Today I had a short, but interesting discussion with my colleague and ‘architecture professor’ at Nijmegen University: Erik Proper. More or less as a result, he published this excellent blog item about finding the right mix between ‘thinking’  and ‘acting’. Acting too early - out of misplaced pragmatism or just being impatient - is bad and it happens all too much in the IT projects of today. So indeed we need to dedicate the right amount of time to Thinking. On the other hand- and clearly a pitfall for bringing in the Slow Attitude - we have the risk of becoming a victim of Analysis Paralysis.  Important stuff for any project manager involved in IT or business change projects, and I am most happy to point you to it.

Once upon a time I used to write complete books. Quite a lot of work, I can assure you. I remember writing a book about iterative development which took me an entire, very hot summer in the attic of my house. It seemed to last forever and even now, when I occasionally thumb through the book, I get visions of sticky, sun-drenched days that I witnessed passing by while writing, thinking, writing, thinking and writing.

Later, I started to fancy creating articles. Yes, the content was a bit more shallow. But it took me less work, typically a day or so, and it allowed me to cover more subjects in a shorter period of time. Then, several technology magazines asked me to become a columnist. I taught myself to deliver crisp messages every month in nothing more than 600 words. You end up writing very short sentences, getting rid of all details and focusing on just one key insight per column. Yet again a bit later, a business magazine invited me to write a weekly column for managers, and I constrained myself further to 400 words, apparently being the maximum amount of content a typical business executive can absorb in one read. I essentially produced sound bites with some stage-setting around it.

Then came the period of blogging. We all learned that a good blogger writes very, very short items and does not really care about style or aesthetics. A blogger does not explain or describe anything. You just link to other sites (thank God for Wikipedia, the source of all truth). And now, we have Twitter. I find myself thrown into a universe in which 140 characters – roughly 30 words – have to tell it all. Even hyperlinks are abbreviated in order to save space. On Twitter I don’t write anymore, I stick to the management summary of the introduction of a first, draft idea.

So I thought this is the right time to introduce some counter activities. If only to remind myself, I have introduced the concept of Slow Blogging. A Slow Blogger takes all the time that is needed to write an item. And the blog readers get to follow it step by step. To illustrate the principle, I have introduced three new blogs. On ‘One Blog Item A Year’ I will produce exactly one item every year. Every week, I will add one sentence to the item, resulting in an item of 52 sentences at the end of every year. Too dynamic? I also have started ‘One Blog Item A Decade’, which build up with one sentence every month, resulting in a final piece of 120 sentences every 10 years. And yes, finally I have also created ‘One Blog Item A Life’ and I will add a sentence to the one and only item on that blog every year.

Not sure how many sentences that final piece will contain, but I am not aiming for just a synopsis, rest assured.

I have been arguing already a few times before why I think now is exactly the right time for a more careful, considerate approach to information technology. There are many arguments, many pros and cons, lots of items to write on this blog. But every now and then, you bump into a devastating demonstration that renders all discussion obsolete. Fed up with e-mail overflow? Blaming e-mail for managing a 1000 issues in that same, shallow way? Using a tone in your e-mails that you would never use when talking person-to-person? Responding a bit too quickly to e-mails without taking the right time to formulate your answers?

Your worries are over.

Now there is Real Snail Mail, the worlds first webmail service using live snails. The good people at boredomresearch, Bournemouth University, take care of a well-trained staff of 8 snails that each carry a 20mm RFID tag on their shell. Incoming messages are collected at the dispatch centre at one end of their closure. Once a message is loaded on the chip, it will be carried around by the assigned snail until it happens to reach the drop off point. Here the message is collected and forwarded to its final destination. The fastest average delivery time is currently achieved by Francis, a gorgeous brunette snail that only needs 2.22 days to bring the message across. This is in sharp contrast to the pathetic 10.43 days of her macho colleague Sean (codename ‘Agent 007’, guess his glory days are a bit over indeed).

As I said, further discussion is useless. Just think about Real Snail Mail the next time you start up your e-mail program, and it may already help you to approach things just a little bit differently. Then again, you could consider to actually use this brilliant, very contemporary service (after all, it’s RFID, it’s cloud and it’s definitely green) in real life. Send yourself and your team members the project plan, IT strategy outline, specifications document or design through Real Snail Mail and take the time in between to contemplate your results. The results can only improve, because you have injected the right dose of ‘slow’ to take some distance and look into the matter from different perspectives.

