From the category archives:

Vendor management

The CIO and the fine art of vendor negotiation

December 10, 2009

“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 by tricks [...]

Read the full article →

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 [...]

Read the full article →

Get multiple arrows for that quiver: selective and competitive outsourcing

May 6, 2009

As I’ve written before (“Offshore development: target the destination, even if you never go there“), the reality of the CTO/CIO’s life is to be constantly challenged to produce more. Most technology executives, given that challenge, focus on squeezing out greater efficiency from existing processes, which is of course a necessary and constant push. What many [...]

Read the full article →

Offshore development: aim for it, even if you never go there

February 19, 2008

As I wrote last time, a large part of my reason for opposing offshoring is because I’ve rarely, if ever, worked in a company where I felt the necessary prerequisites were in place to be able to even consider offshoring as a viable option. Let’s go into that in more detail now.
I’ve observed before [...]

Read the full article →

The pitfalls of the implicit “buy” bias for IT systems and services

February 5, 2008

I wrote last time about how there are twin truths to the buy vs. build dilemma: outsourcing can be a superb way to leverage external expertise and keep your own team focused on core functions; yet, outsourcing is not an easy or friction-free choice, and it’s easy to simply substitute one set of problems with [...]

Read the full article →

Buy vs. build, and why Scott McNealy thinks the CIO doesn’t need a staff

January 30, 2008

I’m going to unabashedly steal someone else’s anecdote for this post. I’ll justify doing so on the grounds that the anecdote has stuck with me since I heard it; I’ll talk about why, and why I tend to repeat it to my staff at opportune moments. Starting with this post, I plan to [...]

Read the full article →

Is there any CIO/CTO out there who is still inclined to answer a desk phone?

January 21, 2008

Just a quick one, this time, in what may become an ongoing motif of describing some of the pet peeves I’ve developed in this role.
For years now, I’ve been unable to answer my desk phone. Or rather, I’ve been unwilling to answer it, at least for calls that I can tell are coming from [...]

Read the full article →

More tips for dealing with IT vendors

August 21, 2007

Now that I’ve covered the more humorous (and hopefully the less typical) side of dealing with vendors, I’d like to present some “lessons learned” for developing and maintaining positive relationships with hardware, software, and service providers. After all, we all need to use vendors’ products and services, and I’ve learned in my own experience [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries