Soft Side of IT

I saw this web surfing Cookie Monster comic strip from a Gizmodo post a while back and I still giggle every time I see it. I kept imagining cookie monster thinking: “What do you mean delete cookies? “

Another classic example is the any key from 20 years ago:
“Press ANY Key” … “Where is the ANY key?“.

So many times, when we communicate what is clear to us, can be confusing to others.

That’s not what I meant
One of clearest realization of this was when a friend of mine was contemplating on a choice. As a guy who was studying computer science, I talked about trees as in decision trees. When she listened, she imagined walking towards 2 trees in a split path & picking which to go towards.

And I clicked, realizing she has no idea what I was talking, but listened as much as she could understand.

Take away
Next time, when you want to explain anything, take a conservative assumption on what you think they know & start from there.

Make sure you are communicating to their understanding, not just yours.

I am sitting in a local Starbucks and the coffee table has been wobbling as I’m typing this. The lure of fixing the stupid table was too strong for me to ignore, then I realized it’s ITs nature to fix things.

Here what I did:
Wobbling table (Problem) 
-> I just slide the table with a folded newspaper (Fixed)
-> The paper is ticking out on the pathway (Problem)
-> Rotate the wobble leg of the table towards the wall (Fixed)
-> The metal leg & the floor is making loud annoying sound when rotating (Problem)
-> May be it might be better use an extra coffee lid (Alternative)
-> Lift up the slightly heavy table with rotate (Fixed)
-> Check if its still wobble? (Test)
-> Nope, good … What am I going to write? (Problem)
…

If you multiple that by a ten & all done in your mind; then you would know how an usual developer think when given a bug.

Developers mind spins 100 mph to find solutions & bugs, that’s why IT are very solution oriented & our nature to fix things.

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/Home/News.asp?id=42663

“There is no such thing as an ‘IT project.’ There are only business projects with an IT component“.

This is one of my favorite insight was this article was the first point out of the 20. My interpretation is any IT initiative has a business reason that drives & pays it. If the business reason can’t fund the project, then it’s a No-Go.

Reasons, not excuse
Business reason is driven by value & ROI (retun on investment) from a problem that needs solving, while excuse is solution driven & the explaination is an after-though.

A common example now-a-days installing is Vista & MS Office 2007:
Vista: Vista is the latest version of windows that has improved their interface to be smoother, this is a excuse since the value of improvement can’t be found. There is almost no business reason to switch Vista when XP is perfectly fine to use.

MS Office 2007: Excel always had a limit of 65536 rows & many report/data exceeds that limit. This causes a lot of report generation issues for standards. 2007 has taken out the limit & many are upgrade for this functionality.

People know the difference between a business excuse & a business reason. So next time when a No is giving, make sure it’s business sound & it’s presented as solving a existing pain/problem … It’s the basic requirement.

This blog talks about soft sides of Information Technology.

The Soft Side is:
- Day-to-day technology use
- People side
- Processes in using, designing, customizing & maintaining business systems
- Any technology implosion

The bulk of my career revolves around IT. Even though the deep end of IT is code, many forget the reason for the code is helping business & people.  So I want to share end of the different perspective involved in IT, their challenges & the lessons learned.

Enjoy!