1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
July 8, 2010 meeting
Present: David Mann, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Jeff Hecht, Hicham Semaan, Dave Phillips
RJTCompuquest are moving their offices to a new building near the airport at the end of August. We will let you know the location as soon as we know the moving date – the August 12th meeting will still be at their old office.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through October 2010:
8/12/10 What’s new at the desktop Tina Haines
9/9/10 Microsoft road map Hicham Semaan
10/14/10 Next generation WAN Jim Sutter
We still need topics and speakers for November and December.
Topic: Agile Methodology
David Mann opened with the declaration that people were more important than whatever process or methodology you select. However it is good to have a process of choice. Examples of System Development Life Cycle process groups are Agile (MSF for Agile, Scrum) for adaptive processes, and Waterfall for more predictive processes. Agile is more suitable for new product development where the scope gradually emerges and evolves. Waterfall is more suitable for maintaining mature systems with mature business models. Agile means flexibility, not about rushing things, an initial vision and ROM, followed by a number of short sprints (iterations), full customer involvement, frequent check points and releases, multi-track (not sequential assemble line phases), focusing on delivery. It does not mean chaos – many micro-waterfalls, less formal change control after every sprint, and good documentation. Agile is about changing scope and requirements to improve ROI, changing plan and processes to reduce costs, changing solutions for design and performance, changing QA to improve quality, changing deployment to enhance SLA, and adjusting to external changes. Agile is about embracing change. Jim expressed concern about the effect of changes on deployment, especially if it changed the user interface and implied major training changes. David’s handout contains slides showing the difference between the Waterfall approach and the Agile flexible multi short sprint approach. Agile does require a mind-shift. It is more about fixing the budget, developing the scope within that budget, with strict control over adding features, and more flexibility over deadlines. It does imply a change culture, and an environment that accepts occasional failure. Jennifer said that they are downsizing with budget cuts so Agile is very attractive – allowing them to deliver product changes within a strict budget environment. David’s slides contain definitions of roles and responsibilities within the MSF for Agile methodology, and I recommend that you spend some time reading the details.
This was another great presentation and very active discussion – so much so that we ran out of time for the usual round table exchange. Dave's slides are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Friday, July 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
OC CIO Minutes June 10, 2010
1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
June 10, 2010 meeting
Present: Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, William Zauner, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, David Mann, Dave Phillips
RJTCompuquest are moving their offices to a new building near the airport in about a month. We will let you know the location as soon as we know the moving date – the July 8th meeting will still be at their old office.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through October 2010:
7/8/10 Agile methodology David Mann
8/12/10 What’s new at the desktop Tina Haines
9/9/10 Microsoft road map Hicham Semaan
10/14/10 Next generation WAN Jim Sutter
We still need topics and speakers for November and December.
Topic: Comparing Social Networking Sites
Despite his disclaimers (see handout), Jeff presented many useful facts and figures about the social networking scene. Facebook dominates, with MySpace, YouTube and Twitter following far behind. Many of the rest I had never heard of! The estimated population of Facebook by Fall 2010 will be 500M. Jeff included several interesting slides on age distribution of users - not as young as you might think – 25% are between 35 – 44 years old, although it does vary by site. Bebo appeals to a young group (44% less than 18); 64% of Twitter users are 35 or older, as are 61% of Facebook users; average Linkedin users are 44. These sites have obvious commercial potential but what about loss of productivity, what are the controls for usage at work, impact on network bandwidth, and hijacking. The inability to control access and the resulting privacy issues are a major concern. Facebook’s “opt out” approach to privacy is a concern, and Google has a similar problem. What access limits are reasonable for businesses? What are sensible business goals for using social networks? One is to use the tools to build a powerful network of users, customers, contacts and friends. Remember that profiles are for people, pages are for businesses. Jeff’s company launched a new B to C business in 2009, and hired a marketing company to develop a presence on Facebook and Twitter. At the end of his handout, he listed several links and references to the material he presented. This was another excellent presentation.
We asked the members which sites they used and why.
Jeff Reid uses Linkedin all the time for personal and professional networking and found it to be very useful. It helped in making and keeping contacts. He also joined Facebook and Twitter to find out more about them but does not use them very much.
Jennifer uses Linkedin, and belongs to a professional organization user group. She also became a Facebook user, and has concerns as a friend uses Facebook extensively, with 1000s of friends, and she has had to caution all her friends against posting pictures of their kids and families on line.
William does not have a personal Facebook account but has one for the business just to capture the name. He does use Linkedin. A family member regards him as the bad guy in his house since he curtailed the use of Facebook!
Sean complimented Jeff on his presentation. He does use Facebook just to stay in touch with the family. He uses Linkedin a lot professionally. He found the social networks to be amazingly useful when following the Chile earthquake.
Jim said that he is an indiscriminative joiner of social networks because he didn’t want to be called an old fuddy-duddy! Among those that he has joined are Plaxo, Zing, Facebook (very good), and Linkedin (very good and has an “opt in” for security).
David also complimented Jeff on his presentation. He is also a user of Facebook just to stay in touch with the family. For security, his solution is just changing the data when you want to opt out.
Jeff's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
June 10, 2010 meeting
Present: Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, William Zauner, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, David Mann, Dave Phillips
RJTCompuquest are moving their offices to a new building near the airport in about a month. We will let you know the location as soon as we know the moving date – the July 8th meeting will still be at their old office.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through October 2010:
7/8/10 Agile methodology David Mann
8/12/10 What’s new at the desktop Tina Haines
9/9/10 Microsoft road map Hicham Semaan
10/14/10 Next generation WAN Jim Sutter
We still need topics and speakers for November and December.
