Effective Meetings Begin With a Real AgendaLearn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Effective Meetings Begin With a Real Agenda article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
1) Goal. Every real agenda begins with a goal that describes the result wanted at the end of the meeting, such as: find a way to reduce travel costs by 10%. Ideally, this goal should be stated so clearly that someone else could use it to design a meeting that achieved the result. 2) Outcome. This describes the benefit of achieving the goal, and thus tells why you are holding the meeting. For example, the benefit of reducing travel costs might be that you will keep spending within budget. 3) Activities. This provides a blueprint (or set of instructions) for the meeting. Ideally, this contains descriptions of the group activities that will help you and the participants achieve your goal for the meeting. Support this list with an estimated time budget for each activity. 4) Assignments. Tell the participants how to prepare for the meeting (e.g. survey your department for travel costs during the last quarter). Also, tell them what they need to bring (e.g., bring a copy of the budget). Prepared participants make a meeting more efficient and more effective. 5) Logistics. Provide basic information on when and where you will hold the meeting. If participants are coming from other offices, be sure to include directions and maps. In general, provide all the information that people need so that they can perform at their best. The small amount of time required to prepare a real agenda will help you hold shorter, more effective meetings.
This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Here Dave outlines a key strategy to employ at the very beginning of your project and some of the tools that you can use.
As the clock keeps ticking towards end of support for Windows XP we need to find ways to accelerate our Windows 7 Migrations. Just because you accelerate your Windows 7 Migration you don’t have to increase your budget. In fact what if you could do the opposite…accelerate the project and reduce cost. Wait a minute – this is an IT Project. The words “reduce costs” don’t really exist in a typical IT Project. Well maybe they can… Most Windows 7 Projects I have seen project over 80% of the costs for that project on Application Packaging and Remediation. What if there was a way to have an organization quickly rationalize their deployed applications. What if there was a way to remove unused software from a desktop prior to the migration. I can sum it up in one word: “Rationalization”.Well there are a couple of tools out there that can help us out with this. One is the Application Compatibility Toolkit “ACT” from Microsoft. It is a great tool that allows us to gain insight into our organization. This unfortunately requires an agent to be deployed on the workstations and requires us to scan them to see what is installed. Then pull the information back to a central database and try to analyze what is deployed. The second tool is one that many of you will already own and have probably deployed. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager has a software metering component that will allow us to use simply scan the machines using the Configuration Manager agent. One problem this requires a lot of configuration and won’t automatically pull back unused software to keep licensing in check. The third tool is one from 1E Software call AppClarity. You can checkout a link to this product here: 1E AppClarity I have personally seen AppClarity give money back to an organization in less than 60 Days after the acquisition of their software. Think about it…why waste money getting shelfware or unused software ready for your brand new Windows 7 Desktops. Once again “Rationalize” not only the amount of software that needs to be migrated to the new platform but also the amount of work. Checkout the screenshot below of this software package. It has revolutionized the way I approach Windows Migrations.
So in my perfect world that I live in I need a tool that will do the following for my Windows 7 Project:
If you can drive cost savings at the start of this project you will be well on your way. Gartner has estimated that it costs on average between $1000.00 to 3000.00 + per desktop to migrate to Windows 7. Most of this cost comes from the work required to migrate unused applications. What if you could get back all that time and save hard dollars by removing shelfware before your projects starts. This makes your project sponsors very happy and allows you to accelerate this project. Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate. Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far. About Dave Kawula
Email | Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 |
More Articles:1. How to Make a Fortune in the Stock Market >> Stock Market Education ... Using Day Trading Systems How to Make a Fortune in the Stock Market >> Stock Market Education ... Using Day Trading Systems .- BY http://www.MomentumStockTrading.com Profitable day traders and investors recognize that knowing how to pick and trade stocks with momentum is among the fastest and most effective ways to harvest BIG piles of cash in the stock market. The problem is that if you don't know which stocks to look for and how to approach them while limiting your risk, you won't even get close to making some … 2. Top 7 Tips for Maintaining a Team Connection Thousands of love songs portray sad stories of the fire going out in a romantic relationship. Business teams face the same danger. Members of a team can become too familiar and stuck in patterns of doing the bare minimum when it comes to teamwork. Similar to the song 'You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore,' the feeling that occurs when the thrill is gone is usually felt by all involved. As a leader, you have the power to influence how connected your team remains over time. Follow these seven tips a… 3. Conflict Resolution - Not As Simple As A, B, or C By Kelly Graves Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just take a simple test to resolve your conflicts and have proper conflict resolution? A multiple choice test would be the best:1. The person you are in conflict with is?a. Controllingb. Indecisivec. DemeaningJust choose letter A, B or C and you magically uncover the solutions to all your conflict problems.How great and easy would that be!Unfortunately, conflict is much too complicated to squeeze into a simple multiple choice test. Conflict is a complex experie… 4. The Three-Dimensional Communication System By Andrew E. Schwartz Human communication is always three-dimensional. No spoken or written message is ever just words or rational thoughts. Every interchange between you and another person has and takes place at the following three intimately related levels, or dimensions, of being: emotional, physical, and rational. Any attempt to communicate will succeed if all of these dimensions are adhered to. Knowledge of this three-dimensional nature is the foundation of training. You can’t get much closer to real understan… |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.