(Warning, what is about to follow is anecdotal evidence as to the state of Vista from my own, limited first hand observations. But it could be worse, it could be second hand and out of context.)

My first attempt to work with Vista was on a dual-core AMD Turion X2 laptop. My hope was that with Vista it would finally make sense to run the operating system in 64-bit mode as Windows XP Pro 64-bit was a bit lack-luster. In Windows XP driver support had been extremely poor and I was unable to get much of anything to work. So all of my Windows XP machines ended up staying as 32-bit while my Linux machines moved back and forth. On Linux almost everything worked great as 64-bit. Only rarely would I get a driver issue or compatibility problem.

For the first week or so Windows Vista was incredibly slow. I decided that trying the 32-bit version of Vista (both had shipped with the laptop, thankfully) might be a good idea. So I performed a clean re-installation of Vista and started again.

Under Vista32 I noticed a significant increase in the overall speed and stability. The whole system seemed to hum right along now without the apparent slowness that I had had in 64-bit mode. Vista32 seems to work exceedingly well and starts and stops more reliably than my Windows XP machines have done in the past. The reliability of the shutdown process has been a major concern of mine from past Windows editions.

Because of the types of applications that I generally use on Windows (e.g. not video games, not entertainment applications, mostly serious business and management applications, only current versions, etc.) there were no compatibility issues in moving to Vista. Not a single application has failed to run and, I am told, that the only game that I actually would care about (Age of Empires 2 circa 1998) will run beautifully in Vista. I have a friend who has tested this on three separate Vista machines.

Few applications that are programmed “correctly” using Microsoft’s published standards and industry best practices have any issues moving to the Vista platform, in my experience. All of the complaints that I have heard about applications not working are either video games – which seldom follow platform guidelines, ancient legacy applications or small independent vendor applications that always fail to work between platforms because there are no updates, standards aren’t followed, etc. It happens. Every new operating system breaks a certain amount of old applications but in many cases, most cases, this is simply a separating of the wheat from the chaff. It is good to shake up the market and point out the weaklings in the herd and thin it out a bit for everyone’s long term health. Think of it as software genetics in action.

For contextual reasons I should point out that I have been using client side “firewalls” – a term that I am loathe to use but has become somewhat of the norm – for a long time, first with Symantec and more recently with Microsoft’s Live OneCare – and am quite familiar and comfortable with the concept of unblocking ports for every new application that is installed or any changes that are made. I am also used to this through the use of AppArmor on SUSE Linux and SELinux on Red Hat Linux.

Already being used to this as a matter of course makes the transition to Vista’s security system almost transparent. I have heard numerous complaints about the barrage of security notifications popping up and asking it “this software should be allowed to install” or if “such and such a port should be allowed to open” but if people were diligent about using past operating systems this would neither be new nor a surprise. This type of checking is wonderful in the computer security nightmare world in which we live. Many people want this “feature” suppressed but these are often the same people asking for continuous help to fix their virus and Trojan horse riddled computers caused, not by malicious external attacks, but by bad computer management habits and behaviours.

Even as a technology professional who is constantly installing and uninstalling applications, doing testing, making changes, fiddling with the network, etc. the number of these security alerts is not quite annoying enough to push me past the point of appreciating the protection which it provides. A normal user, who should not be installing new software or making network changes on a daily basis, should see these messages mostly only during the initial setup of the workstation and then somewhat rarely when new software or updates are applied. If this security feature is becoming annoying due to its regularity one must carefully ask oneself if there isn’t a behavioural issue that should be addressed. It is true, some users need to do “dangerous” things on a regular basis to use their computer the way that they need to use it. But these people are extremely rare and can almost always manage these issues on their own (turning off the feature, for example.)

Some people have had issues with the speed of their Vista machines. All of the complaints that I have heard to date, however, come from people who have moved from Windows XP to Windows Vista on the same hardware. This is not a move that I would suggest. Yes, Vista is slower than XP and noticably so. Just as XP was somewhat slower than Windows 2000 (although not very dramatically as 2000 was so slow. XP may not actually even be slower than 2000!) Windows 2000 was dramatically slower than Windows NT 4 and requires many times more system resources. The jump from the NT4 to the NT5 family was, by far, the biggest loss of performance that I have witnessed on these platforms. The move to Vista is minor.