Topic: Comparing Social Networking Sites
Despite his disclaimers (see handout), Jeff presented many useful facts and figures about the social networking scene. Facebook dominates, with MySpace, YouTube and Twitter following far behind. Many of the rest I had never heard of! The estimated population of Facebook by Fall 2010 will be 500M. Jeff included several interesting slides on age distribution of users - not as young as you might think – 25% are between 35 – 44 years old, although it does vary by site. Bebo appeals to a young group (44% less than 18); 64% of Twitter users are 35 or older, as are 61% of Facebook users; average Linkedin users are 44. These sites have obvious commercial potential but what about loss of productivity, what are the controls for usage at work, impact on network bandwidth, and hijacking. The inability to control access and the resulting privacy issues are a major concern. Facebook’s “opt out” approach to privacy is a concern, and Google has a similar problem. What access limits are reasonable for businesses? What are sensible business goals for using social networks? One is to use the tools to build a powerful network of users, customers, contacts and friends. Remember that profiles are for people, pages are for businesses. Jeff’s company launched a new B to C business in 2009, and hired a marketing company to develop a presence on Facebook and Twitter. At the end of his handout, he listed several links and references to the material he presented. This was another excellent presentation.
We asked the members which sites they used and why.
Jeff Reid uses Linkedin all the time for personal and professional networking and found it to be very useful. It helped in making and keeping contacts. He also joined Facebook and Twitter to find out more about them but does not use them very much.
Jennifer uses Linkedin, and belongs to a professional organization user group. She also became a Facebook user, and has concerns as a friend uses Facebook extensively, with 1000s of friends, and she has had to caution all her friends against posting pictures of their kids and families on line.
William does not have a personal Facebook account but has one for the business just to capture the name. He does use Linkedin. A family member regards him as the bad guy in his house since he curtailed the use of Facebook!
Sean complimented Jeff on his presentation. He does use Facebook just to stay in touch with the family. He uses Linkedin a lot professionally. He found the social networks to be amazingly useful when following the Chile earthquake.
Jim said that he is an indiscriminative joiner of social networks because he didn’t want to be called an old fuddy-duddy! Among those that he has joined are Plaxo, Zing, Facebook (very good), and Linkedin (very good and has an “opt in” for security).
David also complimented Jeff on his presentation. He is also a user of Facebook just to stay in touch with the family. For security, his solution is just changing the data when you want to opt out.
Jeff's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 5-13-2010
1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 13, 2010 meeting
Present: Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Andy King, Tina Haines, Jennifer Curlee, Vinu Gurukar, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, Hicham Semaan, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics from June through October, 2010:
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
7/8/10 Agile methodology David Mann
8/12/10 What’s new at the desktop Tina Haines
9/9/10 Microsoft road map Hicham Semaan
10/14/10 Next generation WAN Jim Sutter
We still need topics and speakers for November and December.
Topic: IT Governance
Quoting Weill & Ross and Gartner, Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, defines IT governance as the processes that ensure effective and efficient use of IT in support of the business – demand governance is primarily a business management responsibility; supply governance is primarily a CIO responsibility. It typically includes IT investment strategy, business and IT alignment, architectural and infrastructure decisions, processes and controls, and oversight. She included a great chart showing a process for building business alignment. Governance is an iterative process. It starts with investment guidelines, a capabilities assessment, and evolves into Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM). Carmella includes portfolio frameworks in her handout. Investment strategies can be categorized into “must do”, “should do”, and “like to do”. She shared with us the IT investment governance model, project approval and change management flow charts they use at Corinthian Colleges. Her handout also includes the guiding IT architectural principals, oversight and project metrics. Cassetta explained that implementing a governance process at Corinthian Colleges was an opportunity to form one from the ground up, as there was nothing in place when she took over as CIO. She was able to use her experience at Ingram Micro and Barnes & Noble, but things changed when they went public and a new management team took over. I recommend that you read her handout in detail. This was an excellent presentation and can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
The following is a summary of points made during the discussion.
Hicham mentioned that since his is a small shop, they have an undocumented structure in place, and responsibility rests with the individual. He enjoyed the presentation and will implement a more defined decision making process.
David complimented Cassetta on an excellent presentation, and everyone concurred. They do not have a formal governance process in place. They started a steering committee but this has disintegrated into a complaints session. They do try to align IT and the business, and the process could be better defined and adapted to the culture.
Jeff liked the definition of the process, and believes that it is a question of maturity. In 9 years, the company has expanded 4 times, and now they have 5 businesses that run fairly independently, although 4 of the 5 share a common infrastructure. This was the same in the prior company he worked at – 6 separate businesses with a common infrastructure.
Vinu saw a lot of similarities between his company and Jeff’s, although there has been a movement from regional management to 4 business units using shared services. They have multiple steering committees, each of which meet 2 or 3 times a year.
Jennifer went through the process of forming a steering committee, consisting of managers who report to the various executives. They meet quarterly and every project is categorized as engineering (high priority), ERP, infrastructure (they don’t get to vote on these). She still touches base very regularly with each of the executives on an informal basis.
Tina has implemented a governance process in 2 companies, one successfully and the other not so. They defined capital expenditure limits, and implemented steering committees. They used a scoring system to identify the relative merits of each project, and focused on the Top 10, although there was an exceptions meeting.
Andy has implemented a steering committee to resolve supply and demand issues. Having a governance process is a big help. Having the CEO involved is also a big help. Top of the list are bug fixes; quick wins come second; planned projects are scheduled annually.
Jim recalled that Xerox loved the formality of a governance process in a very competitive environment. Rockwell was the opposite – very down to earth, less formal processes, the word “strategy” was never used for IT projects, but they did have a steering committee. The winery adopts a portfolio management approach, multi year project planning and budget implications. The strategy is to buy rather than build, although this does involve legal and time delays.
Sean said that in a prior position, he work for a lady who embraced technology, and who became very involved with the governance process. She was promoted because of her commitment to technology, and eventually made it to CEO.
Great presentation and handout, and a great and active discussion.
See you on May 13 , 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 13, 2010 meeting
Present: Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, Andy King, Tina Haines, Jennifer Curlee, Vinu Gurukar, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, Hicham Semaan, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics from June through October, 2010:
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
7/8/10 Agile methodology David Mann
8/12/10 What’s new at the desktop Tina Haines
9/9/10 Microsoft road map Hicham Semaan
10/14/10 Next generation WAN Jim Sutter
We still need topics and speakers for November and December.
