Tag: Dan Kane

Fresh Links Sundae – June 1, 2014 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!

Companies across industries are experiencing a looming issue of finding the senior-leadership capacity to manage the huge program of data analytics. The issue stems from the reality that many top-team members are fully engaged with their existing responsibilities. Janaki Akella, Sam Marwaha, and Johnson Sikes believe that CIOs can help by mastering four critical roles. How CIOs can lead their company’s information business (McKinsey & Company)

With today’s fast delivery cycles, Charles Betz argues that the traditional “Plan/Build/Run” model is no longer sufficient. He explains how a “Demand/Supply/Execute” model may help to counteract the tendency to form functional silos and to promote effectiveness. The challenges of “Plan, Build, Run” and Towards “Demand, Supply, Execute” (lean4it)

In business, process maturity and stability are good things to have, but too much is not necessarily better. Bob Lewis advocates that the job of leadership often is defined by the need to maintain an organization in its most unstable state, because in many areas that is where the best results happen. The unstable optimum (IS Survivor Publishing)

In many IT organizations, setting high operating standards and what gets recognized (ad-hoc fire-fighting) can have opposite effects. Dan Kane believes that performance against the standards you set on an individual basis is a key leading indicator of overall organizational performance. Keeping Employees Engaged with ITSM (Hazy ITSM)

Reporting from IT can be challenging when trying to deliver reports that are accurately reflecting the customer experience. Ryan Ogilvie suggests four principals to keep in mind when planning and making service improvements. Service Management Reporting is all about Perspective (Service Management Journey)

Bill Kleyman advocates that one of the best ways to prep your organization for a potential cloud move is to utilize a cloud readiness assessment. Before you migrate a workload into a cloud provider space, he recommends some key infrastructure aspects to consider. Creating a Cloud Readiness Assessment (Data Center Knowledge)

Denise Brosseau had just returned from her summer vacation to Sweden, after a visit to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. She shares the lessons we can all learn from this remarkable, failed warship. What I Learned About Failure on My Summer Vacation (Thought Leadership Lab)

Just about any animal will tend to repeat behavior that is followed by positive reinforcement. As a result, the more successful we become, with more positive reinforcement we get, we become less able to recognize the need to change. Marshall Goldsmith cautions us not to let over-confidence overshadow our humility and the ability to change. The Success Delusion (Marshall Goldsmith Personal Blog)

Fresh Links Sundae – May 25, 2014 Edition

For organizations that want to run IT as a business, how should IT price its services and charge its internal customers? Bob Lewis discusses the three broad cost categories for invoicing. Chargebacks – tips and techniques (IS Survivor Publishing)

The value of data in business is a popular discussion these days. For managers who want to learn more about how information is being captured, quantified, and used to make business decisions, Walter Frick has a reading list to get those managers started. An Introduction to Data-Driven Decisions for Managers Who Don’t Like Math (Harvard Business Review)

IT has a critical mission of helping business drive success; therefore, the business needs to share responsibility for IT investments and projects as well. Pearl Zhu recommends how CIOs and CFOs can build a strong relationship for IT governance effectiveness and efficiency. CIO-CFO Collaboration for IT Governance (Future of CIO)

With Agile, many organizations have a heavy focus on value generation. While value generation is important, Glen Alleman cautions that focusing on value in the absence of focusing on cost of that value can be a going-out-of-business strategy. To Stay In Business You Need to Know Both Value and Cost (Herding Cats)

Many organizations experience a common pitfall in implementing ITSM – they were investing effort in creating and maintaining configuration information but getting little or no value from their investment. Stuart Rance suggests a list of improvements that every organization should consider. What’s the Point of Configuration Management? (SysAid Blog)

Dan Kane has found that usually the most overlooked part of organizational change is that of consequences and rewards. He believes that every successful process/organizational change does three things thoroughly and well. The Big 3 Questions of Consequence (Hazy ITSM)

Courtney Nash believes that we might have reached a point in software development where we can no longer understand, see, or control all the parts because they are increasingly complex and distributed. She also has some recommendations on what we can do to develop and manage systems with an enormous degree of sophistication and complexity. Everything is distributed (O’Reilly Radar)

Many of us take on the challenge of making changes and find the changes can be both time-consuming and hard to do. Marshall Goldsmith recommends that having the courage to face the truth up front when setting goals can help us stick to the plan. The Five Reasons We Give Up (Marshall Goldsmith Personal Blog)

