house or contracted integration or project delivery side. Weekly input is collected anonymously. Each factor is rated on a simple scale from poor to excellent.

The weekly collection is displayed in a dashboard that allows decision makers to look at trends that anticipate current and emerging issues. The cross section and anonymous nature of inputs removes the bias towards looking successful.

The second phase aligns expectations in order to ensure everyone on the team is on the same page. This step addresses the critical communication of expectations within the project team and between the project team and key stakeholders.

The purpose is not to perfect the expectations between all members of a large team as the number of combinations would become unmanageable. We want to:

• Identify the key relationships (e.g. Sponsor to Project Manager; Project Manager to Technical Lead, Architect, or Process Analyst; etc.)
• Identify areas of misalignment and take corrective action at project initiation, key milestones and in response to issues raised through “Pulse Checks” mentioned above
  1. Coach each stakeholder to develop specific and measurable expectations of others and what they think is expected of them for identified areas of misalignment
  2. Analyze results to identify the largest misalignments
  3. Feedback the results to the Project Stakeholders and develop an action plan to resolve expectation differences

This two phase approach moves project reporting from a rehash of what has happened to a dynamic look at the drivers of project success. It will enable decision makers to anticipate problems and when required, develop a blueprint to full project recovery.

In terms of overall project delivery, project controls and health checks are one part of the project delivery process, which also includes steps required to initiate, plan, execute, and close. Success in all areas requires strong and systematic project management to ensure delivery that meets requirements within budget and on-time. For projects that require a change in behavior beyond product delivery, we strongly believe emphasis needs to be placed on organization change management to assure realization of measureable business value.

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¹ PMI.org

Pick One Platform

If you don’t have time to fully devote to social media upkeep, choose one platform (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram) and do it well.

Planning

Choose how much time you want to devote to social media and include it in your weekly/daily schedule. Pre-write any posts/blogs and proof before sharing (spelling mistakes and grammar errors get called out all the time!) Make sure if you are posting pictures that the picture is cropped to showcase correctly. Great shots of products are only great if the product is visible!

Find Your Voice

If you have the ability to do so personify your business. Decide on a voice that fits your brand and attach your target demographic to it. For instance, if you are selling sneakers, perhaps the voice is that of a runner. If you are promoting a day care perhaps the voice is a grandma that smells like cookies. Have fun with it but really think through and commit. Consistency is incredibly important to develop a solid personification.

Target Audience Digital/Advertising

Take a look at some of the costs of advertising on Facebook. It is REALLY cheap in comparison to other avenues and it hits your target audience! Be aware that this ad needs to be less than 7 words if possible since people will view it scrolling. I would recommend an image and a punchy headline. Also, here is a weird thing…stay away from putting words on a red background. We discovered in our research that people don’t typically read words on red. Decide where your audience will be directed if they click on the add. Would you like them to go to your home page, to the actual item picture, to a lead capture form? You might have to do some testing to find out what works best. Digital add designs are one place that I would recommend consulting with an expert. Paying a little bit for an hour or two to sit down with some one and talk through what really captures people’s attention is never a bad thing.

Have Fun

Social media reaches a mass audience, have fun with it. The more interesting your business is portrayed in the online community the more followers you will. Take selfies of events you attend or places you go and tag people/places/businesses. Share posts or articles that were interesting to you and say why when you post it. Shout out to people that you meet or know publicly on social media, promote others and they will promote you!

Build A Fan Base

This is where it really gets going. If you can, offer contests for your audience and give away prizes to whoever wins. For example, who ever get’s a 100 likes on a picture of your product first will receive a free sample. Get creative with it and reward your followers that are constantly retweeting, sharing, and liking your business. Create some monthly online event that promotes your product or service — Today is donut day send us a pic of your favorite donut! Highlight local events and associate your business with them “Come on out to (event) and visit us!” The list can go on. Pretty much anything you can think of to share with your fans or get them to like and repost is where you will see fantastic results!

ROI

Because social media is so easy to track you will be able to see your return on investment and will quickly understand that spending a couple hours on social media a day will really help generate business!

