The Undercover IT Correspondent

TITLES AND DEPARTMENTS WE COULD DO WITHOUT

Bring back the good old days, when the longest job title was ‘Director of Operations’

Ever wonder why it is that when you choose software product ABC for your local organization, you’re just a project manager working in the IT department, but if you do the very same job on an international scale, you’re suddenly the Director of Transnational Systems in the Department for Global Technology Deployment and Systems Optimization ?

Here are some tongue-in-cheek examples of outrageous job titles and departments that make us hark back to the good old days when the longest job title was ‘Director of Operations.’

·         Strategic ‘anything’ Director: a politically acceptable staging post for executives with no real work to do, or for those whose posts have been rationalized during the recent merger.

·         Director of X-wide Systems: a person whose mandate it is to put in as many ‘standard’ systems as possible in geographical area X, whether or not they have a business case or actually correspond to country requirements.

·         Infrastructure and Planning Department: what you call an infrastructure department to ensure credibility and an annual budget.

·         Global ‘anything’ Department: a group whose mandate is unclear and whose existence is more or less ignored by subsidiaries around the world.

·         Global Products and Technology Department: a body of technical weenies whose job it is to spend vast amounts of time and money defining ‘strategic’ technical standards from a market of ‘me-too’ products. Their toughest mission to date? Choosing between Navigator and Explorer as the worldwide browser standard.

·         Virtually Integrated Planning Committee: runs the whole shooting match. Staffed by dignified 40-something execs with awesome-sounding titles, this body inspires security, confidence and vision. It can get the CEO to write million-dollar cheques for strategic projects without batting an eyelid. Known in inner circles as the VIP-committee.

·         Macro Business and Management Analyst: IT’s concession to user representation. Usually an ex-user whose ability with technology personifies the saying ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Work procedures known in inner circles as MBMA (Management by Magazine Article).

·         Area/Regional: options available for ‘line extension’ to existing director positions when the market for such posts is saturated. Instructions for use: simply append level identifier to original title, as in ‘Area Director for …’

·         Director of Enterprise Process Strategy: a new post created when all line extension options have been exhausted (see above), and a company can no longer create any more Strategic Director positions without raising suspicion.

·         VP for Global Best Practices: head of a department that unilaterally decides which practices are ‘best’ for subsidiaries without their consent and without identifying any ‘worst’ practices.

·         VP for Technology Deployment and Systems Optimization: post reserved for someone who can work the words ‘strategy,’ ‘process’ and ‘architecture’ into the same sentence and manage to keep a straight face.

·         Strategic Director of Advanced Technology: head of a department of one. Post reserved since the dawn of computing for nerds with beards who are best left alone to explore solutions-in-search-of-a-problem.

·         IT Project Manager: what kind of job title is that? Somebody get that weirdo outta here!MG

Copyright 1996 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, Mass. 01701.  Reprinted by permission of Computerworld.  All rights reserved.

Remember when an apple was a fruit and a server worked in a restaurant? 

Any new field borrows words from standard English, and IT is no exception. However, it has reached such an extent that the norm for most words today is the IT one, and the original English meaning has been relegated to second place. For example, how many people can remember the days when an apple was a fruit, a server worked in a restaurant, access and scroll were nouns not verbs, and to default meant not meeting your loan payments? 

This can give rise to some interesting situations. Consider for example the following dialogue, in which the same words can actually describe two totally different situations.  

TOM (hanging up the phone): We’ve got another delivery problem 

MARTIN: Again? 

TOM: Missing packets, undelivered mail. 

MARTIN: What route is it this time? 

TOM: We ran a trace. It seems to be originating from the same neighborhood as the last time, the one we opened up a few months ago. 

MARTIN: Maybe it’s the new router?  

TOM: Surprisingly, no. And the hub doesn’t have anything to report either. However, we’ve got some new clients up there, and I think they’re causing problems. 

MARTIN: Maybe we should poll them more frequently? 

TOM: No, I think we’re at the right interval. 

MARTIN: Did we use the correct protocol? You know how sensitive they are. The slightest bit missing, and the phone starts ringing within 5 minutes. 

TOM: You know how careful we are on that score. Anyway, we suspect it’s one particular client, so we got the address and sent someone to take a look. Here, check this out (hands over a report). 

MARTIN(Reading the report): What a dump! Yeah, our man said he saw a lot of strange characters. He was really concerned. So, what do you make of it? 

TOM: Might have been a crash, but I’m fairly sure this is one helluva bad client.  

MARTIN: OK, that’s it! Cancel the contract! 

The above conversation today would most likely be about a network engineer and his boss trying to resolve a problem of undelivered email (as any internet junkie knows, email is broken down into electronic packets and routed along different routes by a router). While troubleshooting, they analyzed a dump which contained a strange combination of characters. They finally traced the problem to a defective client at a new branch office recently added to the network neighborhood. The clients were part of a batch of recently installed devices which are particularly sensitive to network protocol errors. 

