Focus!

If I thought I’d be able to take it easy and catch up when I got back from travelling, I was sadly mistaken. There’s been a blur of activity, a lot having to do with our recrutiment workstream. They’ve been working to get Taleo out as a global standard for internal and external postings. Again, due to the size and complexity of our organization, deploying any global standard is a hige challenge. Recognizing that, the team was charged with creating something that links to not only Taleo but any de facto job board used within the company. I’m not confident that we even have a definitive list.

To the horror of the workstream lead I proposed that we proceed with a target state definition of an integrated career management environment and use that undoubtedly compelling vision as leverage to convince people around the company that the heavy lifting and pain that it will take to adopt this particular standard will be worth it in the end. I understand their pain, as an escaped technologist I know it would be in their intrests to simplify, not amplify. What I’m fighting is the emergence of a fat new silo created by lashing together a bunch of old silos. In any case I think she ultimately agreed so long as she can deliver something in March to satisfy the basic request. But now I have her attention while I create a picture of a critical part of the overall target state for self-service users.

Noted Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox post “Why Ajax Sucks (Most of the Time)” I’m in the love/hate camp with regard to Jakob. On the one hand I very nearly engaged him to speak to senior management when I was creating the business case for the latest version of the corporate intranet, on the other hand I sometimes find his positions unnecessarily orthodox/purist. In this case there are some spot-on issues – I watched focus group users struggle with some of the Ajax elements in the intranet prototype, especially around the use of the back button. This is something that needs fixing, like it or not. That said, I believe that the Ajax approach has much goodness, especially as it will apply to a thoughful self-service environment.

I’ve also been asked to put together a short paper for internal use on Fusion as a follow up to Open World. Given the current state, that should be brief.

Sunday I travel yet again, we’re taking our road show to Colombia, I come back Tuesday and then out again Thursday for Dallas and Mexico City. That’s the end of the intranet prototype tour, and I’m glad for it. I love to get out now and again but I’m just plain tired.