This article over at CNET is a good reminder that technology is a tool for people, and people are crucial to any good process. Google, LexisNexis, Ask.com, Yahoo and other search engines will spew forth an ton of links in response to a keyword search, but your librarian will give you authoritative answers, knowing how to check credibility of sources and cross-reference with multiple sources. Even the web search companies know that there is no replacing people when it comes to searches requiring expertise, synthesizing information, or complex search strategies. They use people to augment their electronic searches with services such as Google Co-Op, Mechanical Turk, and About.com.

Also, your law librarians are changing with the times, providing great ideas for using new technologies and web services like RSS in the law office. So hug your law librarian today, and ask them for help with a search or how you can better use information in your organization.

In Part 1, we discussed the many things IT has to “sell” internally. What makes selling IT particularly difficult is that those things we have to sell can be costly to purchase, implement, and maintain. This forces IT to argue on the basis of return on investment (ROI), rather than immediately realizable cost-savings or profits. Much more difficult, however, is that IT often has to promote behavioral changes to employees that aren’t necessarily beneficial to either the individual or firm in the short term, but are tremendously so in the longer term. Promoting proper e-mail management and document profiling often feels like trying to sell paying down the national debt.

Training in particular is the great bugaboo for attorneys and other professionals, who often cite the alpha excuse of billable time to avoid sitting in a training session. However, they think nothing of the lost productivity (i.e. billable hours) when they cannot use the application or have lost data because they did something incorrectly. IT also has to sell the value of “profiling” documents for DMS systems, which has negative value to the individual because of the time involved, but has tremendous beneficial value when that document is retrieved much quicker later on.

One suggestion: don’t just sell on the merits alone. Get allies. In particular, find a non-IT champion who is a partner or peer that has high credibility within the firm. Sell them, and others will follow their example. Your allies can also help translate the benefits into terms non-technical people can understand.

Here's an easy yet very useful tip for those who give presentations using PowerPoint slide shows from our OnSight Support Center.

When you want to stop for a break in your presentation without losing your place in the slide show, just press the lowercase B key or press the period (.).  This will cause the screen to go black, and if it is a self-running presentation, it will pause.  When you are ready to resume the show, press either key again and you will start right where you left off.

A number of articles recently have discussed the shift in innovation in corporate IT departments from being led by IT professionals to users who bring their home tech into the office. With the freewheeling experimentation and innovation happening on the Internet these days (mostly under the far-too-generic rubric of “Web 2.0”) and the widespread consumer adoption of WiFi at home before the office, are your users bringing new ideas and technologies to you, or are you still leading them?

Law and professional service firms tend to be even more conservative than corporations in adopting technology, so such an infusion of new ideas is more limited. Younger associates and new hires, however, have pushed web collaboration and handheld adoption into firms. There is nothing wrong with getting ideas from your users as they experiment with tech at home. This idea exchange often leads to thought-provoking discussions, like what can a web-based application like Netvibes give me for a portal solution that more traditional and entrenched players like BEA/Plumtree and SharePoint can’t? IT departments shouldn’t feel threatened that they are not bringing all the technology ideas to the table, but should embrace them. IT is better able to discern which ideas will work and provide value in the organization.

Microsoft’s SharePoint 2007 received a fair amount of buzz at last month’s ILTA conference, with many firms declaring that they are forging ahead with new intranets and portal projects based on the software by year’s end. These plans are even more bold considering that the software isn’t expected to get out of beta until next year. Here at SAGE, we have been helping a number of clients with their SharePoint 2007 projects. One lesson coming out of these projects is: if you don’t have developers and engineers that are experts in SQL, ASP.NET, and web development, make sure you get someone to back you up.

Fact is, SharePoint 2007 is easy to break at this point. This isn’t surprising since it is still in beta. We have seen instances where simply changing a setting causes it to fail. The application’s saving grace is that it is mostly built on ASP.NET, so an able ASP.NET programmer can often fix SharePoint controls and web parts that even Microsoft gets wrong or are currently incomplete. SharePoint 2007’s deep integration with SQL Server also requires in-depth knowledge of the database program to fix faulty group pages or lists. We have found that these problems can often be resolved with good web developers to trouble-shoot the problem and write the necessary code or queries to fix it.

eWeek’s Baseline Magazine has compiled their Top 10 pitfalls to avoid in project management, based on over 200 case studies. While the list is geared towards large corporate projects, legal and professional services firms are particularly susceptible to these:

• #2: Processes and technology aren't synched up.
• #3: Poor data quality leads to increased costs.
• #6: Poor design results in data-entry errors.
• #8: A system is rushed into production too quickly, resulting in duplication of effort and bugs.
• #10: A system's interface is hard to use

The complete list and accompanying case studies are well worth the read. So if we were to compile a similar list for legal and professional services firms, what do you think would break into the top 10?

