Are YOU talking to ME?

By Marc Baizman, June 10, 2010

Taxi Driver(With apologies to Pacino and Scorsese)

I'm working with several nonprofits that are making major technology changes (moving from Outlook/Exchange to Google Apps, selecting a new donor database) and it seems they want to "leave it to the techies" to make the decisions and handle the process.   Obviously not a smart strategy, especially when you consider the dramatic impact these changes are going to have on the organizations and people.

That means it's up to us, the techies, to make sure that we get the right people involved.  Make sure you're talking to the people who are going to be most affected by the technology decisions, and be getting their input right from the start.  In one of these situations, we didn't get (a very important) someone's feedback until much later in the process, and we had to backtrack to incorporate their input, and it had a big impact on a technology choice, all because they weren't involved from the beginning. 

Make sure you've got representation from all the areas of the organization, even if they think "this won't impact me, it's just a tech thing."  Once you've got this "Technology Council" together, it's up to you to make sure you're bringing critical things regularly to this group.  It's very easy to get in the mindset of "I'll just handle this" when sometimes it's important to get people from different areas of the organization to give feedback.  

So make sure people are talking to you, and if they're not, start talking to them!  That's the only way you're going to get some decisions made on technology!

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.idealware.org/trackback/2316

Comments

40% of tech development

by Eric Pratum (not verified) - 2010-06-11 08:06

If I recall correctly, the number that is generally thrown around for percentage of costs spent on making changes to a technology product due to a client changing his/her mind (and/or informing you of something new) before the project is even finished is 40%. The number is mind boggling. I believe this is one reason that companie like Wundermann charge just to scope a project. Of course, clients often find a scoping cost to be preposterous, but if we could somehow build a level of understanding with clients about how legitimate planning for a project is time consuming, serious, and requires research (all costs), I believe we could eventually lower prices for a lot of undertakings...

I mean, imagine it. If someone charged 10-25% of the project's total cost just to scope it and it was done properly, there could be a potential savings of 15-30% on most projects. Alas, I do not see that happening anytime soon unfortunately.

I've heard the same

by Marc Baizman - 2010-06-14 09:54

I've heard the same figure thrown around for costs of change.  And of course, as the project progresses, the cost to change increases exponentially (see any Agile PM site for these charts and stats).  I'll devote a future post to trying to be "agile" in the nonprofit technology environment, which is, by it's very nature, a wily unpredictable beast full of board meetings, executive directors, fundraising events, and of course, lots of staff people who may not love technology.