The Seven Cardinal Principles Of Systems Integration
Management
by
H. Kent Craig
©1998
1): The customer isn't necessarily always right.
Your company was hired because of its specific expertise in
a given area of systems integration. If your customer had
knowledge and people and resources even close to what you
offer, then he wouldn't need you, he or his own people
could do it themselves and save some major money. While
some customers are technologically literate enough to "talk
the talk", that's okay, such advanced knowledge will help
further communication and smooth out problems which will
inevitably occur during the contract, keep in mind they
still can't "walk the walk", or they wouldn't need you to
come in as a big outside whoopteedo consultant.
Hardware does not offer solutions. Software does not offer
solutions. Middleware does not offer solutions. You,
your company offers solutions. So, when a customer starts
bandying and tossing about the entire lexicography of
industry acronyms in some vain attempt to impress or
intimidate you, when your customer starts trying to dictate
specific systems means, methods, or material solutions to
you or your team, smile, nod, thank him for his input, then
within reason ignore the verbiage just spouted and create
the solution to the specific problem, not another problem
to a non-specific solution.
2): Pick the best people possible for your team.
While seemingly common sense at first glance, notice I
didn't say pick the people with longest tenure at your
firm, nor the ones with the best reputations, nor the ones
with the best intra-office politicking skills. When you're
leading one or more systems integration management teams,
egos have to take a back seat to skillsets, and skillsets
have to take a minor backseat to the abilities to think
creatively, intuitively, and produce results within tight
time and dollar budgets.
Recognizing that you still might have to add a deadweight
to your team's shoulders just to keep morale up and
dissension low by bringing on someone less skilled but never the less very popular with the rest of the gang from time to time, if the mailroom boy is a
better component-level repairperson because he does it on
the side for spare cash than old Joe who's an EE with ten
years tenure but who is just a glorified board-swapper, if
Mary The Receptionist acts like your unofficial office
software guru and knows more practical how-to skills about
relational database architecture than Kim The Former SAS
Employee, and if Bill The Janitor proved to you one night
when you had to stay and beta-out some LIMS middleware that
even though lacking a four-year-degree he has an innate
feel for AS-400 & ASL protocols more than anyone else in
the company, then bring all of them on board, enable people
who can make you and your company money to grow with the
company, regardless of prior perceptions.
3): Think outside the box.
Laziness is the mother of invention. Quiet contemplation is
often the mother of solutions. It's an ingrained part of
the American psyche to want to do something now,
even if that something isn't the most efficient or
economical. Unless it's truly a life or death pressing for
timeliness, resist the temptation to blurt out verbally or
in a proposal the first solution which comes to mind. Close
your office door, tell your secretary to hold all your
calls for an hour. Visualize what's there now, and what you
think the architecture of your solution would look like
when the project's through. Then discard that vision.
Visualize the needed solution at one end, and the probable
input at the other. Can the input be changed to something
more efficient? Does that output have to be in that
form? Does the throughput have to remain in a constant
form, or can that be change, too?
Consider buying a molecule-model building kit, a Lego kit,
a Tinker-Toy set, an erector set, anything with parts and
pieces that you can assemble as hubs and lines, blocks and
links, beams and girders. Let the kid-part of yourself shed
itself of the day-to-day burdens that so often smash
creative energy and inspiration to a dead, flatline curve.
While creativity oftens means intelligence, intelligence
seldom guaranatees creativity, creativity more often than
intelligence producing solutions. Don't worry about
anything, just relax and kick back and let random thoughts
bounce around in your head. When one of those random
thoughts gets a good bounce and lands squarely between your
vision eyes and the third eye of your intuition, then
you'll have your solution.
4): Don't be afraid to use outside resources.
Let me let you in on a little-known "trade secret" that I
frequently use as an information resource: the telephone
reference section of my local public library. Seriously,
when my back's been pushed to the wall and I seemingly
didn't have any place to turn for at least leads to
possible solutions, more often than not a single phone call
to Roy Dicks or any of the other professional knowledge
dispensers at Wake Co. Libraries have at minimum pointed me
in the right direction if not offered a direct solution to
my problem.
No one can possibly know even most of it, let alone all of
it, that's why checking your ego at a project's door is so
basic to project success. Just consider such outside help
to be part of your inside team. Besides the above, I've
also made frequent (but judicious time-wise) use of the
professors in various departments at a our local colleges
and universities. The unwritten protocol that's been used
over the years is that one quick phone call for as long as
15-20 minutes is always gratis, but anything over that
becomes an outside consulting fee and/or contract for them.
And don't forget various experts in local or State
governmental agencies and departments, 99% of whom will be
glad to help you gratis, 100% of whom will be glad to help
you for a consulting fee.
5): Give your team adequate resources to do their
jobs.
