Yesterday I went to a Digital Transformation event run by Gartner
It was an interesting workshop, and introduced by looking at some of the drivers behind digital transformation, and some of the leadership issues, as well as some advice on how to start an initiative. As always, these workshops are made all the more interesting by having
people there from a mix of sectors, and this session we had
representatives from public sector, education and manufacturing. Here are a few notes I took:
Technology is everywhere, and has moved beyond the screen. The first 3D printed components are now in production Boeing 777s - technologies such as 3D printing are no longer for fun! Information and intelligence are being added to many products, gamification is being added to digital learning systems.
Leadership in this era is becoming more complex. There are paradoxes:
Operational excellence vs business innovation. So, you must improve the business model that feeds you while creating a new one that won't let you starve.
Acting quickly to gain an advantage requires long term pattern recognition. It's not just about acting in the moment but having a long term insight and collecting the right data.
Working together beyond organisational borders while creating a united offering. we need to interact and collaborate with many different organisations and groups, but offer a coherent service to our customers eg Apple have a very coherent app store, but a huge number of people outside the company are contributing to it.
You are providing a product or service at a moment in time, but the digital value of that product needs to evolve over time.
Digital business and services are technology dependent, but technology alone is irrelevant. Social sciences, culture etc are just as important
Digital leadership therefore requires leaders to move beyond the management of definitive goals, and into a world defined by numerous contradicting objectives with more team based delivery.
Digital business transformation is not a one off, therefore it is dangerous to call it a programme, which implies it has a finish. It is really a culture change.
In setting up a digital transformation initiative start with the why? Why are we doing it. Define the digital business principles.
Then look at the driver, what do you want to get out of it? Is it business growth? Customer experience? Mobility? Operational excellence? IoT?
Then come up with a design plan. What are you going to do?
Get commitment to embark on a journey, not to finish it.
What is the blueprint? Narrow all of the ideas down to the digital business opportunities you want to develop.
Then look at what operating model you are going to use - how are you going to do it. Various ways you can begin including building a bimodal capability or implementing a framework for working with small vendors. Establish the governance, and consider whether infrastructure and support changes are needed.
Leave the "how" till last.
The rest of day was spent doing exercises - looking at how digital transformation might work on a few different case studies. Interesting day, and very relevant to the digital transformation programme (oops, mustn't call it a programme), we are about to set up.
Showing posts with label Gartner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gartner. Show all posts
Friday, 4 December 2015
Friday, 13 November 2015
Home again
Well the conference is finished, we've had the closing keynote, the exhibition stands are packed away, and all of the signs are being taken down. It is a huge conference - several thousand attendees (about 6 I think), and hundreds of Gartner staff. It's a great place to hear about new things, network, attend workshops, and just generally immerse yourself in all things digital.
Takeaways for me included looking at how we might take advantage of the Internet of Things, whether wearables have any place in education and if so, what at the ethical implications, how can we use data and algorithms to improve our services, and most of all - we need to get digital!
And of course, I got to ride on a Segway again. Wouldn't be a trip abroad without a Segway ride. Can't wait for the UK to catch up with the rest of the world and allow them to be ridden here ;-)
Takeaways for me included looking at how we might take advantage of the Internet of Things, whether wearables have any place in education and if so, what at the ethical implications, how can we use data and algorithms to improve our services, and most of all - we need to get digital!
And of course, I got to ride on a Segway again. Wouldn't be a trip abroad without a Segway ride. Can't wait for the UK to catch up with the rest of the world and allow them to be ridden here ;-)
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
Data aftermath of the Ebola crisis
Occasionally it's good to listen to a case study from a different sector to your own, and this afternoon was such an occasion. We listened to Medicin sans Frontiers tell us how they've started to modernise their IT use.
MSF have 35000 employees worldwide. The bulk of them are out in the field. $1.48bn turnover. Big organisation. 15% annual growth. 90% of their budget is spent on 384 projects in 64 countries, often without Internet connection. Established in France 40 years ago by French doctors. Email was a revolution for them. Used to have cassette tapes posted to them in the field, with recordings of what to do, which could be 2 months old!
