EZINE - mde.net - October 2002

MDE's Practical Technology Tips & Techniques Newsletter
You have received this monthly edition of Practical Technology Tips & Techniques Newsletter by subscribing to it or selecting the free tools sample while visiting my web site. For reference to all past issues, go to www.mde.net/ezine. 

If you cannot view the graphics, go to http://www.mde.net/newsletter/oct02/index.html .

This month's articles include:

MDE News ------------------------------------ MDE plans to celebrate second anniversary
I.   IT Manager Tips ------------------------- Plan your IT strategy before building a budget
II.  Web Development Tips --------------- Web site Link Check Generator
III. Product and Service Review -------- Stephen Page's Policy and Procedures Books
IV. Entrepreneur Thoughts --------------- Test your ideas
V.  Special Offer of the month ---------  Planning Combo -- IT Strategy and Budgeting books

MDE News
November 1st will be the second anniversary since leaving my corporate CIO world. This date is also a special date in that it was this day last year that I began focusing most of my energy toward my Internet business to provide insight and products that help IT managers achieve more.

It was a big risk, but one that has proven to be a very good move. Being able to work from home to be close to Eddie and Dorine is very important to me. I missed much of Eddie's early years because I traveled and worked long hours. I still work long hours but doing it from home gives me more quality time with my family. Take a look at Eddie's web site, www.eddiesisco.com to learn about his amazing story and you will better understand my motivation.

I have always thought that every IT Manager should have a copy of IT Management-101, the second of ten books I wrote for my IT Manager Development Series. On November 1, I plan to announce a program that will help make that happen as a way of celebrating a successful year and the second anniversary of MDE Enterprises.

MDE's Internet business model focuses on reaching and helping as many IT managers improve their management abilities as possible. I've been fortunate to have had some very good mentors that helped shape and develop my career. Finally, I have the opportunity to share my experiences and insight with thousands of IT managers all over the world. It has been a truly exciting and rewarding year.

Be sure to look for my announcement on November 1, 2002. The best is yet to come.

I. IT Manager Tips
Plan your IT strategy before building a budget

We are in the middle of "budgeting season" for most companies. I have written several articles and a book to help IT managers budget effectively. It is actually an easy process once you have a few concepts down. Most managers dread budgeting because of a lack of understanding their business in financial terms or because they simply don't know the tricks of budgeting effectively. A few tips were included in my August newsletter.

I have also written a few articles for TechRepublic and provided free download tools to help IT managers in their budgeting efforts. A list of all my published articles is maintained in the ARTICLES section on my web site.

In this month's newsletter article, I want to emphasize the need for you to define your business strategy for next year before you build your department's operational budget. Developing an IT strategy requires focus and a fair amount of work just like anything worthwhile. Avoiding to focus on developing your strategy for next year puts you at big risk in achieving your next year's business plan, or budget.

Strategy is the key to your budgeting assumptions
Defining your major IT initiatives for next year does three important things for you:
        1.  It sets senior management's expectations.
        2.  It allows you to validate what the key initiatives need to be for the coming year.
        3.  It gives you insight on what you need to budget for in terms of manpower, equipment, software, etc.

It isn't necessary to identify every project initiative 100%. But, if you take the time to target next year's major projects and then make the effort to estimate what you believe to be the financial requirements of each project, you have taken a major step in laying the groundwork for most of your significant expenses. These are the surprise expenses that cause most IT managers to exceed their budget when they don't know what to expect.

Developing an IT strategy does not come naturally for most IT managers. People tend to have a reactive nature as opposed to a proactive planning ability. It's just easier to react to a problem than it is to force yourself to develop a plan, so most people take the easy route. By developing a strategy for your IT organization, whether it be the programming support group or an entire IT Organization of a thousand employees, you will set yourself apart from your counterparts.

Key elements to a strategic plan
Keep it simple. An effective IT strategy does not have to be complex. Include the following components and you will have what you need for this phase of "forecasting". It provides excellent insight for your budgeting process.
        1.  Project Initiative
        2.  ROI (Return on Investment)
        3.  Benefits
        4.  Estimated timeframe and duration of time the project will be implemented
        5.  Project costs
                A.  Employee cost
                B.  Equipment, software, and supplies cost
                C.  Consulting and external resources cost
        6.  Company resource requirements and timing (staff, equipment, etc.)
        7.  Prerequisite issues

Draw a picture
It always helps me when I can visualize strategic initiatives in context with one another, ie. to be able to see everything from 10,000 feet. Click here to take a look at a simple 2-page plan I developed to help senior management visualize a strategy to take the company from a predominately paper driven company to a "paperless" environment. I did not include timeframes in this particular presentation but it helped me establish several perspectives:
        1.  There was a clear path from where we were to where we wanted to be.
        2.  It required a significant amount of effort and commitment.
        3.  Multiple projects can be implemented simultaneously.
        4.  Certain projects have to be completed before others are started.
        5.  To succeed requires excellent planning and coordination.
        6.  Certain projects are optional and can be postponed or eliminated altogether.

Developing a strategy helps you budget more accurately and gives you insight that increases your ability to budget  in a way that increases the likelihood of you achieving your financial forecast tenfold. I never miss the opportunity to develop an IT strategy before I try to budget for my operation. It is just too risky.

For more insight into developing an effective IT strategy, take a look at this month's special in Section V below.

II. Web Development Tips
Web site Link Check Generator

One of the things that helps you rank high in the search engines these days is the number of times other web sites have your web site link on their pages. If you want to generate lots of traffic to your web site, you must be able to attain high rankings with the search engines. In addition to including meta tags containing the key words that relate to your site within your html code, you want other web sites to link to your site as well.

