How CIOs can make Business Relationship Management (BRM) work
See CIO.com Movers and Shakers Vaughan Merlyn interview.
Book Review – Be The Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT
I reviewed Martha Heller's last book, The CIO Paradox: Battling the Contradictions of IT Leadership back in October 2012, because I thought it was an important book for my typical blog readership, the IT community. When Martha invited me to review her new book, I jumped at the opportunity because: I respect Martha's perspective—she is both an IT executive [...]
The Value of Business Relationship Management? A 3-Fold Increase in IT Effectiveness!
Highly respected McKinsey & Company has just published a ground breaking research report entitled, "Partnering to shape the future—IT's new imperative." The opening statement powerfully expresses the raison d'être for Business Relationship Management: "When IT acts as a partner to the business, rather than as a technology consultant or supplier of IT services, the benefits are [...]
Who’s Taking Care of Organizational Change Management?
Where are all the Organizational Change experts? I've worked with many companies over the last 45 years or so who were trying to improve business performance by implementing IT-enabled change (or, more precisely, by implementing business process change enabled by IT). I've also worked with IT organizations who were trying to improve their performance by [...]
Razing Silos with Business Relationship Management
IT Organizations are complex organisms that have to deal with rapidly changing, complicated subjects. Such environments are fascinating places for organizational archaeologists and anthropologists to study, revealing layer upon layer of legacy architectures, organizing structures, artifacts and sub-cultures. While the technologies we manage change quickly, the methods and structures we use to manage them [...]
The Search for Role Clarity Ends with Strategic and Operating Model Clarity! (Part 1)
I come across a whole heap (yes, that’s a technical term!) of “role confusion” in my consulting and training work. And it’s an insidious issue. Lack of role clarity leads to errors, miscommunication, redundancy, noise and wasted effort. It creates frustration, confusion, and, for a provider such as an IT organization, it leads to a [...]
Shadow IT: Friend or Foe?
Every now and again, I see articles, posts and comments about "Shadow IT", nearly always cast as a negative phenomenon--something to be avoided, challenged, even eliminated. As an example, Information Week recently published an article entitled "Shadow IT: 8 Ways to Cope." While all the suggested 'coping mechanisms' make sense, I'm always concerned that Shadow [...]
Scrum: Twice the Work in Half the Time–Really? Part 2
This is Part 2 of a 2-part post. In Part 1 I provided some context for my post inspired by the book "Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time" by Jeff Sutherland, including a disclaimer on why you might not like this book. If you are experienced in Scrum methods, [...]
Business Relationship Manager Titles–Does Size Matter?
Once again, I received an interesting question from a reader that prompted a post. Here's the question: My BRM organization is going through leveling and restructuring. I have several BRM's reporting to me and am working with very senior business executives with billion dollar business units. My peers in the IT organization have Vice President [...]
When ITIL® and Other Frameworks and Methodologies Become Substitutes for Thinking
This post was inspired by a question I received via LinkedIn. The question was: I have been working in the IT field for over twenty years and am increasingly frustrated by the blinkered mantra of following ITIL, Prince2 etc. at the expense of Common Sense. I am often confronted by so-called trained experts in Project [...]