Here’s another great insight from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users: what would we actually do if we really followed through on statements like “helping users is our top priority.” Seems obvious, right? But what actions are we currently taking to back up that statement?

IT departments for any legal or professional services firms are in the business of providing service. Certainly, user satisfaction is an important standard of performance. But are users truly satisfied? Have you asked them recently? When they answer, do you really listen, or do you already know what they need? Too often we follow a rulebook, the “accepted practice” that worked for someone else or was touted in some article (or blog!). Two things can be similar, but are never the same, however. Make sure the rulebook applies to your circumstances and users. You will find out if it does if your users are asked.

We often pride ourselves as experts in IT, but that can be a trap. Studies show that experts make mistakes and overestimate their capabilities just as often as non-experts. Too often we think we know what our users need, but more often we don’t, and react with surprise when they bring that fact to our attention. In fact, experts tend to propose solutions stemming from their specialty, whereas another solution outside their field may be more appropriate. The more we work to get real feedback from our users, and are conscious of the shortcomings our expertise brings, the more truly satisfied our users will be.

So what are you doing right now to make sure your user’s are satisfied?

We wrote an article a while ago about the real value of providing a second monitor to users with specific needs in law and professional services firms. This article on Slate’s web site yesterday and other research studies only reinforce our view that adding more screen area can significantly boost productivity. Coders, researchers, and other data entry tasks enjoy significant productivity improvements using dual monitors or large screens because of less time spent switching between applications, less mistakes because a reduced reliance on memory, and immediate feedback on quality. Find yourself “alt-tabbing” all the time, you should probably invest in that 24” monitor, or more economically, dual 17” monitors and a dual-head video card.

We are surprised that more firms do not adopt dual monitors or larger monitors for certain personnel. Our guess is that Accounting and Finance summarily dismisses them as duplicative and wasteful without really investigating the return on investment. Then again, having two monitors does look extravagant, and surely leads to pangs of jealousy from those stuck with a single monitor.

We in IT like to believe we are above the more “unseemly” jobs in business… like sales. Engineers also have this romantic notion that rational choice is people’s primary motivation, and frown upon activities based on irrationality and emotion… again, like sales. We cling to this unfounded belief despite the partners who won’t attend training but harasses the help desk with unending questions and the associate who profiles every document as “other” in the document management system (DMS).

Everyone, including IT managers and directors, has to “sell” something in life. In fact, IT is always “selling” professionals inside the firms on the value of IT’s role and the tools it provides, not to mention its budget! Some specific items IT has to sell within the firm include:

• Why an upgrade is necessary (or why it is not!)
• Need for more IT personnel
• Training
• Introducing Document Management or reinforcing its purpose
• Email management
• Pilot testing
• Drafting design specifications for custom applications or RFPs
• Participation in product evaluations

In Part 2 we will discuss why selling IT internally is particularly difficult. In the meantime: as IT, what in particular do you find yourself selling internally to your firm? What sales strategies are you employing?

When it comes to migration projects, especially large ones, there is some soul-searching regarding whether the firm has the resources in house to manage it properly. Following is a run-down of the pros and cons of outsourcing a tech migration.

Pros

• Expertise that would be too costly or time-consuming for in-house staff to acquire
• Specialized knowledge and experience in particular systems, knowing the nuances and idiosyncracies of apps and their installation
• Bring automated tools and proven processes
• Allows my staff to maintain support levels and timetables for other in-house projects
• Provide additional support and training
• Knowledgeable about coexistence issues
• Less disruption to my users
• Given the above, should be quicker and more efficient

Cons

• Cost
• I don’t trust outsiders
• No support after the project is over
• Usually left cleaning up mistakes after they have left
• Create systems so only they can make changes and updates, not my staff (Potential loss of independence)
• Never stay on schedule
• They work to cover up a problem, not to solve it (a corollary is that they work to a budget, not a solution).

So here is a question for everyone to start the week. What pros or cons would you add?

One of the dirty little secrets of IT is that anyone worth their salt knows that daily server checks are critical in avoiding crashes, outages, and poor network performance, but hardly anyone ever does it. There are only a handful of core items to check (memory, disk space, logs, antivirus signatures, and uptime), but either remoting to the server or physically checking it require a fair amount of time that is compounded by the number of servers. Logging in, opening the appropriate apps and recording the information for each server wouldn’t be so bad, were it not that there are users to support, ongoing projects, and a myriad other matters that require IT’s attention. So in the end, we “satisfice”: the servers are running, so nothing that bad could be wrong… um, right?

