IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®)
ITIL is a set of best practices built around a process model-based view of controlling and managing IT operations. ITIL is considered one set of best practices in the more general field of ITSM. It is important to remember that ITIL is truly a library of books. The "architecture" of ITIL can be thought of as the structure imposed by the titles of the books that describe the best practices. Alternatively, the architecture can be thought of as the set of practices that make up the life cycle that ITIL describes.
Building Relationships, One Conversation at a Time: Virtual Relationships Require Real Conversations
Can you build a trusting relationship when you've never had an actual conversation? (And no, IM, email, text, Twitter and blog "conversations" don't count!) While it may be possible, it's pretty unlikely. Most business conversations tend to focus on tasks and priorities, whether to review the progress of a current project, delegate actions or make decisions. To build relationships, a certain kind of conversation needs to take place that goes beyond the usual checklist review or status report. While this type of conversation requires more effort, it's almost impossible to collaborate successfully without it. This article offers guidelines to create opportunities for conversations expressly designed to build relationships.
What's Your Core IT Competency? Really?
Most everyone outsources some part of their technology operation for all sorts of good-and occasionally bad-reasons. There's a reason why the IT services industry is clipping along at well over $1B per day in the United States alone. More and more companies have discovered the benefits of outsourcing relative to the recruitment and maintenance of large internal IT staffs. In the early years, we all thought outsourcing was about saving money, but then we discovered the truth: outsourcing it not only about saving money, but it's about rerouting money from non-core to core activities.
Project Critical Success Factors
Quite a few things can go wrong with software development. A wide variety of management considerations, such as project scope, scheduling, risk, tracking, estimation, etc., can "make or break" a project. We usually call these considerations critical success factors. This chapter examines project critical success factors. Topics highlighted include managing people, dealing with politics, and managing for disaster.
Leading vs. Managing Remote Teams: Making the Crucial Distinction
As more organizations work virtually, managers of traditional work teams are tapped to lead geographically dispersed teams. When thrust into this unfamiliar territory, many managers flounder, especially those who rely on command-and-control tactics to get work done across locations, functions, cultures and time zones. This article presents a summary of just some of those skills that are especially important for those who lead geographically dispersed teams.
The New Intelligence: The Birth of the Knowledge Management Industry
The introduction of computers led to an unmanageable proliferation of data, which stimulated the birth of knowledge management (KM). To understand KM and all of its components; i.e., business intelligence, content management, etc., it is necessary to first discuss the precursors to KM.
Successful Project Risk Management
Risk management is something you either do or you don’t. If you do do it, it’s worth doing it well. If you don’t do it, well you have already experienced what that does to your blood pressure. This article focuses on how you can get off to a great start in identifying risk and features Simon Robertson's top tip for calmer project management.
Cultivating Trust from Afar
Industry studies show that in the best of times high-trust teams are between 200 to 300% more productive than low-trust teams. In tough times, that delta is likely to be even greater. That's why organizations that operate virtual teams need leaders who know how to earn and cultivate trust among teams that feel increasing pressure to perform. This article offers some practical tips to remote team leaders who struggle to maintain trust in these troubled times.
Creating IT Road Maps to Manage Complex IT Scenarios
With the complexity of multi-vendor hardware and software solutions, accelerated business and organizational change, and the growing number of heterogeneous technology alternatives, most companies today are facing significant challenges planning and managing their IT and making informed investment decisions. Many companies currently build a model of the current and desired future state architecture, but fail in providing support to realize the myriad intermediate states that one must transition to from here to get to there. The lack of this ability is the reason IT never seems to converge. This article discusses the importance of IT roadmaps and describe how you can implement an IT roadmap to manage your complex IT scenarios.
