What Professionals Do

/

...which describes the essential ingredients to what serves as not only differentiators in your workforce, but the "difference makers". I believe the few people that get the lion's share of work done exhibit these behaviors. Being a professional involves a code of conduct. While consultants (Blood Type of a Consultant) and contractors (Blood Type of a Contractor) are defined in the referenced posts terms of what it means to carry their associated profession's badge, Seth does a good job of providing attributes of "being professional"

Read More

Leading at the Edge

/

...At the edge, the action is about change. The action is about identifying a vision and working towards transformation of an organization. In the post noted above, Edge IT is defined as functions and services that rhyme with IT Strategy, workforce planning, financial and operational modelling, scalability and capacity planning. This is an area where leadership makes all the difference...

Read More

Celebration of Shadow IT

/

All those of you who have participated in a Sarbanes-Oxley audit hold up your hand? Good. Now, how many of you have been involved in documenting the processes under scrutiny by the Act? I see fewer hands up. For those of you with your hands still up, do you notice something interesting in each of these processes? Thats's right, there's a healthy dose of technology inside these processes - and a healthy percentage of this was developed by people who don't work within...

Read More

IT Farming

/

...One interesting aspect to explore here is not the comments or absence of them, but how the situations being commented on came to be. While many times these comments can refer to specific events, more often than not, when you dig beneath the surface, you will find that what is being reacted to is a systemic condition, the seeds (either crop or weeds) of which had been planted long ago.

Read More

Hey CIO, How Are Your Legal Skills?

/

What at one time consisted of determining departmental headcount now looks at how to augment this with contractors, consultants, and outsourcing firms. While the workforce plan provides the overall guidance, contracts are where the rubber meets the road. This is where you precisely define the products and services required, and the terms and conditions which go along with the acquisition. Knowing how to negotiate these contracts and the obligations of the parties is a core skill in the delivery of Information Technology.

Read More