Process

“No IT projects”? A practical take

Tweet If you follow the news, it’s quite clear that we’re in the “silly season” of politics, that time when people eagerly grab hold of any questionable statement of their opponent and use it to extrapolate rank incompetence or dastardly intentions (or worse). Language is frequently quoted out of context, definitions become blurred, things get [...]

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Valuable vs. fun: learning to love IT Asset Management

Tweet My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength. – Michael Jordan As with so much in life, so it goes with IT: the parts that are fun aren’t always valuable, and the parts that are valuable aren’t [...]

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Mending Wall: Matches and mismatches in IT stakeholder expectations

Tweet Oil and water? Some days, the disconnect between stakeholder expectations and IT capabilities (and sensibilities) seems staggering. Case in point: I was shown an astounding list of generic stakeholder expectations a while back, drawn up by an obviously frustrated group and titled “USER REQUIREMENTS FOR IT”.  The list is most interesting in what the [...]

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The CIO and the fine art of vendor negotiation

Tweet “Don’t write about that,” I’ve been told by several colleagues, when I’ve mentioned that I was working on a post about how best, as the senior technology executive, to negotiate with vendors.  “You’ll give away all your tricks!” they’ve said. Well, actually, no.  Here’s the main trick: this particular CIO doesn’t have any “tricks”, if [...]

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

Tweet 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 [...]

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The Practical CIO: Difficulties in project prioritization & selection, part 2

Tweet OK, let’s assume you’ve gotten great at picking the right projects to do to benefit the company. How do you know you can actually accomplish the ones you’ve picked with the resources you have? If you’re like most companies I’ve seen, it’s done on a wing and a prayer. But there’s a better way. [...]

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The Practical CIO: Difficulties in project prioritization & selection, part 1

Tweet How does your company pick which projects to undertake?  Demand outstrips available resources: nearly always, there are far more “good ideas” for things to do than can actually be done in a given time period.  So how do you decide which ones you take on? If you research this general topic, you’ll find a [...]

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A rational CapEx purchase and tracking process for IT

Tweet How often does someone in your company (often the CIO, or the CTO, or the head of infrastructure) end up running through the halls, waving a purchase order that “has” to be signed off that very day, or else key systems will allegedly go dark? Maybe you’re in the fortunate situation of being in [...]

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