Monday September 27, 2004

JDS, Change, and my Mom

As I said Friday my parents were visiting this past weekend. Mom mentioned more than once that she wants her old computer back.

Earlier this year my husband and I flew to San Diego to upgrade my parents to DSL. It was a long and painful experience. (We ended up buying a new computer and making a second trip to install it) As a part of the change we dumped AOL and moved to the SBC Yahoo browser based email interface. Mom finds it difficult to use and says she really wants her old computer back. I've try to explain that it is not the computer it is the fact that email was easier to use on AOL than on the browser mail client. She doesn't care. I've tried to explain that she has a faster more reliable system now and isn't tying up her phone line when she is reading mail. She doesn't care. The new interface is just plain hard for her to use.

I think the lesson here is that change is tough. And when the change involves the basic user interface with your computer the change is really annoying. You just feel less productive for a while. The difference of course between what happened to my Mom and what is happening at Sun is that the JDS interface is easier to grasp than the CDE interface. But we still have a lot of work in front of us to build the Change Acceptance for JDS no matter how good it is.

I've been mulling over what makes blogs interesting to read. Call me weird but I find it really interesting. Of course a part of it depends on the audience but I think part of it may be in the story we tell. At least one of the stories I want to tell here is the JDS Change Acceptance story. How will it turn out? Will Sun embrace JDS? Will our Change Acceptance process make a difference? Stay tuned to find out :-)

Friday September 24, 2004

JDS Change Acceptance

Lots going on. Today is my parents' 54th wedding anniversary. They are here visiting and we are having a celebratory dinner tonight.

I want to start my weekend but I want to write here first. I am determined to write regularly.

I'm changing over to Sun Java System Calendar to start to get familiar with it. I tried once before but didn't like using the web I'm ready to do it again. I like learning new things and I am telling everyone they need to be a JDS active supporter so I think it time. Let's just hope I don't miss any meetings in the transition.

We had our weekly JDS change acceptance meeting today. Among other things we did a Change Risk Assessment. We brain stormed what could go wrong, rated the impact and likely hood of occurence, and came up with ideas to mitigate the risks. The problem is there is so much we can and should do and so little time. It is somewhat daunting but it is a great team. Something that I always love is how the results of a team are always better than each person could do individually. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Even though I know this both from experience and academically it still always surprises me a little. The challenge is to make sure I am doing a good job of leadership and greasing the wheels so that we all can get the absolute best results. Its a bit scary but fun at the same time.

Tuesday September 21, 2004

The Change to JDS

We are in the middle of a change. Today some people at Sun still run CDE as their windowing system and use Windows on their laptops. (Shocking isn't it!) We want everyone to run Java Desktop System (JDS) everywhere. There are lots of very good reasons for us to change to JDS. But changing the way people interact with their computers is a fundamental change and change is never easy.

I'm leading a team that is focused on driving the change acceptance process. We call our Change Acceptance Process model Sun CAP. The model has several areas of focus that all work together to drive acceptance of change. One area of focus is engaging support and resistance.

Engaging support will obviously help us build on the momentum of change. Engaging resistance, however, almost seems counter productive. If you have ever heard Bill Vass or Jonathan Schwartz speak you can imagine that this is in no way an optional change. So, you might ask, why would we want people to tell us what barriers they see to the change. Of course we want to know about barriers so we can remove them, but there is another reason that engaging resistance is important.

Karen Smith told me a story that she heard in Sun CAP training. Apparently when cake mixes were first being developed some market research was done. What was discovered was that people don't feel they baked a cake if all they had to do was add water. So the cake mix companies require you to add an egg and some oil to the mix even though there is no technical reason to require it. This story really resonated with my experience. I know that I am much more supportive of a change if I've helped make it.

I'm looking forward to the next few months. I think they will be both fun and interesting as we lead the acceptance of the change to JDS. I expect to learn a lot.