“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 chart) [...]

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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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Cloud computing: misunderstood, but really not that complicated a concept

September 29, 2009

Consider these statements:

Baseball is a game where the pitcher throws to the catcher.
An iPhone is a device that lets you call anywhere in the world.
The Grand Canyon is a tourist attraction in Arizona

You’ll have noticed that these statements aren’t wrong, per se. But they still take you aback, don’t they? They miss the [...]

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On Twitter, if you follow back reflexively, the spammers win

September 13, 2009

Are you among those who believe that if you don’t follow someone back on Twitter, you’re being snobby and arrogant?  Then this post is meant for you. My purpose here, quite candidly, is to persuade you that reflexively following someone back is not only a habit which encourages spam, but is in fact a major [...]

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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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The title issue revisited: CTO vs. CIO

August 30, 2009

Given the recognized ascendancy of business/IT alignment and business change management as a vital purview of the effective CIO/CTO, should senior technology executives decrease their emphasis on technology, and focus primarily on corporate strategy and change? Should the company just have one role (call it a CTO, perhaps) do all that technical stuff, and move [...]

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

August 14, 2009

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.
Last time, [...]

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