Social Media Options

Facebook: Facebook allows you to post pictures and long captions. Facebook pages don’t show up in news feeds often. The best ways to get people to share your posts are to ask for people to share your posts and to promote your posts. Promoting doesn’t cost a lot of money. Seriously, it’s not expensive at all and you’ll be seen.

Twitter: Twitter is fast-paced. This platform works well with restaurants and bars especially. The key to Twitter is to not take yourself and your business too seriously. Have fun and tweet back to the people who tweet at your business.

Instagram: Instagram is great for businesses that have goods that can be photographed. Clothing, furniture, food. If it can be photographed, it can be Instagrammed. Make sure your pics are in focus!

LinkedIn: LinkedIn works similarly to Facebook, but is more professionally oriented. Ditch the casual and familiar language for more professional language. LinkedIn is good for B2B businesses and for finding new hires.

Now go be a social human!

The subject of “leadership” is an interesting one and many people have offered their opinions.

My overriding belief is that not everyone is a “born leader.” You can attend classes on leadership and maybe learn the principles, but that doesn’t mean that you can become an effective leader. Or, perhaps more on point, just because a person assumes the mantle of leadership (like the title of president of a start-up), it does not defacto make that individual a leader. Only by actions and not words can someone be considered a leader.

In my opinion, a leader has:

• Such extraordinary confidence in his/her abilities, that subordinating his ego for the benefit of the company isn’t a thought;
• The vision of the future and is able to communicate that vision in all of the others on the team and motivate them to accomplish great things;
• The ability to make sure that important things get done, even if he doesn’t do them directly
• Is driven to see the venture to succeed
• Embraces the team mentality — “we” and “us” and never the “me” or “I” For now, I’ll contrast the traits seen as important to strong leadership with those seen as “fatal flaws” that doom a person as a leader.

In an article, “Decoding leadership: What really matters,” McKinsey & Company highlighted four key attributes that account “for 89% of the variance between strong and weak organizations.”

These are:

• Being an effective problem solver — problem solving is the precursor of decision making. A leader gathers information, analyzes it and then makes a considered decision. Along the way, in my opinion, a leader, especially a self-confident leader, will draw upon the opinions of others and reach a composite decision.
• Operating with a strong results orientation — setting objectives or having a vision on the horizon isn’t enough. A strong leader actually accomplishes milestones that move the organization toward the longer term goal.
• Seeking different perspectives — it is important to enlist the opinions of others. Drawing conclusions based on a composite is not a sign of weakness. Rather is shows confidence and involves others in the decision process. This engenders a strong team orientation and has people “buy-into” the directions being taken.
• Being supportive — leaders consider how others feel. Ignoring those around you diminishes your effectiveness as a leader.

In some ways, it might actually be easier to understand the true characteristics of leadership by highlighting those of a bad leader. A good reference for this is a Forbe’s article from 2012 titled “15 Ways to Identify Bad Leaders.”

