Here’s an example of what I mean, posts on forums where claims like the following are made.

Eliminate the number of potential risks threatening database development and deployment by 60% and reduce deployment costs by 95%.[sic]

What does this even mean? Reduce what deployment costs? Against what baseline? Is this an average observable saving, if so, where’s your supporting data?

Which development and deployment risks are you talking about? Which of these risks does your tool mitigate? How much effort is required to mitigate those risks? Is it really worth it?

In this particular case a link was provided to a press release. Still no sign of any substantiating data. What about their web site. Nope. Not a thing.

Or how about this one,

AccuRev will eliminate up to 90% of normal merge activity.

What is ‘normal merge activity’? On what basis does this person (who was a representative of the company) make this claim? 90%? At first blush this is a remarkably specific claim (read it carefully and they’ve included those marketing weasel words ‘up to’), it must be based on some pretty sound data. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just one of those made up statistics again. Yeah. That’s what it was. I contacted the person involved and they continued to be vague and push out marketing speak, but failed to come up with anything more substantial than ‘Our customers have typically seen between 70-90% reduction in merging activity.’ Another unsubstantiated claim, and even if it’s true is still seems to be based on perception and hearsay rather than hard numbers. (Oh, and 70-90% is a heck of a wide range and boldly claiming 90% in the original statement is misleading even if you accept the more qualified range.)

Ah, you say, but it claims ‘up to 90%’. Well that’s BS too. I can save up to 100% by not doing any parallel development at all. No merging, no merging costs. Alternatively, if your merges are normally done by a bunch of alcoholic monkeys, then I guess saving 90% is possible by using properly trained software engineers and following good branch and merge practices.

And if they save you 0%, well, that’s up to 90% too. 90% is just a made up number plucked out of some marketing guy’s butt.

Now, I understand that marketing people like to make these claims, they look impressive on paper, but they’re absolutely useless to anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size who is trying to evaluate tools. Frankly, if you’re going to make ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims then I for one don’t want to be doing business with you. I mean, if you can’t be up-front and straighforward at the beginning of our relationship, how trustworthy are you going to be when it matters? (I’m tired of hearing people say things like, ‘but the sales guys said this tool would solve this problem’. Really? The sales guys said that did he? And you didn’t think to verify that before you bought the damned tool?)

The stock reply of course is, ‘but everyone does it and if we don’t make these claims no one will pay any attention.’ Really? You’re falling back on the ‘everyone else does it’ defence? If that’s the best you have then, once again, I’m not sure I want to do business with you. (As my old Mum says, ‘if everyone else stuck their head in an oven, would you?’)

Another justification goes along the lines, ‘but there is no good way to measure X’. Now that may be true, but that doesn’t give you license to just make shit up. If there’s no good way to measure something then claiming to reduce that something by a specific quantity is… well, bullshit. ‘Oh yes, I can reduce your unspecified cost by 53%.’ How the hell can you say that with a straight face?

These sort of unfounded claims really make my blood boil. So I’ve decided that whenever I see unsubstantiated claims I’m going to call them on their BS. It’s simple enough, just reply to their post asking, ‘I am interested in your claim that X will say me Y%. I wonder if you could provide us with the data on which this claim is based, I’m sure the community will be interested to see the methodology and metrics you used to gather this data, as well as the data itself. In an industry where such benchmark studies are rare, or at least seldom published, your data will be most useful.’

I bet not one will reply with anything remotely like an independent data set that substantiates the marketing claim. And if they do, all the better because I for one would love to see this sort of data collected and published.

Remember, marketing statistics and claims are generally worth exactly what you paid for them. Zero. And I have data to support that.

The availability of high performance PCs in almost every IT workers home makes this a real no-brainer. Companies could provide virtual devices to remote workers. The workers install and run these remote devices (virtual machines running approved versions of company software with appropriate VPN connections) on their own hardware and connect in to work.

Iomega recently announces a new package (pdf) that combines VMWare with one of their USB drive products that can be used to clone a PC to virtual form. This USB drive, loaded with the virtual PC, can then be plugged into another machine and the virtual PC run on the host.

Alternatively companies could provide download images for remote workers. Log in to the central server, download your virtual PC image, and run it on your home computer. Login to access the corporate network.

Both of these solutions allow for securing the virtual PC. Disabling USB ports, CD/DVD recorders and so on.

