BusinessCategory

As you may realise from this blog, I’m a Principal Consultant – and that means not only do I work with customers, I also need to lead other Consultants on their journey in consulting. I work with some exceptional and smart people, but the top 5 “rules” for consulting can… Continue Reading Top 5 rules for consulting

Corporate culture can be formalised, or it can be “this is the way things are done here” lore that defines how people act, react, make decisions, and deal with problems. The impact of corporate culture on a business can be significant to the way that corporate culture in IT projects… Continue Reading The importance of understanding corporate culture

Microsoft used to have a realy great approach to product naming – think of Windows, Outlook, Word, Exchange, etc. – but recently, their naming imagination has disappeared into a confusing mess of extended terminology, which to make things even harder, Microsoft have been changing frequently. Wouldn’t you like some of… Continue Reading Office 365 terminology clarified

I recommend that all businesses perform a paper exercise of running a BCP drill, as a way to tease out the conceptual and procedural issues related with planning for business continuity. It can be a desktop process of running through the BCP plan, and it helps to have a critical… Continue Reading The BCP Drill

The old Waterfall methods of project implementation are less able to cope with a dynamic and changing landscape. The approach to front-end a project with planning, scoping, preparation, and documentation are often at the expense of taking the lessons learnt about previous failures – from project postmortems. There is huge… Continue Reading Premortem for project delivery success

Are you retaining a backup for 10+ years? Can you still use the data? How useful are your backups? A necessary burden Backups are a necessary task for all businesses. A hundred years ago, if there was a fire at a business, then everything would be lost – a paper… Continue Reading How useful are your backups?

As Rear Admiral Grace Hopper said – “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission”, and this is true in many areas of change. When I am fighting against “this is the way we have always done it“, I find that the path to success is to… Continue Reading Ask for Confirmation, not Definition

The role of the IT department has changed, and modern IT functions need to re-invent themselves to maintain their relevance and role within the modern enterprise. The changing IT department is moving from the nerds in the basement to real business partners. The Changing Face of the the IT Department… Continue Reading The changing face of the IT department

Humans originally evolved to be dependent on fear. In modern life, the fears that we had evolved around are no longer relevant; we are not going to be hunted by large animals, we have conquered the dark, winter and times of hunger are distant memories. It may be true to… Continue Reading What was a fear, becomes a strength

The concept of “Design for Failure” is often used to describe the approach that assumes that there will be a hardware or system failure somewhere, sometime – and instead of architecting for hardware and server clustering and availability, to design applications so that recovery can be performed quickly. Where the… Continue Reading Design for Failure

I have learnt from my Cloud implementations that often customers hold expectations of Cloud that are not always completely effective. Based on my own experience from working with many customers, I have learnt that the following will need to be a focus; Cloud is potentially more secure than on-premises implementation. However, the… Continue Reading 6 Lessons from Cloud Implementations

You have probably heard the expression that entrepreneurs want to “fail fast” – and that you should do the same for your business… but what does it actually mean – and do your customers want you to “fail fast”? Why would you want to fail at all? It’s important to… Continue Reading Fail fast does not mean you want to fail

What is an ‘Older Worker’? According to a Chandler McLeod report: “Coming of Age – The impacts of an ageing workforce on Australian business”, “variations exist in the definition of an employee as ‘older’ or ‘mature aged’. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations classifies workers and job seekers… Continue Reading Aging workforce and obsolete computer systems

A term that you may have heard used a few times may not make complete sense, so; What is Shadow IT? The term Shadow IT or Stealth IT is used to represent the implementation or usage of IT services that have not been officially created or deployed by the IT… Continue Reading Shadow IT / Stealth IT

Many of us have to give directions; it might be in a project, when managing a team, instructions for someone to pick something up for you from a shop, defining a business strategy – but the way to give directions is important. What is wrong with the way people are… Continue Reading The best way to give directions – destination first

In a 2014 report, Gartner identifies the challenges of the IT organisation in view of the nature of the demands they need to satisfy: provide innovative solutions with agility; provide operational continuity as “business as usual”.  Gartner’s model establishes these as two different types of needs that require two separate… Continue Reading Bimodal IT – Gartner’s view on IT

If you are new to using the cloud, or are now deciding to move more workloads to the cloud – here are my top 10 tips for cloud adoption 1. Switch off dev/test when not using it Probably the biggest advice I can give is to understand the differences between… Continue Reading Top 10 tips for cloud adoption

Who defines how your business operations are performed? How does your business operate? Is it based on a definition of what is best for your business and customers, or is it because that is the process that came out of a shrink wrapped application? Shrink Wrapped Applications vs. Custom Build… Continue Reading Shrink wrapped applications

There are lots of reasons why projects fail, but specifically why IT projects fail – not technology, not budget. You may read in the press about massive IT projects spiraling out of control, costs are double or triple the budget, and technology is being blamed. However, the root cause of… Continue Reading IT projects fail for EVILL reasons

You have probably heard the analogy of trying to guide or coordinate people who have their own agenda or views – that it is like herding cats. It’s often a battle dealing with people who think that they already have the right answer (or those who stick to, and defend,… Continue Reading Herding cats? Use catfood