IT Governance

Continuity Central – Gartner Emerging Risks Report highlights the rise of talent shortage as a top concern

Gartner’s quarterly Emerging Risks Report has found that talent shortage has joined privacy regulation and cloud computing as the top three business risks that organizations are concerned about.

In a time of historically low unemployment where the supply of available workers is much lower than usual, organizations are struggling to find and retain the talent that they need to meet their strategic objectives.

At No. 3, behind accelerating privacy regulation and cloud computing, this is the first time talent shortage was named a top business risk in Gartner’s quarterly Emerging Risks Report. Cloud computing, which was ranked the No. 1 risk in 2Q18, remains a concern. Cybersecurity disclosure and the artificial intelligence (AI)/robotics skills gap round out the top five concerns among executives surveyed.

Fast Company – Why you need to make your team uncomfortable from time to time

It’s crucial to have a sense of community in the workplace, but too much comfort can hinder progress.

People get comfortable with where they sit, what projects they work on, and what teams they are responsible for. For leaders, no‑drama days where everyone does their thing without any complaints or conflict feel great–so they assume that a calm, hassle-free existence is the one that produces the best work. As a result, they optimize for a steady state, where there are no surprises and people do as they’re told.

More of the Fast Company article from Scott Belsky

CIO Strategy / Digital Transformation / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
10
Oct 18

CIO.com – Making IT processes effective for the digital age

Does how IT runs itself matter to their firm’s digital transformation plan?

I have spent a lot of time in the #CIOChat discussing digital transformation. But can the IT organizational design and IT internal business processes impede digital transformation? Can IT, itself, become an obstacle to responding to the waves of digital disruption that are coming? This is the question that I recently asked CIOs.

Do IT processes get in the way?
CIOs say that poor processes and organizational misalignment can get in the way. They say both represent barriers to success when transformational work is built upon them. This, of course, is frequently the case and may explain why so many digital transformations fail.

More of the CIO.com article from Myles F Suer

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Data Center / DevOps / Digital Transformation / IaaS / Internet of Things / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
28
Sep 18

CIO.com – 8 CIO archetypes: What kind of IT leader are you?

From order taker to business leader, CIO responsibilities vary widely. Learn what role you currently play and how to break that mold in service of improved business value and career growth.

Global business disruption is quickening the evolutionary timeline of the CIO role. Market dynamicsare forcing IT leaders to extend beyond taking orders and delivering sustainable IT systems to massaging digital strategies and driving business outcomes.

More of the CIO.com slideshow from Clint Bouton

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08
Jun 18

CIO.com – 8 IT management productivity killers

From neglecting to prioritize key strategic initiatives to failing to adjust project estimates, weak IT management practices are threatening IT’s ability to get the job done.

There are two types of productivity killers in the modern workplace: small distractions that sap your focus and big productivity killers that push you into applying time and effort in all the wrong places. Like it or not, weak IT management practices are what cause the more significant productivity killers.

Following is a look at eight such practices that are derailing your IT department — and how to adjust for success.

1. Neglecting to prioritize strategic projects
IT has to put out fires on occasion. When the online banking servers go down, it’s an emergency. But panic situations tend to be rare. Instead, the steady stream of ad hoc questions and change requests from users are the more significant problem. Making users happy is a worthy goal, but you can easily fall victim to short-term thinking.

More of the CIO.com article from Bruce Harpham

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06
Jun 18

WSJ – Cloud, Not Tax Cuts, Drives IT Spending: Survey

Corporate information-technology budgets are expected to inch up over last year, as large firms continue to shift more workloads to the cloud, according to Morgan Stanley.

Despite recent federal tax cuts aimed at boosting corporate spending, most chief information officers say their IT spending plans haven’t changed, the bank said in a report Wednesday.

The results are based on a survey of 75 U.S. and 25 European CIOs at companies in a range of industries, most with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. The survey was conducted online and by phone between February and March.

More of the Wall Street Journal article from Angus Loten

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Disaster Recovery / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off
05
Jun 18

On stones, clay and rubber balls: why business continuity is not a risk management discipline

Mark Armour explains why he believes that we need to agree on our definitions and change our thinking around risk management, business continuity and resilience.

First, this is not about where the responsibility for business continuity should reside within an organization. It is about the responsibilities of the business continuity profession and its practitioners. Lately, I’ve witnessed the practice of risk management begin to take over that of business continuity. Many practitioners promote this alignment and foster the perception that business continuity is simply a part of the practice of risk management. I say this is bad for both disciplines and the organizations they serve.

For the sake of clarity, let’s start with some simple definitions:

The Institute of Risk Management states ‘Risk management involves understanding, analysing and addressing risk to make sure organisations achieve their objectives.’ The International Risk Management Institute describes its work as ‘The practice of identifying and analyzing loss exposures and taking steps to minimize the financial impact of the risks they impose.’

Computer Weekly – How a new ISO standard helps you take control of your IT assets

The updated ISO standard 19770-1:2017 offers IT managers a way to bring their hardware and software assets under a single management standard.

You must have control over your software and hardware. Not just because you should – but because it makes perfect sense and it is good for your business.

The updated ISO standard 19770-1:2017 promises to help you do just that. ISO 19770-1:2017 is really not a new standard, but an update from ISO 19770-1:2012.

But it is not a minor update. It feels more like an overhaul in that it now meets the requirements of a “real” management systems standard, such as ISO 27001. In relation to IT asset management (ITAM), the standard helps to address some significant problems when it comes to reducing risk and establishing a best practice for managing your IT assets.

The 19770-x family covers all the essential areas, such as lifecycle processes and best practices, software tagging and usage rights (entitlements).

More of the Computer Weekly article from Jesper Østergaard

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24
Apr 18

Continuity Central – Vast majority of organizations are unable to identify anomalous behaviour in cloud applications

Bitglass has published the findings of a survey for its ‘Cloud Hard 2018: Security with a Vengeance’ report, which includes insights from over 570 cybersecurity and IT professionals on their approach to cloud security.

Visibility and compliance challenges continue to trouble organizations, with less than half of respondents claiming they have visibility into external sharing and DLP policy violations in their cloud application and environments. Even more worrying was the finding that 85 percent of organizations were unable to identify anomalous behaviour across cloud applications.

ZDNet – As cloud adoption soars, cloud architect becomes a top career choice

Could you imagine 15 years ago telling your colleagues, or your college career officer, that you wanted to someday be a ‘cloud architect?’

Make room, enterprise architects, data architects and systems architects. There’s a new architect in town, the “cloud architect,” and his or her role is to make sure clouds are staying in formation.

That’s the gist of a survey of 997 technology professionals conducted by RightScale, which documents a shifting role for IT managers and professionals in the emerging cloud-centric enterprise.

The role of cloud architect is on the rise, the survey shows. This year, the survey finds 61 percent of architects identify themselves as cloud architects, an increase from 56 percent in 2017. The percentage of architects identifying themselves as “IT architects” has decreased to 31 percent in 2018 from 35 percent in 2017.

More of the ZDNet article from Joe McKendrick

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.