There are two big benefits in having many links to your web site from other web pages:
        1.  You will get traffic from visitors to the other party's web site.
        2.  It increases your ranking with search engines such as Google, Altavista, etc. The higher your
             ranking, the more traffic you will generate.

Recently, I stumbled onto a tool that will check the links to web page addresses you want to review. There are free tools on the Internet, but there are times when being able to list a dozen or more web site addresses and have all of them checked quickly is a big benefit for me.

Armand Morion's Link Check Generator quickly checks the number of links recognized by five of the major search engines for any web page address you want to check so I purchased the product and the resell rights. The search engines checked for each web site address you add to your list includes:
        -  Alltheweb
        -  AltaVista
        -  AOL Search
        -  Google
        -  MSN Search

One of the activities you will want to do to generate more web site traffic is to get others to link to your web site. More and more, the search engines are using this mechanism to determine how they rank web sites for searches on key word phrases.  In the past, html meta tags containing the key words did the trick, but that is not as effective anymore.

Order the Link Check Generator software today and I will include a free copy of Meta-Tag Creator. It is an excellent tool to help you develop key words for your web site.

Sample screen from Link Check Generator

III. Product and Service Review
Stephen Page's Policy and Procedures Books

Many people have asked me if I know where to find policy and procedure manuals.  There are several sources and I have recommended a couple of them to inquiring parties.

I found a source a few months ago through a business associate. Stephen Page has written a four-part series on writing policies and procedures for any industry. His approach to writing processes, policies, and procedures has been adopted by thousands of companies and for many IT departments. While each book is important for different reasons, his first book, Establishing a System of Policies and Procedures, focuses on writing and publishing a system of policies and procedures.

Stephen uses best practices for researching, writing, publishing, and maintaining policies and procedures for printed and online formats (network, intranet, or internet) that are acceptable to standards set by management, auditors, capability maturity model, iso standards, or ieee standards. His first book is a valuable resource for novice writers, professional writers, technical writers, and management consultants. 

His second book, 7 Steps to Better Written Policies and Procedures, complements the first book as it expands  the Writing Format that is introduced in Chapter 4 of his first book. The book contains exercises, answers, and suggestions for better answers related to writing effective policies and procedures.

His third book, Achieving 100% Compliance of Policies and Procedures, takes the information from the first two books and applies metrics and measures to them to achieve significant improvement and cost savings. This book contains a wealth of good information if you wish to measure and control your progress.

His fourth book, Best Practices in Policies and Procedures, emphasizes how to find content for processes, policies, and procedures and how to create the most efficient and easy to read material. He also gives you links to thousands of samples.

Information on all of his work is on his website at http://www.companymanuals.com .

Stephen B. Page, MBA, PMP, CSQE is a project lead with Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, Ohio. He is currently involved with setting up and deploying best practices processes and guidelines for project management and software development programs. Prior to this job, he has been employed in organizations like Eastman Kodak, Litton Industries, Boeing Aircraft, and Compuware. Stephen helped set up the IT policies and procedures for the State of Ohio. He has been instrumental in deploying policy and procedure systems, process improvement programs, quality tools and metrics, and auditing. He has developed more than 300 company manuals for both printed and electronic formats and more than 7000 processes, policies, procedures, and forms.

I think you will find Stephen's material to be a wealth of information if you are looking for policies and procedures for your IT organization or company.

IV. Entrepreneur Thoughts
Test your ideas

Being an entrepreneur suggests that you are a person that comes up with lots and lots of ideas. New ideas are good as long as you aren't simply jumping from one idea to another without doing something about it. Being able to develop a tremendous amount of new ideas is also a good thing as long as you don't allow yourself to get "snagged down" and avoid spending a lot of money in areas that don't "pan out".

Testing an idea is key. Over the years I have had many, many ideas that I thought were worth pursuing. One of the things that helped me grow my Internet business to the level it is and as fast as it has grown is because I have tested many theories leading up to this point.

For example, in the mid-1980's, I wrote a piece of software for the PC when there really wasn't a lot of software. I even sold a few copies of Cash Flow Manager. The idea was a good one but it didn't fit my desire to create a low maintenance oriented business model. Software support just wasn't what I wanted to do.

In 1998, I bought and sold a lot of items through EBAY. This was another test to learn what the deal was to buy and sell products over the Internet. Until you have done it, you don't really understand the pros and cons. It was in this test that I discovered the challenges of selling a product that you had to maintain an inventory of, etc.

Don't get me wrong. Many of the business models that I have tested in the past fifteen years have been tremendous opportunities, but they didn't fit my business goals.

With my business in full force today, I still test. For example, right now I'm testing three marketing initiatives to determine what works best for the money and effort in creating new awareness of my IT Manager Development Series. Testing allows you to determine effectiveness without spending too much money or investing an inordinate amount of time.

When you find something that works, repeat it. When it continues to work, incorporate it into a normal process.

V.  Special Offer of the Month
IT Planning Special

This month's special is all about planning. Building a Strategic IT Plan provides you with strategy insight and Developing an IT Business Plan is all about budgeting. Buy either one for $24.00 or both for $40.00. They normally sell from my web site for $29.95 each.

For more information, go to http://www.mde.net/itplanning.

Mike Sisco
 
Mike Sisco is the author of the IT Manager Development Series and President of MDE Enterprises, an Atlanta based IT management consulting and training company. This newsletter is free and intended to provide a variety of practical technology insights to help you improve your business. All material is copyright protected and is available for your personal use but is not available for distribution or resell purposes unless specifically authorized by Mike Sisco.

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