The fact is that moving to newer, more feature rich, operating systems almost necessitates that the new operating systems will be slower. Each new generation is larger than the generation before. Each new version is more graphics intense (not true with Windows 2008 Core – yay!) and has power-hungry “eye candy” that demands faster processors, more memory and now graphics offload engines. Users clamour for features and then complain when those features cause their operating systems to be larger and more bloated. You can’t have both. If you want a car with one hundred cubic feet of hauling capacity the car absolutely must be larger than one hundred and four square feet in surface area. Period. It’s math. End of discussion. This isn’t Doctor Who – the inside can’t be larger than the outside. And your operating system can’t have less code than the sum of its components.

If I have one major complaint about Windows Vista it is the extreme difficulty with which one must search for standard management tools within the operating system. Under previous editions of Windows one could go to the Control Panel and find commonly used management tools in one convenient place. Now simply modifying a network setting – a fairly common task and impossible to research online when one needs it most – is nearly impossible to find even for full time Windows desktop support professionals. The interface for this portion of the system is cryptic at best and nothing is named in such a manner as to denote what task could possibly be performed with it.

Altogether I am very pleased with Vista and the progress that has been made with it and I am looking forward to seeing the improvements that are expected to come with the first Service Pack that should be released very soon. Vista is a solid product and Microsoft should be proud of the work that they have done. The security has been much improved and I hope that Vista proliferates in the wild rapidly as this is likely to have a positive effect on the virus levels that we are currently seeing.

Caveat: Moreso than previous versions of Microsoft Windows, Vista is designed to be managed by a support professional and used by a “user”. Vista is somewhat less friendly, out of necessity, and the average user would be better serviced to simply allow a knowledgeable professional handle settings and changes. Vista pushes people towards a “managed home” environment that would be more akin to a business environment.

This change, however, is not necessarily bad. As we have been seeing for many years, the security threats that exist with regular access to the Internet are simply far too complex for the average computer user to understand and with the number of computers in the hands of increasingly less sophisticated computer users the ability for viruses and other forms of malware to propagate has increased many fold. A computer user who does not properly protect his or herself from threats is not only a threat to themselves but to the entire Internet community.

In a business we do not expect non-technology professionals to regularly management their own desktops and perhaps we should not expect this of home users. Computers are far more complex than a car, for example, and only advanced hobbyist or amateur mechanics would venture to do much more than change their own oil. Why then, when a computer can be managed and maintained completely remotely, would we not use the same model for our most complex of needs?

With some basic remote support to handle the occasional software install or configuration change, automated system updates, pre-installed client side “firewall” all that is truly needed is a good anti-virus package and a normal home user could use their Windows Vista machine in a non-administrative mode for a long time with little need from the outside while enjoying an extreme level of protection. The loss of some flexibility would be minor compared to the great degree of safety and reliability that would be possible.

In a recent New York Times article “They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know” author Randall Stross, professor at San Jose State University, uses skewed anecdotal evidence and out-of-context examples in a blatant attempt to bias the reader against Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista. Whether this has occurred simply because the author does not understand the material, because the New York Times has its own political agenda or because they have been paid to reverse-advertise by the competition I cannot say. But for some reason the “illustrious” New York Times is using its position as a media outlet to serve to the detriment of honesty and to mislead the readers who have been mislead into paying for what proves to be little more than a tabloid.

Mr. Stross begins his article by presenting the issue of Vista’s slow adoption rate. He acts as though its adoption rate is unexpected or not appropriate for a new operating system. However, given Windows XP’s presence in business, longevity, stability and feature set it is not surprising or unexpected, in the least, that Vista – not having yet reached Service Pack 1 – would have a very slow adoption rate. Each new operating system generation has to contend with a lesser and lesser value proposition to people updating and it has been seven years since the last major round of Microsoft operating systems – almost an eternity in the IT industry.

