When the economy is good and the company is doing well, the head of the I.T. department wouldn’t have problems convincing the decision makers to approve of the budget requested. But during tough times, these proposals are usually shelved and the I.T. department are working against limited budget. When this happens, the IT head should find ways to motivate their people, remain productive and deliver results despite not opening their pockets.

The following items are things that the IT head can do to produce results:

1. Enhancement of applications – do you still remember the time when you were pressed for the deadline and developers were pushing codes to make it work regardless of standards, design etc. These items are called workarounds and when you don’t have a major release, work on these weak codes and improve on them.

2. Revisit standards – when your team is packed with deliverables and major releases, your team sometimes go into a repetitive process and standards are no longer visited or improved upon. Looking back at the standards you have and the things you can improve on it based on previous releases could do you well in the future.

3. Get those trainings – when I was not yet deployed to a project I attended all the trainings the company offered but when deployment came and major release is on its way, I sometimes find myself not able to attend training for the rest of the year. Use your time and plan on getting those trainings during downtime.

4. Network, network – Get your people to network around the company, create a team that would look into evaluating processes. During these time IT resources can move around the company networking to various business processes and see where improvements can be brought on.

5. Move around roles – since you are not likely to be packed on deliverables, moving roles around the IT resources would help build your business continuity plan as resources would be multi-skilled.

The items above are things that IT department usually neglect when budget is good and projects drain up the time and resources of everyone in the team. During downtime, a lot of things can be done to bring productivity and improve your team.

Image from here.

Post from: EveryJoe

5 Things IT department can do During Tough Times

The IT Confessional

I know, you’re all surprised and excited. I know I am. The second piece to this post is what you’re all want to hear. Who won the contest?

The winner of this particular contest is Kevin Potter for his awesome, “Is that a big or little zero?” story! I will be contacting Kevin (or better yet, if he wants to email me at jesse.middleton at b5media dot com) to get him his KB.

I want to thank everyone who posted and emailed in their stories, they were a great read and many of them will be used to form some, hopefully, entertaining posts at That Damn PC.

Keep checking back for me and sending your stories in.

Post from: EveryJoe

Two great pieces of news!

Many of the responses that nonits (non-IT folk) receive from IT start with a, “Have you checked the amount of free RAM on your computer?” or, “What processes were running when this occurred?” My guess is that if you knew the answers to these questions, you wouldn’t be calling technical support. The big, bad IT guy has to take a step back and realize that he’s paid to do his job because that’s what he knows how to do. I’m sure that he wouldn’t like it if accounting asked why the debits and credits did not foot properly (and yes, that is a real term in accounting as my girlfriend just informed me).

Remember, not everyone is an IT genius. Some need a guiding hand, one who will understand that RAM, BIOS and PCI are just letters to others, not technical pieces of a computer system.

Post from: EveryJoe

Keeping it simple all the time

ReadBurner is a site that deals with RSS feeds. RSS is a great way of keeping up-to-date on almost any website. Any website that’s worth their weight in hosting dollars has an RSS feed to follow. The guys at ReadBurner try to keep the news and information fresh by pulling in RSS feeds from people that share their most loved articles in Google Reader and Netvibes. This means that you can always find out what your friends (all right, you might not even know or like them) or enemies are reading and keeping up with today.

Technorati on the other hand scours the interwebs for the latest and greatest blog posts. They rank both the posts and the blogs that they were posted on to help you find out who is an “authority” in the area that you want to know more about. Different from ReadBurner, they do not limit where they get their information from. They simply wait for people to either ping them or they receive content from links of other blogs. Using a patented (maybe?) system, they keep track of what’s hot and what’s not.

Alltop has taken an even different approach from the first two that I’ve talked about. They take what they consider the most important and special (that apparently includes yours truly) blogs or RSS feeds on the internet and list them in a very simple, easy to browse form. From art to geekery, they have almost any category of information that you might be looking for. In addition to listing the information out, Alltop allows any user to modify what they see on the screen. Don’t want to see that blog on motherhood and sex, just click the little X and it’s gone (at least until you clear your cookies).

It doesn’t matter what way you choose to get your information, just choose to get it. Using the services listed above or any other methods, keep up to date on the news that matters. It will make your life and work that much easier.

P.S. – Come find us and more on Alltop at http://humor.alltop.com or http://oddities.alltop.com. Are they trying to call us odd?