I sure hope that the success won’t put too much pressure on those poor snails. Already, their bosses are thinking about scaling up. This will no doubt introduce the concept of industralised snail farms and before we know it management consultants will be applying Lean Six Sigma to eliminate even the last minute of waste in the tank. For now, champion snails like Agatha (agent 006) and Reginald (agent 012) couldn’t care less. One of them may be carrying my e-mail right now, but that freshly placed marigold looks so much more tasteful. Could be another hour of just bites, rather than bytes.

No better timing than right now to take some quality time and contemplate your plans for 2009. And why not use that good old 43things to do it in true web 2.0 style? Until now, I have been using the site to write down and share my own personal, silly targets. Meditate more. Pick up Chinese boxing training again. Create the first Yellow Raincoat painting. Write a book about Slow IT. You know, just the basic, ordinary stuff we can all relate to.

But why not do it a bit different this year and apply the power of 43Things to the world of Information Technology? What if the Chief Information Officer would share his or her ’43 IT Things to do in 2009’ with the company. Wouldn’t that be a simple and transparent tool to communicate and share the IT strategy? And wouldn’t it be a careful, interesting exercise to condense that complete strategy into a couple (7, 12, 43, whatever) of simple, straightforward targets that others can understand and comment on?

Or why not use the list to create a wish list of personal IT activities that we should definitely consider in 2009? I really hope that you readers – since many of you will now have a few days off – can help me to compile a list of 43 items that we will then publish on the site for everybody to see and work with.

To get the discussion started, here is my first list of IT activities that people may want to plan for in 2009:

1.       Build your own mashup application

2.       Become a Togaf 9 certified architect

3.       Give and get one OLPC laptop

4.        Use a cloud application

5.       Blog about your project

6.       Install Ubuntu Linux on a PC

7.       Start a community on Ning

8.       Get a  personal KPI gadget on your desktop

9.       Try an Android smart phone

10.   Use social network tools (like FaceBook or LinkedIn) within the IT department

These are just my first ideas. I am sure the wisdom of the crowd can deliver much better than that. So I’m most interested in learning from your ideas and I promise to publish the entire list once we have enough input.

And if you are looking for inspiration, why not visit 43things first and do their quick self-test to find out more about yourself? I did the test too and turned out to be a ‘Spiritual Organized Self-Knower’. Not so sure about either of these things, but sounds good anyway. If you are sharing your ideas for the list with us anyway, why not also tell us what type you are? After all, self-knowledge is one thing, but knowing the community around you, might be much more fun.

Slow IT is not only about a renewed, careful approach to creating technology solutions. It is also about our own, personal challenges in using technology, in dealing with the distractions and temptations of ubiquitous information. Thanks to the Internet, Blackberries and Smart Phones, we are always online, always in touch with the high pulse of the connected world.

And it is addictive too. If you happen to have teenagers in the house, you know what it means to be discomgoogolated. If I would ask my 18 year old daughter to choose between MSN and oxygen, no doubt she would go for MSN. Just to be one the safe side, after all, breathing in and breathing out is more like a theoretical concept, isn’t it?

When practicing ZEN meditation, many people find it very difficult to spend an hour thinking about nothing. But practice – sooner or later – pays off and an empty, slowed-down mind is a prerequisite to become enlightened.  In the same way, we will need a lot of tough training exercise before we can disconnect ourselves from the madness on the web, anytime, anywhere we want it. But there is no alternative, except when we think that being permanently discomgoogolated is something that cannot be avoided. A bit like breathing in and breathing out (although my daughter would diagree).

“… Hi, this is John’s voicemail. I am currently unavailable. You see, we have our annual strategy session with all of the IT management and the leaders of the business units. And it seemed perfect timing to make a change this year. Think about it: IT strategy is more crucial than ever. The wolves are howling in the deserted, grey streets of the economy and we are in desperate need of creative ideas. And not only about how to save money on the IT department. We are also looking for fresh, new ways to use technology to tackle the downturn and find a path forward.