1. Leaders who can’t see it probably won’t find it: Leaders without vision will fail. Leaders who lack vision cannot inspire teams, motivate performance, or create sustainable value.
2. When leaders fail to lead themselves: A leader who lacks character or integrity will not endure the test of time. It doesn’t matter how intelligent, affable, persuasive, or savvy a person is, if they are prone to rationalizing unethical behavior based upon current or future needs, they will eventually fall prey to their own undoing.
3. Put-up or shut-up: Nothing smacks of poor leadership like a lack of performance. Nobody is perfect, but leaders who consistently fail are not leaders, no matter how much you wish they were.
4. Beware the know-it-all: The best leaders are acutely aware of how much they don’t know.
5. When there’s a failure to communicate: When leaders are constantly flummoxed by those who don’t seem to get it, there exists both a leadership and communications problem. Show me a leader with poor communication skills and I’ll show you someone who will be short-lived in their position.
6. It’s all about them: If a leader doesn’t understand the concept of “service above self” they will not engender the trust, confidence, and loyalty of those they lead. Any leader is only as good as his or her team’s desire to be led by them. An over abundance of ego, pride, and arrogance are not positive leadership traits. Real leaders take the blame and give the credit – not the other way around. Long story short – if a leader receives a vote of no-confidence from their subordinates…game over.
7. Sing a little Kumbaya: While love and leadership are certainly two words you don’t often hear in the same sentence, I can assure you that rarely does great leadership exist without love being present and practiced.
8. One size fits all leadership style: The best leaders are fluid and flexible in their approach. They understand the power of, and necessity for contextual leadership. “My way or the highway” leadership styles don’t play well in today’s world, will result in a fractured culture, and ultimately a non-productive organization.
9. Lack of focus: Leadership is less about balance and more about priority. The best leaders are ruthless in their pursuit of focus. Those leaders who lack the focus and attention to detail needed to apply leverage and resources in an aggressive and committed fashion will perish.
10. Death by comfort zone: The best organizations beat their competition to the future, and the best leaders understand how to pull the future forward.
11. Not paying attention to the consumer: Leaders not attuned to the needs of the market will fail. As the old saying goes, if you’re not taking care of your customers, someone else will be more than happy to. Successful leaders focus on the consumer experience, which in turn leads to satisfaction and loyalty.
12. Get Invested: Leaders not fully committed to investing in those they lead will fail. The best leaders support their team, build into their team, mentor and coach their team, and they truly care for their team.
13. The “A” word: Real leaders are accountable. They don’t blame others, don’t claim credit for the success of their team, but always accept responsibility for failures that occur on their watch.
14. It’s the culture stupid: The lesson here is that culture matters – forget this and all other efforts with regard to talent initiatives will be dysfunctional, if not altogether lost.
15. Show some chutzpa: Leadership absent courage is a farce. I’m not referring to arrogance or bravado, but real courage. It takes courage to break from the norm, challenge the status quo, seek new opportunities, cut your losses, make the tough decision, listen rather than speak, admit your faults, forgive the faults of others, not allow failure to dampen your spirit, stand for those not capable of standing for themselves, and to remain true to your core values.

That’s 15 characteristics of “faux leadership” which often translate to “toxic” leadership, especially in a start-up environment. I’ve recently disengaged from a situation in which the anointed leader was a habitual “me and I” person and who was incapable of making progress on even the simplest milestones. Truly, leadership means getting stuff done and motivating the team to do it.

With the rapid advance of consumer technology in recent years, customer demand for new technology solutions in the workplace has increased dramatically. For support organizations, this has created new challenges to provide technology related services while maintaining security and providing greater customer service. This problem is magnified for higher education Information Technology (IT) support groups who are struggling to keep up with customer technology demand in an environment where the academic culture is very permissive but resources dedicated to change are limited. Curtis Bonk, Ph.D., Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University, states that educators have an ethical obligation to consider using technology to enable students’ learning. Higher education IT organizations have the same obligation to consider the use and support of technology for enabling both students’ learning and empowering instructors’ use of technology to achieve these outcomes. Providing good customer service while meeting this obligation represents the major challenge to higher education IT support organizations.

Success in Information Technology is typically associated with a monetary goal, either in revenue or savings achieved from the implementation of a technology project, with a new solution that is considered to be implemented on time and under budget, or with a project that has achieved the internal goals of what the IT organization desired. The customer’s input is often overlooked. IT frequently fails to ask:

“What are the benefits to the customer?”
“Did the implementation achieve what our users want?”
“If the new service is implemented, how does this change our relationship to our customers?”

Attention to these customer-centric questions, or the lack thereof, is what promotes either good or bad customer service from the IT organization. Achieving good IT customer service in higher education calls for a fundamental change in mindset toward improved communications and a focus on the people aspect of IT service—regardless of whether it’s the employee or a customer. Everyone should be considered a customer, but it takes time to build this mindset, and it definitely requires team members who have a “Servant’s Heart” approach.

Simultaneously, the organization must continue its focus on understanding new technologies and how they help anticipate and are tailored to customer needs, as well as how these technologies can contribute to the effective attainment of business goals. Being consistently responsive to customer needs via their questions, complaints, and requests determines your relationship with the customer. It is this responsive quality of your service offerings that will either enhance or degrade the relationship with your customer.

