Archive for November, 2009

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It Takes A Strategic Execution Officer To Get Anything Done Around Here

Monday, November 30th, 2009

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Image Credit CIOs Have Yet Another Hat To Wear: Mr. Make-Sure-The-Project-Is-A-Success

CIOs Have Yet Another Hat To Wear: Mr. Make-Sure-The-Project-Is-A-Success

We all dream of the day that we will get the nod to become CIO — finally we will have arrived. Or will we have? Take just a moment and think about all of those major projects that you’ve see during your career that started out with a bang and ended up failing and going away with a whimper. When you are CIO, things are going be different and that’s because you won’t just be the CIO, you’ll also be the company’s Strategic Execution Officer.

What Have I Signed Up For?

Business processes are like pit-bulls: they really don’t like change and if you try to change them, they are probably going to bit you really, really hard. This is one of the reasons that so many major company initiatives fail — nobody really wants to go to the effort to change.

What’s been missing for far too long has been a Strategic Execution Officer and since so many of today’s major projects involve the IT side of the house, who better to assume this role than the CIO?

In your future role as your company’s CIO / Strategic Execution Officer you will not only be responsible for making sure that the new IT systems go in on time, but also that the company’s processes and the behaviors of the staff are changed so that the new way of doing business actually gets implemented.

Sound challenging? It does to me. That’s why we need to reach out to researchers Dr. Jeanne Ross and Dr. Peter Weill who have taken the time to look into what four things a Strategic Execution Officer needs to do. Let’s see what they recommend.

Create & Manage IT Systems Used For Strategic Initiatives

A CIO will tend to look at a given project and search for ways to get it successfully implemented. A Strategic Execution Officer realizes that in order for the company to be successful, the core processes that allow the company to operate smoothly and efficiently need to be digitized.

This means not just one IT project, but potentially several need to be done in such a way that they support the company as it is today and as it will be tomorrow. Key components of this type of solution include a single well-managed database, a standardized development system that allows the creation of different applications to easily talk to each other, and a solid communications network so that workers can access the data and applications that they need from just about anywhere.

Become A Leader In How The Company Does IT Governance

The CIO / Strategic Execution Officer is the one person in the company who is best situated to see it all. This means that you are going to have to take an active role in the company’s IT governance process.

You are going to have to be able to make some hard calls when it comes to identifying what the company’s IT priorities are. On top of this, you will have to be able to communicate to others in the firm what the different trade-offs are to each decision.

Make Business Units Actually Use Digitized Business Processes

Time to play Mr. Tough-Guy here. As Strategic Execution Officer you are going to have to show up and make each of the company’s business units start to use the new digitized business processes once the implementation is done. This is not going to be easy to do.

We all know how this plays out: a project goes in and then half of the company finds a way to get their jobs done without using the new system because they don’t want to be bothered to learn how the new system works. You must not allow this to happen. If you have to take away the systems that are allowing them to work around the new system, then so be it.

Create Both Structures And Initiatives That Make The Company Change

Making the entire IT organization ultimately report to the Strategic Execution Officer solves the problem of how to motive the IT staff to follow through on a company-wide change. In firms that have multiple CIOs, this is one way to quickly solve a lot of common structural problems.

Getting the business unit leaders to sign up and agree to use the results of a multi-year IT project can be tricky. Identifying and removing real and perceived obstacles is one way to go about doing this. Another is taking the time to talk with each business unit leader in order to make sure that they understand why the change is happening and how they will benefit from it.

What All Of This Means For You

Becoming the CIO of your firm will be a major accomplishment in your IT career. However, far too many of us have become CIOs only to eventually fail at implementing some major company-wide project.

The reason that so many of these projects fail is because the company lacked a Strategic Execution Officer to see the project through from start to finish. This is a role that you are going to have to be willing to step up and play.

As the Strategic Execution Officer you will be responsible for coordinating projects that span the entire company. Your ability to be successful at doing this won’t rest so much on your technical skills as they will rest on you ability to motivate the business unit heads to participate in both the project and its final results. Good luck!

What will a Strategic Execution Officer’s biggest challenge be at your company?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just imagine the day that you become CIO: you’ll be able to shed all of those past associations and friendships that have gotten you to this exalted position and finally you’ll be able to focus on what really matters: forging strong links with your company’s senior management. Well, sure, if you don’t really need to get anything done…

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Happy Thanksgiving — Take The Week Off!

Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Image Credit Here's Hoping That This Week Is Special For Everyone

Here's Hoping That This Week Is Special For Everyone

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week is a great week for you — I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume next week…

For my readers in the U.S., you know that this week is all about family, turkey, and of course football. I’m not sure what it is about turkey that always seems to make everyone fall asleep, but I’m hoping that when I wake up this year the global recession will be but a distant memory, gas will be under $2.50 / gallon, and just maybe the world will have settled down for awhile.

For my international readers, pretty much all of the United States will be taking time off this week to celebrate the arrival of Europeans into the New World. For better or for worse, it’s what has gotten us to where we are today and we think that that’s a good thing.

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Wachovia Can’t Modify Loans: Is This Another CIO Failure?

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Image Credit Wachovia's Mortgage Systems Are Falling Down On The Job

Wachovia's Mortgage Systems Are Falling Down On The Job

Hmm, let me try and remember how this is supposed to go: the IT department exists to serve the rest of the company. If the department is doing its job, then the company should be able to operate smoothly and be able to outperform its competition, right? Over at Wachovia (purchased by Wells Fargo awhile ago) the IT systems are dropping the ball and people are in danger of losing their homes. Sounds like Avid Modjtabai, Executive Vice President, Technology and Operations, for Wells Fargo & Company, has got some explaining to do…

The Problem With Adjustable Rate Loans

This tale of woe starts back in the go-go days of the 1990’s when Wachovia, like just about every other bank, started handing out home loans like candy. They offered them to just about anyone who asked for them no matter if they could really afford them or not.

A lot of folks opted to get what are called Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) . These little babies are great when interest rates are low; however, when there is a global recession and interest rates start to go up, those monthly loan payments can quickly get out of hand. The Obama administration has realized that a lot people are in a bad way, and they’ve made a lot of cash available to banks so that they can convert ARMs to fixed rate mortgages (with a non-changing monthly payment).

If you want to change your loan, all you should have to do is go to your bank and work out a deal with them. Unless your loan is with Wachovia – then things get a bit more complicated.

Marchall Exkblad over at the Wall Street Journal has discovered that a computer glitch in Wachovia’s IT systems is preventing people from being able to modify their ARM loans. Avid Modjtabai, I think that you may have a problem on your hands.

The Problem With Wachovia’s Loan Software

It turns out that Wachovia has been forced to “recode” its computer system. They are saying that this is because of “some of the tweaks to the program” that the U.S. government made. What’s interesting about this excuse is that Wachovia customers have been attempting to get their loans adjusted since June (that’s roughly four months if you’re counting).

In Wachovia’s defense, they are saying that it’s hard to modify existing loans under the government’s guidelines for the $75B foreclosure-prevention plan. Umm, I’m cool with that, but the now-parent company Wells Fargo has been able to modify 11% of their loans in the time that Wachovia has been able to modify only 2% of theirs. What gives?

What The CIO Should Have Done

Once again, let’s review: the IT department and its systems exist to help the company do more and do it quicker. Over at Wachovia, that clearly is not happening right now. What should have been done?

Let’s assume that Ms. Modjtabai got handed a bill of goods back in October of 2008 when Wells Fargo agreed to buy Wachovia. She probably had no way of knowing what state Wachovia’s loan processing software was in when the purchase went down.

The problem comes after that deal was closed. A CIO in this situation needs to eliminate as many unknowns as possible. This means that the first thing that should have been done was a top to bottom audit of Wachovia’s systems: what did they have and what did each system do?

We all know that every unique system that you have to support is going to end up costing you a lot of IT budget that could be better spent on something else. That means that Wells Fargo should have used the results of the audit to create a plan for moving the Wachovia business activities over to Wells Fargo’s existing systems.

I’m not naïve enough to think that this would be easy to do, but in the end that is the job of the CIO – to simplify IT and create a path to move forward. The evidence seems to show that the Wells Fargo and Wachoiva mortgage processing systems are still separate. Whether due to poor design or financial neglect, Wachovia’s systems have not been able to keep up with changes in the market. At the end of the day, that’s the CIO’s job to solve.

What All Of This Means For You

When you become CIO, you need to realize that “the company” is a very fluid thing indeed. What the company looks like one day is not what it will be looking like down the road.

When your company purchases another company you will suddenly be responsible for the IT systems and staff that come along with that company. What you don’t know can kill your IT career.

The moment that the purchase deal closes, you need to be jumping in there with your IT team and turning over every rock in order to find out what you are now in charge of. This has to lead to a plan to merge the IT systems of both companies. You don’t necessarily have to keep the systems that the buying company is using, but you do need to minimize the number of systems that you will be left with.

