Who is Your Customer?

Who is Your Customer?  This may be easy for many businesses especially if they are selling consumer goods.  If you ask any service organization at a University, the standard response is “Students are our main customers”.  The rationale here is that without our students, we wouldn’t have a university.  At a very high level this […]

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Implementing Organizational Structure and Focus

When I joined the IT Department at the American University of Sharjah as the Director, I was presented with an organizational structure challenge.  I found out that I had 21 direct reports and that my department did not have a concept of operational management!  I had just come from being the Manager, Business Application Services […]

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My First 180 Days as a CIO

Hard to believe that time has gone so quickly in my CIO role.  On March 17, 2013 I have been the Director of Information Technology at the American University of Sharjah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates for 180 days. It has been a huge change for me especially after spending 20 years at the British Columbia […]

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Leveraging Roadmaps to Link Business and Technology

Enterprise Architects have used roadmaps as a standard model to describe the transition from the current state architecture to the future state architecture.   Many of my fellow enterprise architects have described the many different ways to create a roadmap and to show how they link to an organization’s strategic goals.  Nick Malik (@nickmalik) wrote […]

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An Approach To Project Assessments

Every IT leader at one point or another will be asked to conduct project assessments.  Sometimes it is a project that was initiated by your department and others it is a project that was started in a different part of your organization.  Rarely are successful projects reviewed (even though we should, as we are missing […]

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5 Steps to Brighten Shadow IT

With the popularity of public cloud offerings, BYOD and personal productivity apps, rogue technology acquisitions (at least from IT’s perspective) are more pervasive than ever, creating a new focus on “Shadow IT.” Our 2012 Digital IQ study of 489 executives found that 30% of technology procurement is outside the CIO’s budget. A wise proverb says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” What if you need […]

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Management Information for Managing Innovation

Management information is not particular difficult to produce, it is difficult to make use of. Management information can be produced in quite a few ways and supported by quite a few methods, but too much management information will eventually clutter the line of sight of the decision makers and as such work against holistic management. […]

BYOD and Your CEO

What’s small, shiny and keeps CIOs up at night? The CEO’s personal devices. CEOs are like every other employee. They love tablets, smart phones and apps. The glaring difference is that the CEO’s personal devices put the company at much greater risk than the gadgets of virtually all other employees combined. CIOs must  include chief executives in conversations as they grapple with putting BYOD security policies and procedures in place. Many CEOs criss-cross the globe […]

If you liked this, you might also like:

  1. How the CIO Can Establish a BYOD Usage Policy
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  3. What’s the CIOs Role in Compliance?