In order to achieve a greater customer relationship while providing IT customer service in higher education, our organization has focused on the needs and the care of our customers by:

Embracing a customer-centric approach to providing IT services. This is a shift from the old days of IT being perceived as dictating what services are provided. It places the focus on customer needs and how IT can partner with the business in fulfilling those needs.
Acknowledging the successes and failures of our organization’s efforts. By transparently acknowledging our organization’s strengths and weaknesses, the organization is better positioned to understand our capabilities in providing IT services.
Recognizing within our organization those areas where gaps exist in providing good service and working to improve those areas with measurable and sustained results.
Empowering our customers at every level. Our organization starts by empowering our IT team members through training, decision making, and team member effectiveness. From a higher education perspective, empowering our team members enables our University faculty and staff to instruct without technical issues and to provide a great learning experience for our students, which translates to improving the learning outcomes for our students—empowering them to achieve their educational goals and aspirations.

In summary, exercising greater responsiveness in your communications, acknowledging your organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and recognizing what actions are needed to improve overall service will result in the empowerment of your customers. It is this approach to your customer that will improve your relationship with the customer, resulting in a greater customer service outcome.

The growing amount and accessibility of data can be a significant contributor guiding internal audit toward its True North—or, as sometimes happens, too much data can result in taking internal audit off course when it is not effectively used. Today there are 2.7 zettabytes of data in the digital universe, and by 2020, big data is predicted to be 50 times what it is today.¹ As business operations become more proficient in their use of both structured and unstructured data, analytics are informing decisions across the business in ways never before considered.

For many years, internal audit has focused on using data in limited ways to conduct analytics for fieldwork purposes—commonly known as computer-assisted audit techniques. With advancements in technology, ease of use, and affordability of tools, now more than ever internal audit can focus on building a keen sense of direction to leverage data in a way that provides greater business insights, increases efficiency, enhances monitoring activities, and allows the company to respond better to risks. Leveraging data is not a destination of its own, but rather a mindset shift to integrate data into the audit life cycle—from risk assessment to planning, fieldwork, execution, monitoring, and reporting.

Our survey and interviews revealed that most, if not all, internal audit functions are thinking about how they can better leverage data to be not only more efficient but also far more effective. Most are experimenting with expanding its use, particularly in such areas as fraud management, compliance monitoring, and risk analytics (Figure 1). However, a critical difference between where internal audit functions are today and their True North lies in how data is being used. While 82% of chief audit executives (CAEs) report they leverage data analytics in some specific audits, just 48% use analytics for scoping decisions, and only 43% leverage data to inform their risk assessment. Thus, many still report they have a substantial journey ahead.

Internal audit functions that are evolving in pace with the business are more advanced in their use of data, including wider application across the audit life cycle. For example, risk identification has traditionally been done through a combination of executive meetings and the use of limited financial data. Internal audit functions that are headed toward True North are using data to identify where risks reside in the organization in order to determine where they should focus their efforts. They are also leveraging data not only to focus on where and what could be audited but also to decide whether auditing is needed at all. Ultimately, success with data is predicated on connecting data to insights about the business and the risks it is facing.

CAEs report that obtaining data skills is a top challenge. While 65% of CAEs report they have some data skills on their team, either in-house or through third parties, our interviews revealed a lack of the combined business acumen and data skills. Internal audit functions with sufficient size and scale are reporting the ability to invest in a combination of in-house and third-party resources, while many are turning completely to third parties to gain more immediate access to business-minded data skill sets.

Enhancements in tools have made it easier and more intuitive for business users to access data and gain comfort with how data can be leveraged. By providing a better view of risks, data visualization tools are enabling internal audit functions to absorb information in new and more constructive ways so they can identify and respond to emerging trends faster.

For those functions that are not far along the maturity curve of embedding data analytics into their audit life cycle, we have found that there is a need to work through various roadblocks, create quick wins, and gain momentum. In order to do this, many internal audit functions are still starting with pilot data programs.² These pilots serve as proof of concepts for both stakeholders and those in the internal audit function. Pilots give practitioners the opportunity to work with data, get comfortable with it, and increase their creativity in thinking about how to use it. Sharing early wins with stakeholders will jump-start the momentum needed to drive more creative use of data.

