Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

Saying Why Is A Powerful Tool Wed 01 Jul 09

Adding An Explanation For Our Policies Can Improve Their Effectiveness

Most IT policies are written like the Ten Commandments.  Thou Shalt Not…  Thou Shalt Not…  Thou Shalt Not…  When you read them you almost expect them to be accompanied by a roll of thunder and a flash of lightning as the rules are laid down by the IT god.

Sometimes a more enlightened IT department will write policies in a more positive fashion.  Instead of Thou Shalt Not… they write it as Thou Shall… 

What IT Needs To Give Up Wed 24 Jun 09

The best IT governance in tough times involves giving up some control--and a lot of information

Balancing requests for more services has always been a challenge but it is especially tough during tough economic times when adding more resource is no longer an option. It is in situations like this when the word "no" can be very powerful.

This may seem contradictory to my previous suggestions that IT should put more effort into saying yes but it really isn't.  The concept of saying yes is about finding ways to help rather than looking for reasons why you can't help, why something can't be done or why something won't work. I still think we should look for ways to say yes in that context.

Guiding Principles For IT Wed 06 May 09

If you need me I'll be there.

While going through some old papers the other day I came across something I'd written about 15 years ago in my first IT role.  It was a statement of Guiding Principles for IT that I used to let my employees and the users of IT how we intended to perform our role.  I patterned it off of what I had seen at a non-IT service provider and I was impressed by its simplicity, clarity and straightforward approach.

I re-read this very carefully and it still rings true for me now just as it did 15 years ago.  Even though I have not posted this in my new role (now that I've found it again I just might), it is still the way I like to operate.  It has many of the elements of a mission statement but it is more about how we do our business, truly guiding principles.  Take a look at it.  I'd love to hear what you think of it.

What Obama's CTO Should Do Wed 26 Nov 08

Here's a list of issues to focus on, including data security and growing our tech workforce.

President-elect Obama's announcement the he will appoint the country's first chief technology officer (CTO) has caught the attention of the IT world. It has a lot of people excited and has generated a lot of speculation over who he might name as the nation's first CTO. I think this is a great start, but I hope the new CTO takes advantage of the opportunity and expands on his defined role.

The brief job description states that the role of the CTO is "to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an inter-agency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices."

As defined, the CTO's role is focused internally, concerned primarily with the mechanics of IT--the hardware and software. This isn't surprising given that Silicon Valley was a big Obama supporter--the same Silicon Valley that sold us all that expensive hardware and software that would (supposedly) miraculously solve all of our problems. No doubt Valley companies are hoping for similar opportunities with the new administration; they have probably been using this to push their agendas.

Achieving the CTO's goals will be difficult. We've seen a number of government agencies try this unsuccessfully in the past at great cost. Government bureaucracies are very resistant to change, and if changes are not done properly, we may end up combining a number of fragmented bureaucracies into a new one that is even more bloated and inefficient. But for anyone that has had to deal with the government, I'm sure any progress is welcome.

Rather that focusing solely on the internal mechanics, I'd suggest that the new CTO focus externally on some strategic IT issues facing the country. As in the corporate world, the new CTO could fall into the trap of thinking that running the IT operations efficiently is the critical measure of success. While important, the real measure should be "value" (addressing strategic issues) moreso than "cost management" (efficiencies and best practices).

An IT Question: What Do You Expect From The Project Sponsor? Mon 28 Jul 08

Occasionally I turn the tables and ask you the readers for you input and since it has been awhile since I've done that this seems like a good time.  Here's the scenario--

A major IT project for the Sales department is about to kick-off.  You stop by to talk with the with the VP, Sales about it and the dialog goes something like this.

VP, Sales - My team has told me they are excited to finally get this project going.  We've been wanting it for a long time.  We really expect to see a lot of benefit from this.

You - I'm glad to hear that.  As you're the Project Sponsor we really appreciate your help in getting this done.

VP, Sales - I'm behind this a 1,000%!  You can count on me.  Make sure to let me know when it is done I'd like to host a congratulatory dinner for everyone on the team.

You - Well I truly appreciate your support but we need more than that.  Your active participation is required if we want this to be successful.

VP, Sales - Oh.  (significant pause)  What exactly is it you want me to do?

You - . . .

How do you respond?  What do you expect your executive project sponsors to do?  What is their responsibility?

"Help" photo by Cobber99

Got a question you'd like me to post for future discussion?  Email it to me using the "Email Mike" link in the left hand column.