Yes, brother, I've been in the trenches alongside of you,
having to fight for every dime of budget, every day of
personnel allocation, and every CPU and scrap of software I
could get, but dammit man, that's part of your job as
systems integration project manager. As stupid as
Board-level executive management seemingly is at times, as
proverbially penny-wise and pound-foolish, as demanding as
they are about minimizing expenses in order to maximize
profits, as cost-conscious as they are, even they realize
that to integrate technology systems you must have
technology tools to do so. If they don't realize this and
perpetually starve your teams of needed tools, if they
truly are that ignorant or greedy or both, then maybe you
do indeed need to consider sauntering over to a new
employer.
No one likes to simultaneously have to
beg/threaten/grovel/whine to obtain the pieces and parts
and tools and budget necessary to do one's job as a chief
systems integrator, but unfortunately in most companies,
that's the way the culture is, so you either have to accept
it, or not. Not every person on your team needs a
laptop computer, for example, but all those empowered to
make decisions do. Not every person on your team needs a
company American Express card, but you do at minimum, and
your chief assistant probably does, too. Every team doesn't
need a fullbore portable test and diagnostics lab, but more
than one should be available to all teams at all times.
6): Project professionalism.
Professionalism is attention to detail. Professionalism is
going the extra mile to make the customer happy.
Professionalism is self-confidence and self-assurance.
Professionalism isn't an IBM-clone white shirt and red tie,
but it can be a clean and pressed Eddie Bauer polo shirt.
Professionalism isn't just a baby's-bottom-smooth shaven
face, it can also be a neatly trimmed beard that flatters
your face. Professionalism isn't just a white cotton
labcoat, it can also be a nice darker leather trenchcoat,
but not a blackleather biker's jacket complete with M/C
"colors". Professionalism isn't just a pair of spit-shined
black Florsheim wingtips, but can also be an unscuffed pair
of low-cut L. L. Bean Maine Hunting shoes.
Someone who is a truly sophisticated person is one even
when pulling weeds in their vegetable garden. Someone who
is truly professional is one even when dealing with the
biggest jerk of a client that God ever had the mischievous
joke of making cross your life's path. Someone who is a
leader leads by example, leads by taking the risks of
bullets to their front and arrows to their back, keeping
their cool always as things meld into a simmering hell
around them.
Professionals don't make excuses. They make progress.
Professionals don't blame others. They accept
responsibility. Professionals don't cower behind mother's
smokescreen skirts of what is the remnants of the
technology priesthood. They fearlessly and willingly give
their knowledge and time to enable end-users to see
technology for what it is: not magic, but potential.
7): Don't get lost in the "bardo world" of the
industry.
Probably one of the main reasons you got into the industry
is because you just love technology. In your heart, you're
a little kid that just loves the high-tech toys which are
the nuts and bolts of our industry. Face it, if you didn't,
you wouldn't have the curiosity that drives you to read
15-25-50 professional industry and trade publications every
month, that had driven you to go to college to study
technology, and which will drive you in the years ahead to
continue your never-ending pursuit of esoteric technology
knowledge.
The world of systems integration management, like all
subspaces of the high-technology world, often operates on
slightly different principles than many industries. People
are hired, promoted, and fired for reasons that wouldn't
make sense in the "real world". Executive management
decisions are often driven more from super-detailed
business plans and projections which are invalid almost as
soon as they're printed, instead of
seat-of-the-pants-flying management that many companies use
consciously or subconsciously. The market value of a
systems integration firm is usually determined not by the
value of real assets held or balance sheet realities or
projected revenues from contract streams, but by the proven
track records of upper and middle management.
In a world where stock options potentially worth millions
are doled out to employees like so much stale Halloween
candy but where a systems integration manager might get an
earful from the office manager for buying a $5 box of
micropoint pens he likes, in a world where five and six
figure sums are written for the latest in technology
(translate: new toy) productivity enhancers but the
accounting department bitches about when you charge a $2
croissante for breakfast at Burger King on your expense
account while traveling on business, in a world where you
often get bonuses and promotions for not screwing up as
well as for doing well, it's easy to lose sight of the
reality that for most of the rest of the working world
outside the industry that this isn't their reality.
Play with the fun toys that work provides you at work, but
at home, away from work, touch the earth, do yardwork,
touch the trees, smell the leaves, get real, volunteer and
help someone numb from life's burdens to feel. Psychic
batteries can only be recharged in clean air and pure
sunlight; golf, canoe, go antique hunting out in the
countryside, make weekend trips anywhere but where you live
or work, talk as equals to the real person that comes to
fix your furnace, go to City Council meetings and raise
hell about the lack of an effective noise ordinance that
helps prevent you from getting sleep when you need it, go
and do and be anything when you're away from work, as long
as it has nothing to do with work.
Technology is not your master, but your slave, treat it as
such. Enjoy it for what it is, enjoy making it jump to your
command at work, but when 11PM comes or Friday night late
comes, then leave it the hell alone. Technology is your
toy, but not your heroin, it's fun but should it ever
become your opiate of choice to avoid real-life, then seek
help. This crazy business of systems integration is indeed
a crazy business, but always stay grounded, stay sane,
never let it make you crazy.
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