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Choose the higher bar.

We are wrapping up the big upgrade project of the summer. Documentation is being written, and procedures for maintenance are being updated. Throughout the course of the project, our biggest challenge was getting that 100% allocation of staff for the work. Sure we had a project team of three people. However, those three people were still responsible for other projects and daily duties. My best estimate is that we had 60-70% from each of the three people. This still led to inefficiency in the project due to time lost for multitasking. There are numerous studies (professional and otherwise) about how multitasking is not actually working the way we thought it did. (Here, here, here, and here for starters)

The project was for the most part successful. We jumped forward 4 versions on one of our applications and three on the other. For the first time, a technical project in TNS was designed and implemented despite the silos of Network Planning & Integration, Transmission Services Group, and Network Services Group. This change in process was unofficial, but to the credit of management, they did leave us alone to do what we needed to do.

We are now faced with a new problem. That problem is that we have created three different specialists who among them cumulatively hold all the institutional knowledge. This post by Johanna Rothman sums up the problem with specialists. So vacations, sick time, other commitments, or departure from the organization would be a terrible cost to the University. How do we solve this new problem?

1. We start a new project for documentation specifically and then assign different people as the primary resources.
2. We silence arm chair quarterbacks who would rather complain than do the work. Give them the tasks in #1 to avoid this -->.
3. We assess our goals and requirements critically to make sure they haven't changed, then write them down again as commitments. Now we go and do what is written down.
4. We then empower our staff to make changes as necessary to accomplish the goals. Avoiding management debt requires employees acting without constant supervision or fear of retribution.

Does your team face similar issues? How do you deal with it? Can you deal with it?

The culture of "No"
Why should we put up with it?
You can make this change!

It's been a long time since I wrote something longer than a haiku on this blog, but yesterday I attended a seminar in Pittsburgh hosted by two vendors that have had long-standing relationships with Penn State. These vendors for completeness are Cisco and Verizon. Obviously I am looking into phone stuff again. Spending the day in a room with people who run businesses on budgets once again sparked my thoughts.

Every day that I come to work, I spend a large part of my day trying to figure out what is best for the University. I usually interpret what is best as how can I reduce the costs of running the University. I consider it my personal mission to figure out how to save Penn State money. I do not believe that being the most expensive public University is a badge of honor. Interestingly enough, I work with a lot of people who feel the same way, but like me have trouble figuring out where to begin to change the ways things have always been.

One thing we are good at in higher-ed is writing and re-writing and refining Mission and Vision statements. I only bothered reading one of these statements. It is Penn State's mission and specifically it lists our three responsibilities--Teaching, Research, and Service. (Go ahead and read it, I'll wait, and it's relatively short.) We are expensive because we have too many people doing the same thing all across the University system. I am not talking about cold-hearted layoffs, but instead making more efficient use of the people and money that are already here. As an IT professional I will confine my commentary to the areas that I know something about. Let's talk about technology.

Historically, telephony services had to be managed at each physical geographic location because that is how Ma Bell connected you. In 2009, voice, video, and data can and should be packets on the same wire(network). Security is available, and the complexity can be managed with proper research, design, training and management. Why then do the 24 commonwealth locations not pool telephony resources and work together for Penn State? This week, TNS which is part of Central IT at Penn State turned on a new data path for commodity Internet services. We are now using both 3Rox in Pittsburgh, and MAGPI in Philadelphia as our links. If we make those IP data networks redundant, then we can do the same thing with our other communication services.

Why do our over-burdened and under-funded campuses have to pay their own way and negotiate their own contracts? Why aren't we making our voice services as University services rather than campus-specific services? The only answer that I seem to get to these questions is "We've always done it that way, and each campus has its own budget for that." Well Office Barbrady, I would like to call shenanigans on that way of thinking. The world changes, and change is hard. However, if we are not changing, then we may as well not exist. Everything worthwhile that I have ever done in my life has been uncomfortable. Off the top of my head here's a partial list.

• Putting myself through college
• Getting married
• Having my first child
• Having my second child
• Taking any new job in my career

Now, I know what you may be thinking. "Well, Mr. Smart E. Pants, tell me how you would do it then if you are so smart." So here is my answer. We just do it. Instead of spending 4 years arguing about the virtues of doing it. Let's do a business analysis of inter-site communications. Let's put a price tag on it. Let's create a requirements list, and most importantly, let's put our silos aside and stop worrying about whose budget this project has to come out of. Let's instead focus on the business of why we are here--Teaching, Research, and Service. My job is to give you the tools that you need to deliver services to the students of Penn State and the people of Pennsylvania.

Why shouldn't President Spanier have on demand video conferencing capabilities in his office to communicate with the Dean's, campus chancellor's, or his peers at other universities? Not every question requires a 30 minute commute across campus for a 2 hour meeting. Now take the next step, and ask, "Why shouldn't our students, faculty, and staff all have the same tools?", because if we can deliver a service to one person, we can scale it to the rest. My challenge to anyone reading this post, is that you should be asking, "Why", and not take, "No" for an answer. If you are a manager or director reading this post, then you should be encouraging this change.

The alternative to more efficient services is working ourselves out of a job, because someday, Penn State may be too expensive for our students. If the students stop coming to Penn State, how much of a University will we have then?

**Empty Library 2 Photo by svenwerk

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