CIOs Believe that BPM is a Key Priority in Many Firms

This post on CIO.com discusses that even despite the economic situation, investing in BPM tools is still a main priority and focus for many firms. A report called "Driving Value with Process Improvement" written by Forrester Research indicates that CIOs must embrace BPM technology early in the life-cycle. Are you seeing the same trend across your firms? Is IT really investing more in BPM technology?

CIOs should go primitive in communication

This recent post on CIO.com highlights that even though social media tools like Facebook, YouTube, twitter, email, technorati, and various other collaborative technology is popular now, it might not be the best choice for communication and messaging. Loraine Antrim mentioned that going "primitive" like a simple phone call or in-person meetings can give CIOs a strategic advantage for many critical situations.

Going "primitive" allows the CIO to engage in a more personal level. Here are some examples as detailed by the post when CIOs should go "primitive".

1. When body language can make a world of difference in your communication. At times a simple gesture or a shrug of your shoulder can really aid in communicating your point. Also, when the tone of voice is important CIOs might want to make a live phone call instead of tweeting or emailing.

2. When attempting to persuade or influence. Any type of persuasion is best done in person and in live delivery. Social media communication is best for expanding on data points.

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Jerry Luftman, Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology

Jerry Luftman
Professor
Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Management

Dr. Luftman is a Distinguished Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Management and the Associate Dean of Stevens’ Information Systems programs. In this capacity, Luftman manages and conducts projects, research, and executive programs about business-IT alignment. Among his many clients are IBM, U.S. government federal agencies, CitiGroup, Merck, AT&T, Lucent, and Prudential. He is the founder of Stevens graduate IS programs, which is recognized as one of the largest in the world. Prior to his work at Stevens, Dr. Luftman worked at IBM as a program manager at the Advanced Business Institute, where he played a significant role in defining and introducing IBM’s Management Consulting Group. He has had success as a CIO, Management Consultant, and academic.

His framework for assessing strategic alignment maturity is fundamental in helping clients achieve the management, technology and business process changes required to achieve improved IT-business integration. He has served on the SIM Executive Board for over ten years and was the NJ Chapter President. Dr. Luftman has authored or co-authored over a dozen books.

Don't miss Jerry's opening session Leadership Through IT at the IT Leadership Forum this November 2-4 in Phoenix, AZ!

Free Web Seminar - Navigation Tips for Exploring the IIBA BABOK 2.0

Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

Have you ever gotten lost when traversing through the IIBA® BABOK® 2.0? How quickly can you find pathways through the Guide? How easily can you trace your way from one key element to another? Whether you are new to the discipline of business analysis, someone studying for the CBAP® or even a seasoned business analysis professional, navigating through the BABOK® can be a daunting task.

In this webinar we’ll explore a variety of pathways through the BABOK. Your navigator for the session is requirements guru Mary Gorman, a four year veteran of the IIBA Body of Knowledge Committee.

IIBA® International Institute of Business Analysis®
BABOK® Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®

What you will learn:

• Visualize the underlying foundation of the BABOK® (knowledge areas, tasks, techniques and requirements models)
• Trace foundation elements throughout the BABOK®
• Apply analysis modeling techniques to navigate the BABOK®

Speaker:
Mary Gorman, CBAP™, Senior Associate at EBG Consulting, assists teams to build the right product through exploring, analyzing and confirming their requirements. Mary has over 25 years experience as a consultant, mentor, trainer, facilitator, process engineer, developer, and analyst. In addition to serving on the IIBA Body of Knowledge Committee, Mary also helped create the certification exam for the Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP™).

Register below, mention priority code M2120W3BLOG
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/974065696

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Dr. Michael Valivullah, CIO, PMP, United States Capitol Police

Dr. Michael Valivullah
PMP, CIO, Associate Director, Office of Information Systems
United States Capitol Police

Dr. Valivullah is a Planning Specialist, Office of Information Systems, at the United States Capitol Police, United States Senate. Dr. Valivullah is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)and GSA and Federal CIO Council certified Chief Information Officer (CIO). He worked as a Program Control Manager for EDS, an Information Systems Integrator and Project Manager for Lockheed Martin and a Consultant for Sabre Systems, US Airways, MCI, etc. He has extensive knowledge in Software, Database and Systems Development, Requirements Management, Enterprise Architecture, Migrations, Configuraion Management, Quality Assurance, Operations and Testing.

