Monthly Archives: February 2008

A Disparity of Clarity

 Vince Kellen | Feb 27, 2008  No Responses
Feb 272008
 
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Recently, I had the chance to talk with two CIOs from large, multi-billion and multi-national businesses with names we all recognize. To protect the identities of those involved, let’s call them Firm A and Firm B. Firm A is a still rapidly growing consumer electronics manufacturing firm. But over the past ten years, this firm went from 1,000+ in IT staff to just over 500. They went from a couple dozen finance systems to one. They went from a dozen marketing systems to one. They went from about ten HR systems to one, seven relational database platforms to one, and a couple dozen data centers to less than a handful. And now for the kicker. …

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 Business-IT Strategies, IT Management, Outsourcing  Tagged with: , , , ,

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Risk Managers — Again

 Robert Charette | Feb 11, 2008  5 Responses
Feb 112008
 
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The financial community recently seems to have added a new twist to the advice given in Shakespeare’s Henry VI (Part 2) with regard to lawyers in the wake of the US $130-billion-plus write-offs that are increasing daily due to the subprime mortgage debacle. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce recently fired its chief risk manager after that bank faced write-downs of CDN $2 billion on top of the previous CDN $978 million quarterly write-offs related to its holdings in subprime mortgage debt in the US. The expectation by financial analysts is that the subprime losses for the bank will continue to grow throughout this year. The risk management units at Citigroup (which had to take …

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 Leadership, Risk Management  Tagged with: , , ,

Choking on “One Throat to Choke”

 Vince Kellen | Feb 6, 2008  2 Responses
Feb 062008
 
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Beat ‘em up. Knock ‘em down. Slap ‘em around. Keep them on a short leash. Teach them a lesson. Make ‘em behave. Vendors, that is. This phrase has recently seeped into common IT parlance. I’ve even heard vendors, typically large ones, say that the reason we should buy their wares is that they can then provide us with this pugilistic benefit. Fascinating. A value proposition predicated on giving customers the right to beat up the vendor! Where do I sign? This idiom reflects elided thinking regarding risk. Managers seeking throats to choke, I believe, are simply displacing anger or carrying around naïve ideas about risk. Hopefully it is the latter since that is more easily …

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 Business-IT Strategies, Enterprise Architecture, IT Management, Risk Management, Vendor Relationships  Tagged with: , ,

“Town Meeting” – Open Conversation on State-of-the-Art Agile

 Michael Mah | Feb 4, 2008  No Responses
Feb 042008
 
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I’m a storyteller by heart, which is why I so enjoy the work that I do. Not only my own stories, but exciting stories about what other people have experienced in life and work, which I’ve been privileged to share with them as a consultant. My last Cutter webinar was about telling stories from 5 companies implementing Agile methods. Two in particular achieved remarkable results from their work; they are Follett Software in McHenry IL and BMC Software in Austin TX. That webinar along with another that I delivered on industry productivity patterns was among the highest attended in the Cutter series. My sense is that it’s because both contained really interesting stories. On Thursday …

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 Agile Project Management, Benchmarking+Surveys, Business-IT Strategies

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