IT transparency is good. But how transparent should you be?
A few years back, I had an extremely surprising and unpleasant experience as CTO. The director of my Program Management Office ran a weekly status meeting for project stakeholders, where we’d all...
View ArticleYes we can, yes we must: the ongoing case for IT/Business alignment
How do we (IT executives) get away from being typecast as technologists, unconsulted on core business issues and approaches? Face it, that’s a common situation and dilemma that we all encounter, early...
View ArticleUncommonly followed common sense tips on CIO communication
I recently had the privilege of being interviewed, along with other experienced senior technology executives, by CIO magazine for my thoughts on communication mistakes still made by CIOs. Some great...
View ArticleWe don’t like that estimate. Change it.
CIO: “We can’t go live in six weeks as you want. It’s going to take at least three months.” CEO: “That’s … unacceptable!” One of the most recurring memes in IT, for me, has to be hearing “we don’t...
View Article“ASAP” considered harmful
When do you want it? “As soon as possible”, comes the ready answer. Everyone says it. Everyone knows what they mean by it, in essence, and it seems fairly harmless. But more often than not, I’ve...
View ArticleOne CIO’s “lessons learned” in managing others
Here’s a shocker: none of us has failed to fail at times. We’ve all screwed things up on occasion, and I’m no exception. And that’s especially true when it comes to managing others, which I believe is...
View ArticleThree IT behavior patterns seen in the wild
Assumed Omniscience, Chooser’s Remorse, and Fixation With all due respect to the many fine folks I’ve worked with in the career I’ve spent decades pursuing: we IT types can be an idiosyncratic, even...
View ArticleIT entropy in reverse: ITSM and integrated software
Why am I an IT professional? Here’s one major compelling reason: you simply can’t rest on your laurels. You can’t stop learning and growing and examining and improving, in all aspects, or you stagnate...
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Valuable vs. fun: learning to love IT Asset Management
My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength. – Michael Jordan As with so much in life, so it goes with...
View ArticleThe One True Way syndrome exemplified: the overstated case against code comments
I write frequently, and not without some exasperation, about the perennial search for the “silver bullet” in IT: the holy grail, the end-all, be-all solution to preventing IT failure. The silver bullet...
View ArticleIT does the moonwalk: our endless search for absolutes
Scene: I was CTO at a high-traffic social networking site, circa ten years ago. It was one of those times when our site got crushed by unexpected sudden volume, due to being mentioned in an article in...
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IT extremism strikes again: the odd resistance to bug tracking
In information technology and software development, how many of our wounds are self-inflicted? Here’s what I mean. What I’ve seen happen, recurringly, in IT over the years and decades: idealistic but...
View ArticleLazy thinking: IT shibboleths, sloganeering, and sacred cows
At one company I worked, the executive team had worked up a list of core corporate values. There were 11 of these values, and they were mentioned and pushed in every company meeting. In fact, “Goals...
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