Fresh Links Sundae – February 23, 2014 Edition

While pulling some thoughts together on the future of ITSM and service desk, Stephen Mann outlines his perspectives on what’s to come for those two important areas in IT. What’s the Future of ITSM? (HDIConnect)

As more and more organizations adopt cloud infrastructure, the migration to the cloud is not always a straight path with no obstacles. Phil Whelan outlines common steps IT organizations can take when adopting cloud technologies. 10 Steps To The Cloud (ActiveBlog)

Keeping up with and leveraging the available technology advancement has become one of the top challenges for many organizations and their CIOs. Dion Hinchcliffe recommends the ways a CIO can leverage building a more digitally-aligned business. The new CIO mandate (Enterprise Irregulars)

Migrating to the cloud is not only a technology decision but also a risk management consideration. John Overbaugh recommends four steps a leader can follow to help their companies adopt cloud technologies while minimizing overall risk. Risk changes in the cloud (ISACA Now)

The recent security breach at Target highlights a reality where organizations are much more connected to one another these days. Those close connections, if not managed correctly, also can present potential security loopholes. Bob Lewis suggests two lessons any organization should consider and learn. When they’re good at being bad, learn from the good (IS Survivor Publishing)

Today’s managers often need to exercise the ability to think analytically. Thomas Redman discusses an example of using data to explore cause and effect. How to Explore Cause and Effect Like a Data Scientist (Harvard Business Review)

Many IT organizations work hard to meet their service levels and deliver excellent customer experience. Ryan Ogilvie explains why identifying what makes the service function is critical in the delivery of a consistent customer experience. Service Level Management – The Gap between Delivery and Expectation (Service Management Journey)

When implementing ITSM, some believe that, by improving the IT processes, the IT services will improve as well. Dan Kane cautions IT organizations that improving processes does not always lead to service improvement. Process Improvement is not Service Improvement (Hazy ITSM)

For many organizations, the success often comes down to the quality of leadership and the strength of the culture. Pearl Zhu describes three areas where IT can be a supporting catalyst to the business culture. IT as Business Culture Catalyst (Future of CIO)

Business analysis is a discipline that can effectively promote the success of the projects. Laura Brandenburg outlines eight steps with which a business analyst can follow to perform effectively on the projects. The Business Analysis Process: 8 Steps to Being an Effective Business Analyst (Bridging the Gap)

Something else you might be interested in…

Microsoft has made a free Microsoft System Center e-book available for download. Free ebook: Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution (Microsoft Press Blog)

Fresh Links Sundae – October 6, 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. More importantly, I picked these articles to help my fellow IT professionals be more successful. 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!

When IT groups and their business counterparts do not collaborate, Thomas Redman and Bill Sweeney believe that the failure to derive the full advantage of information technologies does enormous disservice to organizations. While there is no “silver bullet” solution, they have outlined three approaches for IT and business leaders to consider. Bridging the Gap Between IT and Your Business (Harvard Business Review)

With the technologies available to consumers these days, many end users have become knowledgeable on the technologies they are using in their work environment. However, a number of IT organizations still have outdated processes and lack of tools to support their increasingly knowledgeable end users. Eric Feldman gives examples of how IT can better engage and improve their interaction with the end users. Are Your Consumers Treated as Consumers? (CA Service Management)

As part of an ITSM initiative team, Earl Begley was tasked by his CIO to ensure quality execution. He shares with us the lessons learned and the takeaways from his experience as the project’s Total Quality Manager. Is Darth Vadar in your ITSM project? (The ITSM Review)

Dan Kane points out that the “traditional” approach to IT metric reporting can be ineffective, due to the use of the siloed numbers that do not help the readers make the necessary connections between the numbers and the big picture. As a result, the metrics often fail at driving action or decisions. He recommends an approach that can help transform the focus of ITSM metrics into information that tells a compelling story. Do your metrics tell a story? What makes for a compelling metrics story? (Hazy ITSM)

Reflecting from her recent trip to Nepal as a volunteer for a humanitarian effort, Susan Cramm describes how our 21st-century leadership skills can have a powerful and positive impact on those living in extreme circumstances throughout the world. Using Your 21st Century Skills in a 19th Century World (Strategy+Business)