Vista also has a new kernel architecture (the first of the Windows NT 6 family as opposed to the NT 5 family that we are used to with Windows 2000 – NT5, Windows XP – NT5.1 and Windows 2003 – NT5.2) and therefore has many hurdles to cross that have not been seen since the migration from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000. Additionally, this is the first major NT to NT family kernel update to hit the consumer market. Earlier NT family updates happened almost entirely within businesses where these processes are better understood and preparations happen much, much earlier. This is the first major consumer level change since users were slowly migrated from the Windows 9x family (95, 98 and ME) to the NT family (2000, XP) which happened over a very long time period. Users should recall the large number of headaches that occurred during that transition as few applications were compatible across the chasm created by the new security paradigm.

Mr. Stross takes the approach that Microsoft needs to answer for the natural slow adoption of a new, somewhat disruptive technology, but this is ridiculous. Vista market penetration is expected to be slow within the industry and no one is wondering why it hasn’t appeared on everyone’s desktops or laptops yet. Vista technicians are still being trained, bugs are still being found, issues still being fixed, applications are still being tested and Service Pack 1 is still being readied. I have Vista at home but I am an early adopter. I don’t expect “normal” (read: non-IT professionals) to be seriously considering Vista updates themselves until later this year.

Our author then asks the question “Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an ‘upgrade’?” Actually, Mr. Stross, in the IT world this is what is known as an “update”, not an “upgrade”. An update occurs when you move from an older version to a newer version of the same product. An upgrade occurs when you move to a higher level product.

Windows XP Home to Windows Vista Home Basic is an update. Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows Vista Home Premium is an upgrade. Windows XP Home to Windows Vista Home Premium is, in theory, both. Please do not mislead consumers by claiming that Windows Vista is an upgrade. It is not. Windows Vista is simply the latest Windows family product for consumer use.

If you have Windows XP and it is meeting your current needs why would you go the route of updating? I have no idea. I think that people need to answer that question before having unreasonable expectations of any new software product. Windows XP is still supported by Microsoft and will be for a very long time.

If I may make a quick comparison, moving from Windows XP Home to Windows Vista Home Basic is like moving from a 2002 BMW 325i to a 2007 BMW 325i. This is not an upgrade. It is simply an update. Just a newer version of the same thing. Sure, some things change between the versions but no one would consider this to be a higher class of car. If you want a higher class get yourself a 760i.

Mr. Stross goes on to regale us with horror stories of Vista updates gone wrong. In each of the cases what we see is a confused consumer who felt that, contrary to Microsoft’s recommendations and contrary to any industry practice, they could simply purchase any edition of Vista and expect any and every piece of software that they owned to work. This is not how Windows, or any other operating system, functions.

In the first example, Jon A. Shirley – former Chief Operating Officer, President and current board member at Microsoft – updates two home computers and then discovers that the peripherals that he already owned did not yet have Vista drivers. Our author does not mention whether or not Mr. Shirley checked on the status of these drivers before purchasing Windows Vista nor does he complain about these unknown third party vendors not providing Vista drivers. It is implied in the article that it is Microsoft’s responsibility to provide third party drivers. It is not. Drivers are the responsibility of the hardware manufactures. Hardware compatibility is the responsibility of the consumer. In neither case is Microsoft responsible for third party drivers. It may be in their best interest to encourage their development but they are not Microsoft’s responsibility.

In the next example we see Mike Nash – Vice President of Windows Product Management – who buys a Vista-capable laptop. This laptop would have been loaded with Windows XP but capable, as stated, of running at least Windows Vista Home Basic when it would become available. It is absolutely critical to keep in mind that Windows XP Home’s direct update (not upgrade) path is to Windows Vista Home Basic.

When Mr. Nash attempted to update his laptop to Vista we are told that he was only able to run a “hobbled” version. What does “hobbled” imply? We can only assume that it means that he can run Windows Vista Home Basic as we would expect. What has handily been done here is that one version of Windows Vista has been considered “hobbled” and another is considered “not-hobbled” even though consumers must pay for the features between the versions – an upgrade. It a BMW 325i hobbled because the BMW 335i has a bigger engine but requires more fuel?

It is also mentioned that Mr. Nash is unable to run his favourite video editing software – Movie Maker. It is true that the edition of Movie Maker that comes with Windows Vista has some high requirements that may have kept Mr. Nash from being able to run the version of Movie Maker included in the Windows Vista box. But Microsoft makes a freely downloadable version of Movie Maker for Windows Vista specifically for customers who have run into this limitation. So this is not even a valid argument.

