InformationWeek

Dear Herb:
I am 25 years old and hoping to change my career in a year. The administrative jobs I held since graduating from college three years ago were either uninteresting, low paying, or had no potential. I have an interest in computers and would like to develop it further as a career.

While taking courses to improve my computer skills in programming, how do I seek opportunities to express my skills? How can I convince employers that I can perform as well as others who have experience in the IT field?

Thanks,

Stuck at A Dead End Job

Dear Stuck:
You are making a good start by taking courses to improve you knowledge of computer technology. Obviously, you want to make sure that the school at which you are enrolled has a good reputation and that you make good grades while attending it. As you work hard to build your knowledge, develop a portfolio of accomplishments that you can show to a prospective employer. In your portfolio would be the programs that you have written, the web sites that you have developed, and so forth. Your objective will be to have examples of quality work so that you will be seen as a very desirable addition to a professional staff.

Don't forget that your instructors can help you. Whether they are full time faculty or adjunct professors with another position, they may know people in the industry who can provide good tips and exposure to you. Sometimes, your part-time faculty members may even have jobs available in their own places of employment.

Don't forget that employers are looking for dedicated, competent people who are not afraid of hard work and who want to achieve success for themselves and the companies for whom they work.

Good luck.

Dear Herb:
This letter is not in response to any particular column of yours. However, I have read many of them and value your insight. Perhaps you can guide me.

I am the IS Director at a small/midsize manufacturing company with three sites, $25 million in sales and 500 employees. I was brought on six years ago to manage the then "Engineering LAN".

Our LAN now encompasses all sites via frame relay; we have direct Internet connection through T1, and voice over frame to all sites. Rolling out an e-commerce site for service and parts is due next week. I am quite happy with the progress. However, having accomplished this, I find myself with a sense of drifting. I am not a CIO (we do not have such a position). I report directly to our CEO, who is very happy with my efforts and supports me 100 percent.

For one thing, I am the only full-time dedicated IS/IT person in our company. I have one other person who does some network management work on a part-time basis from another department. I handle technical installs, support, management and setting IS goals and selling them to executive management.

I have this feeling that I need to staff up, but frankly I have no clue how to evaluate how much IS staff a company our size should have.

I love what I do, but I am starting to burn out. I'd rather be proactive then continue to drift. How does one evaluate the necessary level of IS/IT support staff?

Thanks,

Tom

Dear Tom:
There are a couple of ways to evaluate whether you need to staff up in your organization. The first way is to do a thorough (and usually expensive) study in which you hire a consulting firm that evaluates your IT and business plans and then compares you to other companies in your industry. The conclusion of the study will be a glossy presentation to your CEO detailing the missed opportunities that have befallen your corporation and a strategic IT plan to remedy this deficiency. You will note that part of the plan will include hiring the consulting firm for another engagement to assist you in implementing said IT strategic plan.

I don't like this approach.

Too often (but not always) hiring an outside consulting firm puts you at the mercy of people who potentially have a lot to gain by your following a particular path. Further, it is unfortunately true that the quality of the talent that you get on such an assignment can be problematic. Please note, there are a lot of good firms out there, and a tremendous number of dedicated and knowledgeable consultants, but unless you have the time to pay strict attention to what they are doing, you have no good way of ascertaining the quality of what you are getting.

From the details of your letter, I wouldn't be surprised that the major reason for your concern about burnout and drifting is that you are overworking yourself. Since you have been in the job for six years with only part-time assistance from another person, how can you possibly take any time off without worrying that the place will crater? How can you possibly have the time to consider what your corporation needs in the future?

Let me suggest that if my assumptions are correct, that you start to take some corrective actions. First of all, congratulate yourself on having done a good job for six years. Things are working and you have the confidence of your boss. Your accomplishments and the support of the CEO are more important than the title (but not necessarily the salary) of the job you hold.

Next, recognize that if you think that you are burning yourself out, then is no question that you need to hire an assistant to help you. Quite simply, you don't need to go through a formal study of IT support levels to ascertain that fact. Have a frank talk with your CEO and explain that you are overworked and are starting to worry that you are not devoting enough time to planning the future of the IT function within the company. With his or her support, start to interview for a person to lighten your load.

Now comes the hard part. It is unlikely with your workload that you have built the complete skill set needed to help your company face the challenges of the future. Increase your reading of industry periodicals such as InformationWeek. Find out if there are professional organizations such as the Society for Information Management that have a local chapter in your area. Start to network with your peers at companies in the area so that you can share ideas and experiences with them. They will provide invaluable insight to you - and you will be of great help to them with the knowledge that you have gained in your job. The result will be that you will feel a lot better and your company will benefit.

Dear Mr. Lovelace:
How, from the start, can you tell a good project from a bad project? Here at the medical center, we are strongly considering replacing a significant number of our "dumb" terminals with "windows terminals" giving the user additional functionality, access to the www, e-mail, etc., as well as maintaining access to the mainframe via a terminal emulator.

Some of these people have been using character based dumb terminals for 20 years, and now we are going to put a mouse on the desk. It is easy for us computer cable folks in the IS staff to say "no problem"...but the nurses on the floor could easily start screaming about the changes.

Thanks,

James

Dear James:
Bad projects come in several flavors. A project can be a bad one because its likelihood of successful implementation is exceedingly small. There have been many articles written about this type of animal. The Harvard Business Review, for example, evidently gets great pleasure from publishing such papers because it seems that once or twice a year there is a learned discourse published in it on the topic. In any case, if you want to see a good explanation of the subject, Professor Warren McFarlan wrote a seminal paper in HBR a goodly number of years ago on the risk factors in project implementation that I still think is one of the best. Basically, he says that risk increases as technical complexity, span of control, size, and the number of business process modifications increase.

The second flavor of bad project is the one that is implemented on time and on budget and also works just fine, but everyone who has to use the new system wishes it had failed and they could stay with the old way of doing things. It seems that you are concerned that your project falls into this latter category. You are, however, helping to avoid such a failure by worrying what the nurses on the floor will feel about the replacement of the old system. They are probably quite busy and feel that they don't have the time to learn something new when they don't know what it will do to help make their lives easier.

Take the time to visit with the intended users. Ask them what are their problems. Talk to them about the benefits. Listen; really listen, to their concerns. Make every reasonable effort to modify the implementation to include their suggestions and relieve their worries. If you cannot, tell them up front and see how you can compromise. There is no doubt in my mind that if you do so, you will increase the potential of your project succeeding and decrease the likelihood that it will be one of those bad projects we have all seen.

Hi Herb:
Can you give or point to a couple of places I could get a good CIO job description? We are a largish international non-profit organization.

Thanks,

Leo

Dear Leo:
There are a lot of places you can get a generic job description for the CIO position. Some you will pay for, others are free. For example, you can get a perfectly good one at http://www.hrvillage.com/jobdescriptions.htm. If that one doesn't satisfy your needs, there are many books you can buy that will contain appropriate (or perhaps not so appropriate) material. You can find these at a large bookstore, either in your area or on the Internet.

On the other hand, I am a firm believer that it makes more sense to determine what your organization needs, rather than relying very much on a generic CIO job description. A clear description that is meaningful to your particular set of problems and opportunities is important in helping everyone involved understand what you want from a CIO. While it may be helpful to use one as a template, or a starting point, it is best to personalize it heavily for your own specific situation.