Technology has transformed the way we do almost everything. And yet, all too often, we resign kids to a use-only mode. Teaching students to create, rather than consume—to understand how technology works, not just how to use it—serves to strengthen a host of lifelong skills like logic, problem solving, creativity, and critical thinking. You see that kid playing on his computer? He may be the next Steve Jobs. And that teenage girl building a robot? She may discover a new advancement in biomedical engineering. But those possibilities may become realities only if we are able to help them connect the dots from playing with technology to using it to create something new to real world jobs.

Fortunately, there are a host of programs throughout San Antonio to help them on their way—from maker camps and free coding events to certification programs and boot camps to degree programs. All are outlined in the recently released San Antonio Technology Education Report, which was researched and developed by the 80/20 Foundation. “It’s our education system,” reads the report, “that allows a company to continue hiring talented individuals. The cities that produce high-skilled technology talent at the necessary magnitude for companies rise above the rest in building a vibrant, prosperous community in our modern economy.”

In fact, according to “The Hidden STEM Economy” by the Brookings Institution, “STEM-oriented metropolitan economies perform strongly on a wide range of economic indicators, from innovation to employment. Job growth, employment rates, patenting, wages and exports are all higher in more STEM-based economies.” So what are you waiting for? If you know a student, point them to one of the many fabulous camps, events, or classes. Don’t know a youngster? Then support their education—volunteer or donate to those who are working to build programs to fuel a STEM-based economy right here in our own backyard.

A Seattle company was recently broken into and a stash of old laptops was stolen. Just a typical everyday crime by typical everyday thieves. These laptops weren’t even being used by anyone in the company. The crime turned out to be anything but ordinary when those same thieves (cyber-criminals) used data from the laptops to obtain information and siphon money out of the company via fraudulent payroll transactions. On top of stealing money, they also managed to steal employee identities.

Another small company was hacked by another “company” that shared the same high-rise office building with them. Management only became aware of the theft once they started seeing unusual financial transactions in their bank accounts. Even then, they didn’t know if there was internal embezzlement or external cyber theft. It turned out to be cyber theft. The thief in this case drove a Mercedes and wore a Rolex watch . . . and looked like anyone else walking in and out of their building. Welcome to the age of cybercrime.

You Are Their Favorite Target
One of the biggest issues facing small businesses (SMBs) in the fight against cybercrime is the lack of a cyber-security plan. While 83% lack a formal plan, over 69% lack even an informal one. Half of small business owners believe that cybercrime will never affect them. In fact, small businesses are a cybercriminal’s favorite target! Why? Small businesses are not prepared and they make it easier on criminals.

The result? Cyber-attacks cost SMBs an average of $188,242 each incident, and nearly two-thirds of the businesses affected are out of business within 6 months (2011 Symantec/NCSA Study). A separate study by Verizon showed that over 80% of small business cybercrime victims were due to insufficient network security (wireless and password issues ranked highest). With insecure networks and no formal plan to combat them, we make it easy on the criminals.

How They Attack
The #1 money-generating technique these “bad guys” use is to infect your systems with malware so that whenever you (or your employees) visit a web site and enter a password (Facebook, bank, payroll, etc.) the malware programs harvest that data and send it off to the bad guys to do their evil stuff.

They can get to you through physical office break-ins, “wardriving” (compromising defenseless wireless networks), or e-mail phishing scams and harmful web sites. Cyber-criminals are relentless in their efforts, and no one is immune to their tricks

5 Steps To Protect Your Business

1. Get Educated. Find out the risks and educate your staff.
2. Do A Threat Assessment. Examine your firewall, anti-virus protection and anything connected to your network. What data is sensitive or subject to data-breach laws?
3. Create A Cyber-Security Action Plan. Your plan should include both education and a “fire drill.”
4. Monitor Consistently. Security is never a one-time activity. Monitoring 24/7 is critical.
5. Re-Assess Regularly. New threats emerge all the time and are always changing. You can only win by staying ahead!

