Sten Vesterli's Blog

Making IT Live up to its Promise

Focus on the Mission

IT Leadership, ,

Do you have a hard time finding the IT talent you are looking for? Spare a thought for the recruitment officers at the CIA. With an image that today is more waterboarding than James Bond, their approval rating among millennials is at an all-time low. Even though they have started running video ads, are on Instagram and post jobs on Linked, they have a hard time recruiting the talent they need.

As the CIO, you can’t do much for the general image of your organization in the public eye, but you can make sure you are communicating in a language and on a platform where your prospective employees are. It is hard and expensive to buy the best talent with compensation alone, so you need to explain how working for you will allow IT professionals to make a difference.

That’s why your job ads should have one thing in common with the CIA: Focus on the mission.

Is Estimation Bullshit?

IT Leadership,

“Estimation is bullshit.” David Heinemeier Hansson (of Ruby on Rails fame) doesn’t mince words. He takes pride in being controversial, and some of his advice is useless or downright dangerous for most organizations. But his point of using budgets instead of estimates is solid.

The reason is it forces everyone to think in terms of business outcomes instead of cost. Instead of asking the impossible “how long will this take” question, you start by determining what a certain feature is worth. If it is worth $200K, you might be willing to spend $50K on trying to build it. If your team hasn’t been able to build the feature after they’ve spent the budget, you kill that project and try something else.

I encourage you to read Wojtek Borowicz’ interview with David Heinemeier Hansson.

If you are involved in the day-to-day running of IT development as a program manager, architect, project leader, or scrum master, I encourage you to read the whole “Shape Up” book. It’s available for free online.

Who Gets to be in the Office?

IT Leadership,

What happens if more people want to be in the office than can safely be accommodated? With coronavirus distancing rules, you can use less of your space. As employees get work-at-home jitters and want to come in to the office to get away from the kids and congregate at the coffee machine,  you might run out of space.

A New York startup, faced with some of the most expensive office space in the world, had this problem. There are many considerations to balance: Do teams need to work together? Do you want people from different parts of the company to meet? Do you need to give everyone equal visibility in the office?

They decided to build an AI-based algorithm to select who gets one of their coveted office spots. How do you decide who gets to be in the office? That is a leadership decision and not something that should be left to chance.

Employee Activism

IT Leadership

Some companies have gotten tired of employee activism. Coinbase has just told its employees to shut up or ship out, and 60 employees have taken the severance package offered and left the company.

That’s an aggressive counter to the public complaints from employees at some high-profile tech companies. They have been criticizing projects and customers and even staging (virtual) walkouts.

IT employees are looking at the way their colleagues at Amazon and Facebook are making their voices heard. Do you have a policy for what your employees can and cannot say? Do you allow political discussions on the #random channel on Slack? You need a policy.

Where you Find Innovation

IT Leadership, ,

IBM is splitting, placing the boring parts where it actually runs people’s business in a new company and keeping all the buzzwords in the company that will still be called IBM. Meanwhile, Oracle is trying to regain its mojo by buying a cool video app used by teenagers. Neither is likely to work.

You should not look to large companies for innovation. If they have survived and grown for decades, they are likely to have an unparalleled ability to execute, and it makes sense to tap them for running the steady part of your business. But innovation has to come from small, new organizations that have not assimilated a big-corporation culture. Running innovation centers inside the organization is hard – getting innovation from small outside companies is much easier.