Nobody ever said that being a CIO was going to be easy – the Wachovia loan processing software bug is just another example that a CIO’s job is never done.

Do you think that the Wachovia loan processing problem is the fault of the Wells Fargo CIO?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

We all dream of the day that we will get the nod to become CIO — finally we will have arrived. Or will we have? When you are CIO, things are going be different and that’s because you won’t just be the CIO, you’ll also be the company’s Strategic Execution Officer.

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Microsoft CIO Sidekick’s T-Mobile Users

Monday, November 16th, 2009
Image Credit
T-Mobile Sidekick Users Are Feeling A Sense Of (Data) Loss

T-Mobile Sidekick Users Are Feeling A Sense Of (Data) Loss

So this story should probably be filed in the “it should have never happened” drawer: Microsoft has lost the information that T-Mobile users of the Sidekick mobile phone entrusted them to store for them. Wait a minute, isn’t this the grand and glorious 21st Century in which data loss like this is never supposed to happen any more? How did Microsoft’s CIO let the ball get dropped like this?

Oops, Your Data’s Gone

Before we spend too much time going after Tony Scott, let’s take a moment and do what they do on CSI: take a look at the crime scene.

For the better part of a week T-Mobile subscribers who use the Sidekick mobile device have been having problems, lots of problems. Specifically, they have been having trouble getting access to their personal information. This has included contact lists, calendar data, photos, etc. Where was all of this data being stored? Why on Microsoft servers of course.

T-Mobile is now reporting that they have been able to restore the ability of the Sidekick to go online, they are also telling their users that they may not be able to recover their personal data. The exact phrase that was used was that the data “almost certainly” had been lost.

How Is This Microsoft CIO’s Fault?

At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility for this lost of countless users’ personal data has to rest of the shoulders of Microsoft’s CIO, Tony Scott. I suspect that that job is a great job until something like this happens. Microsoft got into the business of hosting T-Mobile Sidekick user’s personal data when they bought the company Danger, Inc. back in early 2008.

Microsoft has broken the unwritten rule that hosted data must never be lost or destroyed – when we store things in the cloud, we are trusting the firm doing the storing to make sure that nothing bad happens.

What Does All Of This Mean For You

First off, if you use T-Mobile’s Sidekick device I’d suggest that you start backing up your personal data locally. Secondly, it’s pretty clear that the Danger, Inc. servers that Microsoft took ownership somehow got overlooked in the grand scheme of things.

Every CIO has to have a program in place that lays out step-by-step what the firm needs to do when they purchase another firm – the best example of a company that does this very well is Cisco. I can understand that the Danger, Inc. purchase happened before Tony Scott came on board; however, that is no excuse.

A CIO has to realize that he / she probably doesn’t have everything under control when they take the helm of the IT department. This means that a full audit of all servers being managed and just who is using them has to be one of the first things that a new CIO does.

Yes, Tony will probably survive this data loss disaster and yes, T-Mobile Sidekick users will probably continue to use the devices. However, there could be trust ramifications for the Cloud computing service called Azure that Microsoft is starting up – would you trust them with your data now?

Editor Update: Some Sidekick Data To Be Saved

In all fairness to Microsoft, I must report that on Friday, 10/16/09, Microsoft reported that they had been able to recover some of the lost Sidekick data. I can just imagine the mad scramble and expensive disk recovery resources that were involved in making this happen.

Congratulations to Microsoft for doing the right thing after the fact. Even given this “save”, it’s the CIO’s responsibility to make sure that things like this never happen in the first place.

What is the first thing that Microsoft’s CIO should have done when he realized that they had lost T-Mobile user’s data?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Over at Wachovia (purchased by Wells Fargo awhile ago) the IT systems are dropping the ball and people are in danger of losing their homes. Sounds like Avid Modjtabai, Executive Vice President, Technology and Operations, for Wells Fargo & Company, has got some explaining to do…

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Say Goodbye, Your Database Is Going Away

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Image Credit What Will Your IT Department Do Without Its Databases?

What Will Your IT Department Do Without Its Databases?

You know that database that your company relies on? No, not that one, the other one that is really, really important? Yep, that one – it’s going away, are you ready? It turns out that the databases that we’re using today were not designed for what we are asking them to do. All sorts of things like trying to deal with lots and lots of unstructured data is killing them. Looks like it’s time to go find yourself a new database. Are you ready?

The CIO’s Other Job

When you become CIO you are very quickly going to discover that on top of all of the cost cutting, uptime boosting, and IT team building that you have to do, you have yet another job. This is the job of chief technology visionary. The rest of the company (non-IT parts) are going to be looking at you to be all knowing and predict the (technology) future.