The conversation could also however be a local courier or package delivery outfit that is experiencing recurring problems of missing mail and incomplete delivery in a difficult neighborhood where it recently set up shop. After ruling out the newly hired router (yes, they’re people who route deliveries!) at the dispatch hub, they finally suspect foul play from one of the clients. They send someone over to check out his location, which happens to be in a shady part of town. His report shows enough for them to decide to cancel the contract with this particular client.  MG.

Even gardeners and foresters can make a living writing legalese!

Last week, as I was killing time in yet another airport lounge after yet another flight delay, I thought I’d catch up on my backlog of unread analyst reports. After five minutes of wading through the usual tortuous biz-tech prose however, my will-power began to waver, and I hesitated between my professional obligations and some lighter reading (possibly accompanied by a legally authorized, amber colored beverage).

As I ploughed doggedly through one, it made me wonder why some research analyst groups write about IT in an often incomprehensible mix of computerese and legalese that makes you wonder where research and analysis end and the legal profession begins. Are the people who work here failed lawyers or – God forbid – future lawyers in boot camp, learning to confuse the hell out of ordinary people?

The writing style is clearly biased against plain English. It is characterized by the use (sorry, the utilization) of long words, suitably spiced up with acronyms, which are then squeezed into the longest sentences possible. The postman might only ring twice, but the average reader of research analyst reports has to read at least three times before figuring out just what the author is trying to say.

Here is some sample prose that I hand-crafted myself, which is very similar to the stuff which we are often asked to read:

• SPA (Strategically Painful Assumption): “Through 2009, global organizations will concentrate CRM efforts on optimizing existing initiatives and driving consistency across direct and indirect sales channels, creating synergies for sales, marketing and customer service and tapping into new efficiencies for enterprise-wide processes which emphasize customer retention, cross-selling and up-selling”. (0.1 probability – of being able to translate any of this gobbledygook into something actionable).
• Megatrend: “Global IT departments will allocate resources to projects and technologies based on vehicles which will include extranets, portals and web services so that the introduction of new products and services will galvanize better business results, while simultaneously mitigating the risks and uncertainties which impact business global governance orientations and IT process and role patterns”. (Huh?)

No folks, not only is this not understandable, it’s not even impressive. If someone speaks a foreign language however, say, French, now that’s impressive – especially when your own vocabulary is limited to ‘bonjour’, ‘au revoir’ and ‘are you sure that’s the correct change?’  

And where are good old-fashioned market mechanisms when you need them? Under normal circumstances, complex writing would hardly sell, let alone make it to the bookshelves. Yet we continue to spend enormous amounts on sometimes impenetrable material that confuses as much as enlightens.  Some countries have passed official legislation mandating the use of plain language in legal contracts pertaining to banking and insurance . If legal contracts can be transformed into plain language, then research analyst reports should be a piece of cake.

So, gardeners and foresters, it’s time to clear out the weeds and thickets from your writing. Here’s some friendly advice: 

• Use simpler words. (Don’t utilize, use. Stop depicting, show. And stop using words like preclude and obviate when you can use synonyms like prevent or avert respectively.)
• Use shorter sentences. (The use of the period in the English language is free! Reduce the commas and you’ll reduce the comas we often fall into!)
• Use more descriptive headlines to break up your stream-of-consciousness text into logical chunks we can wrap our minds around.
• Make the book ‘Read This – business writing that works!’ mandatory for all your staff. It is full of interesting before/after examples, has been translated into two other European languages, is in use at a number of Big X consulting firms, and – this is the clincher – was written by my brother, who could use the royalties! (I plug his books and he plugs mine – it’s called relationship marketing).

And if you’re a research analyst who prefers to stick to the old ways, then maybe we should meet up in a quadrant somewhere – you know, the one with ropes all around – and then you’ll get a chance to see my strategic reach and ability to execute. MG.

IT projects live or die by their monikers. Nix the boring acronyms. How about Sapphire or Prometheus?

When Juliet said to Romeo in the balcony scene, ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ she certainly wasn’t referring to IT projects. Names can make or break IT projects.

What you actually name a project, especially a biggie, will go a long way towards determining how much initial funding it’s going to get, how much corporate visibility will be associated with it, and especially, when the going gets tough, how much bailout money the company will feel compelled to sink into it in order to preserve credibility. So if your intended breakthrough CRM or 24-hour customer service project is code-named CRM or CS24, don’t complain if it doesn’t get the funding, visibility and support it deserves. However, with names like Symphony, Omega or – drum roll – Prometheus, which inspire security, confidence and vision, you can count on getting a much better hearing and ensure that the CEO shells out for as long as it takes!

Projects have to be marketed internally, and an impressive name will help contribute to brand awareness. It’s also more massaging to the ego and scores more points with one’s peers to be associated with, for example, project Sapphire than project R2-D2. Most important, an inspirational and visionary name will also help to recruit your key executive sponsor, who will be instrumental in promoting your project in the board room. Yep, if you want to launch with fanfare, adequate funding and all the right people, get the name right!

