OC CIO Minutes November 14, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

November 14, 2013 meeting

Present:        Jeff Crowell, Jim Sutter, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reed, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through December:

11/14/13       IT Governance                                       Jeff Crowell, uGovernIT -

                               Demand, Project Portfolio, Service Portfolio Management

12/12/13       Microsoft update                             Hicham Semaan,                       Quickstart                               

Topic:          IT Governance – establishing key processes in the SMB client space

Jeff started his presentation by describing the CIO’s view of IT Governance. The 3 competing, concurrent activities are:

-       responding to normal service and project requests,

-       contributing to strategic initiatives to increase revenues,

-       and do more with less. 

There are frameworks for IT Governance (CoBIT, ITIL, COSO, CMM)) but it depends on the maturity of the company. Check Jeff’s slides 7 – 21, and his case study. You will need a process to rank competing projects, and how they relate to the business strategy.  The case study results point out the need for executive leadership, a realistic grasp of what can be done in a given timeframe, and a willingness to outsource some functions.  There is a need for portfolio management using strategic objectives and correlation matrices.

This presentation led to a lively discussion. Jeff’s handout includes many slides as part of an Appendix, which he did not have time to cover in the meeting. His slides are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

 

Thank you, Jeff, for a very good presentation on an interesting topic. 

OC CIO Minutes October 10, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

October 10, 2013 meeting

Present:        Keith Golden, William Zauner, Sean Brown, Jeff Crowell, Jim Sutter

 

The following is a list of topics and speakers through December:

10/10/13       Evolving role of the CIO                          Keith Golden, Econolite

11/14/13       IT Governance                                       Jeff Crowell, uGovernIT

-       Demand, Project Portfolio, Service Portfolio Management

12/12/13       Microsoft update                                    Hicham Semaan, Quickstart                               

Topic:          Evolving role of the CIO

Keith Golden introduced the topic – “The Ever Evolving Role of the CIO”.   He described the context – the changing demographics, the economic outlook, and the technology trends.  Keith outlined the “50 Years of IT Leadership” and characterized the 4 classic CIO types.  He, then, projected the future environment and the CIO paradox.  Keith took us through the writings of Martha Heller and a significant discussion ensued.

Finally, Keith outlined future skill sets a CIO must consider developing and constantly refining.  He urged CIOs to “forge the right relationships – to do it all the time….not when you need to.”  His slides outline the 9 traits of the CIO of future.

Keith consulted a number of experts in preparing the presentation.  Very interesting input came by way of executive search professionals whose practice focuses on CIO placements. 

Terrific presentation and lively discussion.  Keith's slides are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

OC CIO Minutes September 12, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

September 12, 2013 meeting

Present:        Jeff Hecht, Jim Sutter, Sean Brown, Jennifer Curlee, Jon Grunzweig, Jon Strittmater, Keith Golden, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through December:

9/12/13         BYOD                                                    Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown

10/10/13       Evolving role of the CIO                          Keith Golden, Econolite

11/14/13       IT Governance                                       Jeff Crowell, uGovernIT

-       Demand, Project Portfolio, Service Portfolio Management

12/12/13       Microsoft update                                    Hicham Semaan, Quickstart                               

Topic:          BYOD

 Slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
 

Jeff Hecht stated the basic issue – getting the balance right between expanding mobility and controlling the risks.  There is a growing demand from employees (and executives) to use their own devices, which they are familiar with, to access corporate assets.  Many of these devices are not supported by the IT department, and trying to support all the varieties is costly.  Having the employees buy their own devices appears attractive at first glance.  There are concerns about corporate data security, device control, and backups. Employees don’t trust the company to look after their personal data.  There are many security concerns – see slide 5, but 2/3rds of the companies are going ahead with trying to support BYOD anyway.  Many vendors state that they have solved the problems but Jeff was not so sure.  See slides 9-13.  The goal of a BYOD program is to monitor, control and protect devices, applications, networks, and data.  You can’t avoid it, so draft a pilot policy and make sure the executives are with and behind the program.  Be ready to communicate the essence of the program, and to update regularly.  It might pay to audit your company to see where you are on controlling the effects of BYOD.