On a recent mountain climbing trip, Bob Lewis experienced the negative consequence when you push your body too far. He cautions that management today can sometimes create a harsh environment where the employees are pushed too hard and too far. Pushing through the pain hurts (IS Survivor Publishing)

Many organizations go a considerable length to build fault-tolerance capability into their technology environment. Occasionally, due to poor design decisions, the fault-tolerance capability does not fully come through when the need arises. Jonathan Hassell explains why regular testing, robust communication, and occasional mock failover are necessary to ensure your disaster recovery practice will work when you need it. 4 Ways CIOs Can to Respond to a Service Outage (CIO)

Organizations seem to have different levels of success when deploying the same technology solutions to its business environment. Patrick Gray believes that, once you develop a strength at gathering and managing use cases, your IT projects are more likely to meet their objectives, satisfy the key stakeholders, and make your company more effective. Approach IT from the perspective of use cases and not features (TechRepublic)

Seth Godin believes that art is the work of a human – an individual seeking to make a statement, to cause a reaction and to connect. He also advocates “art” creation is not just for the artists in the traditional sense – all of us are capable of producing our best craft and “art.” Decoding “art” (Seth’s Blog)

Many people seem to know that encouraging upward challenge is a key to maintaining organizational integrity; however, it can be hard to do in practice. Marshall Goldsmith recommends that business leaders should focus on encouraging their followers on learning how to recognize potential integrity issues and effectively communicating these in a way that can prevent problems. Challenge Up: A Key to Organizational Integrity (Marshall Goldsmith Personal Blog)

Something else you might be interested in…

With data being recognized as a key asset for a number of business processes, trusting the data too much or too little can often lead to unintentional, negative consequences. Cathy O’Neil has published a free e-book that urges its readers to cultivate their inner skeptic when it comes to leveraging data for decision making. New Essay, On Being a Data Skeptic, now out (mathbabe)

Fresh Links Sundae – September 8, 2013 Edition

With IT being essential to the execution of nearly every job, Brad Power believes that business executives will need to continue to build their comfort level with managing IT more directly. Yes, Managing IT Is Your Job (Harvard Business Review)

Drawing from his own dieting experience, Earl Begley explains how building and following a plan are a must for an ITSM initiative to work. The ITSM Diet (The ITSM Review)

With the constant changes in business, many organizations are using IT in a much more sophisticated manner than they are used to be. Stewart Buchanan explains how organizations need better IT asset management controls to prevent unexpected costs from outweighing the benefits of new ways of using IT. Improve Your IT Asset Management Controls or Face Unbudgeted Costs (The ITAM Review)

Motivated by the interest in social-enablement and self-service, many organizations are looking at how best to manage and make knowledge accessible to their people. Barclay Rae gives some planning tips for your knowledge management effort . Knowledge Management Is More Than Just Buying A Tool (The ITSM Review)

Many IT organizations use popular metrics such as first contact resolution (FCR) or mean time to repair/resolve (MTTR) as a primary input into measuring service excellence. Dan Kane argues that well intended metrics don’t necessarily tell the whole story, and we can do better. First Contact Resolution is the last refuge of a scoundrel (Hazy ITSM)

In an effort to maximize his/her own productivity, some developers produce more extra code than the organization can test or make use of them. Dennis Stevens suggests six things that developers can work on that are better economic investments than writing the extra, untested code. Stop Writing Code You Can’t Yet Test (LeadingAgile)

With machines getting more proficient at doing many of the things people traditionally do on the job, this means people need to become smarter at things machines are not quite yet ready to take over. Michael Schrage suggests six different skills that can be useful in today’s workplace and should be taught in school. Six Classes Your Employer Wishes You Could Take (Harvard Business Review)

We live in a world where we want things to happen fast, faster and fastest. Mitch Joel suggests we focus on spending the time you need to get better at your craft. 10,000 Hours And 20% Of Your Work Time (Six Pixels of Separation)

When it comes to finding and leading like-minded people to make real and powerful change that matters, Seth Godin explains why it is vital to build the tribe around the experience that the tribe members already want to have. Q&A: Tribes and the reality of worldview (Seth’s Blog)

Our flaws at work usually don’t vanish when we go home. Marshall Goldsmith advises us on whom we can approach to learn more about ourselves. How to Learn the Truth About Yourself (Marshall Goldsmith Personal Blog)