Faithful in Little, Faithful in Much

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At church this weekend, Pastor Matt Fry continued his series entitled, "ReThink." The series talks about readjusting how we approach about our walk with God. Overall, it was good information.

In this entry, I will explore the idea of being faithful in the little things and the benefits that may follow.

In the Bible, Jesus shares a parable about three servants. He explains that a master is preparing for a trip and calls his three servants for a brief meeting. Before he leaves, he gives them each a number of talents, which is a form of money. The first servant received five talents, the second received two talents, and the third received one talent.

While the master was away, the first and second servant invested their talents while the third buried his under ground. When the master came back home, he found that the first and second servants doubled the amount of their talents. As a result, the master was very pleased and gave them more talents.

Unfortunately, the third servant did nothing and returned with the same talent that was entrusted to him. The master was thoroughly disappointed and cast him out of the house with instructions to never return.

The lesson I gained from this parable is that each of us are entrusted with something. It could be a gift of singing, accounting, or writing books. Beyond skills, knowledge, and abilities, we are also given authority over people and things. How we manage the little things often determines if we get to manage the bigger things.

To apply this in everyday terms, I look to something like a car or house. Many of us may remember our first car or house. Typically, we find ourselves wishing for the big house or fancy car, but only able to afford the base model. It is at this moment that we show the world what we are made of. How do you treat the less valuable things?

In the case of the car and house, do you take care of it? When it needs maintenance, do you make the necessary sacrifices to fix the problem or do you let it slowly fall apart? Do you find value in what you have or do you constantly wish for more?

If you are one of those people that appreciate the used car and treat it like a Mercedes Benz, then I applaud you. It is this type of person that washes, waxes, and even dusts the car. It does not matter if it has the best paint job or even runs all that well, this type of person treats everything they own with respect.

This behavior even runs into their business lives. Individuals who are diligent about treating everything and every opportunity as if it were worth a million dollars are good stewards of their gifts. Based on the story, we find that these individuals are given more because they were faithful with the little bit they had.

As we look to better ourselves, remember that everything from your health to your job is a test of faithfulness. If you can prove your ability to properly care and manage the little things in life then it is more likely you can manage the bigger things.

Therefore, if you ever catch yourself wishing for more money, bigger house, nicer car, more friends, and happier days, then take a look at how you manage what is given you today.

Until next time...

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Find a Quiet and Comfortable Place to Write

This afternoon, I finally moved a writing desk into my bedroom. After months of trying to compose a dissertation on the bed, I had enough. The constant switching of positions, from sitting to laying and back again, made writing a chore.

Knowing that I was going to spend the majority of the weekend behind a computer meant it was time to make a badly needed change. So far, the results are positive.

For starters, I am in a more comfortable position. With the use of an executive type chair, I can sit up and type or lay back and think. My legs no longer fall asleep and my search for extra pillows to support my back is now officially over.

I have set the desk in the quietest room in the house. During the majority of my doctoral program, I was able to escape into my man cave and write. However, with three growing kids and a small home-based business, the office slowly transformed into a daycare. This move turned me into a wanderer.

I tried using the dining room table, but it was too close to the kitchen. I was often tempted to make refrigerator pit stops and then later entertain others who did likewise. I tried the living room, but the foot traffic and house noise gather there. Overall, these distractions were enough to affect the flow of my writing. In some cases, I did not write at all.

As with most things, my greatest achievements come out of necessity. In this case, it is faced with a deadline and a drive to complete the doctoral program.

I share this entry to empress upon you the importance of a quiet and comfortable place to write. Remember, writing is an important aspect of our online lives as well as professional success. So, if you have not done so, take this opportunity to examine your existing situation. Is it a spot that will allow you to create freely or is it a place where you fight just to remain sane?

If it is the latter, I encourage you to find a spare room or closet and build an environment that will allow you to think clearly and explore those million dollar ideas.

Until next time...

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Function vs. Hierarchy within Higher Education Web Sites

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With nearly 14 years experience in developing web sites for higher education, I have watched the changes in technology open doors for new and exciting things. Although, due to bureaucracy, many of those opportunities took longer to implement. In most cases, it was not due to a lack of technical prowess, but rather the ability to gain mass support from the campus. Major decision makers play a huge role in adopting change. If those individuals are not on board, then often little else changes until they are.

