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Technology, Then People, Then Process

May 7, 2012 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Musings

Technology, Then People, Then Process
By Eric Veal

Some people say process leads technology but I think it’s usually technology that leads most peoples’ decisions because it’s so shiny.

There’s an order to getting things done with technology that should be followed to be successful and not spend too much or buy the wrong thing. What we ultimately want in life and business is processes or flows that serve us in efficient, effective, fun, valuable, and entertaining ways. To get these flows (ideal experiences), though, we have to follow a very structured process and invest in technology and experts. The process starts with technology identification and selection, then leads to people and experts, and then finishes with you (hopefully) getting the processes that you want.

  • Technology. The technology selection part is fun. My mom’s looking to get an iPad soon and she’s excited about that. Looking at technologies is fun and we can learn a lot by studying them but we have to first know our goals and criteria. We can and should build our ideal process requirements in this phase.

  • Then people. The people part of the process can also be fun and enlightening. This phase is about bringing in experts or geniuses to support you in learning and achieving your goals and objective processes. You’ll find that many of the geniuses out there have a vested interest in *their* technologies or solutions and are not necessarily customer advocates. True business analysts, managers, and customer advocates inquire with the customer then select only those technologies and suppliers that can meet their long-term, strategic needs.

  • Then process. The process part is also fun and where the rubber starts to meet the road. In this phase, it is about putting the technologies and people you bought into a practice and flow and making it work for you for your objectives whatever they might have been.

In review, working with technology is fun but we have to make sure we surround ourselves with advocates for us who help us get the technologies we need to achieve our process objectives.

Eric Veal, MS, MBA, PMP is a managing member at Efficitrends, a company specialized in evaluating, improving, and automating business processes. Eric has 15 years of experience planning, selling, building, applying, and supporting commercial and custom IT solutions for Fortune 500 and smaller firms. You can read more from Eric on his blog.

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