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From LA Weekly: the Los Angeles Unified School District attempted to roll all of its employees to a single payroll calendar. The conversion has been a disaster, as LAUSD managers failed to follow a basic tenet of information systems migration – parallel conversion. Keep running the old system running until the new system works!

It was January when the district’s new, $95 million payroll system started spewing out erroneous checks, underpaying some people, overpaying others, and creating such chaos that administrators now pay special counselors to deal with the psychological trauma.

The blunders persist despite $37.5 million in fix-it cash, and teachers are ratcheting up the pressure by boycotting faculty meetings and holding rallies. They marched on September 25 outside the LAUSD offices — “We won’t take it no more!” hundreds chanted…

Wikipedia’s article on parallel adoption is actually helpful, with a decent reference list of supporting articles. This concept is discussed in the IS 6100 textbook in chapter 12 on page 476. Both terms have similar meanings.

At the end of the day, employees expect an accurate paycheck

Parallel testing is all but required when a company moves large amounts of data processing to a new system. Developers rarely anticipate every possible exception that might affect a new information system.

Vendors have been selling inexpensive personal computers for years. Dell has offered models that are more-or-less disposable – the case is sealed, and the repair costs may exceed the computer’s actual value.

Business Week reported on 9 October that sales of ultra-low cost PCs are growing, especially in Asia and Latin America. One popular market for these computers is in schools, where students need durable computers. Some models lack hard drives, relying on flash memory and network storage instead. This 16 June 2006 ZDNet article describes an Intel project to design similar computers. The article also points out some of the distribution challenges in these markets. Weekly payments, microloans, content filtering and asset control systems are important features.

The One Laptop Per Child initiative provides similar computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Windows. This 4 October article in the New York Times provides a brief overview of the XO project, and Laptop Magazine has an extensive hands-on review. Wikipedia has an article, of course, and it notes that Intel has redirected its ultra low-cost PC program to support the XO project.

As this spec sheet shows, the XO computer is not a fast device. Its power usage is only 2 watts, which is less than some PDAs and smartphones. The XO’s battery can be recharged in several clever ways, as described in this list from OLPC News.

Ultra-low cost PCs aren’t supposed to compete with standard consumer and corporate models, so the key success factors in this industry may become quite different than those found in mainstream PC markets. The XO is inexpensive, easy to manufacture, and easy to deploy in local schools.

The New York Times has published an article on doctoral education, with a long discussion on shortening the process:

The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33…

It took me 48 months to complete my Ph.D. at the University of Georgia as a full-time student. I earned my MBA at Rollins College in 21 months as a full-time student. An MBA was not a requirement in UGA’s business administration program, but I couldn’t have done my doctoral coursework without some solid MBA experience.

Is doctoral education supposed to be a career?

Four years was an average time to completion for business doctorates, as I recall. I spent almost 3 years taking doctoral courses and seminars. I proposed, wrote and defended my dissertation during my final year.

While I was classified as a full-time student at UGA, I also had a job. I taught at least one undergraduate management course for the management department each quarter. The college used doctoral teaching assistants as instructors, so I designed and taught my management courses, based on the college’s model syllabi and required textboks. The professors gave the doctoral students a great deal of flexibility, as long as we taught all our classes, and produced reasonable student evaluations and average grades.

It seems like a different world back then. We weren’t really on the Internet at the Terry College of Business. We used a service called BITNET to send emails within the college. BITNET used a store-and-forward approach to move emails and files aong the network.

I knew a few students who did their dissertations from a distance. Theirs was a difficult road. Manuscripts had to be mailed in paper form or on diskettes. Phone calls replaced conferences.

I have a box of paper notes in my office that I consult every now and then. Several students and I cobbled these together from our own files, as well as files donated to us by previous students. One of these days I should spend an afternoon and scan them into my digital archives.

From CNN: European universities are facing increased competitive pressure to help students finish their degree programs quickly and find meaningful employment after graduation. In Germany, some universities are charging tuition. French universities are using selective admission policies. Greece may allow private universities into the country.

Will the University of Phoenix expand its European presence? Will European employers allow more employees to earn degrees online or in corporate classrooms?

From CIO Insight: John Parkinson asks an important question - how well can business schools prepare their students to take leadership positions in information technology and innovation?

Graduate education emphasizes meta-learning, or the ability of learning how to learn. A successful master’s degree candidate has demonstrated that they understand and use the course material, and that they can continue to learn and grow as professionals and scholars.

The MBA degree program is fundamentally different from more specific degrees programs. I speak from experience - I earned an MBA as a full-time student at Rollins College in 1988, and I’ve been program chair of an MSIS program for the last 3 years. I also teach dozens of MBA and MSIS students every year. I have a bio page here.

MBA programs provide broad cross-training

An MBA program provides cross-training over several required topics (finance, accounting, marketing, management, law, technology, strategic management) and a handful of specific electives. However, some MBA programs have no electives at all. Other MBA programs have specific areas of interest, such as entrepreneurship, technology, or vertical markets.

A major part the MBA program’s value lies in the integration among the courses. As this is a master’s program, students must do the integrative work themselves, using the frameworks provided by their faculty. This represents the integration of functional areas into business, corporate, and enterprise strategies.

MSIS programs provide managerial and technical preparation

An MSIS program tends to focus on technical skills (telecommunications, software, hardware) and management skills (project management, knowledge management, strategic management). Again, the students follow a framework provided by the faculty as they integrate their knowledge.

If we treat IS as a functional area, and innovation as a process to be managed, the role of the IS professional is to help the organization deliver more value and effectiveness through technology and innovation.

Parkinson’s thesis - that deep scholars are difficult to find - has some merit. Many organizations select CIOs who have demonstrated management ability, but who have limited technological experience. These CIOs are expected to be “quick studies” as they master the technologies and processes that provide value in their organizations.

The MBA degree has often be derided as the “quick study” certificate. Because MBA students get only one or two classes in each of the core functional areas, they learn how to perform rapid analyses that may be sophisticated, but may also lack detail and rigor.

On the other hand, Herbert Simon pointed out that decision-making is usually constrained by the bounds of time, space, and our own cognitive abilities. Managers want to optimize, but they end up satisficing, or making do with less in oder to complete the task at hand. This Wikipedia article has more information and links about Simon’s work, and any good principles of management textbook should discuss Simon as well.

Information systems and technology allow managers to extract more precision and process more data in their everyday work. While IS professionals are essential to this task, they do not necessarily understand the strategic value of the systems they develop, implement and maintain.

In the end, MBAs depend upon IS professionals, and vice versa.