Tag: Damon Edwards

Fresh Links Sundae – December 15, 2013 Edition

Fresh Links Sundae encapsulates information I have come across during the past week. Often they are from the people whose work I admire or resonate with me. I hope you will find these ideas thought-provoking at the minimum. Even better, I hope these ideas will, over time, help my fellow IT pros make better decisions, be awesome, and kick ass!

Most leaders do not always get to build their own teams from scratch – they often inherit the teams from someone. Bob Lewis recommends that 1) hiring one outstanding employee and 2) micromanaging are the two techniques a leader can use in those situations. In defense of micromanagers (IS Survivor Publishing)

Reflecting from a recent discussion at HDI Executive Forum, Craig Baxter talks about what issues and challenges are involved in making effective marketing of the service organization. Tackling the Age-Old “Marketing Your Service Organization” Challenge (HDIConnect)

ITSM can be a highly dynamic endeavor, and what worked a while back might not work today. Gordon Brown outlines nine potential pitfalls when implementing an ITSM effort. 9 Pieces of Terribly Bad IT Service Management Advice (Plexent Blog)

Many organizations spend a large amount of effort installing the service management practice but fail to sustain it with Continual Service Improvement (CSI). Francois Biccard explains why CSI is a critical component in your service management practice. CSI puts the ‘taste’ back in Service Management (The ITSM Review)

In our rush to embrace cloud and virtualization across all aspects of the IT infrastructure, Tracy Corbo believes that the performance, visibility, and management issues simply do not magically go away. She cautions that the new infrastructure deployment options (e.g. cloud) should not cause us to lose sight of the original business and operational objectives. A Means to an End: Cloud & Virtualization Not a Cure-all (EMA Blog Community)

Many enterprise organizations are adopting strategic mobile, social, and cloud initiatives to empower and support employees; however, developing and distributing digital expertise can be a daunting challenge. Perry Hewitt suggests four approaches for developing digital competency within a large organization. Four Ways to Scale Digital Capabilities Beyond Your Team (Harvard Business Review)

As a keynote speaker at DevOps Days Mountain View 2013, Damon Edwards talks about a 3-step technique for introducing the DevOps practice in an organization. How to initiate a DevOps Transformation (Video) (dev2ops)

Many factors can lead to employees being disengaged in their roles. When that happens, the productivity and the quality of the work often suffer as the result of the disengagement. Pearl Zhu suggests active approaches that IT leaders can use to keep talent engaged. CIO as Talent Master: How to Engage Talent (Future of CIO)

Many companies have been reluctant to perform risk analyses due to the perception that measuring IT security risk is too difficult because it’s intangible. Jim Hietala suggests that companies still can get the data they need to perform meaningful risk analysis. Measuring the Immeasurable: You Have More Data Than You Think You Do (The Open Group Blog)

Business issues such as globalization, decentralization, and the rapid pace of today’s marketplace have forced companies to evaluate leadership programs and closely aligned them with corporate strategy. Marshall Goldsmith outlines the key areas to focus on when developing leader program within the organization. Future Leadership (Marshall Goldsmith Personal Blog)

Fresh Links Sundae – October 21, 2012 Edition

Fresh Links Sundaeencapsulates information I have come across during the past week. They maybe ITSM related or not entirely. Often they are from the people whose work resonates with me, and I hope you will find something of value.

Personally, delivering high-quality, business-centric IT services is something I am passionate about, and I am glad my training in ITSM has enabled me to do more for my organization and profession. Drawing from her personal experience, Kirstie Magowan describes the various roles within IT service management field and what skills and training one might need in order to succeed in the ITSM career. Your ITSM Career Path (The ITSM Review)

Many IT organizations have difficulty mapping IT spending directly to the business values created. Robert Stroud describes what IT needs to do in order to provide the transparency and the data points necessary for an organization to make the informed decisions about IT investment. Financial Management for Effective Sourcing (CA Technologies)