Oh, by the way, this year we are not in that luxurious neo renaissance chateau. Instead we are in this nice little motel. Very convenient, just near the motorway and all.

Anyway, IT strategy. If it is so crucial to the success of our company,  why are we so careless about it? Last year, it was difficult enough to get all of the major stakeholders together for one lousy day at the chateau.  Well, nearly all of them, that is. Even when I was on my way, I received a hurried cancellation. Something about an emergency client tender, although I have never heard anything about that one ever since.  The rest of the attendees sort of trickled into the room during the course of the morning and actually it was already 11 AM when we were really up to speed. Just before lunch, actually (they served an excellent Californian Chardonnay, come to think of it).

So, only a few days before I had realised that some preparation might have been nice. And to admit it frankly, the supporting documentation was just hastily thrown together. Rubbish, really.

Not that it mattered. Not a single soul had gone through it. So we ended up explaining and discussing the basic arguments at least three times again. And when we finally had our session, nobody seemed to be connected. Some of the attendees where shamelessly checking email on their laptops. Others choose to use the Blackberry, hidden under the table. When one of my colleges ran out of the room for the fourth time in a row, nervously answering an incoming phone call, something just broke me.

That’s why we are doing our IT strategy planning a bit different this year. We are incommunicado for a full three days and we all left our phones at home. Also, we won’t be using a laptop to make minutes. Just to make sure.

By all means , leave a message after the beep. I may call you back. In a week or two…”.

I received an excellent link from Jon Mulholland, pointing to Getting Real, a book published by Chicago-based web development company 37signals. Interesting company this is (thank God they did not call themselves 42signals, think we all got that message by now). They strive to create ‘the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary’ and also they are proud to announce that their products ‘do less than the competition ‘.

Quite a big thing, simplification.

And no doubt one of the most difficult qualities to create. Especially in Information Technology, where we are easily overwhelmed by all the features, triggers, widgets, gadgets and information flows that we potentially could include in our solutions. And they are tempting too, all these bells and whistles, especially if we did not really take the time to contemplate what the solution really needs. So we turn to eye candy to satisfy our short-term reflexes and soon we find ourselves absorbed in nitty gritty details and challenges that just don’t make any difference.

These guys from 37signals, they certainly drink their own champagne.  Browse around a bit at their website and you start to get the picture of what they mean with simple. And furthermore, read the book. If you want it, you can get it delivered as a good old-fashioned paperback and go through it start to finish. And I although I know you don’t mind spending quality time at all, some of you may be happy to hear that the book consists of small chapters. Indeed a great airplane book (their words, not mine…).

Alternatively, you can read the book online for free. This gives me the opportunity to be back on some crucial subjects in the forthcoming weeks. Build less. Ignore Details Early On. Race to Running Software. Rinse and Repeat:  just a few examples of the principles in Getting Real that are interesting in the context of Slow IT. If only because many of them seem to contradict with the slow approach.

This will be a crucial question that I will try to address together with you in future blog-items: in the era of Web 2.0 we are seeing more and more software that is available at a very early stage of development, never seems to be finished, and always continues to evolve. There is some overrated heroism in the idea of the perpetual beta.  But is it really a sign of rushed sloppiness, the inability to commit to agreed results and an alibi for not thinking before you start? Or is it the only way to really understand the requirements of the business and produce systems that are more robust and better tested? Or could both be true?

Let’s try to find out. Follow this blog.

In the meantime, I would like to point you to one specific chapter in the book that contains an important slow message. In ‘Alone Time’ the authors argue that interrupts are the natural enemy of effective work. It resonates with my own, earlier experiences as a software engineer: I could produce huge piles of quality code, as long as I could work uninterrupted for a longer period of time. As soon as I was sitting at the office and people would walk in and out, asking questions, starting discussions, even bringing coffee, my productivity went down the drain. Eventually I preferred to work early in the morning or – much better for me – late in the evening.

Interesting enough, this is probably why open source software is often produced so effectively : typically the team consists of members that don’t share the same location or time zone. The team may be distributed across the world and only use the Internet to communicate and synchronise results.  There is an unexpected advantage to that: the team members will have a lot of alone time, much more than they would have when working at the same offices.