Don’t miss Dr. Michael Valivullah's session "How Can I Become A Successful IT Manager and Leader?" at the IT Leadership Forum this November held in Phoenix, AZ.

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Ed Trainor, CIO, Amtrak

Ed Trainor
CIO
Amtrak

Ed Trainor is Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, IS for Amtrak. Prior to his return to Amtrak, he held the position of CIO for Paramount Pictures. Trainor has held similar positions with the Southern California Gas Co., and Flying Tigers. He is a new member of the Capital Area SIM chapter but has previously served in several positions on the Executive Committee of the Southern California SIM chapter. After terms as VP, Partner and Service Provider Programs, and VP, Issues Advocacy Trainor served as SIM International’s President in 2003. Trainor has been a participant SIM Advanced Practices Council® and a sponsor of several participants in the Regional Leadership Forum.

Information Week also recently profiled Ed Trainor in which he mentioned that he foresees high-speed rail passenger corridors as a key component of a national transportation policy. You can view the article here.

Don’t miss Ed Trainor's session The Road to CIO & The Future Role of the CIO at the IT Leadership Forum this November held in Phoenix, AZ.

Are CIOs Turning to MSPs for Competitive Advantage?

This latest post on CIO discusses how IBM's Daniel Rabbitt believes that "with the right provider, a medium-sized business can enjoy the same service levels as a Fortune 500 company, without the costs of building and maintaining an in-house solution."

According to research from Nemertes Research's 2009 Spring Benchmark 60 percent of participants are planning on increasing their managed services in 2009 and beyond. Some of the reasoning behind this is falling budgets, lack of specialized expertise, shrinking staff, and a bigger demand to support more complex applications.

Should IT Directors View Enterprise 2.0 as a Process or Solution?

Oscar Berg recently posted on the content economy how he views enterprise 2.0 should be viewed as a process and not a solution. Oscar gives an example of how web 2.0 and social media are built on a core of values including honesty, participation, trust, and openness. But, if we were to just dump the solutions and applications from social media into a corporate setting people would not just start sharing and collaborating. The main reasoning behind this is because the same values that we find outside of work are not found in the corporate environment. Oscar includes a great quote from Gil Yehuda's enterprise 2.0 blog:

I don’t believe “Enterprise 2.0″ is a solution, I believe it is a description. I agree with the bold statement in Sameer Patel’s post: Enterprise 2.0 is a state that Enterprises achieve by employing an appropriate set of social computing concepts. I word it my way: “Enterprise 2.0 describes a transformed organization.”

Do you agree with Oscar that enterprise 2.0 has to been seen as a process instead of a tool?

5 Basic Reaons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail

Michael Krigsman recently posted on ZDNet that organizations can follow a simple guideline in order to avoid enterprise 2.0 failure. Here's a quick recap of his 5 points.

1.What’s in it for me’. Not just ‘What’s in it for us’ - Most failures occur at the initial planning phase where the typical business focus is on organization benefits and personal incentives. An example of this is how a sales rep would act in an online community as opposed to an engineer who would want to collaborate, learn, and share information.

2.Social software plays an important but limited role towards Enterprise 2.0 design - Another big stepping stone is premature technology selection. It's best to think of the performance objectives you're trying to affect and then deciding whether a best of breed solution is best of if you can stick with a general purpose platform.

3.Fix the True Break points in Your Organization - You must carefully think through inputs and outputs of enterprise 2.0 design before deploying anything.

4.Figure out the Optimal Ownership Structure - It can be quite confusing to figure out for this broad functional set in the enterprise. Do this instead, identify which benefits most closely support your performance objectives. This should help you figure out the right home for it in the enterprise.

5.There’s Metrics and then there’s Performance Goals - Explain to superiors that metrics for new media is different. You should measure your business based on conversations, engagement, affinity, frequency of sharing, and other such points.

Do you have any more reasons to add to this list?

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Daniel W. Rasmus, Director of Business Insights, Microsoft

Daniel W. Rasmus
Director of Business Insights
Microsoft

Daniel Rasmus is the Director of Business Insights at Microsoft Corporation.

Dan has 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dan was the Vice President of Knowledge Management and Collaboration research at the Giga Information Group, a subsidiary of Forrester Research. Prior to Giga, Dan was manager of workgroup computing at Hughes Space and Communications, where he managed their knowledge manage programs among other roles.