The Information Technology (IT) environment at most organizations is one of constant innovation that brings in an influx of new information and data. Managing this, along with maintaining existing processes, requires a sound business strategy. Today, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) at the University of Texas at San Antonio is comprised of approximately 150 full-time employees. This staff consists of typical enterprise teams such as developers, server and network administrators, and other positions vital to the daily operations of an IT department. In the past, however, the culture of OIT was that of a traditional IT shop in that teams struggled to keep up with the day-to-day maintenance and operations.

Traditionally, maintaining existing services, upgrading existing applications, and implementing new business applications, along with other tasks, consumed the majority of our work, leaving employees no opportunity for creative development. Despite these many responsibilities, management still expected them to innovate and craft breakthrough ideas for technology. We realized this workload and structure was inefficient and perhaps even hindered innovative development. We needed a team dedicated to keeping UTSA at the forefront of technology while providing the university with a competitive, strategic advantage. As a result of our research, we discovered the concept of Bimodal IT and decided to implement it at UTSA.

Gartner defines Bimodal IT as “having two modes of IT, each designed to develop and deliver information and technology-intensive services in its own way.” Mode One is traditional, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode Two is non-sequential, emphasizing agility and speed. Simply put, Mode One means slow and cautious implementation, similar to that of marathon runners, while Mode Two is fast, similar to that of sprinters.

We needed a Mode Two team that was innovative and not impeded by daily maintenance and operational tasks. The original idea for the Mode Two team involved moving quickly toward implementing innovative solutions while keeping in mind that everything the team did may not prove successful. We adopted a “fail fast” strategy that freed us from spending months on a project only to discover that it was not going to work for one reason or another.

An essential practice with the Mode Two side provides a “proof of concept” that does not involve building projects to scale for the entire environment. Mode One team members implement and build the project to scale only after the “proof of concept” in Mode Two has proven successful. To move towards a successful implementation phase, it is crucial for the Mode Two team to provide thorough documentation for the Mode One group.

Forming the Two Modes
Ken Pierce, UTSA’s former Chief Information Officer (CIO) for IT and Vice Provost, fully supported the Bimodal IT concept, which helped pave the way for forming the new team. The first move was to begin assembling the new Mode Two team. OIT selected a director from the systems side of IT along with two technical staff members from the server and desktop support sides of the house. The staff members chosen for the team had a history of innovation within the organization. The director reported to the CIO, who was committed to the concept. With the newly formed team, the next step was to geographically separate the two teams by moving them into a separate building. This was done to ensure that the subject matter experts from the Mode Two team were not pulled back into daily operational tasks the Mode One team was handling.

The current role and responsibilities of the director of the newly formed Mode Two team then transferred to an existing director on the Mode One side of the department. The two directors created and agreed upon a transition plan that listed all of the outstanding Mode One projects and tasks. A corresponding graph was developed to indicate a percentage of time that the new Mode Two staff would be working on Mode One and Mode Two projects. As demonstrated in the graph, there was a four-month transition plan, and the Mode Two staff were not completely dedicated to Mode Two work until April 1, 2015. This graph allowed executive management and stakeholders the opportunity to visualize the progress of the transition plan.

During the transitions, two professional developers were contracted and two part-time UTSA students were hired to act as assistant developers and provide help in other areas. We hired one student from the Electrical Engineering graduate program and another from the Computer Science program at UTSA. While neither student had years of development and systems architecture under his or her belt, both had experience developing in C++, Java, and other computer technologies. Since the goal was to find students who demonstrated the aptitude and desire to learn, these two students fit the team perfectly.

Our team was finally assembled with two systems professionals, two developers, and two part-time student workers. It was time to start putting our project list together and build out the planning and documentation processes.

From the very beginning of the team’s formation, we focused the projects on transparency. We built the project list into a SharePoint form that was open to all of campus so that the UTSA community could see what the Mode Two team was working on as well as enter requests for new projects. Anyone could enter a project request, but the team reserved the right to approve or disapprove anything from the list. The main criterion for the acceptance of a project request was that it had to provide a business and/or student benefit.