It is implied that Microsoft mislead consumers by stating that the laptop was Vista-capable, but we are not told that Windows Vista did not install successfully nor work properly. What is being done here is the application of unreasonable expectations on Microsoft. Microsoft has stated extremely clearly since long before Windows Vista was released to the public that there would be different versions and that many of the features had specific hardware requirements beyond the base requirements. The features in these higher-end editions were upgrade features not included in the basic Windows Vista distribution.

This begs the questions “Could Microsoft have done more to inform their customers of the Windows Vista requirements?” Perhaps. But the answer is not as easy as it seems. As it was, these requirements were incredibly well known and publicized. The issue that we are dealing with is consumers, including some inside of Microsoft, who did not check the well publicized details and had unreasonable expectations in this situation. Much like the often heard story of the purchase of a video game that requires an expensive high end graphics card that the purchases does not posses. That application has higher requirements than Windows Vista Home Basic so why shouldn’t Windows Vista Ultimate Edition not have higher requirements too?

It is unfortunate that so many consumers have difficulty understanding computers enough to be able to purchase them effectively. It is also unfortunately that many choose to ignore requirements that are clearly stated because it is too much effort. But in neither case can Microsoft be held to a higher level of expectation than any other company in the same position. If a Linux based desktop operating system was being purchased the same problems would have applied. Some features would require a more powerful machine and some are very complicated.

A key issue here is that because these two pieces of anecdotal evidence come from high-ranking Microsoft insiders we treat them as if they are more important than normal consumer issues. The fact is that these two Microsoft employees did not do the same level of consumer diligence that I would expect of anyone buying something so expensive and complex as a new computer. Computers are complex and desiring to “future proof” your purchase requires some careful forethought and planning.
We are also not seeing the whole picture. Perhaps Mr. Nash and Mr. Shirley were purchasing Vista intentionally without putting in any forethought to see what problems the least diligent segment of customers were likely to run into and were using this information to allow Microsoft to attempt to fix their problems even though it was not Microsoft’s responsibility to do so. In this case Microsoft should be being praised for being willing to put so much effort into fixing things that are not their problem just because it makes for happier customers.

I am most unhappy that this article’s use of two pieces of out-of-context anecdotal evidence and using them as a basis for the implication that Vista is not yet finished – by calling it “supposedly finished” without any justification whatsoever. This is called “leading”. Clearly Windows Vista was finished, shipped and is used by many people. But now the reader is lead to believe that it is not finished even though it is not actually stated by the author. This is not the job of journalism – to decide on a verdict and indicate to the reader the way in which they should think. While not strictly lying the intent is to mislead ergo making the intent – to lie.

Even worse is the blatant falsification that “PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when they really were not” which is completely and utterly untrue and clearly intentional defamation and libel. It is never said that Windows Vista did not run on any machine stated here as being capable of running Windows Vista. It is simply implied that some upgrades to higher editions of Windows Vista were not possible.

The article wraps up with a look at the timeline of the decision process in the labeling of machines as being Vista-capable. We can see that internally Microsoft was torn as to which direction to go but chose, in the end, to label all machine capable of running Windows Vista as being Vista-capable.

I understand that there are many reasons why Microsoft may have wanted to mislead consumers (for the consumer’s own good) into buying overpowered new hardware just to feed the coffers of their hardware partners by only labeling a machine Vista-capable if they were able to run the high-end, expensive upgraded versions that would only be of interest to more affluent or intensive users.

Nevertheless, Microsoft resisted misleading consumers and labeled the computers accurately and did not use the Vista release as an opportunity to push hardware prices higher. They labeled their computers honestly and accurately. Labeling them in any other way would actually have been misleading and would have been of questionable intent.

At least poor consumers were not told to buy expensive computers just to find out that a much less expensive model would have sufficed to run Windows Vista! Microsoft would most definitely have been accused to misleading customers in that case. Those customers for whom the price of the computer was most difficult to manage were the ones protected the most.

