Making IT Happen

I've been to a number of industry events recently where the panel discussion / Q&A session has gone in three phases:
1 - bright and breezy - a few gentle openers
2 - key issues - how can the industry attract new talent, be more professional etc
3 - why oh why - how can IT be part of 'the business'?, high profile project failures, we don't deliver what CEO's want etc

Are some IT projects late? Sure. Do all IT investments deliver value? No. But...

Has the IT profession delivered wave after wave of change in the last 50 years that have transformed business and society? Yes. Will it continue to do so? Yes.

That might not make us angels, but I'm happy to be part of an industry that achieves so much.

This title is the current advertising tag-line for Barclays Capital. They ran a two page ad in the FT yesterday, big letters covering the pages:

"Earn success every e-mail, every line of every document, every quick-fire decision, every considered decision, every handshake, every well-judged intervention, every working lunch, every 'i' dotted, every 't' crossed, every "do it again", every double check, every triple check, every percentage point, every second, every minute, every hour..." You can see it here for yourself on Barclays Capital's news release on its "Earn Success Every Day" ad campaign.

Many thanks to their copywriters - that's the best CIO manifesto I have read for a long time.

We are seeing examples where software companies are looking to shift from processer to core based licensing, and to apply this retrospectively so that existing processor licences become new core licences. We've fended this off so far by referring back to small print that refers to physical processors (for once, the small print has been on our side!) Anyone else seeing this?

I was in stiches looking at this take on the new iPhone.

Found this on the excellent blog Daddytypes.

I meant for this to be the first entry on this blog. If you want to get touch call me on 07764 286563 or e-mail me on adam.burstow@telereal.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Reading today's headline on the CW Website "CIOs are winning the business value battle" made me think of our ROI guilty little secret.

Despite putting a lot of time and effort into our SOA programme over the past 3 years, we had never re-used a web service. Whilst I remained committed to the benefits of SOA, it was starting to seem a pretty expensive way of doing point-to-point interfaces. There always seemed to be a reason why an existing web service wasn't right for a new application. Anyway, we've now re-used two web services (admittedly both with additional web service 'wrappers' to refocus them slightly) - the first of many.

Are we the only ones, or does anyone else have a guilty secret they would like to share?

I'm a big fan of ITIL and PRINCE - we use 'lite' versions of each to run our IT services and IT projects. Truly the OGC are the unsung heroes of global standards.

One thing occurred to me the other day. Why does PRINCE cover all project types, whilst ITIL only covers IT services? Could ITIL be extended to become SIL (service infrastructure library), and so extend this wonderful example of common sense across all types of services?