I've posted at length about the Business Relationship Manager (BRM) role as being key to driving business value from IT. But what other roles—typically under-served—work with the BRM in the pursuit of business value from IT? In this post, I am going to introduce three dimensions of value realization than are important to driving business [...]
This is the 2nd in a multi-part post on assessing IT Capabilities. (See Part 1) A Quick Recap Part 1 introduced some assessment principles I've found to be important. The Process is more important than the results. I've found facilitated self-assessments to be the most effective. The results must be actionable. An assessment must give [...]
As a management consultant, I've come to believe over many years of experience that poor process discipline is at the heart of many performance issues. More to the point, I find an incredible amount of misunderstanding about the nature of process thinking and process management, and outright denial that process management is in any way [...]
This picks up on Part 1 and Part 2 in this series on IT Organizational Clarity. In Part 1, I discussed the importance of IT Organizational Clarity, the symptoms when clarity is compromised, and the challenges of trying to address those symptoms rather than the root causes that lead to compromised clarity. Part 1 closed [...]
This is the first in a series of posts on the subject of IT Organizational Clarity. The general concept of Organizational Clarity is clearly laid out in Patrick Lencioni's wonderful leadership fable, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. I believe that Organizational Clarity is particularly important for IT leaders today as IT management and [...]
Thanks to my colleague Roy Youngman for suggesting the theme of this (very short) post when we were comparing notes on past consulting clients. Our discussion was about why some are so satisfying to work with while others can be so frustrating. By the way, as I write this I am well aware of the [...]
Yes - I can connect the unlikely subjects in this blog's title. But bear with me a few sentences to set the context. I recently posted on my time in Portland, Oregon, and my love for the city. I also mentioned the anomalous 'street people' scene. Portland is so squeaky clean and seemingly well-run, and [...]
Many years ago, when I was a partner with Ernst & Young, John Cross, the CIO of BP (a very highly regarded company at that time) approached me wanting to benchmark the way E&Y managed its engagements. My first reaction was incredulity. I knew we were good at engagement management - after all, it was [...]
Much has been written about "Business-IT Alignment" over the years. Alignment can refer to Strategy - the degree to which IT strategy and business strategy are aligned. (This, of course, is both 'old news' and yet often not the case in practice. And there's one school of thought that says there's no such thing as [...]
I just came across a new blog called Simple Processes, and I'm sufficiently impressed to add it to my Google Reader, to my blog roll, and to use this post to point my readers to it. In his current post, Glenn Remoreras discusses the achievement of the highest level of process culture maturity. This is [...]