mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

Join us in exploring the world of modern development, evolving technologies, and the art of future-proof software

Author name: Joe Stangarone

Joe Stangarone is a 40+ year veteran of the IT industry and president of mrc—the software company behind the award winning development platform, m-Power. Joe shares his leadership and technology insights through the Cup of Joe Blog, focusing primarily on ways businesses can save time, money, and increase productivity using technology.

3 new realities IT must learn to accept

EducationHow would you describe your IT department? Are they innovators, laggards, or somewhere in between? In case you’re unfamiliar with those terms, they come from the technology adoption lifecycle concept–a sociological model developed in the 50’s that describes the adoption or acceptance to new products or innovations.

While that concept is generally applied to consumers, I believe it just as easily applies to IT departments.

Every major technological shift comes with varying levels of acceptance among IT departments. Some drive new trends (innovators). Some welcome new trends with open arms (early adopters). Others sit back and wait to see what everyone else is going to do (majority). Still others are reluctant to change, with some even actively fighting it (laggards).

That being said, some trends are out of your control. These trends are driven by consumers. It doesn’t matter which category your IT department falls under–you must adapt. In fact, you could refer to these as more than just trends. They’re realities. In other words, they’re not up for debate. You can’t sit back and wait to see what others will do. You can’t refuse to change.

What are these realities? While I’m sure there are more, I’ve put together a short list of 3 realities that your IT department must learn to accept:

Weekly recap: 9 ways to improve user experience in mobile design, mobile BI, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on mobile app user experience, CSS3 transitions, and more. I hope you find them useful:

9 ways to improve user experience in mobile design
Developing applications for use on mobile devices is a whole new world for traditional web developers. You must build applications for a touch-based interface on a small screen, and that isn’t easy. This article gives some great tips for developers who want to create better mobile interfaces.

5 ways BI will change in the next 5 years

EducationThe world of Business Intelligence (BI) is undergoing some pretty fascinating changes. Whether or not you buy into the “Big Data” hype, you can’t deny the fact that we’re generating crazy amounts of data–more so than ever before.

What are we doing with all of this data? Or, more specifically, do we fully understand the potential? I’m not so sure that many companies know the answer to those questions.

While these changes create many questions, here’s one thing you can count on: Data analytics is changing, and will play an increasingly important role in the business world. When you combine this deluge of data with recent tech trends, we get a few very important changes to the world of Business Intelligence. What are they? Here are 5 key ways that BI will change in the near future:

Weekly recap: 6 tips to break app dev bottlenecks, how to master new skills, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on development bottlenecks, web standards, and more. I hope you find them useful:

How to master a new skill
Keeping your skills current is one key to success in the IT profession, or just about any field for that matter. But learning a new skill is quite intimidating if you don’t know where to start. This article lays out a great plan of attack for learning new skills.

Top 6 strategic IT priorities for 2013

EducationThink back just 10 years ago. Smartphones and tablets (as we know them today) didn’t even exist yet. Social media was a new concept. Mentioning the term “Big Data” would just bring you awkward stares.

My, how the times have changed.

Fast forward to today. Businesses are currently experiencing some of the most rapid technological changes since the rise of the web. Smartphone and tablet adoption have exploded. PC usage is on the decline. Cloud computing is on the rise.

With all of these changes, which areas should your IT department focus on in the next few years?

I’m curious to hear your opinions. What do you think are the biggest strategic issues facing IT departments going into next year? While I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, I’ve created my own list of 6 issues that every IT strategy must include going into 2013:

Partnering Opportunities . . .

AnnouncementWe are looking for a few good companies who want to help us help them to make this world a better and more productive place through the creative application of m-Power in the business world.

Could you be what we are looking for? There is only one way to find out. Jot me an email describing how we might work together to achieve our common goals.

There is no formula here. You don’t have to be in a particular industry. You can be a consultant, but you don’t have to be. You can be an application software company, but that’s not mandatory. You can be into Business Intelligence, or end user report writing, or web application development, or application modernization, government consulting, or any number of things.

Are you a company that can help us profitably spread the productivity benefits of m-Power throughout the world? This document outlines a few partnership benefits, and there are also lots of good strategy reasons you might be interested.

If you sell an application or wish to develop an application to sell with m-Power, our pricing is as straight forward as it can be. There are no seat licenses, run-times, or distribution fees to worry about.

So, if this is something you might want to explore, send me an email with your thoughts: joestangarone@mrc-productivity.com.

Weekly recap: 4 trends revitalizing BI, useful jQuery snippets, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on BI trends, useful jQuery snippets, and more. I hope you find them useful:

14 handy jquery code snippets for developers
If you do any web development, here’s a page you’ll want to bookmark. It provides some of the most commonly used jQuery snippets all in one place, for easy copy-and-pasting during web development.

3 ways IT causes Shadow IT (and how to fix it)

EducationSuppose your car’s “check engine” light turned on. What do you do? Do you take it to the mechanic and ask him to find the problem? Or do you ask him to remove the light?

Of course, you fix the problem. Everybody knows the light isn’t the problem–it’s a sign of a larger problem.

I mention this example because it ties in nicely to the growing “Shadow IT” problem. For those unfamiliar with the issue, Shadow IT is the term used to describe IT systems and solutions built within an organization without the IT department’s knowledge or approval. The IT department cannot control these systems, which creates all types of data security problems.

CIOs and IT managers around the world are asking the same question: How can we stop Shadow IT? I’ve seen some companies try threats. Others try to limit procurement budgets. Unfortunately, these types of approaches rarely work.

Why? As it turns out, they’re asking the wrong question. Asking “How can we stop Shadow IT” is the equivalent of asking a mechanic to remove your “check engine” light.

Why? Shadow IT is not the problem. Like a “check engine” light, Shadow IT is a sign of much larger problems. When business users aren’t satisfied with the services and support they receive from IT, they look for other solutions. Users aren’t maliciously trying to harm the company. They just aren’t getting what they need from the IT department.

So, if you want to fix the problem, you must first identify what’s causing the problem. Rather than asking “How can we stop Shadow IT?”, perhaps IT departments should be asking, “How are we causing Shadow IT?” Why would end users want to bypass the IT department in the first place? To help identify the problem, I’ve created a short list of the most common ways IT departments unwittingly create Shadow IT:

Spreadsheet misuse: Why it happens and how to stop it

Save MoneyDo you know why end users still use spreadsheet programs (like Excel) so frequently, despite all of the security concerns? The answer is simple: Spreadsheets are easy.

Sure, maybe they’ve sat through training classes on how to use your enterprise software. Maybe they already learned about the dangers of spreadsheet misuse. Maybe you’ve even given them a safer alternative to spreadsheets. But, here’s the problem: If the process isn’t as easy (or easier) than Excel, they probably won’t use it.

The solution: Give users simple, secure web applications that replace the most common Excel uses. In what ways is Excel most commonly used? When you boil it down, end users typically use Excel in three ways:

  1. They enter data
  2. They manipulate (edit, sort, and filter) data
  3. They analyze data

If you want to eliminate spreadsheet misuse, give users a better, safer way to accomplish the three tasks listed above. The best way to accomplish this: Give them web applications! Don’t know where to start? Here are some great web applications that replace the most common uses of Excel.

Weekly recap: 5 ways to prepare IT to drive productivity, BYOD risks, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on IT productivity, things you need to know about javascript, and more. I hope you find them useful:

10 things you need to know about Javascript
If you do any type of web development, you’ll likely need to understand Javascript. This article lists some of the most important aspects of Javascript that any developer must understand.