I just read Wayne Eckerson's article "Do Your Team a Favor: Stop Acting Like IT" about how messy systems get and that they are upgraded over and over without much strategic (or tactical) thought. Wayne wants teams to be more like business people and less like IT. Make choices on value rather than cool stuff. What? Is he kidding?
I, like the bad guy in the story, often believe that an upgrade is the correct choice. However it's seldom the right thing to do first. Without reconciling the project to the organization, including corporate policies, procedures and, well, laws of the state, the organization is missing a huge opportunity. If you're not taking advantage of the tools you have, and/or they aren't configured to actually match corporate policy, and/or the system isn't used 'correctly', what's the point? Sure we always cover these topics with the Upgrade Studio as part of our standard upgrade process but it can be an uphill battle if we're working with a group that just 'needs to get it done fast and furiously.' Let's face it, the Upgrade Studio is often started because they have to upgrade, not because the organization is thinking about these things. It's all in the approach <g>.
I find much in that article that makes me like this guy. "In the end, it's not the tool that matters, it's how you apply it." So here's some "revolutionary thinking." Don't upgrade Kronos Workforce Central. Wait! Bryan said that? He's all about upgrades! He's blogging in the third person. He's lost it!
So, you ARE an IT person after all <g>. "An IT person always believes in the value of new software features and fears losing vendor support..." A business person sees the upgrade as "IT busywork" and wonders why he's not getting the promised ROI from the initial implementation.
As we head out to Kronosworks and we all get excited about version 6.2 I'm going to take a stand. It's my personal mission to get all Kronos-Fans on the bandwagon to DO THE RIGHT THINGS RIGHT. It's time to break the cycle. Get your house in order before doing that next big Kronos upgrade (Or even service pack. Have you seen all the new and changed features that show up there?) Audit your pay rules. Update your documentation; not just the technical stuff, but the pay policies too. And when you do jump in, update your training and work hard to eek out more value from your upgrade.
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