There’s a sea change going on – a quiet revolution in the way we work as teams. Successful virtual teams, without question, have been on the forefront of this change. But co-located teams are also beginning to reap the benefits of a new way of working.
To decode the secret, let’s start by examining a simple concept that traditionally has been critical to teams: meetings.
"You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work—and much of the profits—remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?"
Andy Grove, Intel CEO 1987-2005, Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs, BusinessWeek, July 1, 2010
I'm just not sure my boss would ever be convinced in the results of this story. I personally have a difficult time accepting that up to 20% of the time in the office is acceptable for surfing the Internet for fun. However, I do agree that visiting non-work sites between tasks does help recharge the brain.
In keeping with tradition, the following are seven articles that were posted here at CMSReport.com and received less attention than I had hoped. Either the reader didn't show up to view the article or there was little discussion on the subject matter. I'll let you be the judge on whether these articles deserved the obscurity they received in 2008.
Baseline reports that demand continues to increase for qualified people in the information technology field. This demand is in part due to the number of the baby boomer generation retiring within the next 10 years. Also, the decrease in students choosing a major in computer science, engineering, or mathematics isn't helping either.
In the article, Demand for IT Admins Hits Five Year High, a survey found strong needs and increasing salaries for IT professionals for the following computer administration work:
Another Generation Y (Generation Next) in the workforce has been written. This time the article is at Infoworld and titled, The Generation Gap Challenges IT Managers.
The gap is widening, with more workers stacked at both ends of the age spectrum. There are approximately 80 million Baby Boomers, those born roughly between the years of 1946 and 1964, and 70 million in Generation Y, born 1978 through the present, but only 60 million in the middle in Generation X, those born 1965 to 1977.
There are a couple new articles at ComputerWorld that peaked my interest and may be something you too will be interested in reading. The first is an opinion piece by Frank Hayes, "Frankly Speaking: Rewiring Respect for IT".
Why don’t IT people get more respect? On this Labor Day, things are actually looking better for people who work in corporate IT. Budgets aren’t quite so tight. Companies are hiring. Interesting IT projects are getting a green light. But when it comes to how our fellow employees think about us, IT work is a train wreck. Users break the rules we set up, ignore the processes we develop and generally act as if we’re clueless in what we do.
On a different subject, Bruce A. Steward has written an article to remind us that supporting our customers is more than just improving the business process.