“We’ve invested heavily in defining and implementing good processes, practices and methods, the problem is we can’t get the people to consistently follow the process. Why is this?” I hear this lament from Service Desk Managers and ITIL SMEs about the service desk and support staff, I hear it from PMOs about Sponsors, Business Owners and Project Managers and I […]
For those who know my Warehouse (TWL) IT story you’ll know that things were a bit bleak in the early days. I had joined TWL from Deloitte with the expectation that as a CIO my role would be to lead a team that would use IT to provide competitive advantage and create value. However, what I found when I arrived […]
I recently wrote a blog where I outlined an epiphany I had around the need for an IT team to be operationally excellent (the original blog can be found here). In essence the insight was that high performing organisations have high performing IT teams and that a key characteristic of being a high performing IT team is operational excellence. That […]
Innovation is a hot topic around the globe at the moment and given the tight connection between technology and innovation today it is something I am intensely interested in. So it was with great interest that I read the following article and the full report from a few weeks back. First things first, congratulations to Chris Paykel and James Hurman […]
A few years ago I was contacted by a local doctoral student. They were looking into success rates and best practices for ERP implementations. What he as looking for was local case study input into his thesis. Whenever I get these requests I try and help as much as I can, It’s a good thing to do in terms of […]
Many IT organisations are strong on wanting a mandate. This is what IT does and this is what users can and cannot do. The expectation is that if we can simply clarify and enforce the rules then shadow IT will go away and we will solve all, or at least a few, of the world’s problems. The problem is mandates […]
I was meeting with a client a few months back. This particular client was having some ongoing issues with the performance of their help desk. Specifically, tickets were not getting closed in a timely fashion and as a result IT’s customer (i.e. users of IT services) were getting some what exasperated (to be polite). The question on the table was […]
I don’t know about you, but I have a series of moments which are burnt on my mind and I can recall them easily and always will. Whether it is the birth of my children, the 1995 World Cup, which I watched with friends in Ngaio, or the turn of the millennium with family at Waikoikoi. Another of these times […]
Speed is one of the imperatives of our time. Every organisation I work with wants to be able to do things faster whether it’s speed to gain an advantage or the not so positive, but equally important, speed to close down a competitor’s advantage. Everyone wants to go faster. The need for speed is not a new phenomenon. For as […]