There will be some additional cost to the company in term of telecommunications, they will need improved network connectivity, but this is more than offset by the savings of not needing to provide desk space, lighting, heating, etc. for those working remotely. Additionally, all problems relating to transport problems are removed. There’s no need to worry about driving through snow to get to work when you can log in remotely (a particularly apposite example given the current weather and the estimated £1.3Bn losses caused by people being unable to reach work). And companies can claim a significantly reduced carbon footprint by virtue of not demanding their employees drive fifty miles each way to work every day and not having to provide the aforementioned heating, lighting, etc.

Although remote working cannot be practically extended to all IT workers (and some may not want to work remotely), it is certainly appropriate for many. In particular development and maintenance teams, most operations workers and support desk operators, and most, if not all, management functions. A core staff in server rooms will be required for installation and maintenance of physical assets, including the all important network connectivity.

Most IT workers’ activities do not require them to be in the same room. In fact, even workers in the same room will often e-mail or instant message one another in preference to walking to another’s desk.

With realistic broadband speeds now being available to most households in the UK it is perfectly possible for meetings to be held using conferencing software. I would hazard that these meetings would be more productive too since attendees could be working on other matters while waiting to make their contribution. Meetings could also be automatically recorded, making misunderstandings less likely.

So what is stopping companies adopting remote working?

Principally, trust. Companies simply do not trust their employees. If you are compelled to attend a site then the company feels they are better able to monitor you. This is of course hogwash. Being forced to sit at a desk in an office is no guarantee that you are being productive and any manager who thinks they are ‘keeping an eye’ on employees like this really needs to assess their priorities. A worker is assess by what they do, not where they do it. If the work can be done sitting on the beach, why not let it be done sitting on the beach? The company loses nothing, the work still gets done.

It is ironic that companies are more than willing to reduce costs by outsourcing IT functions to foreign climes but are reluctant to allow their own employees and contractors to provide the same services remotely.

The case for companies to not only allow but to actively encourage remote working is overwhelming and it will happen eventually. The question is not if, but when your company will adopt more remote working.

The problem is this. IT people have, in the past, been locked in their ivory tower protected by a wall of technical ignorance within the business. Business people have perceived IT to be a group of elitist jerks, no better than technology janitors with a Napoleon complex. The fiction between the two means lost energy for the business and this friction boils down to one simple statement.

We are suspicious of what we do not understand.

IT people are suspicious of the business people, believing that they deliberately hold back from advancing technology. Business people are suspicious of IT people believing they use jargon and technology to make things look more complex than they really are.

This friction has increased as people have become increasingly familiar with technology in their personal lives. Why can corporate IT not make my PC work when the one I have at home works fine? I should be able to install applications on my PC at work, I manage just fine at home. Why can’t I have an iPhone at work to pick up mail, the one I have at home works just fine for mail? And so on.

The solution for reducing this friction is more understanding between the IT department and the business. The insistence that ‘IT become part of the business’ is as silly as insisting that ‘accounting become part of the business’. Yes, they need to have a close working relationship. Yes, they need to understand one another’s needs. But at the end of the day IT, like accounting, is a specialised skill and will always be in some respects separated from the core business by that skills set.

IT leaders of tomorrow need to have a clear understanding of technology. This is not to say that they need to understand the nitty-gritty detail of programming or how to configure a router. However, they do need to understand not only the impact of technology on their decisions and on their business but also the potential impact these decisions will have on their IT infrastructure and the people who maintain them.

One need look no further than the current excitement about ‘the cloud’ to see how IT leaders can be distracted by insubstantial hype. This steaming pile of horse manure is nothing more than marketing hype. It is nothing more than network computing. In fact it is something of a move back to the computing model of the 70′s when organisations would lease computing time and storage on large mainframes. But I digress.

It leaders of tomorrow need to be able to understand their business’s needs, so they must have business training and must be involved in board level decision making. There is little point the board deciding to implement a brave new strategy if the IT costs of such a move are prohibitive. Similarly, many IT decisions will require the board to understand why such a move is necessary. This level of mutual understanding cannot be affected without the two parties working together closely.

The best IT leaders are able to understand and communicate technically with the IT department and discuss business matters in the parlance of the business domain with the business. This is a very rare skill set. It should be recognised as such and rewarded when it is found.