Review of iPad in the Enterprise, by Nathan Clevenger

Given all the urgency and uncertainty around the enterprise use of mobile devices, iPad for the Enterprise is a welcome addition to the literature available on the topic.

Nathan Clevenger has been involved in the development of mobile strategies and applications for over a decade, and the book reflects it. He begins with a consideration of iPad strategy that’s a wonderful primer for anyone involved in mobility at their organization, from developers in the trenches to executive leadership.

Oblique influence

I just finished a long section of Getting Health Reform Right about the role of regulation in health care that was, to say the least, eye-opening. And as usual, I want to leave aside discussions of health reform and talk more about the implications for leadership generally.

My biggest take away was that changes in health care can rarely be legislated directly: if you want to lower the costs of services, it’s not feasible to just mandate lower costs; if you want more people to seek preventative care, you can’t make a law that they do so; if you want better providers in under-served communities, you can’t just tell them to go there. This kind of direct approach will ultimately fail, either because the link between cause and effect is too complex or because compliance with the law is difficult to enforce.

Centrifugal and centripetal leadership

I’m reading The Innovator’s Prescription, Clayton M. Christensen’s excellent analysis of the health care problem facing the United States. It’s a long book (almost 500 pages), and I’m only 30 or so pages into it, but already it’s turned out to be thought-provoking.

One concept in particular caught my attention so far: the idea of decentralizing versus centralizing product development.

Speaking of Leadership – David DeLuna (part 2)

As part of the Speaking of Leadership series, I sat down with David DeLuna recently to talk with him about his time as CIO at Allied Van Lines, technology, and leadership.

Putting one foot in front of the other (part 6)

In a previous post, I suggested some of the fundamental, structural changes I think IT will have to undergo in the next 10-15 years. And to me, these changes are not optional: organizations will have to make them; the only question is who will risk the difficulties and step up to lead them (and reap the substantial rewards)?

With that done, I’ve come back to Earth a bit to kick off a series of more modest posts that look at some of the baby steps IT needs to take to evolve into a truly strategic capability.

To me, once an IT leader adopts the correct orientation of her department as a strategic asset primarily focused on delivering business value (rather than IT capabilities), she has a number of very tactical areas to address:

Demand pipeline
Structured requirements
Developer-heavy staffing
Agile methods/approaches
Service catalog
Portfolio management (including rationalization)

In this post, we’ll take a look at the last, portfolio management.

Speaking of Leadership – David DeLuna

As part of the Speaking of Leadership series, I sat down with David DeLuna recently to talk with him about his time as CIO at Allied Van Lines, technology, and leadership.

David has 25 years of full business and technology solution implementation experience. In his current role as director of account management at ProspX, he and his team serve as the primary point-of-contact for all customers and leads day-to-day account management and customer satisfaction. Prior to joining ProspX, David managed high visibility, highly complex strategic projects for Doculabs, a leader in strategic consulting and market research. Prior to that, David served as CIO at Allied Worldwide, a $2+ Billion leading global relocation, moving services and logistics company. In this capacity, he managed a $14 million budget and 90 professionals and was responsible for implementing a claims management system that saved the company $1 million annually. David has held management level positions at leading organizations such as BSG, Trident, PerSe Technologies and Moveline. David is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and holds a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications.

Putting one foot in front of the other (part 5)

In a previous post, I suggested some of the fundamental, structural changes I think IT will have to undergo in the next 10-15 years. And to me, these changes are not optional: organizations will have to make them; the only question is who will risk the difficulties and step up to lead them (and reap the substantial rewards)?

With that done, I’ve come back to Earth a bit to kick off a series of more modest posts that look at some of the baby steps IT needs to take to evolve into a truly strategic capability.

To me, once an IT leader adopts the correct orientation of her department as a strategic asset primarily focused on delivering business value (rather than IT capabilities), she has a number of very tactical areas to address:

Demand pipeline
Structured requirements
Developer-heavy staffing
Agile methods/approaches
Service catalog
Portfolio management (including rationalization)

In this post, we’ll take a look at the fifth, service catalog.

Putting one foot in front of the other (part 4)

In a previous post, I suggested some of the fundamental, structural changes I think IT will have to undergo in the next 10-15 years. And to me, these changes are not optional: organizations will have to make them; the only question is who will risk the difficulties and step up to lead them (and reap the substantial rewards)?

With that done, I’ve come back to Earth a bit to kick off a series of more modest posts that look at some of the baby steps IT needs to take to evolve into a truly strategic capability.

To me, once an IT leader adopts the correct orientation of her department as a strategic asset primarily focused on delivering business value (rather than IT capabilities), she has a number of very tactical areas to address:

Demand pipeline
Structured requirements
Developer-heavy staffing
Agile methods/approaches
Service catalog
Portfolio management (including rationalization)
In this post, we’ll take a look at the fourth, Agile methods/approaches.

Putting one foot in front of the other (part 3)

n a previous post, I suggested some of the fundamental, structural changes I think IT will have to undergo in the next 10-15 years. And to me, these changes are not optional: organizations will have to make them; the only question is who will risk the difficulties and step up to lead them (and reap the substantial rewards)?

With that done, I’ve come back to Earth a bit to kick off a series of more modest posts that look at some of the baby steps IT needs to take to evolve into a truly strategic capability.

This one looks at the issue of developer-heavy staffing in today’s IT organization.

Putting one foot in front of the other (part 2)

In a previous post, I suggested some of the fundamental, structural changes I think IT will have to undergo in the next 10-15 years. And to me, these changes are not optional: organizations will have to make them; the only question is who will risk the difficulties and step up to lead them (and reap the substantial rewards)?

With that done, I’ve come back to Earth a bit to kick off a series of more modest posts that look at some of the baby steps IT needs to take to evolve into a truly strategic capability.