From the category archives:

Anecdotes

Uncommonly followed common sense tips on CIO communication

July 19, 2010

I recently had the privilege of being interviewed, along with other experienced senior technology executives, by CIO magazine for my thoughts on communication mistakes still made by CIOs. Some great ideas came out in the article, but when it comes to communication (see tip #1 below), there’s always more to say. So here goes. Communication [...]

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Yes we can, yes we must: the ongoing case for IT/Business alignment

March 18, 2010

How do we (IT executives) get away from being typecast as technologists, unconsulted on core business issues and approaches? Face it, that’s a common situation and dilemma that we all encounter, early and often, and it’s the grist for a constant mill of articles and blog posts and books on business/IT alignment. Lately, though, a [...]

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IT transparency is good. But how transparent should you be?

November 24, 2009

A few years back, I had an extremely surprising and unpleasant experience as CTO. The director of my Program Management Office ran a weekly status meeting for project stakeholders, where we’d all methodically go through the current project portfolio, in order to communicate on issues, gather necessary feedback, and align everyone’s expectations. I typically attended [...]

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“Refuse to lose”: how executive pressure contributes to IT failure

October 28, 2009

“We went live before the system was ready”.  It’s a common excuse/explanation that I hear from IT people when they tell war stories about system launches that failed miserably. Implicit (and sometimes explicit) is the add-on statement: “and we told them so beforehand, too.” There are obviously many things (and many parts of the org [...]

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Conventional wisdom that fails for IT

October 15, 2009

I’ve done several posts featuring what I call “Peterisms”, which are basically aphorisms I’ve adopted that encapsulate hard-earned IT lessons. Let’s turn it around this time, and talk about two sayings that sound equally folksy-sensible, and that I hear again and again, but which I feel are actually dangerous to apply to information technology work. [...]

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Some timeless IT/tech jokes, and why they’re still relevant

September 6, 2009

If you’ve been in the information technology industry for a number of years, certain jokes tend to pop up again and again. Why? I’d say it’s because their underlying premises, the things that make them applicable and funny, continue to occur. So even if you’ve heard these before (and that’s probably the case), it’s worth [...]

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A case study of “going to the cloud” (SaaS)

August 20, 2009

Here’s one series of questions that’s great to ask a candidate for a senior position in IT, be it in project management, development, operations, or whatever: Tell me about a recent project or initiative for which you were responsible. What was the goal, and how did you ensure that the goal was achieved? What were [...]

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“Hot stove” lessons, part II: development and operations

October 28, 2008

I noted last time, once again, that “IT is hard. In fact, it’s so hard that it seems most people have to learn certain core lessons by themselves.  It seems like everyone needs to burn his or her own hand on the hot stove.”  I went through some examples of this sort of “hot stove” lessons particular [...]

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