Have 5 HQs, 5 heads of ICT. Shadow IT has proliferated. Now need to get more digital. Mobile, smart devices everywhere. Many countries have jumped the PC phase and gone straight to smart phones. They are 5 years behind the curve because they liked stability. Only permitted Skype in 2014, despite being used for years. Migrating to Office 365 in 2016.
Started a knowledge management project. They have so much knowledge and experience. Joint project between ICT, general management and learning and development.
Started with small bite bite sized chunks: the Ebola review was a high priority. They were heavily involved in Ebola response. This video shows how much. And I hadn't appreciated the size of the treatment centre they built in Liberia
Pushed to their limits operationally. Imagine the effect on their meta data. They barely had time to write emails. Huge amount of unstructured information. No file structures. 500,000 unstructured emails and documents. Had to be reviewed to pull out the information. No-one had seen Ebola on this scale before.
The review had to go from launch to live in 2.5 months. Hired archivists and purchased enterprise search software, Knowliah. This was their first step into a bigroject like this. Had a full time project management and 2 key user facilitators.
Defined a context information model with 3000 key words and 900 synonyms. did full text analysis and indexing of all unstructured info. Tagging, filtering and cleaning. Removed duplicates, out of scope documents.
Everyone underestimated complexity, including the supplier. Had issues with confidentially, where to store. Decided to build servers in house, but slow. Would have been faster if trusted the supplier. Had to get access to people's email inboxes, which included personal stuff.
Knowliah were the supplier. Asked them to do the extraordinary, adding wikis, advanced search, delete, mail conversation IDs etc at short notice.
Created an email mountain just doing the project! Email was the wrong thing to use.
They met the time and budget, but had extended scope. Went from launch to live in 2.5 months.
Now have excellent information retrieval system. For example, can now find situation reports embedded in emails and pull out health promotion presentations in all languages.
Lessons leaned:
In house project team vital
Relationship with supplier vital
Preclean documents before migrating
Knowledge management is not just about IT, but you can't get anywhere without IT
One proven project can tip the perception of a department. IT used to be the "don't go to" department. Now they are respected.
In the IT environment, they are now learning from their staff, not the other way round.
MSF have 35000 employees worldwide. The bulk of them are out in the field. $1.48bn turnover. Big organisation. 15% annual growth. 90% of their budget is spent on 384 projects in 64 countries, often without Internet connection. Established in France 40 years ago by French doctors. Email was a revolution for them. Used to have cassette tapes posted to them in the field, with recordings of what to do, which could be 2 months old!
Have 5 HQs, 5 heads of ICT. Shadow IT has proliferated. Now need to get more digital. Mobile, smart devices everywhere. Many countries have jumped the PC phase and gone straight to smart phones. They are 5 years behind the curve because they liked stability. Only permitted Skype in 2014, despite being used for years. Migrating to Office 365 in 2016.
Started a knowledge management project. They have so much knowledge and experience. Joint project between ICT, general management and learning and development.
Started with small bite bite sized chunks: the Ebola review was a high priority. They were heavily involved in Ebola response. This video shows how much. And I hadn't appreciated the size of the treatment centre they built in Liberia
Pushed to their limits operationally. Imagine the effect on their meta data. They barely had time to write emails. Huge amount of unstructured information. No file structures. 500,000 unstructured emails and documents. Had to be reviewed to pull out the information. No-one had seen Ebola on this scale before.
The review had to go from launch to live in 2.5 months. Hired archivists and purchased enterprise search software, Knowliah. This was their first step into a bigroject like this. Had a full time project management and 2 key user facilitators.
Defined a context information model with 3000 key words and 900 synonyms. did full text analysis and indexing of all unstructured info. Tagging, filtering and cleaning. Removed duplicates, out of scope documents.
Everyone underestimated complexity, including the supplier. Had issues with confidentially, where to store. Decided to build servers in house, but slow. Would have been faster if trusted the supplier. Had to get access to people's email inboxes, which included personal stuff.