Thank you, Jeff, for a great presentation and discussion.

 

OC CIO Minutes August 8, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

August 8, 2013 meeting

Present:        Jim Sutter, Julie Hubbard, Sean Brown, Jon Strittmater, Jennifer Cheng, Keith Golden, Jon Grunzweig, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

We welcomed Julie Hubbard (Edwards Lifesciences), Jon Strittmater (Mindspeed), and Jennifer Cheng (Studio C Multimedia) to their first meeting. The following is a list of topics and speakers through October:

8/08/13         Internet of Things (IOT)                          Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting

9/12/13         BYOD                                                    Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown

10/10/13       Evolving role of the CIO                          Keith Golden, Econolite      

Topic:          Internet of Things

Jim Sutter defined IOT as a network of uniquely identifiable objects in a Internet-like structure. It was born between 2008 – 09, and now there are twice as many connected devices as there are humans on this planet, and this will double by 2015. Lou Gerstner, CEO IBM, forecasted this in 1995.  Check out the July 22 article in InformationWeek.  Check out Jim’s slides 7 & 8 for the most basic representation and list of enabling technologies.  Jim’s slides are worth reviewing in detail.  You will find that the IOT will be useful in many verticals such as security, transportation, health care, utilities, manufacturing, supplies and facility management (slides 16/17).  If you are worried about your yacht, use this to monitor whilst you are away!  Microsoft has updated Windows OS for IOT.  GE has expanded its use of IOT.  There are many examples of the use of IOT paying off. 

 
We asked those present to share with us how they are using IOT.  Julie said that Edwards is very much engaged in using IOT to track devices, to do machine visioning for surgical devices to understand root causes and improve response times.  The iPad is the hand-tool of choice. Sean said that he has worked with global pharmaceutical companies who track all products at a more granular level than substance.  Keith said that Econolite is experimenting with using it to control vehicles at intersections, in place of lights.  It won’t be long before Google will drive the car! Jon sees lots of potential in buildings, but it won’t happen until it becomes code.  Jeff worked for GE in the ‘80s when they were experimenting with lights out buildings for control purposes rather than monitoring.  Jim closed the meeting with a reference to a home for cats in Colorado, equipping old Victorian houses to track all aspects of cat care!

Good presentation and discussion – thank you, Jim.  Jim's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio  .

 

OC CIO Minutes July 11, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

                                July 11, 2013 meeting

Present:        Joel Manfredo, Sean Brown, Jon Grunzweig, Jeff Hecht, Jim Sutter, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers July through October:

7/11/13         Technology Business Management         Joel Manfredo, Acies Consulting

8/08/13         Internet of Things (IOT)                          Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting

9/12/13         BYOD                                                    Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown

10/10/13       Evolving role of the CIO                          Keith Golden, Econolite      

Topic:          Technology Business Management

Joel Manfredo introduced the What, Why, and How of TBM by listing Gartner’s 10 Top Trends for 2013, and the critical tech trends for the next 5 years (Slide 3).  The basic question is will IT exist in 5 years time?  The most important things a CIO can do is to understand the business needs, and actively measure business satisfaction.  TBM means running IT as a business within a business.  The TBM Council’s mission is to collaborate, educate, and benchmark.  Joel’s slides are very rich in content and touch on the framework, disciplines and index (Slides 10-16).  The primary driver behind TBM is to free up resources to enable innovation.  The CEO’s hierarchy of IT needs is shown on Slide 18, which also shows the CIO’s innovation sweet spot.  Slide 22 shows the process by which one determines the right level of IT operational spending.  This is followed by several slides on transparency, service pricing, catalog and costing.  The last slide gives more information on the TBM Council.

Excellent presentation and discussion. – thank you, Joel.  Joel's presentation slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio  .

OC CIO Minutes June 13, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

June 13, 2013 meeting

Present:        John Mooney, Sean Brown, John Alvertos, Keith Golden, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Hecht, Jim Sutter, Jon Grunzweig, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers June through October:

6/13/13         Preparing for Cloud Computing               John Mooney, Pepperdine

7/11/1           Technology Business Management        Joel Manfredo

8/08/13         Internet of Things (IOT)                           Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting

9/12/13         BYOD                                                    Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown

10/10/13       Evolving role of the CIO                          Keith Golden, Econolite      

Topic:          Realizing business value from Cloud Computing

John Mooney is Department Chair and Associate Professor at Pepperdine University.

