Introducing! 5 Minutes with @NYIke

I'm trying something new and hope you'll enjoy my experiment with the 5 Minutes with @NYIke youtube video channel.

Each episode will be approximately five minutes and I'll be sharing best practices and insights on the areas that I cover including digital transformation, agile planning and practices, product management, devops, data science, big data, data governance, artificial intelligence, low code, organizational change, and other topics.

It's a quick video you can watch the first five minutes of your day when you're sitting at your desk drinking coffee.

I'll be sharing material from the StarCIO Workshops and Guides in some episodes. Others, I will be pulling on news and research.

The intro video has more details. Stay tuned for the first three episodes coming soon:

• What is Agile Planning: Getting backlogs ready for delivery
• The Full Scope of DevOps: Including quality assurance and testing practices
• Three Insights into Citizen Data Science Programs

continue reading "Introducing! 5 Minutes with @NYIke"

Delight Employees and Empower IT to Shine at ITSM

Wake up! No one likes opening service desk tickets or using ITSM tools. Employees expect self-service capabilities and easy to use technologies. Business leaders and managers assume that technology improves productivity and quality, and they believe that the service desk should operate like a genius bar.

But the reality is that many service desks are short-staffed, and employees are raising more complex incidents and requests. It’s harder to prioritize, research, and resolve issues when they aren’t highly procedural operations like resetting passwords or installing basic applications. Addressing the long-tail of employee requests and incidents requires capturing more detailed information about the issue, but, without overcomplicating the experiences and user interfaces designed to open tickets.

You probably have an ITSM tool such as Cherwell, ServiceNow, or Jira Service Desk in place; however, the challenge of providing faster ticket resolutions probably goes beyond the capabilities of these tools. What’s the best way to integrate a mobile helpdesk, ITSM software, and other enterprise systems such as ADP and Workday to automate or simplify fulfilling requests?

continue reading "Delight Employees and Empower IT to Shine at ITSM"

Where to Place Your Machine Learning and AI Bets

A few weeks ago, I published my 2020 predictions and stated explicitly that enterprises must demonstrate AI and Machine Learning wins. So, in this post, I survey several recent research surveys to determine where organizations should place their bets.

I looked for three indicators:

• Is the timing right for medium and late adopters to get in the game, and how much must they wager?
• Should the bet go to red (cost savings) or black (customer experience and revenue)? Or both?
• Where should organizations invest their skills, time, technology, and money?

My summary from six recent surveys and my takeaways follow.

continue reading "Where to Place Your Machine Learning and AI Bets"

Breakthrough Agile Transformation: The Important Leadership Roles

I've written several posts on the CIO and leadership roles in agile transformation, agile adoption, and agile practices.

For example, in the CIO's role in agile transformation, I stress the following four leadership roles:

• Asking questions to drive collaboration on business, tech, and data
• Taking one for the team and challenging the status quo
• Driving iterative thinking and minimally viable products
• Leading, exploring, and reviewing partnerships

continue reading "Breakthrough Agile Transformation: The Important Leadership Roles"

What are Seven Types of Big Data Debt

As more organizations have embarked on agile software development over the last five years as part of digital transformation programs, the term technical debt is more widely understood. Teams that develop code leave artifacts behind that require improvements, reengineering, refactoring, or wholesale rewriting.

Some technical debt is done purposefully to deliver applications faster, while other forms of technical debt emerge over time with age and increased usage. Developers focus on fixing technical debt in their code. At the same time, CIOs often apply the term at a macro level and include legacy systems, monolithic applications, or any technology that needs an architecture upgrade.

But what about data?

continue reading "What are Seven Types of Big Data Debt"

3 Expert Questions to Focus on Winning Digital Transformations

About a year ago, around this time a year, I spoke to a CIO about how to best kickoff digital transformation initiatives. His question, "How do I start? How do I find opportunities that will make a business impact and have the potential to drive transformation?"

I don't recall the specifics of the call and his circumstances but can answer these questions. 

My answers do not depend on whether you are new to the role of CIO or transformation leader. It also doesn't matter whether you are just starting a transformation journey, or, if you're at an inflection point and evaluating the initiative portfolio on where to focus, and what priorities to invest in.

As I said in the opening to Chapter 1 of Driving Digital, 

Look at your company as if it were your first day on the job. What would your first impressions be of how your business is operating?

continue reading "3 Expert Questions to Focus on Winning Digital Transformations"

2020 Predictions: Agile - Devops - SRE, Low-code, and AI

It's been several years since I blogged on new year predictions. My last one published in 2017 covered blockchain (just getting started), AI (breakthroughs coming), talent gaps (growing challenge), and the importance of social business (even more critical).

In some ways, little has changed in three years, and yet so much has changed. My point is that grandiose predictions make great headlines and are fun to read, but are too ambitious for how fast the majority of industries, companies, and people change.

So last night, I came up with my predictions. These are more insights into how digital transformation has impacted multiple industries and what may happen in 2020.

continue reading "2020 Predictions: Agile - Devops - SRE, Low-code, and AI"