The article ends asking “where does Microsoft go to buy back its lost credibility?” But the real question is after so blatantly attacking Microsoft without merit, where does the New York Times and San Jose State University professor Randall Stross go to buy back their credibility?

I had to get up and get out the door even earlier than I normally would even when going into the office on the early side. The event was held at the Sheraton at seventh avenue and fifty-third. That means that I had to take the PATH to the World Trade Center and then the “E” train to seventh avenue. That meant that it took longer to get there than my usual walk to Wall Street and they wanted people to be there as early as a quarter after seven in the morning which was pretty early. I was shooting for a little closer to eight.

The morning keynote was pretty good and we got to see one of the Microsoft Technical Fellows speak and saw several demonstrations. We were provided a breakfast – orange, blueberry muffin, granola bar and orange juice. Then we had the morning technical session which ran until a quarter after one in the afternoon. We ate lunch during the session since I was in the “lengthy” morning session that had no scheduled lunch break. They provided a grilled vegetable sandwich, pretzels, red delicious apple and a Milky Way candy car.

I did get a short break between the sessions mid-afternoon so I hiked across seventh avenue to 810 Deli & Cafe to grab a large coffee and a tuna and avocado wrap before returning to the next session. I needed some caffeine to keep me going.

The afternoon session ran until just after five. All of the other sessions only went until four but I tend to be ambitious. The crowd had dwindled significantly by the time that we were leaving.

I beat Dominica and Oreo home but just five minutes. She came home and cooked dinner.

Dominica picked up Munchkin Cthulhu by Steve Jackson Games today. She has been dying to get her hands on card games for several days now.

On Sunday while hanging out with Ramona and Winni, Ramona was talking about sailing in the British Virgin Islands and mentioned this hilarious British red callbox that had been converted into a shower and installed at the end of a dock where they had, appropriately, docked. I said that I thought that that sounded exactly like the cover of Simon Winchester’s book “Outposts” which I had just read a few weeks ago – possibly while Ramona was in BVI. So I sent her a picture of the book and she identified it as the very same callbox. Now there is an incredible coincidence. Such a tiny, unremarkable spot on the face of the planet and I didn’t have a clue where that picture was taken and for her to actually have been there just a week ago and to be talking about it – madness, as they say in Belfast.

We ate dinner and watched some It’s A Different World and then I had to get to work to make up a bunch of things that didn’t get completed today because I was at the Microsoft show. So I worked about two hours until a bit after eleven. Dominica played more of MySims while I worked.

We had another Amazon order arrived today. I received “Interface Oriented Design”, “More News from Lake Wobegon” Audio CDs and the fourth season of Allo, Allo from the BBC circa 1987.

The weather was nice this morning for the walk into the office. Cool but not cold which is nice because you don’t tend to overheat during the long stretches of walking.

I had lunch with a colleague over at Chevy’s on the west side of the island near the World Financial Center which was a bit of a hike for lunch time but the exercise is always a good idea for me anyway as was the grilled fish and beans that I had for lunch. So no complaints. We mostly just hung out and were “geeky” talking about IT issues both technical and within the field at large.

Microsoft and Seagate have a cute “Heroes Happen Here” comic series out now. Good stuff.

I am consulting for Previsor / Brainbench again. It has been about a year, I think, since the last time that I consulted for them. This time I get to work on a Web Design certification which should be fun. My work starts on Monday.

This weekend should be pretty slow. My work isn’t scheduled late tonight. I have one small project for eight o’clock tomorrow morning but that isn’t bad. No Dungeons and Dragons this weekend as everyone else is too busy. We might have a New Orleans benefit dinner on Sunday afternoon but we don’t know yet if there is anything for us to eat there as neither Dominica nor I can handle eating much seafood anymore. Strangely scallops seem to be an exception for me which is funny since most of my adult life I haven’t particularly cared for them. Shrimp, lobster and crayfish – the mainstays of Creole cuisine – are definitely out though. I am still okay with lobster bisque, crab cakes and shrimp cakes and once in a great while, possibly but not likely, fried shrimp.

I placed a small Amazon order this afternoon. The free shipping option takes a little while but I figure if I place overlapping orders on a regular basis I get to have a continuous stream of books on their way to me which I can look forward to receiving. I am hoping that one book that I ordered not long ago will arrive today but I don’t think that it did even though it left Jersey City yesterday.