He recently took a sabbatical at CISR, where he worked as a research affiliate at MIT Sloan School of Management.  He shared with us his findings with regard to Cloud Computing.  A copy of his slides is attached. Cloud computing enables … on-demand, network access with minimal effort to a shared pool of … computing resources.  Slide 4 is an interesting cloud computing taxonomy by Forrester.  The cloud computing case study was done in cooperation with Allergan, where they tried to answer whether the company, the IS department, and their platform was ready to double in size over the next 5 years.  They defined the business capabilities required, the key performance goals for IS, and adopted a “Cloud First” policy to meet their needs.  Agility is key.  They tried to analyze when would Allergan be ready to consider the Cloud.  They did an architectural review for the technology and security, and a vendor due diligence in both 2010 and 2012.  They discovered that the benefits from the Cloud approach were not just cost, but things like increased responsiveness, speed of deployment and business agility.  They also discovered that there were challenges to success, such as data security concerns, immaturity of the vendors, reliability, and long term cost uncertainties.  One of the key questions was what management practices were needed to realize business value from the cloud approach.  They came up with 6 imperatives to prepare for the Cloud:

-                re-define the IT value proposition from efficiency to agility

-                re-focus the enterprise architecture

-                re-allocate funding from CapEx to OpEx

-                re-structure IT governance

-                re-think the purpose of IT

-                re-engineer the IT organization

The implication is for IS to adapt or become obsolete.

 

What a good topic for a future discussion! 

This was a great presentation and I thoroughly recommend that you take the time to study the slides which can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio  .

 

OC CIO Minutes May 10, 2013

1993-2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

May 10, 2013 meeting

 

Present:        Mario Leone, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jon Hahn, Jennifer Curlee, Joel Manfredo, Robert Hsu, Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reid, Jeff Crowell, Ron Glickman, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through June:

5/9/13           ERP Implementation Experiences Mario Leone, Apri Technology Partners         

6/13/13         Preparing for Cloud Computing    John Mooney, Pepperdine

By May 17^th suggest one topic (or more) for future meetings, one which you would like to hear discussed, and suggest a date if you plan to prepare the introduction.

Topic:          ERP Implementation Experiences

Sean Brown introduced Mario Leone, APRI, our guest speaker for the meeting.  Mario is a very experienced IT executive who has worked for many substantial clients, including companies like Ingram Micro, and has implemented several ERP systems.  His introduction focused on ERP Governance, Methodology and case studies.  A copy of his slides is attached and adds substance to this summary.  Selecting a new ERP is transformational, as its purpose is to overcome the faults of current systems, improve business processes and procedures, expand global governance, minimize risks, and prepare for the future, whether that includes an IPO or making acquisitions.  Moving to a new ERP is not easy – see Slide 3.  Before starting on an ERP project, a business process and IS review is imperative – you must know why you are starting an ERP project and must get the executive management team behind it.  The next step is to select an ERP solution, which meets the objectives.  It is important to launch the project properly, with the right mixture of IT personnel, capable user representation, and experienced consultants.  And that’s only the beginning!  Slides 4, 5 and 6 summarize these points very nicely.  The rest of Mario’s presentation expands on these concepts, identifies the need for a structured approach and a project strategy.  Excellent presentation. 

Several of the attendees had experience with major project implementation, including ERP projects, and had these points to share:

-       make sure it’s clear why you are about to proceed with such a major project

-       is the IS organization ready for this?

-       keep it simple; identify the minimum you are trying to achieve

-       use a dedicated team of good people, not people who are about to be laid off

-       high user support is critical

-       CEO and executive team support and backing is critical

-       rarely do you achieve all the benefits

-       avoid going back to analyze how much of the goals you achieved

-       switch consulting partners if it is not working

-       before implementation, make sure you unit test and walk through a few days in the life of the business to identify and correct what might go wrong

I am sure there was more wisdom expressed but not captured in these notes!