Because ITSM tools can be a major investment for many organizations, Stephen Mann suggests tips on how to make the ITSM tool selection process more meaningful and productive. 50 Shards Of ITIL – The Bane And Pain Of ITSM Tool Selection (Forrester Blogs)

Maintaining sufficient, relevant information on our complex and intertwined systems is a critical task for any proactive IT organization. Rob England outlines the steps on how to capture and maintain such information in a CMDB. How to improve your service configuration data and what that means for CMDB (The IT Skeptic)

With today’s highly complex and interactive applications, Jonathan Ginter describes what fundamental monitoring capabilities should be in place and why such capabilities should be baked in as part of the application during development. Monitoring 101 – Are You Running a Modern Application? (BMC Communities: DevOps)

Here is a collection of several informative videos on the topic of DevOps from Damon Edwards. Defining and Improving DevOps Culture (Videos) (dev2ops)

As an opportunity to provide better IT service and to achieve cost savings, Jon Reeve suggests the tracking of the metric First Time Fix and what the metric does. Increasing First Time Fix – A Service Improvement Priority (ITSM Portal)

While one-time leadership training can be beneficial, Marshall Goldsmith advocates that the follow-up, support, and encouragement from the organization after the training will likely yield more meaningful changes coming from the organization’s leaders. Fallacy of ‘If They Understand, They Will Do’ (Marshall Goldsmith Personal Blog)

Writing business blog with a level of consistency can be an effective marketing tool. Patsi Krakoff outlines tips on how to write quality blog posts. 5 Steps to Write a Quality Business Blog Post (Writing On The Web)

While we can all debate about the proper use of social media for drawing conclusion about someone, Mark Horstman talks about the importance of managing one’s image presented via the social media. They’re Coming For The Kids Now (Manager Tools)

Fresh Links Sundae – September 9, 2012 Edition

Fresh Links Sundae encapsulates some pieces of information I have come across during the past week. They maybe ITSM related or not entirely. Often they are from the people whose work resonates with me, and I hope you will find something of value.

Because people are often the most critical factor for ITSM success, Stephen Mann relays some people-oriented guidance from his colleague, Eveline Oehrlich, and his own on how to put together the best roles and skill sets in place. Staffing For IT Service Delivery Success: Think Employee, Think Customer, Then Repeat (Forrester Blogs)

Many organizations try to minimize the presence of shadow IT because they can present unmanaged risks. Instead of trying eliminating shadow IT, Bob Lewis suggests how embracing shadow IT might help improving outcomes from the revenue and costs perspectives. Stop stomping out shadow IT (IS Survivor Publishing)

Finding competitive advantage through continuous innovation is already an established idea, and IT can be a major contributor to that movement. Damon Edwards explains how the DevOps concept can enable the IT organization to be better leveraged by the business. Use DevOps to Turn IT into a Strategic Weapon (dev2ops)

One key benefit of the problem management process is to enable organizational learning. Barclay Rae suggests one important thing to do in order to get the most out of a problem management exercise. Problem Management Success – Start Using Causal Closing Codes (BarclayRae Website)

If you are working on putting together a Release Management process for your organization, Alicia Choo posted a sample operating procedure document that may help in your endeavor. My take on ITSM and IT Governance: Release Management (Choofca’s Brain Dump)

Referencing to several government-published resources on the BYOD movement, Martin Grobisen talks about the importance of formulating and putting a policy in place to address BYOD. Time to Implement a BYOD Policy (ITSM Lens)

With social media being one of the many options for building a brand, Anna Farmery outlines five steps to leverage social media for marketing. Five-Step Social Media Marketing Plan (The Engaging Brand)

Hiring consultants can be expensive and sometimes without the desired results, Patrick Gray outlines several ways to avoid wasting money and get the most benefits out of the consult’s help. How to win friends and waste money on consultants (TechRepublic)

Although effectiveness leadership can encompass different things to different people, Jeff Haden talks about the personal lessons he learned about leadership and suggests five ways he has used to improve his own effectiveness. 5 Leadership Lessons You Won’t Learn in B-School (Inc.com)

