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Update to the Atlassian’s fundraising drive
Hi everyone, some great news about the fundraising drive I blogged last week.
$100,370 was raised in the Ā 5 days with 13,126 licenses being bought. The sum of money will enable Room to Read to build 25 libraries for children in developing nations.
For more information, please refer to the official blogpost by Atlassian
Thanks to all of you who responded to our blog post and spread the message around. Thank you very much š
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SF: Future of the Enterprize
To further the TED conferenceās mission of promoting ideas worth spreading, it has established the TEDx program of independently organized TED events.
The Advance network is running its first TEDx event on May 5 in San Francisco.
Ross will share key findings from his recently launched bookĀ Implementing Enterprise 2.0. The discussion willĀ focus on key facets of how the enterprise will change, including structure, staffing, funding, and the use of social and communications technologies.Ā
The list of Ā speakers for this event are:
- Ross Dawson, Futurist, Chairman, Future ExplorationĀ Network
- Verna Allee, CEO, ValueNetworks.com and author, The Future of Knowledge
- Sam Diaz, Senior Editor, CBS Interactive
- Melissa Morel,Ā Advance San Francisco Committee – TEDx
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The live streaming will be available on May 6 (Wed) at 7:30am (Singapore time)
For more details, check out the registration page
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Business Continuity Tips against the Swine Flu
While the world is recovering slowly from the global financial recession, we are hit with the impending threat of the H1N1 flu virus (also known as Swine Flu). Although the source is known to be from the remote Mexico, there are reports on a few cases of infection in Asia.
I believe that we are in a much better position now as compared to the SARS period. This is because the alert was raised early and we have accumulated a lot of practical experience from the SARS episode. Nevertheless, we should look at how other organizations are tackling this challenge and relook on the current business continuity measures.
Many companies are playing it safe by restricting travel to the infected countries and also exploring ways to enable employees to work from home should they are suspected of infection. Some of them have set up alternative office sites to continue their operations in case their current office building is placed under quarantine.
I see our solutionsĀ (Confluence & JIRA) would be useful in extending these business continuity strategies. I will list down 3 scenarios to explain how they can help.
Scenario 1: An employee has fallen sick and is unable to do work. Another colleague is assigned to take over his duties but he does not know what are his outstanding tasks and the latest development on the tasks.
With JIRA, the one taking over can check out what are the assigned tasks of the patient and take over the tasks. He will be able to find out on the development via the work logs, notes and discussions for each task.
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Without JIRA, the one taking over will have to check with the superiors and team members on the assigned tasks. He may have to request for access to his email account to read through all the emails. Some clientsā requests might be missed out as there are no records of the tasks.Scenario 2: The employee is assigned to take over a project but all the files are stored in the laptop of the patient who is in the hospital.
With Confluence, all the information is stored in the centralized servers organized by projects and functions. The administrators need only to grant the appropriate permissions to the ones who are taking over.Ā
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Without Confluence, the people can try his luck to get access to his computer and laptop. He may also need to get access to his passwords.Ā As a result, some personal/confidential emails and files will be accessible to their colleagues.Scenario 3: There is a case of infection in the current office building. The entire building is under quarantine.Ā Nobody is allowed to enter the building to do work until disinfection cleaning is done.
With Confluence and JIRA, the staff will be able to do their work from their home with a secured connection (VPN or SSL). Communications can still take place with mobile phones, emails and instant messaging temporarily. When the quarantine is over, they can resume work back at their office.
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Without Confluence and JIRA, the files in the corporate file server are inaccessible from the internet without a VPN connection. There might be a need to rent another office and set up another data centre. This would imply a few days of downtime and a huge expense.Ā
Lastly, I wish everyone good health and hope that this will get over soon.Ā Do check out the tips given by the Singapore government.Share this post
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How we survived through a computer breakdown
Last week, I got a bad shock when I saw the following screens when I started up my computer.Ā
A reboot did the trick, but my heart sank soon with the following screen
What followed later what a series of frantic attempts (scandisks, system restores, etc) to get the laptop working. Eventually, a visit down to the service centre was necessary.
As a result of this incident, I have to reformat my laptop. However I feel I was quite lucky in a sense. This is because most of the important information is stored in our Confluence wiki, JIRA and other web applications. What is lost is only some work in progress and some time to reinstall the applications. The consequences could have been much worse if all the information was lying in my laptop.