Enterprise Architecture: Not Just another Management Fad
Despite awareness of the concept and its importance, there's no standard definition of enterprise architecture (EA) and considerable ambiguity in the use of the term. EA should be about creating and using a shared "language" of words, graphics, and other depictions to discuss and document every important aspect of the enterprise. Without such a communication capability, optimal alignment, agility, speed, and simplicity aren't possible, nor can we hope to realize the potentialities of strategic planning, performance measurement, or process reengineering, or ensure success with security, privacy, governance, project management, innovation, and managing transformation and change.
Understanding Lean Concepts
This excerpt discusses the key goals of a Lean system, the seven forms of waste and the three major tenets on which the development of a Lean system is based.
Mobile Enterprise Transition Goals
Mobile technologies contribute uniquely to the communications revolution by eliminating the need for physical land-based connectivity between people, processes, and entities. However, its success depends heavily on a meticulously planned and executed methodological framework. The Mobile Enterprise Transition (MET) framework provides detailed guidance based on the questions of "why, what, how, and who," thereby facilitating the strategic adoption of mobility by business. The MET framework focuses the goals of the organization on strategic and formal adoption of mobility and, at the same time, ameliorates the risks associated with the transition. This excerpt discusses the goals of Mobile Enterprise Transition and managing the expectations of the business.
How "24x7 Connectivity" Prevents Real Connections
Our obsession with being connected 24x7 has many costs as well. More and more people -- colleagues, family and friends -- abandon in-person interaction in favor of electronic communications. While it might be more efficient, expedient and less "messy" at times, we must question what this trend will mean to our inclination and ability to have the kind of conversations that foster deep connections. This article reflects on the unintended consequences of our growing reliance on electronic communications, and explores some of the conscious choices we need to make as a result.
The Top Trends Shaping Business Analytics
While the practice of collecting and extracting intelligence from business information is not new today's analytic requirements are evolving dramatically. Business managers need answers today or tomorrow, not next month or next year. They need to capture and make sense of massive volumes of data spanning both traditional sources, such as transactional systems, as well as an ever expanding array of data from online and mobile devices. And in an economy that's forcing everyone to do more with less, they need scalable, affordable and simple-to-use solutions. Here are the top trends shaping analytics in 2010 and beyond.
Five Ways to Increase Operational Efficiency with Alert Management
An alert management platform empowers companies to target actionable information from IT applications and systems automatically to the employee who can resolve the issue--escalating as necessary. Effective alert management provides the tools to access internal systems and address events from a mobile workbench as well as resolve issues from any web-enabled mobile device. Process acceleration and service improvements can help resolve incidents an average of 40 percent faster, saving up to millions of dollars annually. There are five ways that implementing alert management can immediately increase operational effectiveness across the enterprise--including process and efficiency improvements in incident, service, and change management--while significantly reducing costs.
Ten Steps to Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
One problem with the implementation of SOX is that it tends to set a standard for compliance that may be inadequate. Meeting SOX standards--i.e., passing 404--does not imply that a firm or an IT department has the processes in place required to manage its business. Nor does it mean that an optimal level of control exists anymore than having a pulse signifies good health. SOX compliance is the minimum standard, not an optimum standard. Regardless of your firm’s current maturity level, you will need to demonstrate SOX compliance efficiently and honestly. This article describes the typical steps required to pass section 404.
Stretching the IT Budget: Look Beyond the Obvious
IT departments willing to look beyond the surface and the obvious can often eliminate apparent tradeoffs without having to choose one side or the other. When faced with a situation that appears to force a tradeoff, try to examine the problem from a different angle. Taking this fresh-thinking perspective can stretch the IT budget to achieve goals that you might otherwise forgo in an environment of severe financial constraints.
The Keys to Intergenerational Harmony
Most of what's been written about multiple generations working side by side has come from those of us who are considerably older and more experienced than our Gen X and Gen Y counterparts. In this article, Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts and Nancy Settle-Murphy sought the perspectives of some of their Gen X and Gen Y colleagues. After all, for all of the wisdom we older generations think we have to offer, the Gen X and Y folks of the world have a lot to teach us, too.
