Business-IT Alignment As Simple Rules

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

Back in 2001, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt and Donald N. Sull published a Harvard Business Review paper called “Strategy as Simple Rules.“   This was a great paper that spoke to the need for a few straightforward, hard-and-fast rules that define direction without confining it.  It resonated strongly with my colleagues and I as the term “simple [...]

Filed under: Change Management, IT Management, IT Maturity, Key Frameworks, Useful Tools | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

How Does Your Company View IT?

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

I’m experimenting with WordPress’s (my blog platform) ever increasing range of bells and whistles – today trying a simple poll. Take a look.  Give us your answer – please don’t be shy!  All responses are anonymous, but please submit a comment if you have suggestions for other polls.  This could become an interesting regular feature!

Filed under: IT Maturity | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Increasing Business Value Through Demand Shaping

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

A key role for IT leaders, especially during recessionary times, is Demand Shaping.   A perennial reality in the business-IT world is that demand seems to exceed supply. Of Backlogs and Early Cloud Computing When I entered the field of IT back in the 1960′s, the term “backlog” was pervasive – that huge list of requests [...]

Filed under: Business-IT Governance, IT Maturity | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Do You REALLY Have Effective IT Processes?

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

From time to time, we conduct IT capability assessments for our clients.  These typically examine two different kinds of capabilities – those IT capabilities that are largely owned and executed by the IT organization, for example: Manage the IT Infrastructure Deliver Business Solutions Manage the IT Organization They also (and sometimes, of great significance) assess [...]

Filed under: General, IT Management, IT Maturity, Supply Maturity | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Why a Good Business Case or ROI Analysis Doesn’t Ensure Value Realization

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

I find that most companies I work with nowadays are pretty good at insisting that business requests for IT solutions are accompanied by a robust business case that surfaces all the costs (including total life cycle costs), expected return on investment (ROI), risks, mitigation strategies, and so on.  They have good business case templates, and [...]

Filed under: IT Management, IT Maturity, Key Frameworks, Portfolio Management | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Getting Control Over Business Demand – How to “Just Say No!”

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

Did you ever feel that some of the things you are asked to do by your business partners just don’t make sense?  That they won’t deliver value that truly justifies their cost?  I find this to be a common issue.  And it’s not just the questionable value associated with some of these requests. Low value [...]

Filed under: Business-IT Governance, Customer experience, IT Management, IT Maturity | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Thought for all the Frequent Flyers and the Folk Who Serve Them

Posted on January 17, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

I know that we’ve all been entranced by the wonderful news of the US Airways plane that “landed” in the Hudson River this week.  It was a remarkable and uplifting piece of good news at a time when we’re mostly inundated by bad or terrible news. As a very frequent flier, I was particularly moved [...]

Filed under: Customer experience | Leave a Comment »

Zen, Motorcycles, and the Art of Organizational Change Management

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

My post the other day on Chaos and Complexity led me into a client conversation about organizational change.  This in turn reminded me of an article I had published back in 1996 in Hewlett-Packard’s Perspectives magazine.  I’ve also said before that occasionally I will dig into one or more of my passions and hobby’s (music, [...]

Filed under: Change Management, social networking | 18 Comments »

Marketing Mix and the IT Organization – Part 2

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

Did you ever feel that IT organizations need to be better at marketing?  Here is the second part of my experimental 3-part video post on IT Marketing Mix and the IT organization.  For Part 1 go here.  Comments and suggestions, as ever, much appreciated.

Filed under: General, IT Management | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Chaos, Complexity and the Future of the IT Organization

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

Did you ever think about the relationship between the magnificent fractal patterns like that in the graphic to the right and IT organization design?  One of my early posts alluded to the climb from Level 1 to Level 2 Business-IT Maturity as “bringing order to the chaos” while the Level 2 to Level 3 journey [...]

Filed under: IT Maturity, Web 2.0, Next Generation Enterprise, Change Management, social networking, Next Generation IT, Useful Tools | Tagged: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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