Good meeting, great presentation and active participation. His slides are at:

http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

 

OC CIO Minutes April 11, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

April 11, 2013 meeting

Present:        Scott Korgan, Sean Brown, Joe Desuta, Jennifer Curlee, Jim Sutter, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through June:

5/9/13           ERP Implementation Experiences Mario Leone

6/13/13         Preparing for Cloud Computing    John Mooney, Pepperdine

John Mooney has a conflict for the May date and asked to be rescheduled to June.

Topic:          Social Media

Sean Brown introduced Scott Korgan, Sevenly, to the group.  Scott is an active coder and developer who works mainly in the start-up world.  He is currently working for Sevenly, which is company who provides services for charity organizations based on the use of social media for marketing.  Depending on your point of view, social media is a supplement or replacement for email.  Social media has changed the way people think, especially if you are of the younger generation.  Sevenly provides services to one charity a week, services like funding and awareness, and products like tee-shirts.  It was started about 2 years ago and now has 35 employees.  It has been profitable since Day One.  Every Monday at 10:00 a.m., they select the charity of the week, and focus totally on providing services to that charity for that week.  A charity can only repeat once every 6 months.  Sevenly’s strategy is to buy, grow and/or create niche social media properties; respond to as many as possible; and obsess over crafting content.

Our thanks to Scott who lead an interesting discussion on an interesting topic.

 

OC CIO Minutes March 14, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

March 14, 2012 meeting

 

Present:        Charles Wilson, Sean Brown, Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jim Sutter, Joel Manfredo, Jon Grunzweig, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through May:

3/14/13         Big Data – an update      
                     Charles Wilson

4/11/13         Social Media        
                     SeanBrown/Scott Korgan

5/9/13           Open

6/13/13         Preparing for Cloud Computing   
                     John Mooney

John Mooney has a conflict for the May date and asked to be rescheduled.

Topic:          Big Data – and update

Charles Wilson gave us an update on Big Data, which was based in part on his presentation in Oct 2011 on Business Analytics.  Sean took pictures of Charles’ white board summaries and these are attached.  Charles stated that more than 50% of analytics projects fail, either because of expectations being too high, or that the results are not good.  What do you need for success?  Charles feels that a positive ROI is good and it has to be adopted by the company.  What do we need for adoption? He proposed 3 qualities that have to be present:

It has to be easy to use – this often means visualization (specialized and interactive) is good. 

It has to have business value.  The logic has to rely on solid processes using tools like ERP, and to be calculation intensive to provide financial consolidation.

It has to fast, which means using more main memory rather than disk, in order to be dynamic, which implies a balance between cost and size of the data base.

Charles proposed 7 core dimensions of a successful project – see ..attachment …082042.jpg.  These are customer, product, time, entity/geography, measure, source and scenario.

This is a complex topic and we had an active discussion of the options and alternatives.

 

OC CIO Minutes February 14, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

February 14, 2012 meeting

Present:        Subbu Murthy, Sean Brown, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Hecht, Keith Golden, Jeff Crowell, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through May:

2/14/13         IT Governance                             Subbu Murthy, uGovernIT

3/14/13         Big Data - update                         Charles Wilson

4/11/13         Social Media                                Sean Brown/Scott Korgan

5/9/13           Preparing for Cloud Computing    John Mooney, Pepperdine

 

Topic:          IT Governance

Subbu Murthy started by defining IT Governance as a subset of corporate governance, focused on IT, necessitated partly because of initiatives like Sarbanes–Oxley.  From a CIO ‘s point of view, the scope involves all of IT so that everything IT does helps the company achieve its objectives.  This includes services requests and new project requests, because of business changes, technology changes, regulatory changes and new ideas for creating value.  One thing for certain – there is always more work than available $ or resources.  So the goal of IT Governance is to make sure that IT $ and time are spent on the right projects, at the right time.  CIO’s are faced with business as usual (service requests), the need to do more with less, and the need to increase business revenues.  Big company CIOs cope with this differently from S/M CIOs – see Subbu’s slides 8-11.  On demand CIO services are gaining traction – slides 12/13.  Subbu’s slides cover a governance framework, a maturity framework, and the need for an integrated solution.  They are well worth reading and prompted a lively discussion.   His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

 

Thank you, Subbu, for a very interesting presentation. 

