1st Edition

IT's All about the People Technology Management That Overcomes Disaffected People, Stupid Processes, and Deranged Corporate Cultures

By Stephen J. Andriole Copyright 2012
    224 Pages 25 B/W Illustrations
    by Auerbach Publications

    By and large, cost-effective information technology (IT) management is more about people, personal relationships, and corporate culture than it is about the technology itself. Simply put, IT doesn’t work if you are surrounded by bad people and stupid processes in a deranged corporate culture.

    IT's All about the People: Technology Management That Overcomes Disaffected People, Stupid Processes, and Deranged Corporate Cultures explains how to achieve dramatic improvements in service and agility by enhancing the people, processes, and culture within your organization. It details the various roles within the technology management process and supplies authoritative insight into the realities of human behavior—including the range of best and worst behaviors from managers, executives, and corporate culture.

    Industry veteran Stephen J. Andriole explains the reason behind why many business cases fail and includes helpful insights on new governance models, organic transformation, guerilla budgeting, and open source software. Providing a fresh perspective on the old basics of IT management through a twenty-first-century lens, this book arms you with the methods needed to master the soft art of IT management as well as purchasing, deployment, and technological support.

    People
    Some Dirty Little Secrets Many Technologists Are not Technical
         No One Knows What the Hell "Architecture" Is 
         Technology Is Operational, not Strategic—at Least for Now 
         Vendor Management Is an Oxymoron: No One Does it Well 
         Software Costs Way too Much (Way, Way too Much)
    Can You Handle the Truth?
    When Reason, Logic, and Business Cases Fail
    Soft Skills from the Dark Side
    What Will You (Really) Be Doing in a Few Years?
    The (Really) Perfect CIO (You Know the Type)
    Will You Work for Results?
    Sometimes You Must Go Negative
    Pay Very Close Attention to New Era Skills 
         Everyone to the Woodshed 
         Politics, Culture, and You 
         Can You Smell Change? 
              The Consolidating Technology Industry 
              Major Changes in the Value and Location of Skill Sets 
              Innovation at Risk
    Leadership, Likeability, and Life
    Do You Speak Business? 
         Pain → Pleasure 
         Credibility → Influence 
         Operations → Strategy
    Three Easy First Steps
         Whatever Happened to Mentoring, Meritocracies, and Sabbaticals?
         Three Brands for the Millennium
         Final Thoughts About People

    Organization
    "I Want a Divorce"
    New Governance Versus Organizational Terrorism
         Driving Trends
    All New Governance Models
         Core Competency Challenges
         Enterprise Business Technology Architecture Challenges
         Alternative Hardware and Software Delivery Model Challenges
         User-Managed Web 2.0 Technology Challenges
         Web Transaction Platform Challenges
         Globalization Challenges
         Organizational Implications
    Why You Need a Business Technology Management Office
    What to Do When the Regions Rebel
         Processes, Clear and Messy
         Process World
         Process Control
         Process Improvement
         Process Incentives
         Takeaways
    The Subtle, Sublime, and Nefarious (or, Watch Your Back)
         Training to Obsolescence
         CAPEX Versus Expensing
         Those Things Are Expensive
         Sourcing
         Telecommuting’s Not for Everyone
         Change for Their Own Sake
    Having IT Both Ways, You Bastards
         Save Money Today and Make Money Tomorrow
         Stop Worrying About Devices
         Software and Hardware Are Already Services
         Open-Source is Safe, Honestly
         There’s Gold in Them There Processes
    Web 2.0 Is Really Your Friend
         Data Without Analytics Are Useless
    Organizational Surgery Is No Longer Elective
         Loosen Up
         It’s Getting Cloudy Out There
    Five Hours to Influence
    Ten Things the IT Department Should Tell Management
    Final Thoughts About Organization

    Management
    Really Stupid Meetings
    Many Happy Returns
    A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
    Changing Our Minds (About Everything)
    Vitamin Pills Versus Painkillers
    Save Money, Make Money, or Go Home
    Ten "New Rules" for IT
    Guerilla Budgeting
    Another Audit?
    Innovation in Flight
    Innovation Parameters
         Incentives
         Governance
         Funding
         Initiatives
         Assessment
    Why Strategic Risk Management Is So Important
    Strategic Risk Management
    The New Risk Equation
    Innovation on the Cheap; Moving Forward While Standing Still
    Way Overdue—Yet Still Really Cheap: BPM
    Crowdsourcing for Fun and Profit
    Tell Them You Love Them—To Innovate
    Social Media (Poor Man’s Marketing, Customer Service) and Innovation
    Innovation Talent Development That You Actually Mean 
    Tough Love Business Cases
         Tough Love
              Web 2.0
    Alternative Delivery Models
    People
    Organizations
    Strategy
    Technology Adoption—One More Time
    Final Thoughts About Management