If this topic was of interest, you might also like the other posts in the IT Question category.

Gimme The Names Mon 22 Oct 07

A lot of the projects that we work on are touted as being labor savings projects.  I say "touted" because often even though the projects are successfully implemented we never seem to see any reduction in labor costs.  Frustrated with this one of my old bosses used to have a stock reply to labor savings projects that usually went something like this:

Requester: If we do this project we'll save 80 hours of engineering effort per week.

Boss:  Gimme the names.

Requester: The names?

Boss: Yes, 80 hours per week is 2 people.  I want to know the names of the people that you'll be firing.

Requester:  (significant pause) Um, Uh, We weren't actually planning on firing anybody.

Boss: Well if no one is leaving how are we getting any labor savings?

Requester: We were planning on using them to do something else.

Boss: Before I'll let you "rehire" those 2 justify to me the merits of this something else.

The boss wasn't really on a mission to fire people but he did want to make sure there was a sound justification for what we were doing.  Fortunately there are some things you can do to make sure you get the economic return you were expecting.

An IT Question: Who Should Pay? Wed 12 Sep 07

Now that budgeting season is upon us I thought I'd ask a question about who should pay for your IT services.

Should you charge your users based upon how much service they get from IT?  Will this drive them to the lower cost "shadow IT" with its inherent risks and problems?  Since they are paying will they opt out of programs and policies that are in the company's best interests?

Conversely, should IT be free with no charge to the users?  This may encourage them to use IT but will it be done effectively?

My question is "Who should pay for IT?"  What do you think?  How do you do it at your company and why?

"Help" photo by Cobber99

Got a question you'd like me to post for future discussion?  Email it to me using the "Email Mike" link in the left hand column.

If this topic was of interest, you might also like the other posts in the IT Question category.

Letting Users Set the Business Tech Agenda Mon 07 May 07

A couple of items in a  recent article at Information Week called "IT Departments Will Set Less Of The Business Tech Agenda, Survey Suggests" caught my attention. 

"Business users want more innovative software faster and will bypass the IT department if necessary to get it."

"In some cases, the research also shows IT organizations turning a blind eye when business units take risks with smaller, more innovative approaches to software."

No doubt this is a worrisome trend for many in IT.  We sit back and say sure the centralized, integrated approach may take a little longer but if we do it we can have better information, we can have a more complete insight to our customers, we can . . ., we can. . ., we can . . .

What this brings to mind is the old riddle about 4 frogs sitting on a log. 

Q. Four frogs are sitting on a log.  Three frogs decide to jump off.  How many frogs are left on the log?

A. Four frogs.  Deciding to do something and actually doing it are not the same thing.

Likewise, software that can provide what is needed is not the same as software that does provide what is needed.

IT Governance: Issues and Opportunities Mon 02 Apr 07

I recently ran across a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) called IT Governance in Practice, Insight from leading CIOs.  They interviewed 47 CIO from around the world with what was considered to be mature IT governance processes in place.  The reasons given for implementing an IT governance processes frequently included:

• "Need for IT alignment (60% of the participants);
• Regulatory pressure, e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley (40% of the participants);
• IT Governance is a natural followon from Corporate Governance projects and is enforced by Board/Executive management or headquarters (53% of the participants);
• An identified need for Performance Improvement, e.g. cost of IT, lack of effective solutions, efficiency gains (from a reduction in duplication) (56% of the participants); and
• Improved risk management (37.5% of the participants)."

I don't expect that anyone is surprised by these results.  Fortunately, PWC doesn't stop at just telling us what we already know.  Also in the report is some useful information on obstacles to implementing an IT governance process and, perhaps most importantly some critical success factors.

An Unexpected Obstacle to Forming a Business Analysis Group Fri 16 Feb 07

In the last post I talked about forming a Business Analysis group to provide a strategic service of helping the business operations to better utilize technology.  In talking about this concept with other people I was surprised to hear of one significant obstacle to implementing this.

A friend and fellow CIO was set to implement this concept.  He had support from top management and the business units and had started to interview candidates.  However under intense pushback from within the IT group he decided to postpone the implementation.

Sometime later I was talking to the president of a large company.  This president liked the concept but was concerned about the effect of it on the IT department.  To my surprise this president raised the same objection as my friend's IT staff had.  Wait a minute!  A company president and the IT staff having the same concern?  This seemed like a very unusual situation.

And just what was this objection they had in common?