 

OC CIO Minutes January 19, 2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

January 10, 2012 meeting

 

Present:        Jon Grunzweig, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Subbu Murthy, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Hecht, Keith Golden, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips

 

The following is a list of topics and speakers through May:

2/14/13         IT Governance                             Subbu Murthy, uGovernIT

3/14/13                                                 

4/11/13         Social Media                                Sean Brown/Scott Korgan

5/9/13           Preparing for Cloud Computing    John Mooney, Pepperdine

Action items from the survey:

1.             I will contact each member who didn’t respond to the survey to find out why they didn’t respond and why they don’t attend that often.

2.             Each member present will invite at least one new CIO (or equivalent) to join and become an active member of the group.

3.             Other occasional speakers could include a CEO, and/or CFO, lawyers, executive recruiters, sales managers, and vendor management.

Topic:          Controlling Project Costs

Jon used the Endeavor’s last mission as a project that had some problems despite the planning that went into preparing the best route through LA to it’s final parking spot.  Why is this so like a number of IT projects? Too many moving parts?  Changes in scope? Incomplete scope and estimates? Poor cooperation between IT and the business?  Unscheduled events? Issues with the vendor and/or supplier? Lack of sufficient training?  Unfortunately this is true even on projects that have been done before, or at least similar to ones that we have done before.  Jon focused on the accountability cycle, on control of scope, hours charged and the timeliness of cost tracking.  Several members spoke to the notion of projects being a 3-legged stool – scope, cost and schedule – any changes to one affects the other two.  You either design to a budget or budget to a design.  Perhaps performance incentives help.  Jon describes some of his foundations for control in slide 14, and onwards. Scope can be defined in terms of deliverables. Each deliverable should include testing and integration, deployment and training, (and on-going support?).  Costs include estimated costs by deliverable and actual cost tracking by deliverable in a timely fashion. Sometimes fixed price contracts work when the deliverable is the responsibility of a vendor or supplier. Schedule is again defined by deliverable, and by deliverable dependency.  Jon’s presentation was well received and led to an active discussion.  The slides are posted at:  http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

 

OC CIO Minutes December 13, 2012

1993-2013

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table

December 13, 2012 meeting

 

Present:        Joel Manfredo, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Jon Grunzweig, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, Keith Golden, Dave Phillips

 

The following is a list of topics and speakers through January:

 

1/10/13         Controlling Project Costs                        Jon Grunzweig

We discussed the responses to the survey. In summary, the positives include choice of topics, interaction with other CIOs, formal presentations and lively interaction, full participation. The negatives include the attendance, which sometimes is small.  To improve the situation, I will contact each member who didn’t respond to the survey, and each member present will invite a new CIO (or equivalent) to join and become an active member of the group. Other occasional speakers could include a CEO, and/or CFO, lawyers, executive recruiters, sales managers, and vendor management to speak on what they expect from CIOs and the IT department.  Despite the comment of “same old, same old”, topics for 2013 could include Cloud computing, mobile, social media, SCRUM, offshore, IT Governance.  Two members volunteered to present the following: John Mooney (Six imperatives to Cloud Computing}, and Sean Brown (Social Media). We are looking for more volunteers!

Topic:          Branding and Marketing IT

Joel Manfredo started by warning IT to take control of your brand, or others will.  The first slide was an overview of the organization, what it took to right the ship, the goals, methods and results – be transparent, or be gone.  The next few slides are the IT Service Management path to maturity from 2009 through 2012.  The need for an IT Brand is to become relevant, to move past the traditional back-office to the front office.  The Press suggests that IT is irrelevant, but we do good work!  So we need to communicate better, and run like a business. What is a brand?  See slides 12, 13 but not 14 or 15!  How to develop a brand is covered in the next several slides.  Noel then described the process they went through at the County of Orange.  He showed us their Marketing Brochure, which is very good.  He showed us several other documents including the IT Service Catalog, which all carried the brand, the same look and feel.  We all complimented Joel on another good presentation.  His slides can be found at:

http://www.slideshare.net/occio