Topic: IT Governance
Quoting Weill & Ross and Gartner, Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, defines IT governance as the processes that ensure effective and efficient use of IT in support of the business – demand governance is primarily a business management responsibility; supply governance is primarily a CIO responsibility. It typically includes IT investment strategy, business and IT alignment, architectural and infrastructure decisions, processes and controls, and oversight. She included a great chart showing a process for building business alignment. Governance is an iterative process. It starts with investment guidelines, a capabilities assessment, and evolves into Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM). Carmella includes portfolio frameworks in her handout. Investment strategies can be categorized into “must do”, “should do”, and “like to do”. She shared with us the IT investment governance model, project approval and change management flow charts they use at Corinthian Colleges. Her handout also includes the guiding IT architectural principals, oversight and project metrics. Cassetta explained that implementing a governance process at Corinthian Colleges was an opportunity to form one from the ground up, as there was nothing in place when she took over as CIO. She was able to use her experience at Ingram Micro and Barnes & Noble, but things changed when they went public and a new management team took over. I recommend that you read her handout in detail. This was an excellent presentation and can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
The following is a summary of points made during the discussion.
Hicham mentioned that since his is a small shop, they have an undocumented structure in place, and responsibility rests with the individual. He enjoyed the presentation and will implement a more defined decision making process.
David complimented Cassetta on an excellent presentation, and everyone concurred. They do not have a formal governance process in place. They started a steering committee but this has disintegrated into a complaints session. They do try to align IT and the business, and the process could be better defined and adapted to the culture.
Jeff liked the definition of the process, and believes that it is a question of maturity. In 9 years, the company has expanded 4 times, and now they have 5 businesses that run fairly independently, although 4 of the 5 share a common infrastructure. This was the same in the prior company he worked at – 6 separate businesses with a common infrastructure.
Vinu saw a lot of similarities between his company and Jeff’s, although there has been a movement from regional management to 4 business units using shared services. They have multiple steering committees, each of which meet 2 or 3 times a year.
Jennifer went through the process of forming a steering committee, consisting of managers who report to the various executives. They meet quarterly and every project is categorized as engineering (high priority), ERP, infrastructure (they don’t get to vote on these). She still touches base very regularly with each of the executives on an informal basis.
Tina has implemented a governance process in 2 companies, one successfully and the other not so. They defined capital expenditure limits, and implemented steering committees. They used a scoring system to identify the relative merits of each project, and focused on the Top 10, although there was an exceptions meeting.
Andy has implemented a steering committee to resolve supply and demand issues. Having a governance process is a big help. Having the CEO involved is also a big help. Top of the list are bug fixes; quick wins come second; planned projects are scheduled annually.
Jim recalled that Xerox loved the formality of a governance process in a very competitive environment. Rockwell was the opposite – very down to earth, less formal processes, the word “strategy” was never used for IT projects, but they did have a steering committee. The winery adopts a portfolio management approach, multi year project planning and budget implications. The strategy is to buy rather than build, although this does involve legal and time delays.
Sean said that in a prior position, he work for a lady who embraced technology, and who became very involved with the governance process. She was promoted because of her commitment to technology, and eventually made it to CEO.
Great presentation and handout, and a great and active discussion.
See you on May 13 , 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 4-8-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
April 8, 2010 meeting
Present: Dave Phillips, Sanjeev Sobti, Tina Haines, Vinu Gurukar, Joe Cracchiolo, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown,
The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
We still need discussion topics and volunteers for the rest of the year.
Check the updated spreadsheet for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: Developing and IT Strategy
Dave Phillips conveyed Rich Hoffman’s apologies to the group for not been able to introduce the topic for discussion, but he had to attend a meeting in Europe. In the early ‘90s when Rich was CIO at Yamaha, he hired Dave to assist in the development of their IT strategy. It’s a topic near and dear to Dave, and to this CIO Round Table, which has explored the issues several times in the past. When he joined Stanford University in 1970 to become Director of the Campus Computing Center, Dave’s first assignment was to head up the project to develop a long-term strategic computing plan for the Stanford community. He spared the group the agony of reading the tomb that was produced but shared with them the letter that Bill Miller, the VP Research and Provost, wrote and distributed to the deans, department heads and principle investigators at Stanford, spelling out the scope of the project and its importance. It was and still is essential to get executive management sponsorship of such a project. When Dave started the Peer Consulting Group in 1988, one of his first assignments was to lead the development of an IT strategic plan for Fluor Daniel, and the handout contains several pages from different reports and presentations involved in that project, to ensure that:
- the executive sponsorship is visible to the management of the company
- the scope and value of the project is defined
- it is driven by business requirements
- it is developed in a reasonable time frame
- it is flexible enough to accommodate change
The Critical Success Factors approach was selected to identify the business drivers, and he described how this approach was implemented at Fluor. These CSFs were used to determine the applications strategy, which in turn provided focus for the individual strategies for data, systems acquisition, hardware, communications networks, etc., for the project environment and the global company. Be careful not to underestimate the effort required to produce the list of CSFs, and the IT strategies. Dave then touched on prior presentations to this group on this topic. On April 8, 2004, Richard Cormier, then CIO at Edwards Lifesciences, agreed that the business should drive the strategy but that technology is expanding the options for revenue growth. He identified several approaches to developing an IT strategy including Michael Treacy’ Business Process Focus Model, where leaders choose one of 3 core business process (operational excellence, product leadership, or customer intimacy) to focus on. On Oct 13, 2005, Subbu Murthy started his presentation by asking what is strategy, the “how” to get to the vision. Then you can use frameworks like John Zachman’s Framework for Enterprise Architecture to define the “what”, the initiatives and projects that need to be completed. On April 12, 2007, Jeff Reid described Conexant’s approach to IT strategic planning and he too listed several process methodologies to help you develop an IT strategy, including Weill and Broadbent’s approach. He stressed the advantages of selecting a process that matches the business and its culture.
In the general discussion, a number of points were made. It pays to know where you are today relative to your competition, and to identify what are your business requirements for change. Within IT, and early step might be to produce an inventory of software and hardware. Within the business, separate the business processes into major categories, such as those supporting operations or manufacturing, those which affect sales/distrbution/customers, and those used by the supporting service organizations. If an ERP system appears to be needed, identify the benefits and problems that would be solved. If you go that direction, take advantage of the best practices that are codified into the system. Using the All in One approach can reduce the time to implement a new ERP system. Perhaps a phased approach to implementation works better for you.
