How much “innovation” is just keeping up appearances?

Focus on business challenges, not technology innovations The IT industry really does bring out the best and worst traits of human nature. Were we always quite so excitable about the latest big thing? It is difficult to tell, as historical records don’t tend to preserve the glee reserved for all things new and improved, whether [...]

What personality is your IT department?

Over the years I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about the idea of IT maturity models – which are great in principle, but, to be frank, a bit of a blunt instrument when it comes to gauging reality. Many IT organisations are quite comfortable where they are in terms of maturity for example [...]

Towards dynamic systems management methodologies

I do take my hat off to the people who first put together the IT Infrastructure Library, which (like the end of the cold war) celebrates its twenty-year anniversary this year. It’s one thing to learn, both on the job and with little support, the ‘golden rules’ and best practice principles of any discipline. It’s [...]

The Bathtub Curve and other over-simplistic ideas

Every now and then, a certain model or other seems to have direct relevance to a whole series of challenges. It’s funny how it happens – at one stage (for me anyway) it was Eli Goldratt‘s Critical Chain theories for project management (and the whole world started to look like projects), at another it was [...]

Presentations and events update

I was recently asked for some examples of events I have spoken at, so for the record this is what I’ve participated in so for this year: Taking back control of IT, Webinar, 28 February 2008 (video stream – registration required) Improving business productivity through effective content management, Webinar, 4 March 2008 (video stream – [...]

"That’s not a product, that’s a business strategy"

I can’t remember who said that to me a couple of weeks ago, but its one of my favourite phrases at the moment – it applies so well to so many things we’re dealing with right now: SOA, Identity Management, Information Management, BPM. Give it a go, and se where it sticks.

Presenting on Governance in Virtual Worlds

For anyone who’s interested in either topic, I’m going to be presenting on the role and impact of business governance in relation to virtual worlds, in a few weeks at the ISGIG conference in Pisa. What an irresistible topic – here’s my outline so far: There is (currently anecdotal) evidence that immersive environments such as [...]