August 27, 2019

How much do I actually need to know about technology?

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The question I get most often about my career is “how do you have a position in technology management without a background in technology?”.  It’s been my experience that most business management people are in my shoes, they have some sort of a business/accounting/finance background and not a development/engineering background.  So how do you add […]

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August 27, 2019

Don’t just be a numbers monkey (or what does the COO do?)

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A lot of the content on the site so far and basically all the content in TBM forums is focused on the Financial aspects of the job.  While you are expected to have a mastery of this area, this doesn’t represent the whole job.  I should say, you hope this doesn’t represent the whole job.  […]

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August 24, 2019

What to do with legacy infra costs when you want to move to the cloud?

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If you’re like me, you’ve heard the term “cloud” more than you’ve heard your kids names over the last year. And, if you’re like me, you already have expensive legacy data centers. Yes, cloud is cool. No, it’s not free. If you have a barrage of app owners looking to move apps to the cloud, […]

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August 24, 2019

Cost avoid is nebulous

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I can’t tell you how many investment ideas are pitched to me as a cost avoid. If you were to add up all the cost avoid ideas over the years, IT would be free at this point. What I’m really saying is, “be skeptical of cost avoid”.  Let’s take a look at how to flush […]

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August 24, 2019

I hate my client (and they hate me), now what?

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If you do this job long enough you’re going to run into some personality conflicts. Some of these can be fatal to your career if you aren’t careful. Most people create a narrative where they are the hero and the other guy is the jerk, but none of that matters if the other guy/girl is […]

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August 24, 2019

Why do I keep losing people?

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As you try to put together a highly functioning team, turnover will be a challenge. Some of my best teams had the highest turnover. Why?  Because they were great people and great people are always in demand.  When I was trying to build a team, I poached people and you can expect the same. So […]

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August 24, 2019

The data is dirty

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The key to reliable transparency is always clean underlying data. And yet, as you progress, you will continually find data that is less than clean. In fact, sometimes it will be embarrassing. I’d argue this is a natural progression of the process. Let’s take a look at the problem and some potential solutions. Damaged or […]

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August 24, 2019

How to handle allocation wars

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Once you get to the point where the organization has a mature IT allocation process, there are two things that happen next. The first is a war over the allocation dollars.  The second is when clients understand the allocation process well enough that clients learn how to game the system.  Let’s talk about wars first. […]

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August 24, 2019

How to “game” allocations

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Once you have a reasonably mature TBM practice in place, you can be sure that some of the more sophisticated players will try to game the process. Why?  Well less allocation means more IT work for the same dollars. If you are running an org where technology is vitally important but dollars are tight; frankly, […]

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August 24, 2019

Application TCO – The holy grail

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We have a lot of data points at my shop. I’m sure you do too. On their own, they’re basically meaningless. They need to be tied together to drive decisions. As I’ve written many times, FYIs are worthless to running the org. So with all the data, what is the problem you are trying to […]

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