Now that she is on the recruiting side, Tina has noticed a movement away from implementing ERP systems, towards defining business information strategies.
Jennifer says that IT works horizontally across the organization, often acting as the catalyst to resolving differences between departments, so it’s important that the CIO develop alignments and good relationships with other department managers.
See you on May 13 , 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626
April 8, 2010 meeting
Present: Dave Phillips, Sanjeev Sobti, Tina Haines, Vinu Gurukar, Joe Cracchiolo, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown,
The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
We still need discussion topics and volunteers for the rest of the year.
Check the updated spreadsheet for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: Developing and IT Strategy
Dave Phillips conveyed Rich Hoffman’s apologies to the group for not been able to introduce the topic for discussion, but he had to attend a meeting in Europe. In the early ‘90s when Rich was CIO at Yamaha, he hired Dave to assist in the development of their IT strategy. It’s a topic near and dear to Dave, and to this CIO Round Table, which has explored the issues several times in the past. When he joined Stanford University in 1970 to become Director of the Campus Computing Center, Dave’s first assignment was to head up the project to develop a long-term strategic computing plan for the Stanford community. He spared the group the agony of reading the tomb that was produced but shared with them the letter that Bill Miller, the VP Research and Provost, wrote and distributed to the deans, department heads and principle investigators at Stanford, spelling out the scope of the project and its importance. It was and still is essential to get executive management sponsorship of such a project. When Dave started the Peer Consulting Group in 1988, one of his first assignments was to lead the development of an IT strategic plan for Fluor Daniel, and the handout contains several pages from different reports and presentations involved in that project, to ensure that:
- the executive sponsorship is visible to the management of the company
- the scope and value of the project is defined
- it is driven by business requirements
- it is developed in a reasonable time frame
- it is flexible enough to accommodate change
The Critical Success Factors approach was selected to identify the business drivers, and he described how this approach was implemented at Fluor. These CSFs were used to determine the applications strategy, which in turn provided focus for the individual strategies for data, systems acquisition, hardware, communications networks, etc., for the project environment and the global company. Be careful not to underestimate the effort required to produce the list of CSFs, and the IT strategies. Dave then touched on prior presentations to this group on this topic. On April 8, 2004, Richard Cormier, then CIO at Edwards Lifesciences, agreed that the business should drive the strategy but that technology is expanding the options for revenue growth. He identified several approaches to developing an IT strategy including Michael Treacy’ Business Process Focus Model, where leaders choose one of 3 core business process (operational excellence, product leadership, or customer intimacy) to focus on. On Oct 13, 2005, Subbu Murthy started his presentation by asking what is strategy, the “how” to get to the vision. Then you can use frameworks like John Zachman’s Framework for Enterprise Architecture to define the “what”, the initiatives and projects that need to be completed. On April 12, 2007, Jeff Reid described Conexant’s approach to IT strategic planning and he too listed several process methodologies to help you develop an IT strategy, including Weill and Broadbent’s approach. He stressed the advantages of selecting a process that matches the business and its culture.
In the general discussion, a number of points were made. It pays to know where you are today relative to your competition, and to identify what are your business requirements for change. Within IT, and early step might be to produce an inventory of software and hardware. Within the business, separate the business processes into major categories, such as those supporting operations or manufacturing, those which affect sales/distrbution/customers, and those used by the supporting service organizations. If an ERP system appears to be needed, identify the benefits and problems that would be solved. If you go that direction, take advantage of the best practices that are codified into the system. Using the All in One approach can reduce the time to implement a new ERP system. Perhaps a phased approach to implementation works better for you.
Now that she is on the recruiting side, Tina has noticed a movement away from implementing ERP systems, towards defining business information strategies.
Jennifer says that IT works horizontally across the organization, often acting as the catalyst to resolving differences between departments, so it’s important that the CIO develop alignments and good relationships with other department managers.
See you on May 13 , 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Thursday, March 25, 2010
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 3-11-10
1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
March 11, 2010 meeting
Present: Jeff Reid, Mike Siersema, Andy King, Jennifer Curlee, Hicham Semaan, Jeff Hecht, Vinu Gurukar, Carmella Cassetta, Jim Sutter, Joe Cracchiolo, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Mike Siersema, CSC, to the meeting as our guest subject matter expert. The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
4/08/10 Developing an IT strategy (Open discussion)
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
We still need discussion topics and volunteers for the rest of the year.
Check the updated spreadsheet for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: On-Demand / Cloud computing
Jeff Reid, Clean Energy, introduced our quest - subject matter expert, Mike Siersema, who is a senior technical director at CSC. Copies of his presentation slides were not available at the meeting but are attached, as is a Gartner paper on the subject. You can find a number of white papers on cloud from CSC at http://www.csc.com/lefreports. Mike started by asserting that market forces are driving IT delivery from in-house integrated technology to outside providers assembling and managing it. Cloud computing is one promising way, which is forecast to grow from 5% in ’09 to 10% by ’13 of worldwide IT spending. The NIST definition is “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” The fundamental characteristics include on-demand self service, accessed via the Internet, and paid for on an “as you go” based on use. Certain types of IT services lend themselves to this model more than others, such as email, test environments, Amazon.com, AWS, salesforce.com. It appeals to both ends of the spectrum - Government departments are big users and so are start-ups. Usage can be classified as SaaS, infrastructure services, storage, application software platforms, business process services and testing environments – all with significant growth forecasts. The key challenges to cloud computing adoption are security, compliance, control, performance, vendor lock-in, integration, availability and connectivity. This can be summarized as a lack of trust, which CSC address with their Cloud Trust Protocol services - see Mike’s slides for more detail. Probably the best approach for most companies is to have an orchestrated hybrid of public clouds and private clouds. I recommend you take the time to read Mike’s presentation slides for more detail.