Instead of consuming large amounts of time building long, elaborate project charters and project plans, a process was created that resulted in a simple hypothesis form requiring three key pieces of information:

• Project summary and problem statement
• High-level requirements
• Business or student benefit

A traditional Mode One trait that does not go away is the process of thorough documentation from inception to completion. Since these projects were eventually handed back over to the Mode One teams, it was imperative that build documents, lessons learned, and other information were delivered to the new team tasked with implementing the project.

Key Lessons Learned
The Bimodal concept includes two separate and fully functioning groups. It is essential that management does not forget the Mode One team or allow the Mode Two group to become known as an “elite team.” Management should remember that the Mode One team requires their attention and support because they are, after all, managing the heart of the IT infrastructure.

The leadership style of the Mode Two team should be democratic and focus on collaboration. Everything should be designed to function within a collaborative environment.

It may take time for the Mode Two team to change their mindset and ways of doing things. Managers can coach and remind them to start thinking in the new mindset. It is important to have the full support of senior management, especially the CIO’s when managers begin working with the Mode One Team.

Both teams (Mode One and Mode Two) offer two different ways of approaching projects and solving problems. When both teams are used properly and to their full potential, the entire IT department can benefit and produce impressive results.

The way you see it, TV is just a passing fad. Like the Hula Hoop, poodle skirts, or air travel. None of these things appeal to you, so you project your distaste onto the world at large and assume TV will fade away. “TV will be long gone soon, so why waste time and money on it?” you say to yourself.

That’s the thing with social media. Folks who aren’t into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., often assume that since they aren’t fans, these new communications channels are either just passing fads or only for the young. Boy, are they wrong to assume that.

Look, I write this as a 50-something guy who grew up loving radio, TV and – gasp! – newspapers printed on actual paper. If time and the unstoppable march of technological progress had stopped 30 or 40 years ago, I wouldn’t have minded. The Internet, Skype, smart phones, Pandora, podcasting, YouTube, Dropbox – these and so many other communications, information and entertainment technologies wouldn’t exist if the calendar still said today was May 18, 1985. People would still be reaching for a printed Yellow Pages book to find a local company. And life would go on anyway.

But the pages of the calendar keep flipping. And over the years, millions upon millions of people in my age range have embraced the new ways of communicating. Don’t make me whip out a string of statistics—you can see this with your own bespectacled eyes—but middle-aged and senior citizens are all over social media. Yes, Instagram skews younger and Facebook skews older. But it’s quite common to see a head full of white hair cocked over an iPhone, with thumbs flailing out a new social post.

Yet not a week goes by that I don’t hear a white haired client or colleague tell me that their customers are older and, therefore, they don’t see a need to engage their organization in social media. “Our customers/members/clients still like doing things the old way, with pen and paper,” they’ll say. Or, “They don’t really use stuff like ‘Tweeter’ so it would be a waste of time for us to set up an account. Our printed newsletter still works just fine.”

It’s hard to know where to begin in responding to those kinds of statements. But let’s take a shot.

First, no one should assume the people they need to reach aren’t social media users. A simple survey of customers/members/prospects/etc. could be a real eye opener on this one. We should also not assume that someone not using social media today will never become a social media maven. Hey, some folks just got their first cell phone within the past year, and I bet the vast majority of them will never give it up.

Second, if the company or organization in question currently revolves around older customers or members, that should be a red flag. (Or perhaps a white flag to match the dominant hair color.) In other words, the long-term viability of the organization may depend on recruiting younger members or customers. Do you think you’re more likely to attract them with an ad in the printed newspaper or with a highly targeted social media campaign? And does your absence from social media automatically lead those younger prospects to conclude that your organization is only for older folks?

I know. Letting go of the old ways is hard. But one way to evolve into the modern era is to do just that—evolve. Gradually. Take a few baby steps to creating your organization’s social media presence and get comfortable with the basics of how it all works. Start a couple of accounts. Facebook and Twitter are easy to use, and you’ll very quickly pick up on some great tools, like hashtags and sharing, for connecting with your audience.

Remember, effective marketing isn’t about what you like. It’s about what your customers like, where they are, and how they want to interact with you. Hint: More and more of them—of all ages—are on social media. You need to be there, too.

