IT’s Top 10 Interests – Why the Perennial Oldies?

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

I was perusing the September 15 issue of CIO Magazine (ok, I’d been on vacation for nearly 4 weeks, and was catching up on my massive reading pile!) when I noticed the chart recreated to the left.  (Note:  I could not find the chart in the electronic edition – only the paper magazine.  Also note, [...]

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How “IT-Savvy” Is Your Company? Why Does That Matter?

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

Regular readers will know that from time to time I refer to research by Peter Weill, Chairman & Senior Research Scientist, Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  I’ve had the privilege of knowing Dr. Weill for many years, and having collaborated with him on several multi-company research initiatives. [...]

Filed under: Business-IT Governance, Demand Maturity, IT Infrastructure, IT Management, IT Maturity, Key Frameworks, Portfolio Management | Tagged: , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

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 [...]

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The IT Infrastructure Investment Deficit Disorder

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

How should you treat IT infrastructure investments in a recession?  I was listening to an interesting piece that got me thinking about this question on NPR this morning titled “Obama’s ‘Big Fix,’ And Investment Deficit Disorder.” Renee Montagne interviewed New York Times columnist David Leonhardt about his January 27 article, “The Big Fix.“ Determining IT Infrastructure [...]

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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 »

To Centralize or Decentralize IT – That Was The Question…

Posted on January 3, 2009 by Vaughan Merlyn

What are the key issues in thinking through the perennial ‘centralize vs. decentralize IT’ question? This post was triggered by a question I received from a CIO over the holidays (yes, CIOs and management consultants don’t take holidays!)  He was trying to deal with a number of departments which insisted on having their own IT [...]

Filed under: Business-IT Governance, Demand Maturity, IS Management, IT Infrastructure, IT Management, IT Maturity, Key Frameworks | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Web-Oriented Architecture: From Push to Pull – So Very 2.0!

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Vaughan Merlyn

Dion Hinchcliffe’s excellent recent post on Web-Oriented Architecture (actually, this is his latest in a series of posts on this topic) reflects an important shift in thinking around technology architecture and componentization.  This is the shift from push to pull approaches to change – a shift I’ve covered from from time to time in this [...]

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Business Implications of SOA: Part 3

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Vaughan Merlyn

The previous post and the post before that addressed the first 3 business implications of SOA.  Let’s discuss the other two major business implications of SOA.  First, with SOA it becomes important to understand the distinction between “enabling” and “actualizing” a business process.  Actualizing a business process embeds IT automation elements such as workflow into the [...]

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You Know You’ve Reached Level 3 When…

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Vaughan Merlyn

  Back in mid-December, I posted “You Know You’ve Reached Level 3 When…“   As the BSG Alliance multi-company research project that has been examining Reaching Level 3 Business-IT Maturity shifts gears from its research to its reporting phase, I want to revisit that headline.  Here are some ‘one-liners’ that are being discussed in today’s WebEx [...]

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

Did You Accidently Outsource Your Enterprise Architecture?

Posted on December 21, 2007 by Vaughan Merlyn

I’ve referenced Enterprise Architecture several times in this blog, and see it (or lack thereof!) as a common “sticking point” (see, for Example, Enterprise Architecture and Level 2 Sticking Point) as it’s one of those things that does not naturally “grow” out of less mature practices (IT Architecture, for example) but takes a different twist [...]

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