Jeff Reid, Clean Energy, just recently joined his company, which has under-spent on IT in recent years. They are not using cloud computing yet but are starting to move in a major way. Cloud computing is an attractive option, as is virtualization. At Conexant they were aware of the promise of cloud computing, especially as they acquired and spun off many companies.
Andy King, Exemplis, thanked Mike for his presentation and for clarifying the differences between SaaS, etc. and cloud computing in general. This will come in handy as he prepares a presentation to his various user divisions on the pros and cons of cloud computing for things like project management, storage, etc.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they are a small manufacturing company in 5 separate buildings, all within 2 miles of each other. They have 350 email accounts and 80% of the email is internal. They do have Internet network problems so should they be using cloud computing solutions, or virtualization? They are looking at using cloud computing for DR.
Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, said that they use applications like CRM and email in the cloud. They agree with all the listed concerns such as low security but are using the cloud where there is a low need for integration, and for public services, such as Sharepoint. The ROI is very good but he is not sure how easy the cloud vendors will let you move to using another vendor.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, looked really hard at using cloud computing, and would like to use it for email, Sharepoint and CRM. He feels that there are still problems with DR and archiving. Security and integration are major problems. Still, the ROI is compelling.
Vinu Gurukar, Edwards Lifesciences, said that they are dipping their toes into cloud computing for things like project management and Salesforce.com. His IT guys are being invited to industry meetings on the subject. He would love to have nurses and Doctors use the cloud for data capture. Security is a problem.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said that they have outsourced their infrastructure to ACS, and would like to get an application up quickly on the cloud in a test environment. Something like gmail and Google apps for their students. They are worried about their lack of leverage with the gmail vendor.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that there is not a lot to report from his client - Microsoft CRM is being used by one division. Web sites that are customer facing are hosted outside the firewall. He recently sat through a full day of project review for 2010 and there were no green or no cloud projects in sight. He is on the board at WaveMaker which offers a development environment that deploys applications to the Cloud. He mentioned an article in the CIO Magazine, where Bechtel’s CIO reported that the list prices for Amazon’s cloud service (EC3) were less than his new center.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thanked Mike Siersema for a good presentation. The customers for cloud computing are those who are moving rapidly, as you can bring things together quickly at low cost.
Thank you, Mike, for a very interesting and interactive presentation.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
March 11, 2010 meeting
Present: Jeff Reid, Mike Siersema, Andy King, Jennifer Curlee, Hicham Semaan, Jeff Hecht, Vinu Gurukar, Carmella Cassetta, Jim Sutter, Joe Cracchiolo, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Mike Siersema, CSC, to the meeting as our guest subject matter expert. The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
4/08/10 Developing an IT strategy (Open discussion)
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
We still need discussion topics and volunteers for the rest of the year.
Check the updated spreadsheet for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: On-Demand / Cloud computing
Jeff Reid, Clean Energy, introduced our quest - subject matter expert, Mike Siersema, who is a senior technical director at CSC. Copies of his presentation slides were not available at the meeting but are attached, as is a Gartner paper on the subject. You can find a number of white papers on cloud from CSC at http://www.csc.com/lefreports. Mike started by asserting that market forces are driving IT delivery from in-house integrated technology to outside providers assembling and managing it. Cloud computing is one promising way, which is forecast to grow from 5% in ’09 to 10% by ’13 of worldwide IT spending. The NIST definition is “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” The fundamental characteristics include on-demand self service, accessed via the Internet, and paid for on an “as you go” based on use. Certain types of IT services lend themselves to this model more than others, such as email, test environments, Amazon.com, AWS, salesforce.com. It appeals to both ends of the spectrum - Government departments are big users and so are start-ups. Usage can be classified as SaaS, infrastructure services, storage, application software platforms, business process services and testing environments – all with significant growth forecasts. The key challenges to cloud computing adoption are security, compliance, control, performance, vendor lock-in, integration, availability and connectivity. This can be summarized as a lack of trust, which CSC address with their Cloud Trust Protocol services - see Mike’s slides for more detail. Probably the best approach for most companies is to have an orchestrated hybrid of public clouds and private clouds. I recommend you take the time to read Mike’s presentation slides for more detail.
Jeff Reid, Clean Energy, just recently joined his company, which has under-spent on IT in recent years. They are not using cloud computing yet but are starting to move in a major way. Cloud computing is an attractive option, as is virtualization. At Conexant they were aware of the promise of cloud computing, especially as they acquired and spun off many companies.
Andy King, Exemplis, thanked Mike for his presentation and for clarifying the differences between SaaS, etc. and cloud computing in general. This will come in handy as he prepares a presentation to his various user divisions on the pros and cons of cloud computing for things like project management, storage, etc.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they are a small manufacturing company in 5 separate buildings, all within 2 miles of each other. They have 350 email accounts and 80% of the email is internal. They do have Internet network problems so should they be using cloud computing solutions, or virtualization? They are looking at using cloud computing for DR.
Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, said that they use applications like CRM and email in the cloud. They agree with all the listed concerns such as low security but are using the cloud where there is a low need for integration, and for public services, such as Sharepoint. The ROI is very good but he is not sure how easy the cloud vendors will let you move to using another vendor.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, looked really hard at using cloud computing, and would like to use it for email, Sharepoint and CRM. He feels that there are still problems with DR and archiving. Security and integration are major problems. Still, the ROI is compelling.
Vinu Gurukar, Edwards Lifesciences, said that they are dipping their toes into cloud computing for things like project management and Salesforce.com. His IT guys are being invited to industry meetings on the subject. He would love to have nurses and Doctors use the cloud for data capture. Security is a problem.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said that they have outsourced their infrastructure to ACS, and would like to get an application up quickly on the cloud in a test environment. Something like gmail and Google apps for their students. They are worried about their lack of leverage with the gmail vendor.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that there is not a lot to report from his client - Microsoft CRM is being used by one division. Web sites that are customer facing are hosted outside the firewall. He recently sat through a full day of project review for 2010 and there were no green or no cloud projects in sight. He is on the board at WaveMaker which offers a development environment that deploys applications to the Cloud. He mentioned an article in the CIO Magazine, where Bechtel’s CIO reported that the list prices for Amazon’s cloud service (EC3) were less than his new center.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thanked Mike Siersema for a good presentation. The customers for cloud computing are those who are moving rapidly, as you can bring things together quickly at low cost.
