It's not always 'bout the technology

During my work as an IT manager, there are 2 kinds of customer

  • 1 who doesn't realize the benefit of IT

  • 1 who over-confident 'bout the benefit of IT

For the 1st group, we need to give them some real demo, some data, some endorsement from other people to convince them.

For the 2nd group, the problem is more interesting (at least, for me).

First, it's always a good feeling when people think your demo is cool. However, the toughest moment is to know when to tell them "hey man, this might look cool, but we really need to find a way to make use of it, to get something out of it".

So many excited questions were raised, e.g. "can it do this, or that ? I think we can do all the [some-other-unrelated-project] with this man !". And we might tend to just "can do" for all the things (with the thought that we might somehow be able to work it out later).

This can lead to so high expectation which is always a double-edged sword. It can help to drive the adoption of your project but it also can set the wrong goal (read: unrealistic) to your project as well.

Just some thoughts on how to manage this

  • Still, give a simple, cool and understandable demo to the non-IT people

  • Understand what's the real problem that we're gonna solve. Focus on the core ones first before tackling those fancy stuffs

  • Get tangible results as soon as possible to keep the hype and the engagement

  • Always educate people (and remind yourself) : it's not about the technology but how we deploy it, how we utilize it and the process we put in place to make it really sustainable

{http://work.plonely.com}

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Jamie Larson
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