In this article, I would like to introduce a few issues I see with North Carolina Central University's web site and then follow up with a recommendation. While the subject may be higher education, I believe the problems and solutions are relevant to other types of organizations as well.

Common Problems

Poor Navigation
As it stands today, we get tons of complaints about finding information on NCCU.edu. To many, the solution is that everything belongs on the front page. Unfortunately, the front page has limited space. How can we deliver value and relevant content to customers with space constraints?

Different Looks for Different Departments
Each year, a number of departments seek to freshen their site's design. Over a period of time, the university's site looks like a virtual Frankenstein where each unit looks and acts totally different than the next. As users move between pages, they have to adapt to a new navigation and design. Not that I dislike other designs, but the university spends valuable resources trying to bring attention to only one department versus using resources to better promote the entire university.

Putting Everything We Own Online
Another issue the university runs into is overloading the web site with too much information that fails to bring value. Not that a manual or catalog is without value, but is it necessary to save every document from 1996 when the current information is all that is needed?

Recommendation
Times are changing and so should we. The way higher education web sites were built back in 1995 are not great examples of how they should be built today. Forget about what another school is doing for a moment and look at your customers. What do you see? What are they coming to your site for?

If you quietly thought or openly stated something about users seeking online services. Then you and I are on the same page. For years, I have watched web users come to expect more from our web site. In higher education, students should be able to register, pay bills, select roommates, find a tutor, and ultimately solve problems online. Instead, we still ask customers to call, email, or physically visit a department when, in many cases, this is not necessary.

No More Silo Mentality
When people talk about a new design or placing a link on the front page, I believe they are looking for more attention. From a departmental point of view, highlighting MY stuff is important and getting attention means more visits to my page. As the Web Service Manager, I totally understand the strategy. Unfortunately, I do not believe that a new design or front page link is always the answer. Instead, I think we need to look at a few other things: a) Centralize similar information and b) Focus on function vs. hierarchy.

Centralize Similar Information
The first thing departments should do is centralize similar content with information from other areas. Centralizing means bringing similar services together in a common place. If we take for example our current situation with jobs or employment opportunities, we find that a user needs to know which department is offering jobs and then where to find the department on the site. In order to do that, you have to know who the department reports to and the the location of that office online. Truthfully, that asks far too much of users.

Focus on Function vs. Hierarchy
This collaboration between different departments means that we now focus on function versus its place in the organization. To continue with our employment example, I would seek to pull all of the jobs, internships, co-ops, community service opportunities from across campus and centralize it under a meaningful name of employment. This means users only have to know what they want to do not who is in charge of the service.

There are benefits in adopting this method. One perk is a decrease in the number of pages we are required to maintain. We could potentially remove dozens of pages in order to deliver just one, users would not have search so hard to find information, and the campus would finally work together to meet customer needs. Because online services are interrelated, when one department does well, we all do well. As Derek Brinson would say, "All boats rise."

Additional Thought
The problem most universities have at this point, including us, is communicating this message to stakeholders. There are those departments that base their identity on the existence of a web page. I foresee resistance when you talk about taking away pages in order to group them together based on function. Additionally, Web Services needs to have the authority to make these types of changes without going through congress. We do not tell nurses, educators, or administrators how to do their jobs, so why do we allow others to dictate how we do ours?

One suggestion I received to overcome this challenge is to organize a Web Advisory Committee. This committee, which consists of high level decision makers, would meet regularly to discuss web priorities and serve as the enforcers of policy across campus. For Web Services, we get to develop a relationship with decision makers and provide guidance on the current web issues. Over time, these decision makers become advocates and help to support future goals. If you have no advisory group, consider adopting one.

I am curious to find how you currently handle these issues at your organization? Feel free to leave your response in the comments below.

Until next time...