Knowliah were the supplier. Asked them to do the extraordinary, adding wikis, advanced search, delete, mail conversation IDs etc at short notice.
Created an email mountain just doing the project! Email was the wrong thing to use.
They met the time and budget, but had extended scope. Went from launch to live in 2.5 months.
Now have excellent information retrieval system. For example, can now find situation reports embedded in emails and pull out health promotion presentations in all languages.
Lessons leaned:
In house project team vital
Relationship with supplier vital
Preclean documents before migrating
Knowledge management is not just about IT, but you can't get anywhere without IT
One proven project can tip the perception of a department. IT used to be the "don't go to" department. Now they are respected.
In the IT environment, they are now learning from their staff, not the other way round.
Posted with BlogsyThe Future of Work
Next keynote is from Perry Timms, Director of People and Transformational HR and is on the Future of Work.
Digital will transform the way we work. Has a big part to play in improving work. A digital enabled workforce will save the world from mediocre work. Has to be coupled with design, and a destiny mindset.
The world of work has changed. All about how HR has to change. We recruit and hire in the way we always have done. Most of our recruiters don't know how to hack linked in. That's if they've heard of it.
Need a 5G HR. Time for a digital makeover. What is the user experience of an applicant to one of our jobs?and it's not about having a system they can apply though. It's all about touch points. It's about the applicants we don't attract. Think about our reputation management though our digital interface. We need to be HRs closest friend, to enlighten, partner and create.
Social HR is important. People development in a connected age. We have celebrated the lone wolf, long hours culture. We need to re-energise people. Take a walk, talk to people, be more social. We need to push, promote and participate in the social agenda with our HR colleagues.
Cognitive HR. Our brain is amazing. Need to tap into what we are as cognitive, creative individuals. We need to help create a love affair between digital and learning. Linear click through learning doesn't work anymore.
Design HR. Who's good at design and UX. We tend to be. Help HR design things like policies that people will actually read. Extract what is important. Two places to hide a dead body - on page 2 of Google or in Apples terms and conditions.
In summary:
Rise of the HR technologist
Establishing social as the working default
Creation of world class digital learning content
Enhanced designs for work of the future
Rebirth of HR as startup entrepreneurs
Hit list of companies doing it right, disruptors!
Things to do:
Be best corporate buddies with HR
Share incessantly with HR about how Tech does its thing and influence their thinking
Allow HR to bring the best thinking from behavioural science into your ways of working and thinking
Just make like the Four Tops and Reach Out!
Great talk, full of energy. But again, difficult to blog, mainly because I was listening intently!
To get a feel for it, watch his TEDx talk:
Digital will transform the way we work. Has a big part to play in improving work. A digital enabled workforce will save the world from mediocre work. Has to be coupled with design, and a destiny mindset.
The world of work has changed. All about how HR has to change. We recruit and hire in the way we always have done. Most of our recruiters don't know how to hack linked in. That's if they've heard of it.
Need a 5G HR. Time for a digital makeover. What is the user experience of an applicant to one of our jobs?and it's not about having a system they can apply though. It's all about touch points. It's about the applicants we don't attract. Think about our reputation management though our digital interface. We need to be HRs closest friend, to enlighten, partner and create.
Social HR is important. People development in a connected age. We have celebrated the lone wolf, long hours culture. We need to re-energise people. Take a walk, talk to people, be more social. We need to push, promote and participate in the social agenda with our HR colleagues.
Cognitive HR. Our brain is amazing. Need to tap into what we are as cognitive, creative individuals. We need to help create a love affair between digital and learning. Linear click through learning doesn't work anymore.
Design HR. Who's good at design and UX. We tend to be. Help HR design things like policies that people will actually read. Extract what is important. Two places to hide a dead body - on page 2 of Google or in Apples terms and conditions.
In summary:
Rise of the HR technologist
Establishing social as the working default
Creation of world class digital learning content
Enhanced designs for work of the future
Rebirth of HR as startup entrepreneurs
Hit list of companies doing it right, disruptors!
