George Spafford

Efficient communication is an important element of daily work. In addition to this intrinsic need, regulatory pressures, the need for security and rising volumes of both email and instant messaging are taxing IT organizations like never before. Why then, isn’t more attention paid toward treating the various messaging platforms as critical systems in organizations? If […]

Two goals of governance initiatives are to create effective policies and procedures that enhance operations, while protecting the organization. These are monumental tasks to say the least. During both the creation and subsequent audit steps, organizations must ‘beware of shelfware’. Sounds clichi, but it’s more important than you might suspect. What must not come out […]

There’s a great deal of debate these days about outsourcing, particularly offshore outsourcing. Like many business processes, the use of outsourcing can be interpreted in a positive or negative light. On one hand, management typically is under tremendous pressure to control costs, so outsourcing can help with that. On the other hand, if you are […]

It is increasingly common for IT to make a decision between subscribing to a service or purchasing a product and performing the same function in-house. For example, does the organization buy a firewall appliance or do they purchase a service for one year wherein the vendor supplies the hardware and then performs all of the […]

As mentioned in the previous article about mapping, the various stakeholders all have expectations about what IT can and cannot provide. As a result, their various behaviors reflect their beliefs and subsequently affect their interactions with IT surrounding service levels. Thus, not only must IT be aware of their expectations, but also must actively manage […]

People often talk about resistance to change at an individual level. While this is a real phenomenon, there are systemic issues that cause an aversion to change as well. If we think of the status quo as inertia, then we realize that there is a mass at rest, so to speak, and that a controlled […]

Freedom of speech is certainly an important human right. However, for quite a long time even in the United States, there have been legal limitations placed on that freedom. For example, you do not have the freedom to yell “fire” or some such phrase and incite a riot in a crowded theater just for fun. […]

“The project was failing. After spending close to $10 million the system still was not meeting requirements. After reviewing the situation, management decided to invest another $2 million in an attempt to recover the project. In operations, everyone thought this investment was a very bad idea as the system was fundamentally flawed yet management proceeded […]

One of my pet peeves is to go to a conference and hear how the group’s functional area is what makes a business run. I’ve heard various professions make the statement when, in fact, it is the careful blending of people, technology and processes that create an exceptional organization. IT is no different. The bottom […]

In the wake of 9/11 and corporate debacles such as Enron, organizations are taking a serious look at their information technology (IT) groups and questioning the governance models necessary to minimize risks and maximize returns. At a very broad level, organizations can approach governance on an ad hoc basis and create their own frameworks, or […]