The CIO’s missing priority
Directing decision-maker-awareness to the right targets is a key skill for CIO success. Investment risks that pit security vs. IT prove the point.
Directing decision-maker-awareness to the right targets is a key skill for CIO success. Investment risks that pit security vs. IT prove the point.
These graybeard IT tenets still reign -- when applied in their modernized guise
"If you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction," said famed World War II German resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We in IT boarded the wrong train a long time ago. It's the "standard model" of information technology organizations - the familiar litany that says CIOs should run IT as a business, meeting the requirements of its internal customers. This refrain has been endorsed by our holy trinity, too: analyst firms, most consultancies and ITIL.
Management Speak: I will accept no excuses! Translation: I don’t know the difference between an excuse and a real problem.
MANAGEMENTSPEAK: Application of this tool in our environment is critical to successfully meet our objectives. TRANSLATION: We have to find a place to use this, or I won't be able to justify spending the leftover funds I had to burn to secure our budget for next year.
Some words inspire terror. Their mere mention causes blood pressure to rise, mouths to dry, and skin to shed beads of cold sweat. Words such as vampire, final exam, orthodontist.
The president of a rather large technology company recently told employees he wants them to be fungible, or so a correspondent reports. This might actually mean something, although probably not. The term "fungible", meaning interchangeable, is generally restricted to non-sentient beings, _after all.
If you know the formula, picking technological winners and losers is easy. "But they are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso on computers. Among the many careers I want to try before I die - televangelist, rock star, college bar owner, psychic - is founding an organisation to help a neglected group of which I'm part - Sarcastics Anonymous.
MANAGEMENT SPEAK: We are not interested in helping the users here. We are only interested in clearing the help desk queue. No translation will do justice to this sentiment.
Does Microsoft have a monopoly?
Training with difference
Reorganising is a common solution to problems, but often causes trouble
Employee involvement losing favour
The seven deadly sins of IS
Visible results of spending money or energy
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