The trend of sourcing and outsourcing services has been the trajectory through the 90′s and onwards, with organisations delivering their IT through ecosystems of suppliers. As the nature of IT becomes ever more infrastructural and available as a ‘utility’ the shift to the sourcing of services will increase. On this basis, one future vision of [...]
READ MORE »A Service Dominant Approach
The perennial question: should IT be a service provider? The safe answer is yes. This is the one that won’t get you into too much trouble. The problem is a part of me wants to say no. Well, not so much no, but not exactly or exclusively. The danger in becoming a service provider is [...]
READ MORE »Being Too Glib About Cloud
Over the last few months I’ve encountered distributed groups of people being very ‘glib’ about Cloud. Discounting it as nothing new. Not being entirely sure what all the fuss is about. Describing Cloud as just hosted applications on the Internet. What I found surprising, is it seemed dismissive of the ability of Cloud to transform [...]
READ MORE »Narrative Is King
One of the strongest memories I have of my childhood involves one thing: Playpeople, though that was their UK name, in the US they were, and still are, known as Playmobil. As a family, we had a collection of Playpeople, though it is the space sets that I remember most. We had the Space station [...]
READ MORE »The Dissertation Distinction
As of yesterday, there was two weeks until the dissertation has to be handed in and the MBA comes to a close. Epic pause. Moment of reflection. That 14th December 2011 date shall be etched in my memory along with a few others I’ve accumulated over the course of my life. It’s been 3.5 years [...]
READ MORE »Project Reality Bites
I’m often convinced that Project Management is broken. I’ll be more specific, how Project management is taught is broken. The problem is the model of project management taught often follows the ‘construction model’, because a lot of what we ‘understand’ about Project Management comes from the construction sector and it’s ever so easy to show [...]
READ MORE »Theory + Practice = Win
This topic has been coming for a while. I can trace it all the way back to the early days of my first role in 1992. Back then it was my contemporaries insisting all they’d learned in their degree was irrelevant. They insisted their ‘academic’ study had nothing to do with ‘practice’. I didn’t see [...]
READ MORE »Index Cards And Other Things
It’s two weeks since the examined coursework assignment (ECA) for the Research Methods module was released. As part of my plan to be very proactive with the dissertation, I’ve not let the momentum slow and I’ve been using the paper, essentially a research proposal, to clarify and refine the actual dissertation. On this basis, the [...]
READ MORE »A Foundation For Business Execution
So, for various reasons I’ve found myself discussing ERP projects. Challenging. Interesting. Obviously, in the various discussions around the why, what and how of ERP implementations I’ve found myself stepping back a bit from some of the specifics, important though they are, and considering the strategic perspective. In my view the strategic perspective, sector and [...]
READ MORE »The IS Capability
Okay, lets take a big stride towards getting into some practical tools and techniques. We’ve discussed the distinction between IS and IT and why the separation is important and useful. We’ve also established the journey that has gotten us to the concept of the IS capability. Now we are going to take a 30,000 feet [...]
READ MORE »
Social Media