Because the IT organization is often entrusted by its company with access to many vital assets, Don Tennant suggests that trustworthiness is the most important, foundational characteristic for people in an IT organization. Don also outlines a few ideas for detecting deception when a breach has occurred. Tips on Detecting Deception in Your IT Organization (From Under The Rug)

Fresh Links Sundae – May 27, 2012 Edition

Rob England expressed his viewpoint of why using menu as the analogy for service catalog is not that simple. A menu is not a service catalogue (The IT Skeptic)

Damon Edwards got together with two other industry experts to talk about their experience and insights on the DevOps topic. High Velocity Release Management with Alex Honor and Betsy Hearnsberger (dev2ops)

Jeff Wayman discussed some excellent points for taking on a brand new ITSM initiative or trying to revive an under-performing one. The key is to center around taking on small bites, achieving results, and iterating continually to improve and to compound the smaller, positive results into a bigger one. ITIL for the Beginner: 4 Common Misconceptions (ITSM Lens)

If you are looking for ideas on how to set up or improve your change management practice, Alicia Choo has published something that is worth looking into and adapting it for your organization. My take on ITSM and IT Governance: Change Management (Choofca’s Brain Dump)

Julie Craig gave several suggestions on minimizing the probability of your enterprise management software acquisition becoming shelfware. Just say NO– to shelfware (EMA Blog Community)

Perry Rotella gave his thoughts on three key considerations a CIO must address to ensure operational success in managing the data within the organization. Data Excellence = Executive Success (Forbes)

Bret Simmons talked about the importance of not withholding truth as part of a leadership lesson. If You Don’t Have Something Nice To Say (Positive Organizational Behavior)

Julie Peeler talked about some simple steps to take to better protect you from disclosing too much data via social media. Data leakage in social media ((ISC)2 Blog)

Charles Betz suggested how a different approach like Demand-Supply-Execute can improve what we do in IT management today. Moving from Plan-Build-Run to Demand-Supply-Execute (Nimsoft Modern IT Blog)

Anna Farmery suggested the use of S.U.P.E.R. model to improve our effectiveness in what we do in business. Why Tomorrow…is so Yesterday (The Engaging Brand)

Fresh Links Sundae – March 25, 2012 Edition

Fresh Links Sundae encapsulates some pieces of information I have come across during the past week. They maybe ITSM related or not entirely. Often they are from the people whose work I admire, and I hope you will find something of value.

Robert Stroud talked about how the role of IT has changed from a pure operational role to a more strategic and business-oriented one. Transformation of the role of the CIO (CA on Service Management)

Rob England discussed that many organizations have not managed or governed their IT function effectively and can do more. Organisations have failed their IT like bad parents (The IT Skeptic)

Charles Betz examined a recent survey on IT demand management and discussed some preliminary findings. IT cannot prioritize (Charles Betz)

Jeff Wayman made some suggestions on how service desk can help its users to combat hacking and protect themselves. 5 Ways a Help Desk Can Stop a Hacker (ITSM Lens)

Don Tennant discussed a research finding where leaders and employees having very different views on who is helping to promote innovation and who is not helping. Research Shows Company Leaders Are Stifling Innovation (From Under the Rug)

Damon Edwards discussed how reducing batch sizes can improve the effectiveness of DevOps within your organization. DevOps Lessons from Lean: Small Batches Improve Flow (- Blog – dev2ops)

Brad Power discussed two examples of IT playing a leadership role in helping two organizations drive competitive advantage. Look to IT for Process Innovation? (Brad Power – Harvard Business Review)

Bob Sutton talked about how effective leaders practice both leadership and management principles together. Hollow Visions, Bullshit, Lies and Leadership Vs. Management (Work Matters)

Marshall Goldsmith discussed a simple, yet effective system for getting better at providing positive recognition. How Do I Provide Meaningful Recognition? (Marshall Goldsmith)

Finally, a simple yet informative explanation of social media for a simple-minded individual like me. Social media explained with donuts (Geek.com)