Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans—you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
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A successful business intelligence (BI) outsourcing strategy requires a clear understanding of the value proposition. A benefits analysis to assess the gains of outsourcing should include the value of coming "online" more quickly with a new BI application; the cost saved by not having to build and maintain inhouse BI expertise; and the value inherent in the vendors' experience and ability to avoid perils and pitfalls.
In my previous Advisor (see "The Mythical Business Case -- Part 1: The Limits of Rational Decisions," 8 March 2006), I presented the not-so-uncommon phenomenon of tweaking formal business case analysis to fit (rather than prove) the IT investment decisions that have already been made.
Reputation is a major corporate asset that is often valued much more than the tangible assets of the corporation itself. Buying a corporation's reputation is as important a consideration as buying its assets. When Phillip Morris bought Kraft Foods for US $13.1 billion, it wanted Kraft's reputation and was willing to pay four times Kraft's physical assets to get it.
One critical issue that arises in the move to agile methods is organization. Since some of these issues differ between product organizations (such as software ISVs) and IT organizations, I will discuss some general guidelines and then how they apply to each type of organization. This first Advisor on agile organizations will focus on the first guideline (of the six outlined below) of empowered customer-facing teams.
"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either." This quote from Ben Franklin came to mind as I sat bemused while trying to outwardly show some sympathy to my government colleague as he attempted to log on to his agency's network. Some 30-plus minutes later, he was able to log in. Next came the process of asking the network for permission to start checking for his e-mail. This is always an adventure as well, since this activity might take another 30 minutes to complete.
Technology and business conditions are creating an environment that favors rapid response, collaboration, and loosely knit modular organization. This trend can be seen at all levels, from the supply of individual contract labor up to "constellations" of enterprises brought together for a common purpose.
Sadly, I believe that the data management (DM) community has fallen down when it comes to ensuring data quality within the vast majority of organizations. Yes, these people talk the talk, but they don't seem to walk it. They claim that data quality is important, and they're right about that. They also claim that they should be responsible for ensuring data quality, which also seems fair. But, as we can see by the myriad data challenges faced within most organizations, their vision begins to fail.