And while the laptop is being serviced, I was still able to access to information and continued with my work (though my productivity dropped a bit). I need not worry about the technician having access to my confidential files on my laptop while repairing it. I do not need to spend time backing up my laptop every now.
Some of my friends said this could have been avoided if I backed up my files regularly. So I am now very curious about the backup habits of others. How often do you back up your files?
Lastly, if you haven’t done anything to backup your data, let this be a reminder. Machines can be replaced easily, but not the content inside!
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Hot News! Confluence & JIRA at $5
Atlassian is running a fundraising drive to raise $25,000 for Room to ReadĀ by selling special edition of Confluence and JIRA for USD$5 each.
These starter editions have the power-packed features as the enterprise editions of Confluence and JIRA. And owners will be eligible for support (for standalone installation) and free upgrade in the next 12 months.Ā The only difference is that usage is limited to 5 users.Ā
This is definitely a good investment if you only need to collaborate within a small team or want to try it out as a proof of concept first. The enterprise edition of Confluence and JIRA costs USD$4000 and USD$4800 respectively. Now you only need to pay $1 for each user.
To further sweeten the deal, all organizations (in Singapore) who bought the starter licenses will be eligible for a free 2-hour consultancy session from us to explore how to unleash more value from these applications.
This special promotion will only limited for 5 days and will expire on this friday (24th Apr). So act fast!
Latest News
Adaptavist is offering Theme Builder and Communities Bubbles (addons for Confluence) for free (for 5-user Confluence License)
Ā
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Live Webcast of how Confluence is used in the US Government
The World Bank is organizing a session “Sharing our Stories about Wikis the Pecha Kucha way” for governmental agencies to share how they are utilizing Confluence and other wikis for their work.Ā Key partipants includes: Ā Ā Ā - The World Bank
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)Ā
- National Geographic Socieity (NGS)
- Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
- Executive Office of the President – Office of Management & Budget (EOP-OMB)
- Others
The session is only limited to 50 users. But thankfully, Atlassian will be recording the presentation.Ā
The event will be held on 14th May (Thu), 11pm – 12:30am. Ā I will put up the link to the video in this blog when it is available.
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How to manage your workforce in the recession
CIPDĀ together with ACASĀ has released an official guide for businesses to get through the recession. There are a few points that I would like to highlight.
Think long term
A lot of businesses are exploring aggressively to cut down on their operating costs. There are a variety of measures by- cutting jobs
- terminating improvement projects
- insourcing
- using cheaper solutions and products
While these may help to bring down the cost at the moment, it might not benefit the organization over the long run.Ā
- Talents and experts that took time and money to be trained are being lost together with precious domain knowledge. Bad publicity also results in lower trust by the clients.
- Forsaking opportunities to achieve efficiency and additional potential revenue
- Higher expense – Forsaking the opportunity to get the job done by the experts at a cheaper ratesĀ
- Lower service/product quality. Additional expenses to customize the solution or manual workaround. The worst scenario is to spend extra money to migrate the solution in future.Ā
- Incurring unnecessary (indirect) expenses – It is possible that an effort to reduce software licensing costs could result in huge, additional expenses during Ā the migration to another cheaper system.
It is important to find a good and low cost solution which is scalable with additional investments when possible.
Maintain employee engagement
We always say that employees are the ones who make a difference to the company. At this time, there is a need to boost the morale and keeping them engaged. It is also necessary to set a clear sense of direction from the top management. I once heard a management story highlighting how good intention can end up wrongly executed –The top management said cut unnecessary cost. The middle management said cut manpower cost. The employee told his wife “I got cut”.
Therefore it is essential to set up a platform for the top management to communicate their plans down to the line workers.
Develop a strategy for redundancy so itās there when you need it
A lot of companies have put in plans to handle the redundancies through hiring of contract workers and outsourcing to external vendors. However, they may have missed the crux when there are cases where companies have to retain the contract staff and retrench the permanent staff. Ā There are also occurrences where Ā the dependence with the vendor has grown so high that it is almost impossible to switch to another cheaper vendor.Even though the jobs have been outsourced, there remains an important and urgent need for companies to capture the essential knowledge within the organization. This is possible by setting up a collaboration site (Confluence) or issue tracking list (Jira) to capture information that are important to the organization.
Have you implemented these strategies in your organization?
