IT Governance

A Project Portfolio Management Approach

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I introduced an approach to project portfolio managment (PPM) to my IT team at the American University of Sharjah.  After 9 months here, I have a real sense that we were doing too many projects for the resources that we had available.   The result of trying to do too much was that our planning […]

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Who is Your Customer?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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  2. 4 Steps to Manage Your Technology Portfolio
  3. Why the CIO Should Heed Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits

Management Information for Managing Innovation

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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. […]