Small is Beautiful

This article was recently published in the march issue of Vivid magazine. You can find it on here vivid’s site as well as below.

—–

In the last few years that I have spent as an IT consultant it has become apparent that most companies do not effectively know how to use an IT consultant. There are many elements which contribute to a good working relationship between the consultant and the client but the number one factor is if the client knows what he wants to achieve. This may sound odd at first but most of the time the client does not actually know what he wants. Success is based on whether or not the client is able to identify the reasons and needs for an IT consultant.

Once a company has identified the areas in which it needs help (sometimes with the help of a consultant) it should consider whether it could resolve the issues internally or use external sources such as an IT consultant.

Deciding on whether to use internal sources or an IT consultant is usually a relatively easy choice to make. The client either has the necessary skills in-house or not. If the client has some of the skills but not all it might be a good idea to invest in training to acquire the rest of the skills. In some cases the costs of acquiring these skills far outweigh the costs of a consultant. Care must be taken when analysing the prospect of using an IT consultant. Luckily there are consultants that can help in exactly these types of scenarios.

The method by which an IT consultant may be sought varies greatly as some companies will go for word of mouth recommendations while others will go through recruitment agencies and other similar services. I recommend a combination of both while taking into consideration that the IT consultant should be known on the market via local user groups, have proven skills in the areas in which you need assistance, and have previous experience in the areas that you need assistance. They will hopefully be certified and have been involved in similar projects.

Aside from the technical skills required the relationship between the consultant and the client is just as important. The outcome of the project will largely be based on this relationship and how comfortable each party is with each other. It is important, for example, to integrate the consultant into the teams that he will be working alongside. A comfortable relationship will provide better communication and better output just as in any other relationship.

It is also important that the consultant know all aspects of the project in which he is involved. From my personal experience IT consultants are usually treated as outsiders when they first start a project and information is withheld by employees. Getting the clients trust is a slow process and slows down production. If the consultant cannot effectively communicate with the whole team it will hold back positive results. Management or the person responsible for hiring the IT consultant must make sure that the consultant is tightly integrated into the team or teams that he will be working alongside, and that communication is a positive, driving force.

The tasks or projects that an IT consultant is set should be clear before he is hired, although sometimes it is hard to define them without the help of one. Once the tasks are clear the consultant should be provided access to the necessary information in order to fulfill his duties. Employees sometimes become stumbling blocks for IT consultants because they feel they could have provided the same services; in such cases I recommend letting management take decisions about whether the employees should help in some way or let the consultant go it alone.

As the project or projects play out it is important for the client to see and understand what value the IT consultant has brought to the projects. Weekly meetings, documentation, briefs or reports are useful in getting feedback from the IT consultant. Sometimes in large projects it could take months or even years to see the full outcome of the project and having regular updates and information lets the client see where he stands.

As with any relationship, the most important factor is communication. Knowing when to use an IT consultant, where to get one and how to effectively use one is a difficult process but using common sense and communication will provide positive results.

Lately Ive been placing my hopes in a more structured methodology of work by implementing a collaboration suite. There is somewhat of a lack of communication and in order to bridge the gap I looked to collaboration suites where I could assign/receive tasks and have an overall picture of every-ones schedules and tasks. Naturally I looked to something that would run on Linux and work with email clients available for Linux. After quickly realizing that there is nothing out there that just works or even with a couple of days of tweaking would show some small promise that “it would work” I gave up and installed MS Exchange.

Since I run only Linux on my workstations I needed a client that would work with Exchange. Evolution is what is being touted as the Open Source worlds best collaboration email client so I naturally tried it although I have had plenty of previous experience with it. To keep things short, Evolution and its Exchange connector is joke and an insult to my computing skills. Aside from the fact that evolution-data-server freezes constantly it takes ages to load. I tried switching distros thinking it was something on my particular set-up but the same problem. Also LDAP queries only work when you are in the same LAN as the Exchange server. For some reason you cant take your GAL with you on the road. So I eliminated what was being touted as the best solution for Exchange and a Linux client right from the start.

Next I looked to Novell Groupwise which unfortunately seems to be just as much a joke as Evolution and Exchange integration. The Linux client is written in Java and aside from being a hideous piece of graphical design it does not include 90% of the features that a collaboration client needs (for example tasks!!!).

I didn’t have a chance to run Lotus although I would have liked to see if it offers anything of use on my Linux desktops. I am starting to believe that a collaboration suite for Linux is truly the Holy Grail.

So after looking at some of the better known commercial alternatives I looked to some free ones such as zimbra, opengroupware and some others. I have spent the last 3 days installing and configuring everything that even has the smallest promise of being a collaboration suite for linux and have found absolutely nothing! I cannot use something web based due to the fact that I need offline support so all the AJAX mambo-jumbo is of no real use to me. I need a email client that works, is stable and doesnt get in my way with arcane meus and other junk. Thunderbird works and is actually fun to use so is evolution so long as you dont try to use it with Exchange.

So I am going to keep my Exchange server because it works and it actually does it in a very simple manner. What I dont need right now is a collaboration server that needs to be babysitted. What I DO need is an email client for linux that can talk to Exchange. Since I have no such client I am going the VMWare way. I am actually using Vista in a VM with Outlook 2007 and it is working just fine, aside from a little performance penalty due to all the emulation.

As much as I love Linux and OSS I hate the fact that sometimes I reach a point where I realize I have nothing to compete with when it comes to true problem solving solutions. I need to offer businesses something that works and doesnt get in the way. I cant push web based because they suck. Plain and simple. I dont have Internet access 100% of the time. Maybe the OSS community should look to building something that works. Maybe they need to do it from scratch and they need to make it work with Outlook if they want any share of that huge collaboration market.

Will I have to wait 3 years for some collboration suite that barely works on/with Linux or will I keep using my shiny new Exchange and Outlook running inside a VM? I am starting to see huge possibilities to all this virtualization stuff. For example I would have saved myself a whole weekend doing something else instead of toying with would-be technologies that probably never will be…