Is IT Collaboration an Unnatural Act: Part 4

In the last post and post before that, I examined a real life case study of a team collaborating using Web 2.0 tools.  Now I want to review the lessons learned from that experiment.

Many (most?) busy people working on a team with deadlines for deliverables will wait until the deadline is really close, and then [...]

Is IT Collaboration an Unnatural Act: Part 2

 
I posted recently on collaboration perhaps being an unnatural act for some activities in some types of organization.  I want to come back to this topic and look at it through the lens of one team’s experiment with a new IT-enabled (Web 2.0) approach to collaboration.  We will discuss the results and potential implications of this experiment.  [...]

The “Secrets” of Consulting? No, but some nuggets of wisdom!

 
Over the years, among all the other stuff that piles up in our heads, a handful or two of “nuggets of wisdom” that are easily applied to real life, and, by and large, help solve problems.   One of the more influential books in my early to mid-career was Gerry Weinberg’s “Secrets of Consulting” - a [...]

The “Unwritten Rules” of Project, Program and Portfolio Management - Part 2

 
I’m going to continue on this theme of “Unwritten Rules” as a powerful way to understand what drives behavior, and with that understanding, be able to change the rules, and thereby change behavior.
Yesterday, I posted on the Unwritten Rules that are common to organizations where Program Management is practiced versus those where Project Management is [...]

The “Unwritten Rules” of Project, Program and Portfolio Management

Among the most popular posts on this blog is that of October 15 on Project vs. Program vs. Portfolio Management.   Less popular (but give it time… have been my posts of the last couple of days on Unwritten Rules of Business-IT Maturity.  I want to use the latter to illustrate the former, and some of [...]

The “Unwritten Rules” of Business-IT Maturity - Part 2

Today I will expand upon the introduction in my last post to the topic of ‘unwritten rules’ as they pertain to Business-IT Maturity. 

First a reminder - the Business-IT Maturity model I’ve discussed from various angles since starting this blog last October addresses ‘two sides of the coin’, those being Business Demand maturity(the business appetite for IT [...]

The “Unwritten Rules” of Business-IT Maturity

Following several consecutive posts on ‘improvement versus innovation,’ I want to take a shift of focus, and start talking about the tricky topic of ‘organizational culture’ as it relates to Business-IT Maturity.

Back in 1994, my colleague Peter Scott-Morgan wrote a remarkable book, “The Unwritten Rules of the Game.”  Having been both a student of, and consultant [...]

Elevating Business Demand Maturity - Victim or Leader?

 
I’ve touched on this theme in several posts, but I feel it’s time to call it out: don’t be a victim - be a leader!  I’m moved to get back into this because I continue to hear IT professionals bemoan the fact that “Our business partners just don’t want to use IT to innovate - [...]

Business-IT Maturity and the Trap of “Walled-off Resources”

I was consulting for a client recently, and they used the term “walled-off” resources to describe IT professionals who were dedicated to specific business units.  (As an aside, when I first heard them using this term, I thought they were saying “Waldorf resources” and could not imagine what this meant!)  Anyway, I think the principle [...]

Six Sigma and Process Innovation

 
The Enterprise Leadership site posted a nice piece on ITIL and Six Sigma back in December, and more recently on Getting Six Sigma Right.  I want to reflect on this, and expand on my own post a while back which discussed IT Improvement versus Breakthrough.
Quality guru W. Edwards Deming said you can focus on product [...]