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Why sharing knowledge matters to me?
Gil Yehuda highlighted a potential and plausible threat that people might be less willing to share their knowledge to protect their jobs.
Ā … these days Iām detecting a threat to this mindset ā one that is aided by the recent down-economy. Ā I speak to many employees in workplaces, and to many people out of work, and I detect a regressive attitude about collaborative thinking. Ā Employees have lost all loyalty to their workplace and are preparing themselves for a potential layoff.
What results is that employees are more likely to take information and store it in their private web spaces (e.g. Google docs) or in their personal email folders and thumb-drives ā waiting for the pink slip. Ā In this way, theyāll have the information they need for the next job. Ā And therefore, they are less inclined to share it.
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But the question is whether this mindset is helpful? Is it worthwhile to hold on a sinking ship or is it better to do our best to keep the ship afloat and get it cruising?ĀI shared my experience on the benefits of knowledge sharing as a comment to the blogpost.
I would like to share my experience on this. When I just got my job, I was not known in the company despite my dilligence. Only my immediate boss and a close working group knows what I am doing.
Subsequently, when we embarked on the use of wiki as a knowledge exchange site. I begun to actively share my knowledge. People eventually got to discover my knowledge and competence. I get people coming to ask me for advices. My name became known to the top bosses. And I got several job offers from my ex-colleagues. All because they got to know my talents and positive attitude in work.
It is important to work hard and be competent. But it is also important to let others know too. Thatās why advertising is still required for very good products. And in times like this, it is even more important to advertise ourselves.
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Beside promoting oneself, it is also very important to keep on learning and improving. And the best way to learn is to teach. We discover new and better way of doing things by exchanging ideas and learning from one another. Through the interaction with others, we can also build up the network and relationships with other colleagues in the organization.And when everyone share their knowledge, the company will get the opportunities to cut down on costs through improvement in productivity and less expenses. In fact, TransUnion got an estimated savings of $2.5 millionĀ through sharing their knowledge and experience. Imagine how many jobs can be saved with this amount of money?
I would like to end with what Stephen Covey mentioned in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
- Dependence is a condition
- Independence is an achievement
- Interdependence is a choiceĀ
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Quality Management System with Wikis
The use of wikis is getting more and more prevalent. Corporations and institutions are adopting wikis for their formal corporate uses.
Geometrica has put up their case study on implementing a Quality Management System using wikis and have successfully attained their ISO 9001-2008 certification.
Here are some of the benefits with using wikis:
- Better control of documents – automatic versioning and notifications of updates
- Ease of management – documents are stored in a centralized place instead of multiple versions circulating around
- Ease in retrieval – with searching capability and centralized site. Viewing is directly on the browser without the need to download and open with another editor
- Helps in maintaining the integrity of the information – a paper-based system will require amendments to all documents with changes whereas wikis does it automatically
- Simplifies internal audits – all approvals recorded on the wikis without the need to printed documentations with signatures or separate email approvals
- Promotes continuous improvements – any mistakes can be reported (by comments) and corrected (by the reporter or the person in charge) almost instantly with email alerts in place.
- Encourage participation – people can give feedback easily or ask the rationale for certain policies. Understanding this will definitely helps in better conformance
- Lower cost – as compared to expensive document-control software with a “built-in” QMS manual which have little flexibility. Less time required to maintain and update the information too.
In fact, the use of wikis are not limited to quality management systems. A lot of financial firms are also using wikis to keep track of their policies as it is easy and fast to update (with the constantly changing regulations). The information can also be circulated easily without spamming everyone’s inboxes and searching is much more convenient and responsive as compared to digging the shared drives for the document.
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Project Managers or Project Secretaries
If you are a project manger or aspiring to be one, read on š
As a project manager,
- How much time do you spend on your emails?
- How much time do you spend on updating your excel worksheets?
- How much time do you spend checking Ā and tallying on the progress of the project?
- How much time do you spend on collating information and preparing reports?
- Do you belong to the 1st diagram or the bottom one?
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If you are interested to find out how you can move from a project secretary (who is tied down with the adminstrative overheads of project Management) to become a project manager (who is focusing on the “management” aspect of Project Management), you can read out the articleĀ Focus on getting things done with Project Management 2.0Ā byĀ Andrew FilevĀ on ZDNet Asia yesterday
His article resonates with what we want to help our clients with.
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