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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August 13, 2019

It’s all about driving behavior

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If you read any TBM book or attend a conference, you’ll drown in business speak.  It’s not that they are incorrect.  It’s that they are trying to fill a hundred pages or twenty minutes trying to get down to the essence.  At the end of the day, it’s all about driving behavior. Transparency is nice.  By […]

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August 13, 2019

How to be credible (while still being mostly full of shit)

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Every organization is a minefield of acronyms and legacy policies.  When you are new to the function or the org, you will need to get up to speed quickly.  While there is a “language” of TBM, it will mostly be understood by only professionals in this field.  The language you really need to learn is […]

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August 13, 2019

Getting Started in TBM

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For starters, see my career path post.  But if you are thinking about a career in technology business management and want to know how to get started, here are some thoughts. Degree I know that some universities have begun to offer degrees in TBM, both undergrad and post grad.  I’m not sure that any degree […]

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August 13, 2019

Chargeback versus Showback

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For or those that are new; chargeback is creating an allocation engine that takes in costs and attributes them to objects or services.  Those costs are then allocated to a client on a dollar for dollar basis.  Less cost equals less charge.  Not rocket science.  To achieve this result, you are going to need a […]

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August 13, 2019

Finance versus Technology

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One of the first questions I’m always asked is where technology business management should sit; within Tech or in Finance.  Like most things, there no one correct answer. In a perfect world it wouldn’t matter as the two organizations would work closely together.   However, years of anecdotal evidence suggests that it doesn’t really work that […]

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