Thank you, Mike, for a very interesting and interactive presentation.
Monday, February 22, 2010
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 02-11-10
1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
February 11, 2010 meeting
Present: Jim Sutter, Scott Campbell, Sanjeev Sobti, Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reid, William Zauner, Hicham Semaan, Vinu Gurukar, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Sanjeev Sobti, Virco, and Vinu Gurukar, Edwards Lifesciences, to the meeting. The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
3/11/10 On-demand computing Jeff Reid
4/08/10 Developing an IT strategy Rich Hoffman
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
We still need discussion topics and volunteers for the rest of the year.
Check the updated spreadsheet for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: e-Collaboration, and the role of Web 2.0
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, started by identifying business pressures, like globalization, the green initiatives, and cost cutting, which encourage e-Collaboration. His 3rd slide lists business drivers and the IT developments that enable them. For instance, globalization was enabled by the Internet, Wide Area Nets, e-mail, etc., all to support business growth. The strategy depends on whether the company strives for customer intimacy, or product innovation, or operational excellence, which determines whether they invest in people, product development or process improvement. He took us through a series of slides that describe process as requirements and business rules, supported by applications/software, which need an infrastructure/platform to run on. But it’s never that easy! The 21st century organization tends to have less hierarchy, more teams and empowerment (it’s OK to break the rules!), and is network-based. There are many workshop support products like Lotus Notes/Exchange/Outlook and blogs, wikis and social networks. There is a new generation of software, which is platform independent and Web 2.0 based. Web 2.0 facilitates connections, relationships, context and helps resolve ambiguities. There is a growing adoption of Web 2.0 by companies such as Texas Instruments and Stormhoek Vineyards – check Jim’s slides for more information on these and other applications. Jim's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Each attendee was asked to share with us their use of e-Collaboration and of Web 2.0.
Scott Campbell, First American Trust, said that there is a culture at First American that seems to exclude collaboration at any level, and so use of these kinds of tools is not encouraged. He really enjoyed the topic – it was a good refresher for him in how to collaborate with others to your advantage.
Sanjeev Sobti, Virco, described his company as a manufacturing company of 2,000 people and you would think that collaboration would be natural. This is not so – in fact the individual departments seemed to be against the concept.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they use lots of collaboration tools such as wikis and blogs, but not many of the popular ones. There is a lot of collaboration with their offshore partner, but with little control so there is some concern about exposure of information when using public Web 2.0 tools. HR is not for it, and has developed a policy statement against it.
Jeff Reid said when he was at Conexant, they made heavy use of collaboration tools such as IM with their India and China partners. They did not make much use of the social networking tools. At Toyota Material Handling, everything was locked down. Now he has opened a Twitter account just to become familiar with the tool and its potential use in a corporation.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that Operations chose not to encourage use of collaboration tools, but not so in IT where they use them fairly extensively. They use My-page on Sharepoint for the department. He thanked Jim for the presentation.
Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, that they encourage the use of the tools, such as IM, Sharepoint, Facebook, and Twitter. They found that they needed more structure to be effective. It can be very productive but he sees both sides of that issue, and is concerned about potential time wasting. They also put training tools on the web. They have had problems with people at home using work tools to respond to questions.
Vinu Gurukar, Edwards Lifesciences, said that since they are a medical device company, they are highly regulated. The R&D department wants to collaborate with many people, but all they have is email and twitter messaging. The industry demands validation and regulation. Another challenge is the recognition by HR that use/availability of these tools can be a good attraction and retention feature for hiring new talent. How do blogs, wikis, and the like, fit best into this environment?
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, that they do use a wiki-based tool within each department, but HR wants to block the use of any tool at home if someone is on sick leave or on a leave of absence. They do block the use of social networking sites at work, and also have software to track usage by keystrokes. They do use blogs for marketing products and to conduct forums.
Thank you, Jim, as always for a very good presentation and handout.
See you on March 11, 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
February 11, 2010 meeting
Present: Jim Sutter, Scott Campbell, Sanjeev Sobti, Jeff Hecht, Jeff Reid, William Zauner, Hicham Semaan, Vinu Gurukar, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Sanjeev Sobti, Virco, and Vinu Gurukar, Edwards Lifesciences, to the meeting. The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
3/11/10 On-demand computing Jeff Reid
4/08/10 Developing an IT strategy Rich Hoffman
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
6/10/10 Social networking site comparisons Jeff Hecht
We still need discussion topics and volunteers for the rest of the year.
Check the updated spreadsheet for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: e-Collaboration, and the role of Web 2.0
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, started by identifying business pressures, like globalization, the green initiatives, and cost cutting, which encourage e-Collaboration. His 3rd slide lists business drivers and the IT developments that enable them. For instance, globalization was enabled by the Internet, Wide Area Nets, e-mail, etc., all to support business growth. The strategy depends on whether the company strives for customer intimacy, or product innovation, or operational excellence, which determines whether they invest in people, product development or process improvement. He took us through a series of slides that describe process as requirements and business rules, supported by applications/software, which need an infrastructure/platform to run on. But it’s never that easy! The 21st century organization tends to have less hierarchy, more teams and empowerment (it’s OK to break the rules!), and is network-based. There are many workshop support products like Lotus Notes/Exchange/Outlook and blogs, wikis and social networks. There is a new generation of software, which is platform independent and Web 2.0 based. Web 2.0 facilitates connections, relationships, context and helps resolve ambiguities. There is a growing adoption of Web 2.0 by companies such as Texas Instruments and Stormhoek Vineyards – check Jim’s slides for more information on these and other applications. Jim's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Each attendee was asked to share with us their use of e-Collaboration and of Web 2.0.
Scott Campbell, First American Trust, said that there is a culture at First American that seems to exclude collaboration at any level, and so use of these kinds of tools is not encouraged. He really enjoyed the topic – it was a good refresher for him in how to collaborate with others to your advantage.