Okay, so about nine months down the line, with the euphoria stage long gone, the practical problems have been identified (cranky users with no idea of what they really want, legacy systems with data in worse shape than originally thought, consultants costing an arm and a leg….). The initial deadline is no longer realistic and more money is needed. So what else is new? Well, no problem here. While some dumb-sounding R2-D2 project requiring more funding would really be scrutinized – maybe even canned – the visibility and commitment associated with your high flier will ensure you get bailed out the first time with hardly a murmur of protest. The second time around might elicit a rap on the knuckles. Of course, if things continue going downhill, the CEO will eventually pull the plug, but not before your project has become a corporate runaway. You might fail, but it certainly won’t be for lack of funds!

So now that you’re convinced that good name branding is an essential part of Project Marketing 101, you’ll want to be careful how you go about choosing one. Remember, be practical. If your big project makes it to the press, a journalist should be able to string together a cute headline (‘The Midas touch!’). But be careful; if your project goes awry, you can count on the same journalist to hang you (‘Midas – or fool’s gold?’). The following are some naming conventions to consider and some to avoid:

• Sure-fire winners are names from Greek mythology, such as Zeus, although you’ll want to stay away from some of the overused gods like Atlas and Apollo.
• Relatively safe are the classical composers (Bach, Schubert), but shy away from Mozart (or Amadeus) and Vivaldi, which are so common that using them actually shows a lack of culture.
• Risky but still manageable choices are jewels, such as Emerald, Ruby, Diamond and Gold.
• Avoid like the plague the names of planets (Saturn, Mars) and cutesy industrial acronyms such as FAST, CORE and FORCE, whose mileage went out with the ’60s.  

Finally, you’ll also want to be sure the name can travel. It’s so easy to end up embarrassed, especially in Europe. You won’t endear yourself to your executive sponsor if he becomes the butt of endless boardroom jokes about the time he brought the Spanish management team to howls of laughter when unveiling the new customer service project code-named NOVA. In Spanish, it means ‘no go’. 

MG

Copyright 1994 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, Mass. 01701.  Reprinted by permission of Computerworld.  All rights reserved.

The IT profession was characterized by alphabet soup right from the word GO!

Last week my daughter asked me why my profession is called IT, instead of something in plain English. She did have a point – though I refrained from commenting on the DVDs and CDs lying on the floor of her room, or the time she spends on MSN while listening to her MP3. 

All professions have their jargon. Doctors favor marathon words longer than German nouns. Lawyers use long-winded English, with some Latin thrown in for good measure. The computer industry of course favors acronyms. There are two types of acronyms : the ubiquitous 3-letter ones like ERP (Enterprise Rectal Pain), and gobbledygook like PCMCIA (People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms). The first computers were called ENIAC, RAMAC and PDP, ran languages like FORTRAN, COBOL and JCL, and were built by companies like IBM, DEC and the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell). The profession was therefore characterized by alphabet soup right from the word GO. Even the alphabet was not enough – the colons of a new era went overboard in their use of colons and other special characters. The whole #&*%@:$! industry was awash in it ! 

So to no one’s surprise, the newest member of the organizational chart in the fifties branded itself with an acronym : EDP (Erroneous Data Processing ), followed later by MIS (Mostly Inadequate Service) and finally IT (I Try). In contrast, other company departments get by with plain English names, like Finance, Accounting or Purchasing. Even the legal profession, that bastion of conservatism and intellectual superiority, is content to go by the simple name of Legal – which is just as well, otherwise we’d have even more lawyer jokes doing the rounds. HR, incidentally, was the only other department to go down the acronym route, but they’ve always been an insecure lot anyway (plus any re-branding away from the word ‘personnel’ could only be a step in the right direction). 

Acronyms may be irritating after a while, but there’s no denying their staying power. Examples : IBM and NCR are the only member of the original BUNCH still in existence today; in the HP-Compaq merger, guess who’s running the show? There’s also no denying the marketing power of acronyms, and their ability to get people to buy in to the latest buzzword, as long as it’s known by a clever acronym, eg CRM (Can’t Really Matter). 

And when we ran out of acronyms, we simply tagged on numbers. The first mainframes and minicomputers had names like CDC-7600, PDP-11, VAX or the IBM 390 – not to be confused with the IBM 3090. This numbers game continued with the first micro-computers, like the MITS Altair 8800, Radio Shack TSR 80 and the Levi Strauss 501. 

This great tradition was diluted, however, as numbers and letters gradually gave way to names. The person who kicked off this trend was Apple’s Steve Jobs, who started by naming his company after a fruit. He then brought out a computer named after a girl, the Lisa, which was based on technology he picked up during a stroll in the PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) at Xerox. Since then we’ve seen computers called the ProLinea, Performa, Presario, Aptiva, Jornada, Inspiron, Vaio and Lenovo.  Geez, where do all these cutesy names come from ? Who let these marketing people through the door ?  

I think it was a plot by the folks from Detroit who were laid off during the slump in the American auto industry in the 80s. Determined to wreak revenge on the thriving computer industry for transforming them into second-class corporate citizens, they successfully took over all of marketing in Silicon Valley. This explains why most computers today have meaningless, feel-good names which end in an ‘a’ and sound like a run-down of the models and concept cars from last year’s auto show. 

I say the profession has forgotten its roots. Whatever happened to the original world of acronyms, numbers and letters that knit together a whole community ? It makes you hark back to the good old days when computers were named after the street number of the founder’s house!

MG