I didn’t have to work that late tonight which was nice for a change. I was able to escape the office at six thirty and hit the road for home. (Or hit the rails, more appropriately.)

I got home just minutes after Dominica and Oreo.  We ordered in some Italian from Nino’s for dinner and watched The Hudsucker Proxy on DVD that Dominica had just gotten last night from Netflix.  The Hudsucker Proxy is one of those truly great films that came out of the cinema renaissance of the early 1990s.  It is one of, if not indeed the, best performance ever given by Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh who are the stars.  Other notable actors include Paul Newman, Charles Durning, John Mahoney, Bruce Campbell, Bill Cobbs, Peter Gallagher, Anna Nicole Smith, Steve Buscemi, Sam Raimi and John Goodman.  It was quite a Who’s Who of 1994 Hollywood.  Dominica had never seen the film and for some bizarre reason we only own in on LaserDisc.  I have seen it so many times on LD that it is hard to imagine that we didn’t own in on DVD but it has been one of those movies that I have told her about so much but haven’t seen myself since we unhooked the last LD player in regular use around 2002, not long after Nate and I bought the first DVD player in our group.

After the movie we pretty much went straight off to bed.  Dominica was really exhausted and was asleep before eleven.  I did a little work but went to bed not long afterwards.  I wasn’t very tired though.  But didn’t feel like staying up late either.  I do have to work first thing in the morning tomorrow so sleeping in late isn’t an option.  Never is these days.  It’s tough getting older and having responsibilities.

Non-Measurable Organizational Value is the concept of corporate benefit being derived from a project that is inherently non-measurable. To some degree all value is difficult if not impossible to measure accurately except in extreme circumstance. Organizations are complex entities and any project or process is just one of many projects or processes that all contribute in some way to value.

Let us look at a quick example of a difficult to measure project. Project X at ABC Corporation (they give all of their projects letter-names for some reason) is a project to add four important new features to one of the company’s software products. The project runs its course and is estimated to have cost the company almost exactly $100K to complete. The new features are now available in the product which is available to existing customers as a free upgrade and are included in the shipping product to all new customers. Now we must determine the Organizational Value or OV of these new features.

These new features are designed to derive their organizational value from several planned sources. The first source is through “feature marketing“. In this capacity we are left attempting to derive, generally, through collected sales data both before and after project completion what the change in sales is because of the new, added feature. This has to be balanced against any changes in sales or marketing, changing market pressures, increased product maturity, changes in competing products, etc. Even asking customers to voluntarily report on this data can be very misleading in the best of circumstances.

The second source of derived organizational value is through customer retention. This is far more difficult to calculate than the somewhat ephemeral marketing and sales aspect of the first source. To some degree you can calculate the number or percentage of customers who decide to go through the upgrade process if they are downloading the update from ABC’s web site. But you are still left estimating what percentage of customers did the upgrade simply because they felt that they should use the latest version, who wanted to get the features but would not have switched products to get them and which customers would actually have taken the effort to switch to another product to acquire those features.

This approach does not consider the market affects that ABC’s new features have had on its competitors. In some cases by supplying in-demand new features ABC may have driven the market forward forcing competitors to include those same features, but it may also have done research and development that now its competitors can copy at lower cost. Or perhaps it has implemented features so costly or specialized in nature that competing products avoid implementing those same features simply because they are already available on the market. Estimating ABC’s market effect is very difficult if not impossible.

The third source of revenue is difficult to calculate as well. This third source is through market preparation. By this I mean that two of these four features implemented by ABC Company are building blocks that are expected to lead into another project that will provide a number of really incredible and difficult to produce features in another year. A certain amount of planning and framework design was done during this project in order to prepare for the following project. A few hundred hours of manpower were put into this robust framework that would have been excessive for just the current features but will allow future features to be added in more easily. This technology investment will not see dividends until other projects, seeking their own organizational value calculations, are layered on top of it.