Sanjeev Sobti, Virco, described his company as a manufacturing company of 2,000 people and you would think that collaboration would be natural. This is not so – in fact the individual departments seemed to be against the concept.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they use lots of collaboration tools such as wikis and blogs, but not many of the popular ones. There is a lot of collaboration with their offshore partner, but with little control so there is some concern about exposure of information when using public Web 2.0 tools. HR is not for it, and has developed a policy statement against it.
Jeff Reid said when he was at Conexant, they made heavy use of collaboration tools such as IM with their India and China partners. They did not make much use of the social networking tools. At Toyota Material Handling, everything was locked down. Now he has opened a Twitter account just to become familiar with the tool and its potential use in a corporation.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that Operations chose not to encourage use of collaboration tools, but not so in IT where they use them fairly extensively. They use My-page on Sharepoint for the department. He thanked Jim for the presentation.
Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, that they encourage the use of the tools, such as IM, Sharepoint, Facebook, and Twitter. They found that they needed more structure to be effective. It can be very productive but he sees both sides of that issue, and is concerned about potential time wasting. They also put training tools on the web. They have had problems with people at home using work tools to respond to questions.
Vinu Gurukar, Edwards Lifesciences, said that since they are a medical device company, they are highly regulated. The R&D department wants to collaborate with many people, but all they have is email and twitter messaging. The industry demands validation and regulation. Another challenge is the recognition by HR that use/availability of these tools can be a good attraction and retention feature for hiring new talent. How do blogs, wikis, and the like, fit best into this environment?
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, that they do use a wiki-based tool within each department, but HR wants to block the use of any tool at home if someone is on sick leave or on a leave of absence. They do block the use of social networking sites at work, and also have software to track usage by keystrokes. They do use blogs for marketing products and to conduct forums.
Thank you, Jim, as always for a very good presentation and handout.
See you on March 11, 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Monday, January 18, 2010
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 01-14-10
1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 14, 2010meeting
Present: Robert Bobojco, Scott Campbell, Larry Godec, Jennifer Curlee, John Mooney, Hicham Semaan, Andy King, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, William Zauner, Sean Brown, David Mann, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Scott Campbell, First American Trust, and Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, to the meeting. The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
1/14/10 IT alignment with the CEO/business Sean Brown/Robert Bobojco
2/11/10 e-Collaboration, with web 2.0 Jim Sutter
3/11/10 On-demand computing Jeff Reid
4/08/10 Developing an IT strategy Rich Hoffman
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
We still need volunteers for the rest of the year. Check the updated spreadsheet that I will send to you in the next few days for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: IT alignment with the CEO/business
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, introduced Robert Bobojco as our guest speaker and subject matter expert. Today’s economic climate presents an opportunity for IT to evaluate its alignment with the business. The question is HOW – how do we develop a strategy which is aligned? How do we get the CEO and CIO to be aligned? How do we get a statement of direction? How do we document alignment? Alignment is a continuous process, and a perception that can be measured. If IT is not aligned, it is regarded as a cost (which can be reduced), not as a business enabler. Business strategy is about growth, customers, market, competition, operational efficiency, performance analysis and decision support. IT strategy is about platforms, budget, TCO, vendors, initiatives, projects, resources and skills. We need a translation process to support the business strategy in a structured, methodical way, to create IT strategy, objectives, initiatives, projects, solutions and capabilities. But IT strategy not only supports the business and the market and customers, it must also anticipate technology enhancements, and software and hardware vendors release strategies and capabilities.
Robert’s slides lead us through an alignment process and I recommend that you take the time to review them in detail. If you follow the process that he describes, you can end up with a proactive IT, working on tangible improvements, which are outward focused, and become regarded as a business enabler and partner. It is up to you to take the initiative. Robert's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
I asked each attendee to tell us if they were aligned with the business and if so, what was the most important step or problem that they had to overcome to become aligned.
Larry Godec, First American, felt that his IT department is aligned with the business, and with the CEO. In the last 6 months, First American created a business strategy document. The one reference to IT was the IT infrastructure strategy and resulting cost savings from embracing the virtual server concept. Robert’s presentation was very good and it reminds Larry to go back to each Division president to make sure that IT understands their goals and objectives, and is positioned to support them.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, has divided up IT into groups reflecting the way the company is organized – one supporting the customer interface, another the manufacturing groups in the company, and herself and local staff supporting the financial and management group, including the CFO and the CEO. The biggest problem thwarting the alignment process is the reluctance of the divisions to talk with one another.
John Mooney, Pepperdine University, agreed that alignment is a process, not an event. Playing catch-up is not good, so sometimes you are ahead of the game, and sometimes you are not, so it’s very important to build a highly agile capability within IT. It doesn’t work well if IT takes total responsibility – a division should own the project(s) designed to support it, and be enabled by IT.
Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, said that he wears two hats in his company – CEO and CIO. As CEO he sees that he is part of the problem! The CIO’s problem is the need to communicate with the other executives, to develop relationships, to become friends, so that everybody understands that we are all on the same side of the table when it comes to solving problems.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, said that he has found that the more his IT department is aligned with the business, the less stressed he is. The biggest problem he has is to get face time with the CEO to make sure that he is aligned. Then he has the problem of staying aligned with each business group. He liked the presentation and the formality suggested by the process that Robert described.
Jeff Reid said that the biggest problem he found with alignment was the change of CEO. The new man always changes the business strategy, objectives and plan, which means that IT has to be nimble to get back in alignment. The process is a continuous one as companies either sell parts of the company, or acquire new companies, and expect IT to be able to handle both options with relative ease.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that his company is a very interesting place to work at, as the owners are forever acquiring things, or changing things. They don’t have a formal strategy, but they do have underlying principles – always focus on customer service, be the best at what they do, and keep improving. As a result IT has to focus on being nimble, agile and to implement infrastructure changes in anticipation of need.
William Zauner, JAMS, hopes that his IT function is aligned with the business. They do go through an annual budgeting and plan cycle, which starts with presenting a draft to the CEO for discussion. They need to do a better job of making sure that they aligned with the other divisions and business managers. For some reason, it becomes the responsibility of CIO to make sure this happens.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thanked Robert for an excellent presentation. He has found that the best way to make sure you are aligned not only within the company but also within the industry is to reach out to other organizations to see what they are doing, and feed that back within your own organization. It takes work but is worth doing.
