A study a couple of years ago found that 63% of executives were making fewer business trips because of technology.
Instead of a plane trip, face-to-face meetings and a plane trip back, they used email, videoconferencing, or online meetings, according to the Accountemps study.
If you’re a manager who’s spending less time with a suitcase and more with a mouse, you’ll want to pay attention to the nature of the media we use, and especially when sending important messages.
A few years ago we heard a lot about etiquette in electronic messaging (netiquette) on the Internet, about needing to be conscious of how messages might be misconstrued by receivers. One of the ideas to come out of that effort was emoticons, little text symbols that aimed to make up for the loss of facial expressions and body language.
Emoticons and netiquette have pretty much disappeared, but the world of electronic communication still can be a dangerous place.
And especially dangerous if the stakes are high, as they’re likely to be when managers communicate this way.
So, let’s further explore some issues that arise when we communicate electronically, rather than face-to-face.
I have been reading this abstracts paper from the Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering and it has lots of interesting points to make.
In the Dagstuhl Seminar report (Burnett et al) it is stated that “The number of end users creating software is far larger than the number of professional programmers. These end users are using various languages and programming systems to create software in forms such as spreadsheets, dynamic web applications, and scientific simulations. This software needs to be sufficiently dependable, but substantial evidence suggests that it is not.” This point relates to that of (Ko) (Carnegie Mellon University) who explains that the goals of end-users may be unrelated to production of code, but instead they are interested in their domain problem, this means they perceive programming barriers as distractions. Ko explains that end-user programmers must be allowed to focus on their goals, and an important part of the solution is to visualise the whole program execution not just the output. A further problem outlined by Ko is that of programs which were intended to be temporary and owned by a particular person becoming central to a company, this often happens with spreadsheets.
Employing software testing methods can have its disadvantages. For one, it can cause undesirable delays in releasing a newly developed software. Despite this, however, software testing is still employed by most software developing companies. Aside from the fact that software testing is part of the standard protocols in software development strategy that should be observed, there are a number of benefits that can outweigh the delays that can be caused by software testing. The following are reasons why software testing is crucial when developing a new software:
Software testing will help ensure that the new software that will be released will work. Through software testing, developers will be able to find out whether there are technical problems in a particular software before it is released. This will help ensure that the software end- users will be purchasing is working properly. Software testing also ensures that the software that is being released by its manufacturer has passed standard quality tests.
Computer Backup- Forget About It!
Backup Software is for the birds! Computer Backup is too hard, too much trouble and a pain in the butt. Let’s just forget about it.
Backup Software is touted as the savior of your computer’s critical business and personal files. They claim that all computer hard drives (where our files are stored) eventually will have a 100% failure rate. They try to tell us that the failure of our hard drives is just a matter of WHEN, not IF.
Do your backups they shout!
Poppycock!
BACKUP SOFTWARE- LET’S GET REAL
You and I know the real story. The real story is that new computers are so well made that they almost never fail, right?
Therefore, we don’t need to worry about buying backup software and setting up a computer backup system, do we? It would just be a waste time– for sure!
After all we know that all the press about hard drive failures, natural disasters and terrorist attacks is just a conspiracy by the backup software companies to get us to buy their products.
Personally I never had a hard drive failure (that I recall). If my computer stops working for whatever reason, that’s life.
Regardless of size and industry, every enterprise is dependent upon information technology, and must have a strategy for how to employ it, especially as the internet becomes more pervasive. Information technology strategy is an enabler of business strategy. Not only must an enterprise manage relationships with its constituencies, but it must be able to connect with them electronically through data arteries – information supply, value, and demand chains. The information supply and demand chains are external; the information value chains are internal.
An information technology strategy is a special case functional strategy because every function in the enterprise requires electronic information delivery capabilities, and many require electronic process control also. In very large enterprises, strategy may be formulated at both the enterprise and organizational unit levels.
As websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, and Twitter become more pervasive in business, linkages between application systems and databases and social networking websites will be more important to enable constituencies to communicate both collaboratively and cooperatively. Just as email has become a primary method of communication between enterprises and their constituencies, so will social networking sites especially for advertising and ecommerce.