Keeping up with new technology

Do you ever feel like there's too much technology? Or struggle with learning all the new stuff? There is just so many different technologies that impact our daily lives. And I know it's just going to continue to accelerate the change in businesses.
It's real challenge for IT managers to understand the constant changes, the good and bad, and the impact. Sometimes, you wish you could put the brakes on "change" so you can pause and digest the technology. We just need to "hang on" and do the best job we can.

Learning from my son about life

My son has played in his last football game. He will be graduating from High School this year. The Valley Christian Trojans won the 2A State Championship...what a year! I have learned alot watching him play, expecially about team dynamics and growing through struggles. I have seen God work in our lives this year. I learned that we can learn many "life" lessons from football, and probably any team sport. I will always charish this time in my son's life.

Lessons learned from a football addict

This is high school football season and I am addicted to watching #70 play, my son, on the Trojan offensive line for Valley Christian. The team is 6-1 and playing well. I am consumed this year on learning all the stats about 2A football. I am also re-learning the basics like "it takes a team to win". It's odd how injuries, penalties and luck play into a championship team.

How is your IT Team? Are you all working from the same playbook? Are odd things keeping you team from being a championship IT team for your church?

Learning from our IT projects

We have just finished writing our children's checkin module for Arena CHMS. This was a big project and took a lot of work by our entire IT team. I think it's is easy for us to just move on to the next project. But I think there are lots of important things to learn after a projects completed. I think teams should discuss "lessons learned" from projects in order to grow as a group. For example, we learned that our new ONTIME Agile software programming tool was invalueable to our team. It is now a "best practice" for our team to stop and write down what we have learned from our completed projects.

Fiber optic Testing

Now that our PTP 200mb circuit is installed, its time to test our new bandwidth. We started by simply coping files from our Mesa Campus to our Gilbert Campus which is 10 miles away. These transfers were better than our old T1 circuit but left some questions. I discovered that file tranfers don't maximize the bandwidth.
I have discovered several companies, like Asperasoft.com, that specialize in high-speed file transfer software. We are currently testing their software. Thier software uses UDP to communciate between both sites.
The software reveiled 45% packet lose with our connection. So, is the problem with QWEST or on our network? We now have something else to troubleshoot. We have installed I-PERF to test our connection. The I-PERF teats reveal we are only getting 40 mbits from our fiber ciruit. Now I need to document everything and speak with Qwest.

Optical fiber circuit complete

Qwest just finished installing a 200 MB circuit from our Mesa Campus to our Gilbert Campus. The Gilbert staff is very happy. This circuit replaces our intial T1 circuit. We will now start testing the circuit by copying SD and HD video files (40-50 GB's) each week between campuses. The big question is how long before I get a request to increase this new circuit?

Ever thought about strategic value?

Do all of your IT projects have strategic value? If so, how much? Do we waste time? I think sometimes we work on too many projects that may not have much strategic value. I think we need to develop our thinking, at times, for the long-term. I think this is very hard for us but very important for the church. We need to make sure everything we do directly aligns with the churchs strategic goals. It's easier for us to fix problems and move on.

I challenge you to make a list of all your current projects and rank them by strategic value, its an eye opener.