friend writes that he was recently laid off from his job at a firm in Utah. My advice to him:

My quick take is that if you have any penchant for entrepreneurship I think there is always a crying need for outsourced help desk and support for SMBs. Companies between 1 and 20 are in a crack because they need computers but they are not quite large enough to justify an IT person. If you can add to that the ability to help them think strategically about IT, help in hiring when they do decide to hire and IT person and even placement, then you have the makings of a real and sustainable business.

As an example of what one of these offerings looks like, check out IT Handyman.

And of course don’t forget that PositiveWare is a great app for helping the SMB execute its plan.

I was surprised and a little chagrined to read about Microsoft’s PerformancePoint Planning a few months ago. Was this the PositiveWare killer? Were all our hopes of changing how people think about Performance Management irretrievably crushed?

Not so much.

Turns out MSFT is killing the product as of January 23 or so, in conjunction with other pain throughout the organization. Functionality from the application will be available through Sharepoint Server.

Of course we were never too worried because PerformancePoint Planning and products like it fail to recognize that the key to successful operations is not a dashboard, but people, people who are engaged, aligned, trained, and managed. Any effort to use software to reduce or replace the role of management is bound to fail (admittedly this is a strawman argument but what the heck, they killed the product.)

So why does PositiveWare not contradict this? Because we are more a system of record for managers and employees, a way to capture goals, projects, and tasks, and collaborate on them. We passionately believe that the best management is deeply personal, and that by removing administrative barriers to knowing what everyone is doing on everyone can focus on how to do better.

Flex Project Manager
Listening to Doug do a demo of the Flex Project Manager in PositiveWare - lots of new stuff - client seems to like it

The new blog from Weise Communications comes with a provocative title.

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Doug and I met to plan the next release. We are mesmerized by the idea of providing a solution that goes from the most macro goal to the most micro to do list, creating a comprehensive application for project management and performance management.

For this reason we are planning to implement to do list functionality for PositiveWare in the next release. To Dos can be aligned (or not) and they will be relatively simple to create - a description should do it, with the option of alignment  and due date. To dos are also an obvious integration point for Outlook, Apple Mail, iCal, Twitter, Jott, and so on (later.)

We are also planning a novel feature which for the moment we are calling the hot list. This is the ability to create a temporary list of to-dos, task, projects and clients which reflect your immediate priorities. We envision that a user will refer to the hot list every morning to design their day or week. This also leads to a reminder email that a user can queue up to receive every day (later.)

Look for this release in early February.

Trying out Zendesk to make support even better

A recent Information Week column by Bob Evans uses the pretext of a CIO’s letter to the CEO to focus on the right way to use IT strategically. Two of his points should resonate with PositiveWare users - the importance of time tracking and performance management. 

8. One of the key building blocks in reallocating IT budget dollars out of maintenance and into innovation or savings or both is the ability to know with great precision how people are spending their time. That way, we can ensure they’re not falling back on old habits and spending time on projects that aren’t driving the company forward. But while I gave the HR folks a few presentations on this and have given them a few specific applications to evaluate, they keep telling me that it’s too difficult or confusing to have various time-tracking systems for various departments. Frankly, Jim, this is the sort of backward thinking that will kill us, and I need your help and support to root it out. 

9. In a similar vein, I need your support in allowing me to create new, flexible, and outcome-driven compensation and bonus systems for many people in the IT organization whose efforts are indispensable to helping drive the types of fundamental change you and I both agree are needed for this company to fulfill its objectives.

These new incentive plans need to be based on deep and quantifiable collaboration with all parts of this organization; new metrics centered on effective engagement with customers and prospects; new ways of walking in lockstep with the LOBs to enhance business and customer value; and precise and measurable impacts on new approaches that will allow us to cut maintenance costs beyond 60% this year to 45% or even 40% next year. But, once again, the HR people are very nice and sympathetic and say all the right things, but at the end of the day — and the end of the month and the end of the year — I’ve still got people doing 2009-level work but getting paid on 1995 models. 

As reported in the Denver PR Blog.