Organizational Behavior

Nashua, New Hampshire, USA – Kentico Software (http://www.kentico.com), the Web content management system vendor, announced the re-launch of their Trees for Bugs initiative. Company employees will plant a tree for every software bug reported in each latest version of Kentico CMS for ASP.NET.  The company also promises to fix all reported bugs within 7 days.

”I’m proud to say that although our product gets more complex, we are constantly eliminating the number of bugs in new versions. We have also been successful to keep our promise and comply with the 7 days bug fixing policy since its announcement back in 2009.” said Martin Hejtmanek, CTO at Kentico Software. “Our efforts became an indivisible part of Kentico's commitment to deliver a stable platform for managing websites, on-line stores and social networks.”

“Kentico has always been committed to provide high-quality user experience to our customers and partners. While we test our software extensively, it’s important to make sure that we encourage our customers to report any bugs they find. Based on the feedback on our initial program, which was only related to the 4.1 version of Kentico CMS, we decided to keep it for all upcoming CMS versions, starting with the current 5.5 R2 release,” said Petr Passinger, PR Manager at Kentico Software. “From now on, we will plant a tree for every bug found in each latest version of Kentico CMS.“

The Trees for Bugs initiative is well explained in the following one and half minute animated video:

The current number of bugs, and therefore the number of trees that will be planted, can be seen at the re-designed Trees for Bugs website: http://trees.kentico.com.
 
The homepage of the Trees for Bugs website shows a graph that represents distribution of bugs/trees between individual development teams. With almost 6,000 active customers in 84 countries, the website provides country standings in the “Bug-Finding” discipline.

Each planted tree is dedicated to the person who reported the bug and labeled with their name. The tree is also listed in the tree gallery and its location is marked on a map.

If you have ever worked for a large organization, you should easily relate to this Dilbert cartoon. As the IT guy trying to make everyone happy at work, I've spent the last year making sure everyone that needs two monitors gets two monitors. It's not an easy task in an era of tight budgets and cycle replacements but we're getting there...

"You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work—and much of the profits—remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?"

Andy Grove, Intel CEO 1987-2005, Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs, BusinessWeek, July 1, 2010

Who really defines what is a CMS?

You do.

I'm more convinced than ever that CMS experts aren't really in the driver's seat when defining the content management system. Experts in the field of content management are more or less observant passengers that are there to help you not get lost and to point out the significant landmarks on the way. This journey takes you to places while you the customer remain in the driver seat with all the privileges and responsibilities of being the driver.

Over the past few years I've realized that my work preference is to keep things as simple as possible. Sometimes when defining information systems keeping things simple works while other times the system is new and remains too complicated to define. Thanks to my reply in a productive rant against CMS by Laurence Hart I'm not only understanding my aversion to being called a CMS expert but also my philosophy and role in defining what is a CMS. This personal philosophy is developing...

Scott Abel convinced me a few years ago on my own blog that the definition of a CMS is never static and always changing. We’re chasing our own tail when we get nit picky in our definitions of a CMS. Somewhere in all the marketing that has been done for terms such as CMS, ECM, and WCM…we have forgotten the difference between information system and information technology.

This week, I spent a lot of time in various discussions on the negatives of Web content management systems (WCM). For all the excitement us CMS enthusiasts have for WCM, there is also associated frustration that threatens to dampen our spirit and kill the mission.

"Innovation initiatives that used to take months and megabucks to coordinate and launch can often be started in seconds for cents."

"This new environment also has big implications for managers. Simply put, bosses must be prepared to give up some control. With testing so cheap, easy and accessible, there's less need to ration it as they have in the past. Managers used to directing the company's innovation efforts must give their workers the freedom to come up with ideas on their own and pursue them without lots of red tape."

"Some of the best experiments come from outside the chain of command."

"All too often, however, committees don't work well at all -- resulting in a relentlessly short-term outlook, an inability to stick to strategic plans, a slapdash pursuit of the latest fad and a tendency to blame mistakes on somebody else."

-Jason Zweig, "The Intelligent Investor: How Group Decisions End Up Wrong-Footed", The Wall Street Journal, April 25-26, 2009

I'm just not sure my boss would ever be convinced in the results of this story.  I personally have a difficult time accepting that up to 20% of the time in the office is acceptable for surfing the Internet for fun.  However, I do agree that visiting non-work sites between tasks does help recharge the brain.

Seth Gottlieb, Content Here, recently turned me on to Sacha Chua and her blog.  Sacha is an Enterprise 2.0 consultant and application developer for IBM and she also happens to be a very good blogger.  What makes her blog interesting, besides being well written, is her posts on corporate use of social technologies given from the perspective of her generation, the Millennials (latest hip word for Generation Y).

While some organizations are still debating about introducing Web 2.0 technologies to their employees, this newest generation now entering the workforce is likely to expect that such technologies are already available to them for use in their daily work tasks.  While the use of information technology is often viewed by companies in terms of staying competitive and a requirement for implementing strategic plans, the technologies are also increasingly becoming an essential tool for the human resources department.  If you're expecting to attract and keep bright educated Millennials such as Sacha within your organization, you then need to better understand how people in her work cohort are likely to process the work given.

Laura Scott posted her 9 best practices and things to avoid when it comes to e-mail. We followed some of these rules a decade ago, but a good reminder is always appreciated. Laura doesn't mention anything about not using all CAPS in an e-mail and I assume that's because if you don't know that rule by now...nine rules is beyond your grasp.

My favorite rule to follow is number 3:

Write your response above the quoted text.