Defining a hero in your organization is probably correlating to the gap of knowledge availability in the organization and his private knowledge.
But what is a hero? From wikipedia “hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters (fictional or historical) that, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice”
Let us define danger in the IT world. danger will be the loss of ones reputation due to failure to execute.
Using that logic a Hero is a man who delivers an IT solution.
But what does the gap of knowledge availability and personal knowledge have related to delivery?
Everything! not knowing how to solve an issue prevents you from delivery and the more complex and the less information the harder it is to deliver.

Heroes are created when they display their abilities to know some thing that is not clear and takes some experience and thus both put their reputation on the line for a job every body else is trying to avoid and save the companies reputation.

We all know that all Service providers are in need of keeping up with other entities and keeping its reputation and market positioning.

Professional Service agencies are measured on quality and reputation that represent the abilities of the workers and their capability to deliver.

The environment where these heroes grow in is typically a selfish and hiding environment where people are fighting on knowledge sources and tend to hide the knowledge in private means.

Heros, as we all know, were very proliferate in the dark ages and later. they were very proliferate in combats and usually were holding a story of surviving in the place where no other man has survived. but if no other man has survived where is the information to make them a hero? the lack of that information made them the hero’s they could be. i can extend my argument to which’s and magic that today is no more then acts and herbal medicine. the more proliferated the information is the less likely we are to see an extraordinary phenomena and when we meet one we know that it just something we dont know yet.

Now lets get back to the Professional services age and the IT Heros.

If the information is collected in a Content Management system or a collaborative means it is usually becomes more available with time. but that is only true when people share, and sharing is a conjunction of the environment they are in.
So what will be a good environment to get people to share.
There are a few reasons why you wont share:

1. Over competitive environment where your performance is directlly linked to your compensation
2. Protecting your existence in the company
3. Environment that is ruled by a secretive manager who divides and concures

So technology in this case is not going to share the content between people unless they get an incentive to do so.
My guess is that when companies devour the Hero culture they embrace the team environment.
Cultivating the team as a value in a company that usually is scattered across clients is quite hard and requires the effort of the managers and the instantiation of technology.
I assume that team building will be poised at the top of the companies pedestal but the question is what actions will be put into place to support this.
I guess that in my opinion the yearly team meet is not the greatest and a more regular team gathering is in place.
another thing is putting the compensation to extra effort like bonus as a team bonus.
Will this stop the neanderthal hero from coming back?
I am not sure.

While reading the post and comments over at Jon’s blog i was reminded of all the assessments i have done for products and all the projects i have met and i started thinking of the purity of the process and structure of it.
My comment to the article was:

*Note* РI work with Vignette, a CMS vendor. My opinions however are my own….but are obviously biased.
I will go on this later on my website but for the time been i think that we need to take the Selection process and asses Adriaan Bloem comment.
The selection process even if it is for a case 1 will need to be maintained by some workforce of the client. so the vendor selection should be at least reviewed by the current team of the client.
Preferably that part of the sales will include some introduction training over the product to enable assessments of the primordial capabilities of the product.
This assessment should not be a Business case assessment but a technical one since the product UX is not available at this stage on the demo product.
After this assessment the client will be much more aware of the products and their matching capabilities to the IT requirements they have. i have seen too many projects been pushed on the IT department as a finalized solution without their approval and making them support something they are unfamiliar with and unable to do so.
The Agency should do its own math as for what product is more suitable for the implementation of the UX and the success of the client and be focused on that.
Later in the process there should be a discussion over the best product matching both the Agency analysis and the Clients departments analysis, the product of this should be a ranking of products.
at this point the price should not be discussed and information should not be available to the teams.
Next there should be a discussion over the price and some fondling with the sales guys.
This will result in a product selection based on 3 criterias:
1. Implementation ease.
2. Matching to clients needs.
3. Price is right.
Now regarding the corruption
Since not everything is money in the world and we are dealing with people, my personal belief is that the Agency and the Client are both pushing for the easier path that will either pay them more or be safer or both.
Coming to see that will in fact reduce the corruption allegations to the ones that are at court at the moment.
It could be that some of the licensing deals have hidden agendas and friendly handshakes but not everything is money.

So what is the way to judge the purity of the CMS vendor choice?
I want to start analizing the choice from the correct timing of the choice.
In SDLC we have these processes when creating a new software:
Initiation/Planning – Generate a high-level view of the intended project and determine the goals of the project.
Requirements Gathering And Analysis – Determine where the problem is in attempt to fix it with a system. Engage business users to define definite requirements.

Design – Design functions and operations and describe them in detail.
Implementation – Based on all the design outputs (documents) build the system while documenting the process.

So where do we put the CMS vendor selection? my thoughts are to do it after you have the Requirements analyzed and before the Design process. but who will make the analysis and who will make the design? do we need to further complicate the business side of the engagements and put more vendors to the mix?
One of the most frustrating thing for me is the finger pointing game we see in many implementations when there are many agencies mixed up in the game.
The price in getting many agencies involved in the process to me outweigh the matching of the CMS Vendor and its matchability.
I wish that many agencies were as proliferate as they should be. their ability to cut the clutter of the process into one agency with one goal and one liability in the process and their vast knowledge of multiple CMS vendors makes them one of the best agencies you can contact.
But there is a risk when contacting a single agency, this is putting all of your eggs in one basket, the risk of them not putting the maximum effort and skils they have towards your implementation and stuffing it up. i have seen some implementations that are quite big and very knowledgeable put their apprentices and not the experts on a project to save the low ball offer they made.

Do we need an external company to process all the parameters collected in the analysis and decide for the customer and the implementer what will be the platform? i guess that is correct if you put the implementer choice right after the CMS vendor choice.

and if we point the spotlight to the implementer choice, what should be the process? do we put an RFP out just for the implementation? are we using an external analysis company to asses the success ratio of implementers and then go by the most successful?
If we do assess the success of the implementer shouldn’t we do it for the CMS Vendor also? and the Agency if we go to the one stop shop alternative.

So what should we do?
I guess there is no simple pathway covered with a red carpet waiting to be found.
I guess that the client should choose the best fitting option.
The only thing i think any company should have is a knowledgeable supervising company/individuals that will be able to asses the progress of the process, especially the implementers progress.