From Business-IT Alignment to Business-IT Convergence

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Vaughan Merlyn

I’ve posted before on the emergent confluence between business and IT.  I’ve also discussed the shift from Business-IT Alignment to Business-IT Convergence as an aspect of increasing business and IT maturity.  I’ve noted (Goodbye, Shadow IT – Hello, Shadow IT) that ‘Shadow IT’, often viewed as a problem to be solved might be more appropriately [...]

Filed under: Business-IT Governance, Demand Maturity, IT Management, Next Generation Enterprise, Next Generation IT, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

IT Organizational Implications of Cloud Computing

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Vaughan Merlyn

First off, let me make myself clear.  I firmly believe that Cloud Computing, in its various forms, is real, absolutely inevitable and will completely revolutionize the form and role of the IT Organization.  Some readers will look at that sentence and laugh – it’s like saying “day will pass into night.”  Obvious, beyond dispute, devoid [...]

Filed under: IT Maturity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Collaboration – Finding a New IT Order in the Chaos!

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

IT organizations are complex beasts – both in terms of the number of moving parts with their many subtle relationships and in the more scientific use of the term – as in complex systems theory. Mastering 3 Fundamentally Different Value Propositions IT Organizations have to deliver day-in, day-out on three very different value propositions: Operational [...]

Filed under: IT Infrastructure, IT Management, IT Maturity, Next Generation Enterprise, Next Generation IT, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Why IT Professionals Will Need to be Enterprise Architects

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

I actually credit the topic of this post to a quote by a client last week.  We were working with him on the PMO he was setting up, when he made the point in the headline.  I thought it was provocative, and made an important point, so I want to explore it. What Is Meant [...]

Filed under: IT Infrastructure, IT Management, Next Generation IT, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Why the Notion of the IT Organization is Deeply Flawed!

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

It’s time to fully acknowledge what I first recognized back in 1980 when I read Alvin Toffler’s remarkable book, The Third Wave.  In that book, Toffler pointed out that the differentiation of production and consumption is not the natural order of things.  Separation of production from consumption was necessary to fuel the industrial age (which [...]

Filed under: IT Management, Next Generation Enterprise, Next Generation IT, social networking, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments »

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 »

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 »

You’ve Got Information Technology Questions? We Have Answers…

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

As an IT professional or IT leader, do you find yourself with questions or issues you’d like to get opinions about?  Of course you do.  As a consultant, researcher, educator and author, I get questions all the time.  For me they are my oxygen.  If the questions ever stopped, well, I frankly don’t know what [...]

Filed under: General, IT Management, IT Maturity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Business-IT Maturity and Smaller Businesses

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Vaughan Merlyn

  Someone sent me an email about my blog and the small business in which she works.  She wrote, “Level 2 sounds like my workplace.  It drives me insane that we have no in-house IT person. I feel that any business over a certain size should have at the very least a part-time in house [...]

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Confluence and the Salmon Fisherman’s Secret

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Vaughan Merlyn

 My colleague Roy Youngman just pointed out to me what salmon fishermen already know – the best place to catch King Salmon (and other varieties) is at the confluence of rivers.  Turns out, where rivers come together, the conditions are ideal for salmon fishing. I love the analogy – where the rivers of business and [...]

Filed under: IT Maturity | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

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