Dan has held technical and management positions at Dataproducts, ITT Cannon, Cipher Dataproducts, Western Digital and Hughes Aircraft. He has managed large projects, including engineering collaboration systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations and the development of expert systems for manufacturing applications.

Dan is the author of nearly 200 trade journal articles and three books. His most recent book, Listening to the Future, was published by Wiley in 2008.

Dan attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received a certificate in intelligent systems engineering from the University of California, Irvine.

Don’t miss Daniel's session Preparing for the Business Environment of the Future at the IT Leadership Forum this November held in Phoenix, AZ.

A Snapshot of IT Budgets in 2009

This article in CIO discusses how recent research taken by Forrester shows us that companies are reducing their IT budgets by not only laying off staff, but by also cutting back on benefits and employee salaries. The research firm took their information from more than 1,250 SMB IT decision-makers between the months of February to May 2009.

According to the report "IT staff salaries and benefits continue to be the largest part of the IT operating budget. Hiring freezes and layoffs top the list of actions that firms expect to take this year as a result of current economic conditions."

How are IT departments expected to innovate when there are so many cutbacks on resources?

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Warren Fristensky, CIO, John Wiley & Sons

Warren Fristensky
CIO
John Wiley & Sons

Warren Fristensky is the SVP/CIO for John Wiley & Sons, responsible for all computer and communications services for the company worldwide. Coming to Wiley from the financial industry in 1992, Warren successfully reengineered the technology function and infrastructure to a common global platform architecture. Recent activities have been focused on integrating major acquisitions, evolving global hosting and development capabilities including outsourcing and offshoring, and helping the company transform to electronic publishing via the Internet. These activities have been recognized as innovative and leading edge by several industry publications and academic research studies. Prior to his position at Wiley, Warren was V.P. of advanced technology at Banker's Trust, and V.P. of Systems and Network Development for Bank of New York where he utilized early Internet technologies for the Bank's commercial and retail networks. Warren received his MBA degree from Pace University where he won top honors in Information Science, and holds a B.S. degree in Business Management and Data Processing from St. Peter's College in Jersey City, where he later served as an adjunct instructor in Data Processing. Warren serves on the MSIS Executive Board at Stevens Institute of Technology, and is a member of the Board of Regents at Saint Peter's College. Warren is an active member of the Society for Information Management.

Don’t miss Warren's session Managing in A Global Environment at the IT Leadership Forum this November held in Phoenix, AZ.

Archive Web Seminar from founder of CMS Watch: Enterprise Social Software: Ready for Prime Time?

For those of you who missed Tony Byrne's informative web seminar yesterday
Enterprise Social Software: Ready for Prime Time? here's your chance to view at your own leisure! Make sure to check back on the blog often more upcoming web seminars brought to you by the IT Leadership Forum. Don't forget if you're planning to attend the event make sure to mention ITWEB for 20% off the standard registration.

View the web seminar archive.

IT Leadership Forum Speaker Profile: Kathleen Barret President and CEO, IIBA

Kathleen Barret
President and CEO, IIBA

Kathleen Barret is the Program Manager for the Global Resourcing Centre of Competency within BMO Financial Group. With her team of GR consultants, Kathleen oversees BMO’s relationships with its multiple suppliers of India-based development resources for its information technology organization.

Kathleen started with BMO Financial Group in 2000 as a Business Analyst within the Call Centre business area. In January 2003, she moved to the BMO IT Best Practices group to lead the organizational charge to standardize and ISO certify its requirements management process. From 2004 to 2006, Kathleen further refined and integrated the requirements management process as BMO adopted the CMMI software development framework. In late 2006, she accepted the role of Program Manager for GR, leveraging her experience and knowledge of business analysis to ensure effective off-shoring of development work.

In March of 2004, Kathleen became the first and current President of the International Institute of Business Analysis, a professional association focused on defining the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge^® (BABOK^®) and implementing a certification program for qualified practitioners.

Kathleen has over 20 years experience in the Information Technology field. Particular fields of expertise include networking, research, benchmarking, retail and e-business in large and small enterprises. In addition to BMO Financial Group, Kathleen has worked for major corporations such as Manulife Financial, Bell Canada, KPMG and IDC, and spent 10 years with a benchmarking consulting company, Real Decisions, that was later acquired by Gartner Group.

