Dr. Todd Stephens, the author of the Collaborage blog, struck a chord with one with his message today. Some quotes:
Will Enterprise 2.0 do more harm than good? The obvious answer is no but management has a way of screwing things up.
For most investors looking at the stock price is more of a conversation thing. We may look at the price on a daily basis but most of us won’t act. If we did, the transaction fees would kill any profit that we have in the portfolio. It’s the same thing in the business world. If we just used the dashboards as guides then we wouldn’t have so many problems with firefighting and over reacting.
The assumption is that if we apply Six Sigma methods to our technology community then we can have a predictable and stable environment. How many innovations are actually going to emerge from a predictable environment?
Woe to the project manager that lets the status turn to yellow or red. The amount of overreaction this causes is borderline hilarious.
His conclusion:
Now imagine an executive taking time to read several employee blogs. One weblog, by a respected technology professional, wails on the project. She describes the trouble brewing and the difficulty of making the deadlines based upon the untested technology. Maybe she discusses the lack of appropriate testing time allocated to the project or poor usability of the interface? Will managers use Web 2.0 technologies as guides or just another reason apply their influence on people and activities that don’t really need them? The key to Web 2.0 is to use the tools appropriately and not use them to over compensate.
One of the many reasons why we at BSG Alliance look to the Agile process in our projects is to make the delivery cycles short enough to allow for innovation along the way. With the Agile methodology, space for innovation is added to the fabric of a project’s life cycle.
I agree with Collaborage in that Enterprise 2.0 tools and Agile development methodology are just aids for helping technologists deliver innovative solutions with a manageable structure around them. Bottom line, you need experienced technologists working in a collaborative manner in order to foster innovation.
Posted by steinthal 
Posted by steinthal 
