eWeek Lab Director Jim Rapoza evaluates two services of interest to Sourcingmag.com in the magazine’s Jan. 2, 2006 issue.
The first is a two-day seminar offered by MIT’s Sloan School of Management on how to manage technical professionals and organizations. If you’re an expert at managing people, that doesn’t mean you understand the unique challenges of working with techies. Often, they’re highly competitive yet bow down to proven technical prowess. What motivates them isn’t necessarily the same as what motivates a typical knowledge worker. The seminar, Rapoza says, is pricey — $2,600. But, as he explains, the bottom line is this:
“Knowing how to effectively manage highly technical workers can be the difference between successful technology projects and disastrous ones.”
The second review examines a hosted service focused on the phase of an IT project that help you figure out the potential costs of the project before it begins.
SCOPE iT, a hosted service application from SCOPE iT Inc. that costs $2,950 per user per year, lets you choose a type of project, then provides a template. The template steps you through a series of questions — hardware requirements, testing requirements, in-house experience, project complexity — then generates a report you can customize in Word, Excel or Project. The service also allows you to create your own templates.
You can learn more about the Sloan program here.
You can learn more about SCOPE iT here.
