Researchers at the University of Tennessee have studied a variety of outsourcing deals-from IT and back-office work to manufacturing and logistics-and identified the most common mistakes organizations make when partnering with an external provider.
"If you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction," said famed World War II German resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We in IT boarded the wrong train a long time ago. It's the "standard model" of information technology organizations - the familiar litany that says CIOs should run IT as a business, meeting the requirements of its internal customers. This refrain has been endorsed by our holy trinity, too: analyst firms, most consultancies and ITIL.
After four days of potholing, moving barrels across imaginary ravines and trying to map-read their way around the countryside, the pressure on the group of trainees was beginning to tell.
As an IT professional, you don't often have the luxury of going with the flow. With businesses everywhere seeking both efficiencies and revenue growth, IT's mission is increasingly geared toward implementing and even spearheading many types of change.
I always thought that I was lucky to be born in Brazil, but the real value of my ancestry became apparent to me only after I became CIO of General Motors Europe. As you can imagine, a lot of my energy was consumed by the process of managing a large, decentralized team that was both multinational and multicultural.
Do video games stimulate the intellect? Are gamers more social and better equipped to make decisions than nongamers?
Now more than ever, experience outside IT counts.
Let the IT manager who is without sin cast the first stone.
Remember the late '90s, when tech managers left corporate IT in droves join Internet start-ups? Some people got rich, and others got burned, but everyone agreed -- working for a start-up is a unique experience.
When you're one of just two technology managers tasked with supporting a geographically dispersed user base, any kind of self-help technology that takes the burden off IT is welcomed with open arms. That's why Ernest Kayinamura of Enel North America and his lone counterpart have actively embraced wikis as a way to make IT materials more accessible to the end users they support.
IT leaders looking for a pat on the back for delivering much-needed technology to the business could be waiting a long time. Survey results released this week by Forrester Research show that while a majority of business executives depend on technology to do their jobs, they don't credit IT for providing those high-tech resources.
We dread hearing the news that something once considered unique or innovative has turned into a commodity, where the only differentiator is price. We especially don't like it when that transformation happens in our own careers -- when a prized skill becomes so ubiquitous that it can be had for pennies on the dollar. We might as well admit that this shift has happened to another treasured asset: our ability to solve any problem by simply whipping ourselves into a coffee-drenched frenzy and working harder.
A look at the technology that these start-ups say will make them stand out from the pack.
With the economy struggling and financial markets in a state of chaos, this is becoming a hard time to be an IT manager.
In these uncertain times, who isn't worried about job security? There are ominous signs aplenty: tech projects put on the chopping block, layoffs looming, and spotty full-time hiring opportunities on job boards. It's good to have a backup plan in case you're let go, and one plan is to prepare yourself to be a free agent.