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7 Digital Strategies of Top-Performing Companies

January 31, 2012
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Growing a multimillion dollar corporation during a recession is no small feat and it’s no accident. Companies that are swimming against the economic tide are doing things differently than those that are treading water, or worse, drowning. So, what exactly separates the best from the rest? In a world of tech-empowered consumers and employees, companies that are bucking the economic trend exhibit key behaviors that allow them to exploit technology and weave it into their ...

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Run IT Like a Business, Not As a Business

January 25, 2010

A recent InfoWorld article by Bob Lewis questions the IT organization concept of “running IT as a business.”  Paraphrasing, he poses several problems with it: No one inside your company is your customer IT’s costs are always higher than external options Building software that “meets customer requirements” is short-sighted and reactive Software product focus limits enterprise wide thinking and shared investment It creates more organizational and relationship barriers and is seen as a vendor not ...

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A Resurgence of Portfolio Management?

January 21, 2010
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by Chris Curran and Jim Quick Portfolio management was all the rage 5-6 years ago, driven in part by some good management thinking from people like Peter Weill at MIT CISR and Dr. Howard Rubin and in part by some software tool vendors.  Back then, most organizations added some kind of portfolio thinking or at least dabbled with it.  While most of the interest seemed to be in the IT organization, some organizations actually drove ...

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6 Ways to Find Weak Signals

October 9, 2009

One of the fundamental mysteries in the practice of IT management is “why cant we get better at delivering projects?”  Much has been written about the subject, with the balance focusing on the negative – project failure, IT Fail, etc.  A recent article in MIT Sloan Management Review got me thinking about another angle on this question – maybe we are ignoring some fundamental, but less obvious signs that our projects are not positioned for ...

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Public Cloud Adoption – Where Are You?

October 7, 2009

by Chris Curran, Nalneesh Gaur and Rob Warren In distilling perspectives from our clients for two upcoming events on cloud computing (Diamond Exchange, InfoWorld), we have developed an informal categorization that captures where companies are in adopting public cloud computing offerings.  “Not Interested/Not Applicable” could have been an option for our list but we don’t know anyone not at least looking into applying the cloud. Our clients fall into one of six categories in their ...

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Is Agile an “All or Nothing” Proposition?

September 16, 2009

By Michael Mariani, Scott Likens, Imran Ilyas and Chris Curran When it comes to Agile methodology, many organizations have resisted it because of a belief that they have to implement it across the entire organization or not at all.  Furthermore, there is a fear that Agile isn’t proven for large, complex, enterprise-class projects.  However, we have found that using an approach driven by architecture best practices, the benefits of Agile can be applied individually to ...

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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 ...

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The CIO Role: One of Influence or Control?

July 29, 2009

I’d like to thank Michael Krigsman for inviting me to join him in the IT Failures town hall yesterday.  It was great to interact with a few CIOs and other experts in IT management and leadership and discuss challenges facing the CIO in successfully delivering value.  For those who missed it, the entire session was recorded. The focus of our discussion was on the CIO’s role in project success or failure.  (William Monroe regularly reminds ...

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“None” is Not a Social Media Strategy

July 22, 2009

Saying “No” to social media is a big mistake, especially if the decision was driven by the CIO.  Over the last few weeks, I have spoken to two CIOs, one in financial services and one in the public sector, who say their organizations have a “no social media” policy. I agree that there are many reasons to limit what your employees post on Facebook or LinkedIn.  That said, shutting off the spigot entirely misses out ...

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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 ...

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