David Mann, Word & Brown, also thanked Robert for his presentation – he got a lot out of it. He thinks that they are aligned but it takes a lot of work, not only on the technical end of things but also the political aspect, because everyone is trying to compete within the company for relatively scarce resources. Open communications becomes the key.
Scott Campbell, First American Trust, said that he is responsible for supporting the commercial banking division in First American, and they have recently got a new President, so the issue of alignment is immediately before him. He enjoyed the presentation especially the tangible, structured nature of the approach, and the need to meet and work at a peer level with the other division managers to make sure that they are meeting their requirements.
Thank you, Robert, for a very good presentation and handout.
See you on February 11, 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 14, 2010meeting
Present: Robert Bobojco, Scott Campbell, Larry Godec, Jennifer Curlee, John Mooney, Hicham Semaan, Andy King, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, William Zauner, Sean Brown, David Mann, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Scott Campbell, First American Trust, and Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, to the meeting. The minutes of this and other meetings are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to other material, when available.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics in 2010:
1/14/10 IT alignment with the CEO/business Sean Brown/Robert Bobojco
2/11/10 e-Collaboration, with web 2.0 Jim Sutter
3/11/10 On-demand computing Jeff Reid
4/08/10 Developing an IT strategy Rich Hoffman
5/13/10 IT Governance Carmella Cassetta
We still need volunteers for the rest of the year. Check the updated spreadsheet that I will send to you in the next few days for unassigned topic suggestions.
Topic: IT alignment with the CEO/business
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, introduced Robert Bobojco as our guest speaker and subject matter expert. Today’s economic climate presents an opportunity for IT to evaluate its alignment with the business. The question is HOW – how do we develop a strategy which is aligned? How do we get the CEO and CIO to be aligned? How do we get a statement of direction? How do we document alignment? Alignment is a continuous process, and a perception that can be measured. If IT is not aligned, it is regarded as a cost (which can be reduced), not as a business enabler. Business strategy is about growth, customers, market, competition, operational efficiency, performance analysis and decision support. IT strategy is about platforms, budget, TCO, vendors, initiatives, projects, resources and skills. We need a translation process to support the business strategy in a structured, methodical way, to create IT strategy, objectives, initiatives, projects, solutions and capabilities. But IT strategy not only supports the business and the market and customers, it must also anticipate technology enhancements, and software and hardware vendors release strategies and capabilities.
Robert’s slides lead us through an alignment process and I recommend that you take the time to review them in detail. If you follow the process that he describes, you can end up with a proactive IT, working on tangible improvements, which are outward focused, and become regarded as a business enabler and partner. It is up to you to take the initiative. Robert's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
I asked each attendee to tell us if they were aligned with the business and if so, what was the most important step or problem that they had to overcome to become aligned.
Larry Godec, First American, felt that his IT department is aligned with the business, and with the CEO. In the last 6 months, First American created a business strategy document. The one reference to IT was the IT infrastructure strategy and resulting cost savings from embracing the virtual server concept. Robert’s presentation was very good and it reminds Larry to go back to each Division president to make sure that IT understands their goals and objectives, and is positioned to support them.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, has divided up IT into groups reflecting the way the company is organized – one supporting the customer interface, another the manufacturing groups in the company, and herself and local staff supporting the financial and management group, including the CFO and the CEO. The biggest problem thwarting the alignment process is the reluctance of the divisions to talk with one another.
John Mooney, Pepperdine University, agreed that alignment is a process, not an event. Playing catch-up is not good, so sometimes you are ahead of the game, and sometimes you are not, so it’s very important to build a highly agile capability within IT. It doesn’t work well if IT takes total responsibility – a division should own the project(s) designed to support it, and be enabled by IT.
Hicham Semaan, Quickstart, said that he wears two hats in his company – CEO and CIO. As CEO he sees that he is part of the problem! The CIO’s problem is the need to communicate with the other executives, to develop relationships, to become friends, so that everybody understands that we are all on the same side of the table when it comes to solving problems.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, said that he has found that the more his IT department is aligned with the business, the less stressed he is. The biggest problem he has is to get face time with the CEO to make sure that he is aligned. Then he has the problem of staying aligned with each business group. He liked the presentation and the formality suggested by the process that Robert described.
Jeff Reid said that the biggest problem he found with alignment was the change of CEO. The new man always changes the business strategy, objectives and plan, which means that IT has to be nimble to get back in alignment. The process is a continuous one as companies either sell parts of the company, or acquire new companies, and expect IT to be able to handle both options with relative ease.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that his company is a very interesting place to work at, as the owners are forever acquiring things, or changing things. They don’t have a formal strategy, but they do have underlying principles – always focus on customer service, be the best at what they do, and keep improving. As a result IT has to focus on being nimble, agile and to implement infrastructure changes in anticipation of need.
William Zauner, JAMS, hopes that his IT function is aligned with the business. They do go through an annual budgeting and plan cycle, which starts with presenting a draft to the CEO for discussion. They need to do a better job of making sure that they aligned with the other divisions and business managers. For some reason, it becomes the responsibility of CIO to make sure this happens.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thanked Robert for an excellent presentation. He has found that the best way to make sure you are aligned not only within the company but also within the industry is to reach out to other organizations to see what they are doing, and feed that back within your own organization. It takes work but is worth doing.
David Mann, Word & Brown, also thanked Robert for his presentation – he got a lot out of it. He thinks that they are aligned but it takes a lot of work, not only on the technical end of things but also the political aspect, because everyone is trying to compete within the company for relatively scarce resources. Open communications becomes the key.
Scott Campbell, First American Trust, said that he is responsible for supporting the commercial banking division in First American, and they have recently got a new President, so the issue of alignment is immediately before him. He enjoyed the presentation especially the tangible, structured nature of the approach, and the need to meet and work at a peer level with the other division managers to make sure that they are meeting their requirements.
Thank you, Robert, for a very good presentation and handout.
See you on February 11, 2010 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
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