We’ve been there too, especially since client needs come before our internal firm needs. We looked into sophisticated monitoring software, but decided that all we needed was a quick way to check core items and log who did the check, when and what issues were found if any. In the end, we came up with Sentinel, which allows us to perform daily checks remotely in one “spot.” Sentinel has helped us shave at least 50% of the time we used to spend on server checks, and that savings increases with more servers. Best yet, the checks get done, which has significantly reduced operational issues overall.

If you are interested in how Sentinel works, we will be having an upcoming webinar next Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 2 p.m. Follow the link to sign-up on the SAGE web site. We also posted screenshots of the Sentinal interface for viewing.

Here is a tip from our OnSight Support Center: Many times, co-workers would like to send an e-mail to people on your distribution list. You can send an MS Outlook distribution list to someone else by following these steps:

• Open a new mail message and click anywhere inside the message body.
• If MS Outlook is your email editor: Select Insert … Item.  In the Look in: list, select the folder that contains the distribution list. Select the distribution list you want to send and click on OK. Then send the message.
• If MS Word is your email editor: select Contacts, find the distribution list and drag it into the message body. Then send the message.

Note: If the distribution list you are sending contains members from a Global Address List, be sure the person you are sending to has access to this same Global Address List.

Oh, the allure of the sales pitch. That attractive male or female salesperson running through a carefully orchestrated script, artfully demonstrating that their software will solve every difficulty you can possibly imagine. And that’s the problem. But don’t just blame the vendors, according to a new study your users and technology committees are just as much to blame.

The study found that users are equally guilty of valuing capability over usability when choosing software. Sure, vendors try to justify upgrades by packing niche or highly specialized features into software versions, which then distract and overload users. When making purchasing decisions, however, users equate more capabilities to a better product. But when using the software, they complain about its usability because they are overwhelmed by the features and the overall complexity. So they are Dr. Jekyll during the sale, but Mr. Hyde when it comes to using it. This is apparently true for novices and experts alike.

One conclusion we draw is that IT needs to take a greater role in educating and focusing users (and technology committees) on the core functionality they are looking to meet. What the study didn’t mention was that the users won’t blame themselves for the purchase decision, they will blame IT. Ultimately, the software becomes IT’s responsibility anyway, so IT managers better manage the purchasing decision from the start.

So do you buy a 32-bit server for Exchange 2003 alone or a 64-bit one that can eventually host Exchange 12? If you go the 64-bit route, you also will need the 64-bit version of Windows Server, as well. Oh, by the way, Microsoft suggests also going with new multi-core processors, probably 2 of them, and being able to max out memory to 16GB when you upgrade to Exchange 12.

There are a couple of interesting studies about collaboration and productivity in science cited in James Surowiecki's very thought-provoking The Wisdom of Crowds. Looking at Nobel laureates, scientists' publications and collaborative activities, studies found that "the most prolific man is also by far the most collaborating" (p. 162). Nobel laureates, it seems, collaborate far more than your run-of-the-mill scientist.

So how can we collaborate more or better? The greatest barrier is often cultural. Most people are accustomed to traditional hierarchical work groups where everyone is given assignments and information flows up to the case or project lead. Changing how we work is scary and daunting, and we have a hard time imagining how to go about it or the benefits. This extends to using tools like extranets (such as MindPort), wikis, and social tagging that facilitate collaboration both inside and outside the organization.

But if collaboration works for Nobel laureates, shouldn't that be enough motivation to reevaluate our current ways of working?

Crucial to the success of any technology project is getting feedback from users and interested groups (like the technology and management committees!) Sounds easy, but during the early phases of the project when feedback will have the greatest affect at the lowest cost, users are the least equipped to provide it. At an early stage of the project, we assume that users will have the imagination to envision the final product and how they can use it. This assumption is wrong, however, because while users are imaginative in their own ways, they are not when it comes to designing and implementing new technology.

To overcome this lack of imagination and get better feedback early when it costs less to make changes, the user needs to be "mocked," and mocked often. They need mock-ups, prototypes, and other visual aids to help them conceive the finish project and how it will integrate into their work. These aids don't need to be elaborate: sketches, diagrams, wireframes, and simple proof-of-concept demonstrators often bridge the gap between conceptualizing the proposed idea and the finished product. A simple mock-up is often enough to spur valuable ideas from your test users and groups that will make the finished product much more useful. As the project progresses, you can provide more iterations of prototypes and demonstrators leading to alpha and beta tests. By providing low cost mock-ups early on, costly revisions when the project is nearly completed can be avoided.