And in many cases indeed, some decent alone time is all you need to create real progress.

Of course, if you are at the same offices, you can still agree to be complete incommunicado – for example between 10 AM and 2 PM. No coffee rounds, no meetings, no phone calls, no emails, no mobile phones.

Because somewhere, sometime, somebody needs to do the work.

Probably like many of you, I was touched when I first learned of Carl’s now famous example of speed-parenting. A few years ago, he was so obsessed with speed and efficiency that he initially liked the idea of One-Minute bedtime stories. Carl read about it in a newspaper, impatiently standing in line at an airport gate. While figuring out how to get the complete series as fast as possible through Amazon, he suddenly realised that things had gone way too far. Being a father of a two-year-old son, he already found himself involved in nightly confrontations, his son fancying long, carefully told stories and Carl trying to find the shortest stories and the most efficient way to tell them (you know, why not have Snow White and the 3 Dwarfs…?). All because emails were waiting, calls had to be made, decisions had to be taken and every minute seemed to count.

The experience changed his life and since then, Carl has been one of the proponents of the Slow Movement: people that believe that the important things in life need to be done at the right pace, with careful dedication and a genuine love for foundation and quality. Where this is already having a profound influence on cooking and dining (Slow Food actually started the whole movement), industrial design, travel and parenting, I believe that the world of Information Technology (IT) is now very, very ready for a proper dose of slow. I am convinced that 2009 will be the year of Slow IT.

Here’s why.

Businesses depend on technology. Actually, nowadays no business transformations exist without the crucial, enabling role of information technology. But to many people, technology is difficult to understand and evolving at an intimidating speed. No industry has produced so many buzzwords and nowhere else, trends come and go so easily. Nevertheless, you don’t need to be a professional to see the potential of technology: especially now, solutions are readily available through the Internet and in our private lives – buying things, communicating with others, being at leisure – we know all too well what technology can do for us.

It makes us even more impatient in applying information technology to address our business challenges. On the other hand, we don’t have the time. Many IT departments are kicked around by the circumstances: fighting fires wherever they appear, dealing with botched-up, antiquated systems, heterogeneous infrastructures, incompatible interfaces, undocumented specifications and shattered, often overlapping applications. Between two breaths, business and IT people may find a few moments to discuss requirements, ideas, plans (speed-dating, really). Then it is back to the usual.

Some may turn to workarounds to deal with the situation. The business side may create its own, isolated solutions. And they are likely to add to the un-integrated mess that needs to be dealt with tomorrow.

For all the wrong reasons, organisations may start to practice agile development. Not because they want a better understanding of the real business needs and a more intimate alignment between business and IT, but because they think the approach delivers fast results without the need to carefully understand, plan and design. Put it in a time-box and all your worries will be over.

It is just a matter of time before we will have the One-Minute IT-strategy.

Especially in 2009, where on one hand the budget for IT is under pressure and on the other hand technology provides the tools to address the downturn, the need is greater than ever to slow down. Not in terms of doing everything at a snail’s pace (thank you, SlowPlanet home page). Much more in terms of striking the right balance between a well-architected, carefully crafted technology platform and ad-hoc, opportunistic solutions that solve the business issues of today.

Among many other things, first of all it is about really sitting together to discuss the IT strategy of the organisation. Not in a rushed workshop of just a few hours in which half of the participants does not show up – there is always an emergency somewhere – and the other half is checking Blackberries or running in and out to answer phone calls (the latter being one of the most saddening examples of the way we let ourselves being ruled by technology). Strategy is crucial to the future of the company. It deserves the proper amount of dedication, also in the preparation and the finishing process.

This is the world of Slow IT, the art of careful technology. And as 2009 is bound to be a transformational year anyway, I am convinced that a renewed respect for properly timed and crafted technology solutions will be the unmistakable trend.

There is much more to tell about Slow IT. So much more that I thought it would be a good idea to write a book about it. And although I cannot already tell when the book will be finished (it’s ready when it’s ready, remember), I will be most happy to share some developing insights with you through this blog.

And thank you for reading this item, even if you got it through your Blackberry on a late Saturday evening.