Sten Vesterli's Blog

Making IT Live up to its Promise

People and Material

IT Leadership, Technology That Fits, ,

“In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.” Napoleon said that in 1808, and it applies equally in Ukraine today.

It also applies in other human endeavors. You can see organizations performing well with antiquated IT systems, and organizations making a mess of their customer service even though they have the latest and greatest cloud services. Simply rolling out new technology without considering people, organization, and processes will not improve your organization.

Make a Useful Contribution

Spiritual Programmer

There are good and bad ways to contribute. When watching what is happening in Ukraine, we of course want to help. IT professionals with cybersecurity skills can contribute directly. For the rest of us, the right way to contribute is with money.

Don’t contribute a used overcoat or an old phone. Charities are drowning in these. Give money to a reputable organization like the International Red Cross. Money can be used for whatever is necessary, and the brave people on the ground know if the highest need is for food, medicine, shelter, or transportation. Make a contribution, but make it a useful one.

Do People Believe You?

IT Leadership

How is your credibility balance? Will your employees, partners, and customers believe you in a crisis?

The information war accompanying the kinetic war has been resoundingly won by Ukraine. Many of the stories coming out of the conflict zone are false, but Ukrainian stories are given the benefit of the doubt while Russian stories are immediately disbelieved.

Honest communication adds to your credibility balance. Trying to sweep your failures under the carpet and hitting your critics with spurious DMCA takedowns and questionable lawsuits detracts from it. If you are in a credibility deficit when the next crisis hits, it will become orders of magnitude worse.

Don’t Ask Half Questions

IT Leadership, ,

Asking half questions leads to dangerous outcomes. We just saw an example when irresponsible Reuters pollsters looking for a scoop simply asked Americans “should NATO establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.” They got a resounding 74% approval.

Another pollster asked the question with the qualifier “knowing that this will lead to direct war with Russia” and support dropped to 34%.

A complete question asks “are you willing to accept this downside to gain this upside?” Organizations get an idea, focus on the upside, take a cursory glance at the downside, and then take erroneous or even disastrous decisions. Who has the job of ensuring the downside is examined as well as the upside? You might need someone external to provide this.

There is Always an Alternative

IT Leadership, Technology That Fits

There is always an alternative. Not looking for it is either intellectual laziness or willful manipulation. Margeret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK for a decade, was known among friends and enemies alike as “TINA” due to her usual insistence that “There Is No Alternative.”

As an IT leader, you are bombarded with requests to make specific technical decisions. Many of these are attempts to railroad you into choosing a technology that the team would like to play with and put on their CVs. When presented with a single option, ask for more. When one of the options is the obvious slam dunk, examine what has been left out of the presentation of the others. Binary selections are common in computer programming. In the real world, there are always many choices.

Winter is Over. Get Outside

Spiritual Programmer, ,

The calendar tells us winter is over. If you have been hibernating, now is the time to get out of your cave.

Fresh air, daylight, and exercise are crucial elements of your physical and mental well-being. You have to get outside. No matter how fast you pedal on your Peloton bike, it is not enough. Your body needs to see daylight and breath fresh air. Make an appointment with yourself on your calendar to take a walk outside tomorrow.

Are you Monitoring Important Systems?

IT Leadership, ,

New York is replacing their payphones with LinkNYC access points providing free calls, 911 calls, free WiFi, charging, and more. You would think such a system would warrant professional monitoring. Nevertheless, some of these devices just show a blue screen of error messages followed by a Linux login prompt.

  • Monitoring of crucial systems must include an automated mitigation action and reporting to a 24/7 operations center.
  • Monitoring of important systems needs immediate alerting to staff on call.
  • Monitoring of normal systems only needs to log a trouble ticket to be addressed by regular staff during working hours.
  • Low-priority systems do not need active monitoring.

It seems these kiosks are not as important to the company running the system as they were to the Mayor promising them.

Does every system on your central system list have a monitoring priority? When was the last time you checked with the person with the technical responsibility what monitoring is in place?

Compliment Someone

Spiritual Programmer, ,

Did you compliment anyone today? I’m not talking about your colleagues’ looks – don’t enter that minefield. But remember to appreciate your co-workers and team members when they do good work.

Complimenting other people is an under-utilized superpower. It costs nothing and makes both you and the receiver feel better. Today is #WorldComplimentDay. Be part of the movement 😉

Fancy or Usable?

IT Leadership, Technology That Fits,

Do you want something that works or something that looks fancy? Sometimes, these two objectives come into conflict. Too often, the IT professionals can’t imagine a solution that does not involve touchscreens and mobile apps.

I’m staying in an upscale hotel in New York this week, and the control panel for heating and lighting is definitely old-school. But it works. And it can be understood and operated by every age group likely to frequent the hotel.

Meanwhile, back in Denmark, we are currently rolling out a new central authentication system. You will have to figure it out in order to do online banking or access public services. It was designed by tech-savvy young people and is very fancy. Too bad it has left hundreds of thousands of non-computer-literate citizens desperately calling the understaffed phone helpline.

Are you sure the solutions you roll out have been tested by the entire target audience?