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Questioning the Best Use of Bundles in Google Reader

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This morning I am struggling with how to use bundles. On Tuesday, I wrote a how-to article on creating bundles in Google Reader. The process, while a little clunky, works but it revealed to me another problem. What should go into those bundles? Should it include only my work or a combination of my own contributions with the shared work of others?

If you look to Google for guidance, you will notice that there are about 449 bundles online. The topics range from news to yoga. Inside each bundle is a collection of web sites and RSS feeds from around the net. Most bundles created by Google hold between 4-10 resources. It does not sound like a lot but when you subscribe, the list of feeds can be overwhelming in number. Additionally, the range of topics coming from those feeds may not always correspond to the topic of the bundle. In very short order, your Google Reader stream may begin to look like a hot mess.

While I enjoy a good resource, I have reservations about allowing feeds an open faucet into my bundle. There should be some control. This leads me to my current situation.

The Two Options

Option One: Damond Nollan Only
The first option for bundles is to include only my feeds. As we learned in Breaking Damond Nollan Apart in Google Reader: Learn to Give Your Readers Exactly What They Want, I can separate my blogs, lifestream, pictures, videos, and audio into topics that automatically redirect into related bundles. Subscribers of option one will only get the stuff I share online.

Option Two: Damond Nollan and the Best of Shared Items
The second option is to include my own feeds, as described in option one, along with favorite finds from around the net. This could include Twitter, Friendfeed, YouTube, and Flickr finds along with my own blogs, images, video, audio, and lifestream.

I can see the benefit of option one being less noise and duplication. Because I subscribe to a number of well known feeds, the likelihood of duplicating someone else's share is great, assuming I share what I read. Whereas my own work is original and far less distributed, which means less noise.

Although, on the other hand, I like shared resources, which is one of the reasons we use applications like Delicious, Friendfeed, and now Google Reader. Our friends and associates filter through large amounts of information and share only the best. I know that many of my friends rely on me to find good stuff and share it with them. So, do you see my dilemma?

The bottom line is that I want to provide good information. There are some users that are only interested in what I do but then there may be others who value my shared finds. What to do? What to do?

Yes, I have thought about creating both a Damond Nollan only and shared bundle for the same topics, but then it seems a little much. I have not made a final decision, but curious to find what others are doing? What do you like/dislike? What would you do differently?

Thanks for any feedback you feel moved to provide. Trust me, I will read every response provided.

Until next time...

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Web Development: Develop for the Test

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Believe it or not, I was a music major in college. When I should have been practicing my art, I was in the computer lab learning HTML. I write that to say much of what I know about web development is learned through reading and experience. Today, I do very little development but a lot of management. Fortunately, I have an awesome team that is highly skilled and a pleasure to work with.

The reason for this article is to share with you something I learned recently. As much as I would love to say I know it all, I do not. Every day is another opportunity for me to explore this world and embrace a new idea, process, or perspective. This day, my eyes are set on new ways to create and insure quality in the programming.
More specifically, I would like to address testing. I know, it already sounds like a boring idea for a blog, but it is important. Trust me, as I watch my team spend countless hours creating awesome applications, I also recognize a need for quality assurance. We, as a team, need to know that our web sites are functional and user-friendly. To do this, we need to develop code and then test it. Sound good?

Well, there is one quick change I would like to make. Instead of developing code followed by tests, we should create the test first and then develop the code. Yes, it sounds backwards, huh? No worries because I thought the same thing when I first heard about it. The idea behind creating a test before we code is simple, it is to guide developers toward being done. One of the most popular questions I get from them is, "When are we considered DONE? My answer is when the application passes the test.

What goes in a test case?
That is a very good question and it really depends upon the type of test you choose. If the test case is used to check the applications functional components, then write the test to highlight the steps and the expected results. The test will pass if the results meet your expectation.

In the case of a usability test, one would develop a series of tasks that an innocent user would be asked to complete. An example would be to fill out a specific form, find a particular page, or locate the companies mailing address. The objective is to observe the user and identify any areas that could benefit from additional attention. The result is a better understanding of how users navigate the application, which leads to a more enjoyable user experience.

Conclusion
As you think about your next project, seek to understand the success criteria and put those into a test case. Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you.

Until next time...

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