Time in a box and arguing points

Technology Management Seminar in Problem Solving – Week 2 Weekly Summary

It has been amazingly easy to compartmentalize MBA work this week. Having plenty to do with the robotics team has forced me to put class work in a time-boxed schedule and that (plus maybe a little getting used to the whole thing) has really throttled back the amount of time I spend worrying about class. It probably also helps that this is the first two weeks of the class, the workload is usually lighter during weeks one and two. I have to be careful though not to box school too tight; this class still requires four days a week of participation and the instructor seems pretty tight about what he considers to be ’substantive participation’. I already had to argue one point deduction from the previous week because he said I missed the ’substantive’ requirement one day; but in reviewing the information online I can see where he did indicate my participation was meeting the requirements. Maybe the grading was just a typo. He also dinged me saying my research paper didn’t have a header and pagination. Please. I’ve been doing this for a while and have a standard template library I use for my papers. I verified the paper I turned in had both elements, so I had to call him on that deduction too.

This week’s reading highlighted business driven technology, the definition of IT processes, and some discussion of selecting infrastructure and platforms. The discussion questions drew a lot of activity about everyone’s experience with collaboration systems. A variety of systems seem to be used by students in the class but everyone seems to agree that these systems have become part of routine and required daily life within the enterprise. A second discussion question on database management systems and their relationship to data warehouses initially made me pause. I work with these systems every day, so these seem so common to me that to have someone ask what the business benefit of a database management system seemed a bit like asking why water is important to life on earth. Everyone knows it is but maybe, a bit like clean water, we get so used to it we take it for granted. So it was interesting to go through the discussion on database management systems to hear everyone’s perspective on why these systems are important. The data warehousing discussion was also interesting. Working for a business intelligence consulting company, it is always interesting to hear how other people view data warehouses, and the class did not disappoint. As with many of our business clients, the variety of applications of data warehouses presented simply reinforces how mainstream these systems are becoming.

The homework this week was a good chance to walk through the interconnected nature of strategic, tactical and operational IT processes. The scenario provided a nice backdrop for the discussion and the text flowed nicely with the homework assignment. The biggest difficulty I had was finding relevant references from the library. Once again, these seem to be concepts so fundamental to business that perhaps not a lot of people write about them. Once some references were located I was happy to find some peer reviewed journal articles that took the topics deeper than our classroom discussion and at least I won’t have to worry about being dinged for not using appropriate sources.

Can I please get a reading on if this is Substantive Enough?

Technology Management Seminar in Problem Solving – Week 1 Weekly Summary

Being the first week in our ’specialization area’ of technology management, this was a milestone week for many of the students in this class, if not for everyone. After up to 13 classes in common MBA subjects, this week we’ve finally made it to the topic that is near and dear to many of our hearts. In light of that I thought it turned out to be very appropriate that we spent much of the week looking at emerging technology.

One of the topics of the week that jumped out at me was discussing how effective management of technology can help companies maintain their competitive advantage. I have worked in businesses who view IT in a variety of ways ranging from a simple cost center to being a proactive change agent for the organization, so I could relate to the message that companies who use IT to their advantage tend to fair better than those that just view IT as a burden. Yes, I know, it sounds obvious- but there are people who still only view IT as a burden, so maybe stating the obvious a few more times will help change that.

Another big topic of the week was discussing how emerging technologies create business opportunities. The lifecycle of technologies coupled with the ‘personalities’ of organizations (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards) made for an interesting discussion in the text, highlighting the characteristics of an organization that can be derived from the company’s favored approach to emerging technology.

The discussion questions this week drew a lot of activity around how people have seen emerging technologies used in their business environments. The instructor seems to be following the fairly standard model regarding quantity and frequency of responses to discussion questions, but also seems to have an unclear standard for what counts as a “substantive comment”. That could lead to points awarded or lost due to a subjective interpretation of the rules, it could be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Onward to week 2.

Week 6 of 6 and Strategies for Competitive Advantage is a Wrap

Strategies for Competitive Advantage – Week 6 Weekly Summary

Back from vacation and the class is a wrap.  The week was split pretty evenly between commenting on other team member’s strategic plans, making adjustments to my plan, and preparing the power point presentation to accompany the strategic plan.  There were no discussion questions this week, instead the instructor asked everyone to spend their time discussing within their learning teams.

The requirement for the final submission required paring the information in the strategic plan to fit into about six slides for a power point presentation.  After initially sketching the outline of the presentation it was looking more like 12 or more slides. In fleshing out the outline, it became clear a couple could be omitted without sacrificing the message and a couple others could be combined. 

Getting and providing feedback on other team member’s papers was also an interesting exercise.  It is always interesting to see the variety of organizations people choose for their research. 

Tomorrow starts the 12 week run to wrap this little project up. 

Intermission is almost over, please return to your seats

Strategies for Competitive Advantage – Post Holiday Break Summary

Two weeks off and it feels good.  I can look back and see I was getting really burned out on the pace of school.  The work isn’t that hard, but having it constantly hanging out there was really wearing me out.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one.  I got a generic e-mail from the university at every e-mail address I’ve ever told them about saying “we know it is hard but keep going it is worth it”.  I’m guessing they are seeing (or have seen in the past) a lot of drop outs at this time of year.  Case in point, normally my classes are between 20 and 25 people, this class is down to six.

  Now it is time to return for one week in this class.  The work this week will be reviewing and commenting on my team members strategic plans, and finishing mine.  After briefly reviewing theirs I’m thinking mine is going to play just fine.  I ran long in terms of the word count, but content wise I think mine is competitive.  I can’t think of what I would add at this point, I’m planning on just doing some editing but will consider the comments I get.

The biggest difficulty in the upcoming weeks will be dealing with limited time.  My work with the robotics team puts big chunks of time out of play for grad school work.  I can always shift the time back as needed; the robotics team will get along fine.  One of my ongoing concerns is that I’ll psyche myself out over the schedule, thinking I have too much to do and not enough time.  To help manage that I’ve put placeholder appointments in my calendar with little cautionary notes like “if this doesn’t get done (meaning I don’t put the time in) tomorrow’s robotics meeting will have to get cut short”.  I guess you could call them motivational cautionary threats.  Just plugging everything into my calendar has already helped by (1) letting me get more use out of my calendar, (2) shown the time limits I have to operate under and (3) shown that there is still free time no matter how packed the schedule feels.