    Sourcing
    Why More (and More and More) Outsourcing Is Inevitable
    Vendors Vendors Everywhere
    Has Anyone Been to Nordstroms?
    Technology Life in the Clouds
    What Start-Ups and Wind-Downs Do Now
         Start-Up Tactics
         Wind-Down Tactics
    Sourcing Sourcing Everywhere
    New Ways to Deliver Old Services for Less Money
    Clashing Rocks
         Open-Source Software
         Web 2.0 Technologies
         Hardware-as-a-Service
         Software-as-a-Service
         Thin Client Architectures
         Caution to the Rocks
    Why Crowdsourcing Makes Sense
    IT’s a Done Deal
    Enterprise Software: Now You See IT—Now You Don’t
    What the Early Twenty-First Century (in Ruins) Is Teaching Us About Technology Delivery
         Renegotiations
         Subsidies
         Technology Trends Assessments
         Alternative Delivery Models
    Final Thoughts About Sourcing

    Organic Transformation
    Over and Over Again and Again
    People
    Processes
    Governance
    Rationalization
    Sourcing
    Innovation
    Management "Best Practices"
    Internal Consulting—Go for IT
    Internal Versus External Consultants
    The Consulting Process: Identifying Meaningful Problems
    The Consulting Process: Assessing the Appetite for Solutions
    The Consulting Process: Determining Likely Costs and Risks
    The Consulting Process: Finding the Right Sponsors
    The Consulting Process: Developing Compelling Business Cases
    The Consulting Process: Realistically Defining Projects
    The Consulting Process: Chunking
    The Consulting Process: Executing
    The Consulting Process: Revisiting Value/Cost/Risk
    The Consulting Process: Reporting
    Consulting Knowledge and Skills
         Knowledge of the Business and Functional Business Areas
         Knowledge of Technology
         Skills, Abilities, and Behavior
         Culture, Organization, and Politics
         What Next?
    Epilogue

    Index

    Biography

    Steve Andriole’s career has focused on the development, application, and management of information technology and analytical methodology to complex business problems. These problems have been in government and industry; Dr. Andriole has addressed them from academia, government, his own consulting company, a global insurance and financial services company, and from the unique perspective of a venture capitalist.

    He was the Director of the Cybernetics Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he managed a program of research and development that led to a number of important scientific and technological advances in the broad-based information, decision and computing sciences.

    Dr. Andriole served as the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. where he was responsible for identifying technology trends, translating that insight into the Safeguard investment strategy, and leveraging trends analyses with the Safeguard partner companies to help them develop business and marketing strategies.

    Dr. Andriole was the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President for Technology Strategy at CIGNA Corporation, where he was responsible for the enterprise information architecture, computing standards, the technology research & development program, and data security, as well as the overall alignment of enterprise information technology investments with CIGNA's multiple lines of business.

    He is currently the Thomas G. Labrecque Professor of Business Technology at Villanova University’s Villanova School of Business where he teaches and directs applied research in business/technology alignment and pervasive computing. He is also a founding partner of The Acentio Group, a technology optimization consulting organization comprised of senior business technology professionals.

    He is formerly a Professor of Information Systems & Electrical & Computer Engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a member of the faculty of George Mason University as a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Information Systems & Systems Engineering.

    Some of Dr. Andriole’s thirty books include Interactive Computer-Based Systems Design and Development (Petrocelli Books, Inc., 1983), Microcomputer Decision Support Systems (QED Information Sciences, Inc., 1985), Applications in Artificial Intelligence (Petrocelli Books, Inc., 1986), Information System Design Principles for the 90s (AFCEA International Press, 1990), the Sourcebook of Applied Artificial Intelligence (McGraw-Hill, 1992), a (co-authored with Len Adelman) book on user interface technology for Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. entitled Cognitive Systems Engineering (1995) and a book for McGraw-Hill entitled Managing Systems Requirements: Methods, Tools & Cases (1996). Dr. Andriole’s most recent books include, The 2nd Digital Revolution (IGI Publishing, 2005), Best Practices in Business Technology Management (Auerbach Publishing, 2008) and Technology Due Diligence (IGI Publishing, 2008).

    Dr. Andriole received his BA from LaSalle University and his Masters and Doctorate degrees from the University of Maryland. His masters and doctoral work was supported by a National Defense Education Act fellowship. His Ph.D. dissertation was funded by DARPA.