In this example of ABC’s Project X we see that this project was based mostly upon Non-Measurable Organizational Value. Some of these value sources could be examined and an estimate of OV could be extracted. But this is, at best, guesstimation and the organization would need a very carefully managed process to keep this type of guesstimating consistent and fair between projects. But there are other NMOV concepts that we should also address.

One type of NMOV is employee morale and the related “development velocity.” Employees, especially technical workers, are highly affected by their work environments and generally desire to be allowed to produce good products. Developers and analysts will often state that the value and quality of their work is a driving factor in their level of job and career satisfaction. A company with high morale, satisfaction and happiness will generally get better products and it will get them out the door faster. Teams are more likely to gel. Sick time goes down. Communications go up. A project will not often be undertaken purely out of concern for employee morale but a feature, a methodology, a technology or a technique might be chosen for just this reason. A project might be written in Java instead of C++ just to keep a team more interested in their work, for example.

Now we can attempt to measure employee morale in several ways but we have two main arguments preventing us from doing any meaningful measurement. The first is that there is no good means of measuring an increase in morale based on project decisions. Finding single points of morale boost or morale decrease may be possible but determining overall morale deltas caused by a specific project separate from the overall organization culture is simply unreasonable. The second argument, against being able to measure the OV, is that even once morale change is estimated it is then not possible to determine the degree of effect that this will have against the short term or long term organizational bottom line. And, of course, we must consider the morale bolstering affect of an organization being willing to sponsor projects for the purpose of or, at least, with consideration towards employee happiness.

But this is not to say that employee morale has no value. Certainly it does. I believe that it is an important factor in organizational health. A very important factor indeed.

Any project looking to determine its own value cannot truly do so without considering the implications of non-measurable organizational value. But to what extent should these factors be considered? To this, I believe, there is no simply answer. In an extremely large enterprise where many years of metrics could be collected and careful research into marketing, market pressures, competition, morale, productive velocity and more can be collected and calculated, over a very large system of hundreds of thousands of employees, I believe that we should be able to see reasonably consistent trends that will lend themselves to reducing NMOV factors into estimable organizational value. However even in this circumstance these calculations will have to be done at a very high level of abstraction with a significant amount of organizational research ongoing at all times. And results, unlike OV from specific projects, are most likely to only have a good degree of confidence when undertaken as organizational directives and initiatives and not on a project by project basis.

Large enterprise organizations, those with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, are often caught by their own bulk and momentum and find that many NMOV factors do not exist for them in the same manner than they exist for small companies. At the one extreme a behemoth manufacturing company with a half million employees will find enacting organization wide morale or velocity initiatives to be difficult to implement, difficult to measure and that the effects are minimal as the momentum of the firm keeps these changes from trickling down to the majority of the workforce without being watered down by the established corporate hierarchy until even the attempt at change is seen as a waste of effort. Large enterprises often settle into a relatively stable state of morale with only truly significant events having a serious or long lasting effect.

Small companies, especially those under five hundred employees, can find a much higher value in NMOV, in my opinion. Small companies gain some of their greatest advantages through the leverage of NMOV. In a tiny company of twenty people one great project could invigorate the entire company for potentially years. Culture and attitudes can change almost instantly and truly great velocities can be achieved and maintained. Smaller companies need to be more attuned to the NMOV factor than their large counterparts. It can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Small companies do not have the luxury of the employee scale buffer (read: organizational momentum) to keep morale busting events from dragging a company down quickly.

Some larger companies have become famous for managing to keep morale and culture at the forefront of their priority list with exceptional results. Notably Microsoft and Google have become poster-children for great corporate culture even in large firms. And both have become well known for consistently delivering strong technical products, moving the market forward, breaking new ground and keeping employees very happy. Both are also known for investing heavily in research and development which are often incorrectly thought to be NMOV activities but, over time, R&D activities have a reasonable level of estimable value.

NMOV cannot be the sole driver of organizational projects but it should not be discounted. NMOV should be considered even if, at the very least, only from the aspect of attempting to mitigate negative NMOV behaviour or project choices. To some extent, though, I believe that NMOV should be estimated through soft calculations and guesstimation to be accounted for within organizational project portfolio planning as well as corporate culture fostering activities.

Perhaps NMOV, given the potential value that it can add to an organization, should be considered not to be non-measurable but to be immeasurable.