Post from: EveryJoe

Information is the key to success

Clair, over at New Linux User, wrote a post about the wrong way to go about showing people what Linux can do. And I agree with her completely. The wrong way of showing someone why they should switch is to force it down their throats — and besides, this leads me to my first point (or is it second) that there is a reason that you need to force it down their throats. I can not imagine how difficult life would be if an IT guy had to explain why the kernel needs to be recompiled or why they only make that software for the PC (which everyone else uses). This would be a headache and a half.

On the other hand, learning about new technology is a great thing. We would still be in the dark, using the dirty holes in the ground to relieve ourselves and be trying to put squares onto axles to get the car going without learning about and embracing new technology. Linux has a great deal to offer both the personal and commercial front but they may not be there yet — or the users may not be there to accept it yet.

Either way, forcing new ideas and programs on people can only cause them to push back. It’s like and argument between a child and his mother about how much he wants the brand new Power Ranger toy (are they still around?). The more the parent pushes back, the more the child fights. Give it a rest, they will come around.

Post from: EveryJoe

I hate Linux, give me Winblows

Check out the blog post at SECURE-ID’s blog below.

Image Courtesy Of: http://securid.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/new-way-to-store-passwords/

Post from: EveryJoe

This is not the way to save your passwords

It’s never easy to do but its a necessary evil. Sometimes you have to open up and tell the people what’s going on. This is something that Twitter has learned recently. With all of their downtime and problems, they have found that simply notifying their users that something is wrong makes everyone feel a bit more comfortable that their favorite micro blogging service will be around.

The IT folk out there could really learn from this. Inform, don’t shelter.

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004566.html

Post from: EveryJoe

Let the user in on your little secrets

If something does break and there are error messages that come up, WRITE THEM DOWN. I can’t stress this enough, those error messages appear for a reason and usually indicate the problem. If you can’t duplicate the issue then it’s not an issue anymore.

To explain this a little clearer, lets break this apart into easier to digest chunks.

1. When an error message pops up on the screen, it means there is a problem. No, the computer does not spit them out for no apparent reason and no they are not there to amuse and excite (although many of them are quite amusing.
2. Write them down should be a no brainer but so many people click OK without even thinking or reading what the message said. As in the first step above, these messages pop up for a reason. Make sure you keep a copy of them (a screen shot would be best) in a form that someone else will be able to understand. Read: Write out the full error, not just “Microsoft Word said error.”
3. Finally, if you can’t reproduce it, it’s not an issue anymore is not always true. Many times issues that can’t be reproduced are not gone, they are just sleeping. Think of it like when your dog finally takes a break from chewing up your couch. It’s not that he won’t chew anymore, it’s that he’s too tired to eat another cushion. But take heed, follow steps one and two so that you will save your cushions and your couch.

To many people ignore the warnings that are staring them in the face. If your computer starts to act up, spits out funny messages or down right BSODs, stop and open a ticket, call your nearest nerd-tech guy or simply go out for a smoke break. You’ll thank me later, I can guarantee it.

Post from: EveryJoe

For the love of all that is helpful, write it down

First, a question (or two) — What is the worst situation that you have experienced while dealing with an IT department? What is the worst situation that you have experienced while working in an IT department? Now as you can see, I want your stories from both sides. I believe in what my father used to say, “I don’t pick favorites between you and your brother. I dislike both of you equally.” So please, leave a comment below and I promise, I’ll read it.

Now, on to the story. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a wonderful coworker ask me:

How do I fix my monitor?

I started to rattle off a canned answer before I realized that they had not told me any information about what the issue was. When I pressed them for more information, they had no idea of how to respond. As we went back and forth with questions like, “Is the monitor on? Is it dim? Does it have lines across it?” I came to realize that this issue stems from a much larger problem — We in IT don’t have all the answers. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true. This is especially true when we don’t have all the information.

The reason I’m telling you this is that most of the time when a problem arises relating to a computer, people grab the closest tech-savvy person and ask them to fix it. This does not work. People are trained in different aspects of IT. If you were an accountant, you probably wouldn’t want me running to you each time I was short on cash. Why? Because you’re not a loan shark. Sure you deal in money but that doesn’t make you qualified nor interested in what it is I have to say. The same rings true in IT. A desktop support guy (or gal) is probably trained in desktop computer issues. This doesn’t include servers, networks, car engines or your blender. So please, be kind to your IT guy and give them the information that they need so they can either solve your issue or point you in the right direction.

By the way, in case you were wondering — This user had unplugged the VGA cable from their computer while cleaning. They didn’t think it did anything so they coiled it up, nice and neat, and taped it to the back of the monitor.

Post from: EveryJoe

A new way of thinking