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Standards are great, but best practices make everything better!
When I travel, I've got standards set for such things as hotels
where I get booked. They must be in a safe area, clean and
reasonably close to the client site. My flights must be
prebooked -- never standby -- on a major carrier and,
unfortunately, coach class. My rental car must be from a major
provider, not be a subcompact and have power seats - so I can
see over the steering wheel and reach the pedals.
These are my basic required standards for business travel,
however, best practices take me a step further. For example, my
hotel should have a restaurant on-site and rooms should open
only into a secured corridor, not the outdoors. I also refuse to
stay in a room if the patio or suite doors cannot be secured.
Lastly, there should be a coffee maker in my room so I don't
have to forage bleary-eyed for caffeine in the morning.
My best practice for air travel is to fly my favored carrier
whenever possible. This helps me obtain preferred seating,
upgrades and other perks that increase the quality of my
experience. If I get a free upgrade to first class, I may get a
meal in flight and can skip the drive-thru garbage on the way to
the client's office. As a matter of fact, I recently qualified
for a six month free membership to an "executive traveler" club.
I definitely get more work done in one of their quiet rooms than
I do fighting the masses at my gate.
Driving in strange vehicles in unfamiliar cities can be a
daunting experience, so I make it a practice to get rentals with
a Global Positioning System (GPS). Hertz® refers to these as
their Never Lost® system. I call it the "never lost for long"
system! I pay a bit more for the GPS, but with my navigational
skills, I more than make up for it with more billable hours at
the client site as opposed to driving aimlessly in circles
around strange cities. OK, lost and freaked out about it! Stress
is never good, and the possibility of being late for a meeting
and hopelessly lost causes lots of stress in my book!
While the basic standards for business travel are fairly easily
met, it can be difficult to justify the added expense needed to
push the experience up a notch to "best practice" levels.
However, with a little extra effort and expense, the overall
success of the trip is significantly enhanced and typically ends
up being less expensive (due to vendor-provided perks such as
free meals, internet access, upgrades and the like).
When you think about information technology and it asset management,
it is easy to see how standards are important. Most of us are
familiar with any number of established standards-setting
organizations, such as the Project Management Institute (PMI),
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO®) and
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE®).
Standards are an essential element to manufacturing equipment
that will play nice with other equipment, such as wireless
modems, external drives, printers and more. Standards are
imperative for hardware and software developers as well. It
wouldn't make sense to write software that didn't work on the
majority of PCs in use, now would it?
Before ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange) was invented by computer pioneer Bob Bemer, there
were over 60 ways to represent characters in computers! He
referred to those days as a "real Tower of Babel!"
When you get past the basic standards, such as taking "I must be
in an airplane with wings" to a higher level ("I must be on an
airplane with a jet engine and it must have met rigorous safety
standards") you simply get a higher-quality solution. This is
what is referred to as best practices.
Now some might argue that standards could be so rigorous they
surpass best practices, but in my experience just the opposite
is true. I've seen a definition of standards as "something set
up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of
quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality" and "an
acknowledged basis for comparing or measuring something." Hum.
Practice is "to perform or work at repeatedly so as to become
proficient," so best practices could be described as a process
for optimal tactics and strategies. Neither standards nor best
practices can guarantee success in every situation; rather, they
describe those tactics and strategies used in successful
companies.
The Hackett Group, a business advisory firm, studied best
practices at 200 organizations and recently reported that
"world-class" organizations spend 18 percent less than the
average company on IT. On top of that impressive figure, those
organizations do so with 36 percent fewer workers. Those
companies deliver 91 percent of all projects on time, on budget
and with the intended results
and benefits. Median companies,
reportedly, meet these criteria only 68 percent of the time.
Ouch!
So when it comes to the metrics for justifying best practices --
even if they are just suggestions -- there seems to be good
reason to push the envelope from standards that must be met to
practices that are strongly recommended. But how does one know
what is a "best practice"? Looking more closely at The Hackett
Group findings, one will discover that world-class organizations
use best practices to achieve simplification and standardization
and they develop higher levels of process discipline to improve
IT's overall alignment with business objectives. When savings
are achieved, some of that money is reinvested into technology
that adds business value and potentially contributes to the
company's bottom line.
One of the other strategies that world-class organizations use
to "do more with less" is to manage IT vendors more
strategically than average businesses do. Typically they will
use 5 percent fewer hardware vendors, 29 percent less contractor
services and 65 percent fewer software suppliers. By managing
vendors more advantageously, world-class organizations typically
can support the business with about 28 IT staffers per thousand
end users as opposed to average companies who typically need 44
IT staffers for the same quantity of users. Please, folks, let's
not run out and cut IT headcounts - let's position ourselves for
growth by implementing best practices, raising the maturity
level of our processes and managing vendors more effectively
through strong negotiations and tight service level agreements
(SLAs).
Focusing on standardization and service delivery models and
ensuring alignment with overall business strategies are good
first steps to moving up on the proverbial food chain of
success. Remember the good ole "KISS" rule: Keep it simple,
sister! OK, I paraphrased! Tight project management processes --
preferably standardized and formal -- company wide is another
key to the probability of more project successes. Moreover, The
Hackett Group study found that the best companies, those that
adhere to a common project management methodology 90 percent of
the time, can achieve optimal results. Six Sigma and Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) are both good examples
of process management practices that are well developed and can
be deployed company wide -- most notably for IT projects.
Experts agree that the critical success factors for successful
Information Systems Implementations contain the following key
elements: Clearly define goals, scope and purpose of the project
Ensure top management support and a skilled, respected project
leader Recruit, hire or assign appropriate personnel for the
team Appropriately leverage outside resources and vendors Use
industry standard technology - match it to needs properly -
abide by standards Properly "sell" the project to stakeholders
Communicate effectively and often with stakeholders Pilot the
program competently Train and support users Expeditiously
troubleshoot deviations from the plan
I would add to this list: learn from your mistakes and endeavor
not to repeat them, and document, document, document! People
implement best practices, tools cannot. Try to match the
application of best practices to individual job functions and
illustrate the value of using those practices. Strive for
continuous improvements by holding "lessons learned" meetings at
project completion and then changing a process to reflect those
improvements.
If your organization doesn't currently have a set of established
best practices for a particular component of your IT operations,
consider leveraging those set by organizations such as the
InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards
(INCITSSM), the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) or any number of other organizations. In essence, look
for practices that have consistently demonstrated a significant
improvement to the bottom line.
Best practices can help us all rest comfortably in the knowledge
that we are doing our jobs efficiently; ensure that we never
find ourselves lost in the process quagmire and ensure that we
are quickly alerted to deviations that need immediate attention.
Hum ... resting comfortably ... never lost ...alert. A good bed,
car and caffeine close at hand! Life is good for a road warrior
who follows best practices!
About the author:
Donna Johnson Edwards is the Director of Consulting for Tenax,
Inc. Established in the U.S. in 2002, Tenax provides IT
compliance certifications, training and targeted consulting
services. For further information on Software Asset Management
please visit the Tenax Corporation website at
www.tenaxcorporation.com.
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