Business Value Of IT

Defining the Business Value of a Project

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 25, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

I’m following a project management meme lately; while freely admitting that I’m oversimplifying some complex topics, I will forge ahead with … project “value”. At work, we’ve been talking about the classic challenge of putting a business value on a project. I call it a “classic” challenge because it’s a basic requirement for every prioritization [...]

Chargebacks Redux – Some Good May Come Of It

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 9, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Okay – to be fair, that really wasn’t the end of the chargebacks conversation. One of my cohorts suggested that we each come up with an argument counter to our position; I needed to come up with something “good” about chargebacks. Actually, it’s quite easy to come up with the one good thing; the only [...]

Yet Another Discussion on IT Chargebacks

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 7, 2007 ⋅ One comment

It felt anachronistic, getting into a surprisingly good conversation on the pros and cons of IT chargebacks this past week … We’re not seriously thinking about it (thank goodness), but a group of us did go through the intellectual exercise of discussing the good/bad/ugly of such an approach. Unfortunately, most of the “debate” focused on [...]

Open Source Insights on Enterprise Software Business Models

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 15, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

A recent Slashdot posting pointed to a presentation from EclipseCon earlier this month, given by Brent Williams, an equity research analyst who used to be in the software business. A few things really caught my eye … Take some time to flip through the original presentation; there are some interesting insights about the nature of [...]

Defining an Effective IT Metrics Framework

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 21, 2007 ⋅ One comment

Had a really good conversation about metrics the other day. We’ve been discussing ways to express how our systems are performing, delivering value, and staying available – and I’d like to use the same general structure for all systems, regardless of function (transactions, integrations, analytics) or platform (Wintel, AS/400, Open Systems). For each type of [...]

Who Pays for IT Infrastructure? Business projects!

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 16, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Earlier this year, I attended a meeting where differences of opinion came out – all in a good natured way. We got into some interesting semantic discussions; some folks have a fairly absolutist way of thinking about IT investments and projects. I insisted, for example, that an IT project whose sole purpose is to upgrade [...]

Subdivide a huge project list to simplify the prioritization process

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 27, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

A classic problem for many project-oriented organizations (IT, R&D, Engineering, Operations) … how can resource prioritization be simplified, yet repeatable? It’s a fairly involved topic, but a common approach is to group projects into a workable number of “chunks” … we’ll use the term Initiatives. How will this help? Challenge: Clarify the team’s priorities, alignment, [...]

You can run but you can’t hide

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 5, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

I sent out notes to folks talking about my new situation, and some came back with interesting comments. Here’s one from W, a brilliant guy with Big-6 background and plenty of business acumen. However, he (like me) is a coder at heart, and really wants to focus on the technology (not like me). More power [...]

Free as in … the Open Source Refrain – Improved!

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 23, 2005 ⋅ One comment

I’m not going to recount the history and foundations of open source software, just point out that the word “free” has long been a point of contention when folks talk about “free” software. For clarity, the open-source crowd will refer to … Free (as in Speech), meaning the user’s freedom to run, copy, distribute a [...]

Sell your Boss – Some Tech Observations

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 30, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Saw this great post from Hyatt (referred from this blog, definitely worth syndicating) re: how to get decisions / results out of your manager / boss. Great stuff, pay attention to the details here, all of it is right on. A few additions I’d make to the list … Keep it short – just like [...]