How a Small Nonprofit Succeeded in Digital Transformation

One of my favorite clients, Charity Navigator, just released a major upgrade to how they process and rate nonprofit charities. Say you're passionate about saving the rainforests, improving homeless shelters, or helping children with cancer, Charity Navigator's tools help you find nonprofits and make smarter choices about where you contribute and donate.

Charity Navigator just released The Encompass Rating System, a new rating system with new criteria and methodology to accommodate organizations of all sizes. This was facilitated through the upgrade of technologies that load and process data, as well as a new user interface.

The results are significant.  They are now rating over 160,000 charities with The Encompass Rating System. Compare this to the 9,000+ ratings they were through their long-established Star Rating System.

continue reading "How a Small Nonprofit Succeeded in Digital Transformation"

What is the Most Important Agile KPI?

I'm asked this question on selecting agile KPIs all the time from leaders. 

Some want to try measuring agile methodologies with the same project management measurements that worked for them in the past, while others are trying to establish some oversight on a process that they don' fully understand. Other motivations include benchmarking productivity, quality, and other metrics across multiple agile teams.

You can already see there are some good and bad motivations, some approaches that better align to agile principles and others that carryover from command and control cultures. But agile teams want to improve and leaders overseeing larger agile organizations must demonstrate the impact of process investments and transformations. Metrics and KPIs can be a very good tool to show progress, drive process improvements, emphasize desired behaviors, and drive broader cultural changes.

So yes, selecting KPIs is important and smart, but they are not a one-size-fits-all answer to aligning the organization.  

continue reading "What is the Most Important Agile KPI?"

5 Priorities for IT Leaders During this Summer of COVID

It's been a very challenging year for everyone and indeed, this has been the case for first responders. Somewhere a couple of rungs further down the ladder, most organizations owe plenty of thanks to CIOs, IT leaders, and especially the IT service desk. It's one compliance requirement to have business continuity plans, but an exponential challenge to quickly enable global organizations to stay safe and work remotely.

Over the years, I've made several posts advising CIOs and IT leaders on how to use the summer months. In 2013, I shared my CIO advice for taking summer vacations and suggested burying the email, learning something new, and building memories. In 2017, I shared five things CIO should do over the summer, including unplugging, having fun with the team, and scheduling fall events. Sadly, these suggestions are hard to do this summer. In 2018, I added five things digital transformation leaders should do over the summer, including road tripping to visit customers, bringing treats to difficult meetings, and getting hands-on with customer data.

continue reading "5 Priorities for IT Leaders During this Summer of COVID"

What is the Role of the Tech Lead in Agile?

Tech lead is a role many organizations assign without providing a role description or defined responsibilities. That's because it's often used as a role on an initiative, product, project, or team, and not a formal job description. Most organizations spend their efforts on defining and wording job descriptions and related career paths. They don't go more in-depth into determining roles people take on, especially roles on initiatives, projects, and teams. 

This can lead to confusion for both the person assigned the role and for the people working with the tech lead.

continue reading "What is the Role of the Tech Lead in Agile?"

From Legacy to Intelligent ERP: A Blueprint for Digital Transformation

Do you cringe when it’s time to upgrade the ERP because of all the testing that’s required? Do you have frequent nightmares of executives and managers coming after you because the ERP is down or performing slowly? Are the customizations and hard-wired integrations developed in and around the ERP a tangled mess that complicates making changes and requires in-depth expertise to support?

Gone are the days of your grandfather’s ERP. These legacy ERPs perform basic accounting and resource management functions well but often fall short of attaining the enterprise platform that supports predictive analytics and growing the business.

continue reading "From Legacy to Intelligent ERP: A Blueprint for Digital Transformation"

5 Ways to Better Manage Technical Debt

There are specific topics that will get CIO and IT leaders to vent. Talk about show many spreadsheets bounce around through email, midyear budget cuts, or hundreds of projects everyone won't prioritize, and you'll get an earful. But there's one topic that will get them out of their seats and red in the face with anger. 

That topic is technical debt.

continue reading "5 Ways to Better Manage Technical Debt"

Transforming the Workforce with Governed Citizen Development

It’s an unprecedented time to be a CIO or any technology leader. On the one hand, technology organizations are working hard on digital transformation and developing many new customer and employee-facing applications. On the other, IT is now running double duty by supporting more remote working employees and then responding to other COVID-19 business needs.

continue reading "Transforming the Workforce with Governed Citizen Development"