Sakaidelic Musings

This isn't a post about Sakai specifically, since its a community-source project, which means its project management-related issues are of a slightly different flavor. However, anyone who works in IT (and who doesn't these days?) has probably heard the words "compliance" and "auditors," along with a good dose of "project management" and "portfolio management." Although they're separate issues, compliance needs seem to drive adoption of project management practices, since they're the main way work is (supposed to be) organized, documented and carried out.

Sure, everyone wants to document, do the right thing, and make sure we're doing what we say we're doing, but how to balance that with innovation, creativity and productivity?

Some interesting thoughts from Tom Grant at Xythos:

...no one wants to live in a world where they waste time documenting what work they did today, archiving that documentation, documenting the archiving, responding to feedback about the documenting and the archiving, documenting the response to the feedback, scheduling meetings to review the archiving and documenting and feedback...This is the way the world ends, not with the bang of Godzilla's giant foot, but the whimper of bored, unproductive people.

That's yet another why you can't make compliance a separate application. It has to be embedded in the tools people use, in ways that are (in order of preference) invisible, helpful, or painless. Otherwise, you might as well slap a giant Portal To Hell logo on your "compliance application," because that's how your users are going to treat it.

Everyone talks about Google's 20% time rule, and most leaders are clear about wanting to create innovation in formal and informal ways, but sometimes things don't always connect. Few have really solved the balance between an organization's concerns (regulations, bad press, protecting the organization) and the innovation and work that is necessary to keep the organization from falling behind.

That's why this post by Don Cohen is a harsh (but honest) lesson that creativity can happen in surprising and unexpected ways and it takes a strong and secure leader to encourage the right projects to move forward.

Although an informal poll in Newport confirmed that the Sakai developer community is by no means a hostile environment for developers of the female persuasion, I'm excited about this talk taking place at LUGRadio in San Francisco:

A slightly raucous but very fun look at female participation in open source computing. This presentation includes a subversive tour of the well known articles and statistics about women in open source and finishes with tangible solutions that really do get more women engaged in technology. Drawing on personal experience, Emma will present you with real solutions that have worked in her community. Explore absolutely new ways of thinking about the gender gap and learn how to take the next step towards really increasing the number of women in open source computing.

from http://emmajane.net/events/lrlusa2008

What excites me about it is the emphasis on how we can redefine open source communities for the future, rather than dwell on a less-than-stellar past.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day.

Take a moment to think about, or even blog about, a women in technology that inspires you. If you can't think of one, the Anita Borg Institute has some suggestions.

Recently, my heros are this girl scout troop that entered a LEGO robot competition, even though their troop leaders didn't know anything about robotics. It's a cute article, even though you have to read it in their silly interactive book format.