This means that you are going to be constantly learning. You’ll have to keep your fingers in a whole bunch of different pots so that when your CEO boss comes to you and says “I just read something about cloud computing, what does this mean for us?” you’ll have a smart and snappy comeback.

The Deal With Databases

As an example of the type of information that you are going to have to be staying on top of, let’s take a moment and talk about databases. They are the workhorses of the modern IT department. We set them up, pound them with requests, and desperately try to keep their contents secure.

However, we are at a critical junction with databases right now and things are getting ready to change. Are you going to be ready to tell your management and peers why things have to change and how they are going to turn out? If not, then read on.

Back in May of 2008 out at the Claremont Resort in Berkeley, CA, Rakesh Agrawal and 26 other prominent database researchers got together to talk about this very issue. What came out of this meeting is what you need to know.

Causes…

Databases have to change. There are a number of reasons why they need to change and how they need to change. Here are some of the reasons that the brightest minds in the database world think that changes are coming:

  • Big Data: the datasets that we are working with have just become huge. What used to be an exception that was limited to government statisticians or astrophysicists, has now become almost commonplace and today’s databases were never designed to deal with this much data.
  • Big Money In Data Analysis: databases used to be something that ran quietly in the backoffice. However, nowadays databases are operating close to the front lines of business and are responsible for driving corporate profits. The arrival of business intelligence software has turned databases into real-time engines, a job that they were never designed for.
  • Unstructured Data: today’s databases like data that can be broken up into comma delimitated fields. However, a lot of the data that you find in a modern workplace is of the unstructured format: blogs, documents, web pages, etc. The databases that we are using were never designed to deal with data that is in this format.
  • The Arrival Of : Why Use The Cloud?” href=” http://www.theaccidentalsuccessfulcio.com/cloud-computing/cio-cloud-computing-101-why-use-the-cloud”>Cloud Computing: the very architecture of the corporate data center is starting to change. Will the database remain onsite or will it be hosted? How about the data that it is using – where will that be located? What kind of data latency and security issues will this cause?

… and Effects

“Great!” I can hear you saying, so things are going to change. How are they going to change – what will the future look like? The answer is … I don’t know. However, with the help of those smart database researchers we can predict what areas you are going to see the most change in (and thus are where you should be watching):

  • Database Engine changes: it’s got a Hemi! Well, maybe not but today’s database engines have been tuned for specific tasks (OLTP anyone?) and will basically need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to deal with tomorrow’s data needs.
  • Programmer Productivity: no matter how fast your database engine runs, if it takes your database programmers forever to program it, then business will still be moving too slowly. Creating a way for your non-expert database programmers to create good code that can run in a multi-processor environment is going to be a must.
  • Data Harmony: in future databases both structured and unstructured data are going to have to learn to get along with each other. Structured data is not going away even as unstructured data continues to grow. Tomorrow’s databases are going to have to be able to deal ably with both at the same time.
  • The Mobile World: the need to be able to provide real-time services to a large collection of mobile users who will be generating lots of user created data will become a critical function that tomorrow’s databases will need to be able to provide. The need to participate in virtual worlds as a mobile user will only increase the amount of data that will need to be processed.

What All This Means For You

When you become CIO, you are going to instantly be thrust into a spotlight where the rest of the company is going to be looking to you to understand and translate all of the changes that are occurring in IT technology. This will be a new role and in order to do it, you are going to have to start spending time researching what is going to be happening next in IT.

Your database systems are going to be a big part of the IT technology change. The reason that database systems are going to have to change range from the arrival of massive datasets, real-time processing demands, the arrival of unstructured data, and the emergence of cloud computing.

As a CIO you are going to have to be able to determine what changes in the database field you are going to have to watch because they will determine how the databases that you’ll be using tomorrow will operate. The key areas that will require your attention will include database engine changes, programmer productivity, data harmony, and support for mobile applications.

Spending your limited time watching these specific areas will provide you with the key insights that you will need in order to predict the future of database technology. Once you start doing this, you will have become the technology visionary that your firm wants in their CIO.

What function do you hope to add to your databases in the future?
Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So this story should probably be filed in the “it should have never happened” drawer: Microsoft has lost the information that T-Mobile users of the Sidekick mobile phone entrusted them to store for them. Wait a minute, isn’t this the grand and glorious 21st Century in which data loss like this is never supposed to happen any more? How did Microsoft’s CIO let the ball get dropped like this?

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Posted in database | No Comments »

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