Recently we had a technology group meeting regarding backup and disaster recovery. During the course of the presentation, the topic generated many points of discussion regarding the best ways to perform backups and what solutions seemed to work the best in the personal experience of those in attendance. Suffice it to say, the opinions were quite varied. This made me think: if there were that many different opinions on the topic among technology professionals, then it surely must be confusing for the everyday consumer or IT professional who has not had a lot of experience in this segment of the IT industry! So, I thought I’d try to shed some light on some of the types of solutions that are available and what users may expect from them.

The types of backup solutions that are typically seen in small businesses are:

• Portable (USB) hard drives – These are typically hooked up to a server or main PC, and files are backed up to the portable drives either automatically via software or manually by a key person in the office or the IT professional. These portable drives typically are set up to save a certain number of backups onto each drive before the oldest backups are overwritten with the newest ones. Multiple portable drives can also be used to create a rotation to extend the number of backup sets that are kept and to allow drives to be taken offsite in the event of a catastrophe.
• Cloud backups – These are a category in and of themselves, and there are countless solutions available. Some of the most common solutions are Carbonite, Mozy, and Crashplan. These backups are typically set to run on a daily basis in an automated fashion. Some offer unlimited data storage, and others have data limits set by the package that is being paid for on a monthly basis. These online backup solutions also typically have retention period settings that determine how many days, weeks, or months the data sets are backed up for (i.e., how far you can go back and recover data).
• BDR (Backup & Disaster Recovery) Devices – These devices are in most situations the equivalent of having a backup server in your office. They provide both onsite backup and cloud backup as well. The backups performed on these devices are typically snapshots of your in-house server that are stored both locally and in multiple data centers in different locations to provide redundant protection from catastrophes by geographically locating your data in multiple secure locations. This solution can also give you the ability to bring up a virtual instance of your server in your cloud environment if there is damage to your physical property that houses your server, or the ability to bring up a virtual instance of your server on the local appliance in your physical building in the event that your server or servers fail to provide time to fix whatever the issue might be while minimizing downtime.

The above solutions are listed in the order of how well they generally work as well as the amounts they typically cost on an ongoing basis.

Some observations I have made over the years that people may not be aware of until they have had a situation where they have a need to restore data or recover from a disaster are as follows:

• Even if you are using a cloud backup solution, you should always still also have some form of onsite backup solution. The reason for this, depending on the amount of data you are backing up to the cloud, is that even with a modern day high speed Internet connection, you could be talking about hours or days to download all of your data from the cloud backup provider, versus restoring much more quickly from a local backup. Some cloud backup companies will overnight you a hard drive (referred to as seeding) with your data on it for a fee, but this still involves a lot more downtime as compared to just restoring from the local backup and reserving the cloud backup for a situation where your local backup has failed or you have a disaster you are dealing with at your building site.
• A backup is only as good as your last restore. Commonly, backups are being performed and emails or status reports are sent out saying that backups are being completed successfully. However, without doing a test restore of some of the files being backed up, there is no guarantee that you could actually restore your files (whether from a cloud backup or onsite).
• Dropbox is not a backup solution. Dropbox is a good solution to synchronize files between multiple computers, devices, and other people, but it is not a backup solution. There is revision history where you can go back and bring back old versions of files, but to restore your entire data set or entire folders all at once from dropbox is not possible with the consumer version of dropbox (which is what most people use). Only the business version of dropbox allows for full folder restores. That being said, it is still recommended to perform your own backups of your dropbox or other file synchronization software data.
• What type of backup are we running? If you are like a lot of companies, then you likely could still just be performing file level backups. The issue with only performing file level backups and not a “bare metal” restore type backup is that if your server crashes and you have to perform a restore from a file level backup, the server will typically have to be rebuilt from scratch before the backed up data can be restored to it. This is very time consuming and contributes to a lot of downtime versus having a “bare metal” restore backup solution, which is like taking a snapshot of your server so that it can be restored from absolutely nothing in a much faster manner.

The moral of the story is that there are a lot of backup solutions out there with different functionalities. It is best to know what solutions are out there, what your current backup solution is, and what kind of downtime you are looking at in the event of hardware failure or disaster.

If you would like a review of your current backup solution setup or to talk more in-depth about the available options, feel free to contact me.