Kathleen received her degree in International Economics from Georgetown University.

Don’t miss her session Back to Basics - Coming out ahead after the recession is over at the IT Leadership Forum this November held in Phoenix, AZ.

http://iirusa.com/itleadership

Kathleen's biography courtesy of theIIBA.org

Obama Administration Pushes Open IT Innovation

According to this recent post on the CIO blog Barack Obama and his administration is pushing for agencies to pursue an open innovation approach to government. One of the departments heavily favored to adopt this practice quickly is John Holdren, who heads up science and technology. George Bush's administration was highly criticized for the lack of involvement and idea exchange in their technology agencies, will this finally change/

Sharepoint is shining in the recession

The Bits Blog at the New York Times recently took a look at how Sharepoint is shining in the current economic downturn. It's a software, much like Microsoft Office, that has taken many different applications and combined them for use in one program. It's used to both create and manage content for their websites. Read the full article here.

How to Strengthen the Office of the CIO

In his two part series on GovTech.com, Andy Blumenthal discusses ways that the office of the CIO can be changed to better serve the us population and the government body. Blumenthal's discussion focuses around to identifying, describing and linking the core elements that make up and support an Office of the CIO for the purpose of demonstrating how that will lead to improved IT operations. When the CIO is properly supported, program and project management can be executed with strategic intent and alignment.

We encourage you to check out both articles in Blumenthal's series and share your thoughts with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

How to Strengthen the Office of the CIO: Part 1
To Strengthen The Office of the CIO: Part 2

Reminder: Free Webinar Next Week by Tony Byrne of CMS Watch: Enterprise Social Software: Ready for Prime Time?

Next Thursday, the IT Leadership Forum in association with Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch, will present a one-hour long web seminar on Thursday, August 13th from 2:00 - 3:00 PM EDT. Here's a brief description of that web seminar.

You can now find numerous case studies of successful departmental implementations of various social software technologies, such as wikis, blogs, forums, tags, micro-blogs, and so forth. However, extending those projects to enterprise-wide initiatives gets trickier.

Noted independent analyst and evaluation firm CMS Watch will explain how the challenge in enterprise deployments stems partly from immature technology. Many social computing tools – even from large, established vendors – lack key functionality. But the rest of the challenge lies in organizational factors, including common barriers to adoption.

This seminar will assess today’s social software and collaboration marketplace and offer concrete advice about how to select the right tool for your circumstances. It will also share best practices in enterprise deployment and adoption of social technology.

What you will learn by attending:
- Key success factors for enterprise-wide social software roll-outs
- How the enterprise social software marketplace breaks down into six categories
- Strengths and weaknesses of some of the major vendors
- How to pick the right tools for your enterprise
- What the future holds for 2010

Featured Speaker
Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/345059881
Mention Priority code G1M2114W1BLOG

Intel Taps Facebook Multitudes for Massive Research Efforts in Volunteer Computing

According to TechNewsWorld.com, Intel has built an application that will connect Facebook's More about Facebook masses to a volunteer computing application designed to boost the research efforts of three nonprofit organizations.

Progress Thru Processors is launching as a public beta and is available to all Facebook users. It runs as a background process on the computer, automatically directing idle processing power to the researchers' computational efforts. When the user's computer needs the processor performance, the application shifts into idle mode.

Progress Thru Processors' desktop client and application are based on software developed by the National Science Foundation-funded BOINC project at the University of California, Berkeley.

The process utilizes volunteer computing, which according to the report, has been around for a long time.

Progress Thru Processors is starting out with only three research endeavors:

* Rosetta@home, which uses computing power to help find cures for cancer and other diseases such as AIDS and Alzheimer's;
* Climateprediction.net, dedicated to understanding global climate change by predicting the Earth's climate and testing the accuracy of climate models; and
* Africa@home, which is currently focused on identifying strategies to combat malaria by studying simulation models of disease transmission and the potential impact of new antimalarial drugs and vaccines.

What do you think about utilizing volunteer computing for the greater good? Would you like to implement or join this effort with your business? We'd like to hear your thoughts.

Follow IT Leadership on Twitter!

The IT Leadership Forum now has a Twitter!

Follow us at:
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What are some of the IT Twitters that you recommend following?