IT Management

The Skinny on Lean IT

August 7, 2009

by Chris Curran, Steve Legnine and Rob Boudrow Lean, an optimization philosophy embodied in the Toyota Production System, is re-gaining popularity among some of our consumer products clients as they continue to search for ways to do more with less. I’ve asked Diamond’s business process expert, Steve Legnine and our IT optimization guru, Rob Boudrow, to work with me on this post to get the best thinking from the process quality world and to make ...

13 comments Read more →

First Aid for IT Project Failures

July 20, 2009

I spent last week at Boy Scout Camp in Oklahoma. One of the benefits of attending a Scout camp as an adult is the great training opportunities available. This year, I was able to get Red Cross certifications in First Aid, Wilderness First Aid and CPR during the week – all very important when dealing with boys (and adults) in camps away from good cell phone signals. As I sit here and take a break ...

8 comments Read more →

4 Steps to Manage Your Technology Portfolio

May 27, 2009

This post is about managing the life and death of technologies in an enterprise. Not projects or applications, but the portfolio of the underlying technologies – operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, middleware, etc. These must be managed too or you will find yourself in the same situation as a client CIO of a large retailer did a few years ago. The servers than ran the in-store processors – the computers in the back office of ...

8 comments Read more →

A CIO Can’t Do More with Less

May 12, 2009

Yes, I realize that “doing more with less” is a saying that is used to encapsulate the increased pressure on the enterprise, and the IT function specifically, to keep the business running with less revenue coming in and lower budgets. But, it bugs me because I think the saying propagates the myths that somehow IT can squeeze even more blood out of the stone, in the same environment in which the business is dissatisfied with ...

2 comments Read more →

5 IT Governance Attitudes Foreshadow Failure

May 7, 2009

After you have the organization following your core IT processes (more on that here), you are ready to add effective IT governance to increase productivity and alignment. Before you do this, make sure that you squash any of these five attitudes that may exist in your teams that will implement governance – they will virtually eliminate any chances you have for success. “We are here to govern you” The primary goals of governance is to ...

4 comments Read more →

IT’s Keystone Skills

April 16, 2009

Process issues are not alone in contributing to IT’s success or failure. People (and their skills) are also part of the “holy trinity” of People – Process – Technology, the three interrelated building blocks of any business capability, IT included. With the dramatic uptake in outsourcing over the last several years, CIOs have been faced with a new set of organization design challenges and skill needs. In fact, many IT shops have remade themselves to ...

3 comments Read more →

Next Entries →