Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy bloggers
Ashu Bhatia (21)
Gregg Powers (3)
Mark Benedict (1)
Tom Finneran (5)
Tom Marrs (1)
Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy blog archives
March 2009 (1)
April 2009 (3)
May 2009 (4)
June 2009 (5)
July 2009 (5)
August 2009 (3)
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October 2009 (1)
December 2009 (1)
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February 2010 (1)
April 2010 (1)
May 2010 (3)
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Some Useful Views of Metadata
Tom Finneran, Principal Consultant : 14 June 2010 / 10:40 AM : 0 
Most IT practitioners recognize the importance of metadata but not all can describe it’s value. Gartner has stated these benefits of metadata management:
Tagged: Business Intelligence
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IT Strategy – bringing it all together
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 21 May 2010 / 4:54 PM : 0
I often talk to folks within the executive team that seem to be struggling with issues around how to service business needs, how to fund initiatives, which metrics to report, etc. I always bring a simple and powerful framework to consider these questions:
IT Strategy Alignment with Business Strategy – To understand the role that IT plays as an enabler and value partner, we need to start with looking at the following dynamics of the marketplace in the industry:
Tagged: Business Architecture Business Value CIO IT Planning IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment
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Practical Process Improvement
Mark Benedict, Director of Quality Assurance and Testing Services : 06 May 2010 / 11:57 AM : 3
Process Improvements are routinely needed everywhere in the IT and IS worlds. But no matter what the process is that needs improvement, the technology that needs to evolve or the new methods people need to use the overarching story is the same: We need to do this, but we just don't have time to do it. We're too busy working.
Even in organizations that have it all figured out, it comes down to this one last thing. Making the change. And that's where the worst resistance in any organization hits your best intentions with a sucker punch.
Recently I've gotten calls from several organizations that have done all the right things from Root-Cause Analysis with all the right people and points-of-view involved, realistic process re-engineering, the cr...
Tagged: Change Management Governance Risk and Compliance IT Planning IT Strategy Knowledge Management Lifecycle Controls Organizational Change Management Process Improvement Project Management Project Methodology Quality Assurance Quality Control Quality Management
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Incident Management vs. Problem Management
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 05 May 2010 / 9:10 AM : 0
Incident Management vs. Problem Management
I was talking to this executive in a fortune 500 company and he was struggling with putting in some SLAs for his IT organization. He wanted to show the business side that he was making operational improvements. One of the things he was struggling with was Incidents and Problems that folks were capturing. He could not get his team to look as these separately and was talking about how Incident Management is related to Problem management and how it should be different.
I thought of capturing my point of view as below. Whether you use ITIL terminology or not, here’s the difference:
Tagged: Business Architecture Business Value CIO IT to Business Alignment
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Setting up Data Governance
Tom Finneran, Principal Consultant : 29 April 2010 / 2:52 PM : 0
There are a number of steps that should be taken in setting up a Data Governance.
First, let us define what we mean by data governance. Data Governance: is a strategic, “top-down” program in which leadership communicates the core value of data quality and integrity. It includes development and enforcement of standards and processes. It requires broad understanding of upstream and downstream stakeholders, systems, and processes for all decisions and issue-resolution. It requires executive sponsors to provide support for their business Data Stewards.
The Data Governance process begins by getting both business and IT senior executive support. Business and IT managers with interest in the major transactions and master data objects gather periodic...
Tagged: Business Intelligence Business Modeling Business Value Data Architecture Data Modeling DW / BI Architecture Enterprise Architecture Enterprise Integration Governance Risk and Compliance Information Management Information Security IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value Knowledge Management Model-Driven Design SOA & Data Architecture
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IT Capacity - Do more with less
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 23 February 2010 / 4:22 PM : 0
I was talking to an IT executive and he was chatting about how difficult it was to raise awareness within the business side of what IT capacity he has and how much his organization can really take on. He mentioned that despite some IT demand management processes, it was tough to set expectations. I guess these days IT Operations faces a number of opposing priorities:
But the real essence comes down to 3 things:
Tagged: Business Architecture IT Planning IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value
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Business Drivers and IT Strategy
Gregg Powers, Senior Management Consultant : 20 January 2010 / 12:13 PM : 3
In the last blog entry, we looked at some of the first principles of IT strategy – things that should be addressed within an IT strategy document. In this blog entry, we explore in more detail, some of the fundamental aspects of tying IT strategy to the business. A key relationship that develops over time, although not immediately recognized by IT executives, is IT organizations inability to objectively define their value proposition are often viewed as an expense to be minimized. Hence, there is a linkage between the view of IT within the organization as an expense and IT’s inability to define its value.
IT organizations have historical...
Tagged: IT Planning IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment
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Master Data Management
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 08 December 2009 / 11:05 AM : 1
Master Data Management
Master Data is the fundamental business data in the company, typically long-lived and used across multiple applications, inherently including the subset of Master Reference Data.
Master Data, including Reference Data, is not to be considered “Metadata”. Metadata is data about data. It describes data content but it is NOT the content. There is no formal and universal definition of how deep to take the definition from a content perspective. Only those metadata whose management will bring more value to the enterprise than the cost of the labor needed to create and maintain it should be managed and integrated formally. For example, “Master Data” definitions (customers, suppliers, products, org...
Tagged: Business Architecture Data Architecture Enterprise Integration Information Management SOA & Data Architecture
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Shared Services and proper Chargeback is key for IT Operational Excellence
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 01 October 2009 / 9:37 AM : 2
There has always been much discussion and interest in creating Operational Efficiency through Shared Services - and today's climate is no exception. In particular, if a company is decentralized and the IT organizations are serving businesses in a disparate manner, there is some scope to optimize the IT spend, after bringing these silos under a common umbrella. But a Support Services business model typically used, whether as a cost center or profit center, has its pluses and minuses. However, in any case that this is set up, there are certain steps to be followed:
Tagged: Business Architecture CIO IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value
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II - IT Strategy First Principles
Gregg Powers, Senior Management Consultant : 18 September 2009 / 4:20 PM : 0
In the last blog entry, we looked at the need for IT Strategy. In this blog we will look at some of the foundational elements and perspectives used in development of a good IT strategy.
Google ‘IT strategic plan’ – go ahead and try it. Once you find some hits, take the time and look at some of the plans that are within the links. What do you see as common within the pl...
Tagged: Business Value IT Planning IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value
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