Things to do:
Be best corporate buddies with HR
Share incessantly with HR about how Tech does its thing and influence their thinking
Allow HR to bring the best thinking from behavioural science into your ways of working and thinking
Just make like the Four Tops and Reach Out!
Great talk, full of energy. But again, difficult to blog, mainly because I was listening intently!
To get a feel for it, watch his TEDx talk:
Monday, 21 September 2015
What to to when every employee is an IT employee
What to to when every employee is an IT employee
Look at where Total IT spend comes from - Mainly IT department and shared, but increasingly by business units, and more recently, employees. More jobs becoming deeply depending on technology. 81% of employees bring their own applications into the workplace. More work is collaborative, requires problem solving.
PWC have estimated that more than 50% of the changes in the way we work in the next 5 years will be due to technology breakthroughs. But, an unrelated survey by IBM on Millenials found that only 4% thought their IT organisations had no issues implementing new technologies. So, 96% aren't ready for fulfilling these increased expectations?
Three decades on we are still email centric organisations. So, is it about the organisations ability to change?
Accelerating pace of consumer technology.
CognIToy. Toy Hippo driven by IBM Watson.
Hello Barbie, records children's voices, processes, and replies. And stores it in the cloud. privacy concerns? .
Drones are very inexpensive. Are already delivering rings to weddings.
Wearables have wearables. Tiny tattoo like sensors on your skin.
These are changing what people are expecting to get
Emerging workplace technologies include Virtual personal assistants, Production studios and space planning.
So, what do we need to do to prepare for this.? Need a new skills and workforce strategy.
What are our top business goals?
What will employer expect from employees and vice versa
What skills do we need to meet those goals?
Sorts of skills we should be looking at are
- Digital acument
- Ability to change roles and groups
- Local leadership
- Effective partnering
What will our employees expect?
- Easy access to content and data
- Tablets, macs, smartphones
- Apps not applications
- Collaboration tools
- Engaged IT support
- Thriving enterprise social network
- Having the right tools for the job
- Stimulating work
- Ability to learn
- Autonomy in how the job gets done
- Digitally literate leadership
Who will we need in our teams? Think about some or all of the following. :
Knowledge management in a digital workplace
Next session is about managing all of the knowledge and data coming out of smart workplaces.
Knowledge Management (KM) is a discipline to enable effective action through access to relevant intellectual assets, including those that are known, but not documented. It's not a technology. Its biggest challenge is going beyond information into knowledge.
Easy bit is capturing the facts, harder is the implicit stuff, stuff that's in people's heads. Contextual information, experience, expertise etc. Can't capture this, so have to connect people through collaboration systems and capture what makes it possible to act effectively in given situations. Very difficult to capture what everyone knows using conventional methods.
Is it time to automate knowledge extraction? Use AI techniques. Machine learning, linguistic analysis.
For example, fraud detection. Conventional way is to get characteristics of a fraudulent transaction from a human expert and code them up manually in policies, rules or in an automated system. Or, get a machine to look at the history of all relevant transactions. Let it discover common patters and automatically build an automated model to detect fraudulent transactions.
Or Helpdesk. Train agents to deal with problems, talk to each other, capture information in a knowledge base. Or, example from a SAP Helpdesk. take a machine learning system and give it data, software manuals, previous queries, also activity monitoring systems, real time data, data from public sources. Built a service that the user could interact with. Learns form all queries that the system can't deal with and gets passed to an agent, can answer question next time round.
Already using this sort of learning eg in Spam filters.
Will become more prevalent. The digital workplace will increase our ability to observe work. What is being done, by whom, with whom, where,how, at what time, in what context, resulting in what. This will all be observable, recorded and analysed. Will result in either decision support systems, automation,
Example of Boston hospital. All patient records and data in this sort of system. Intended to improve diagnosis, treatment. Decisions still doctors, but this acts a smart assistant.
Use data from previous outcomes to have more data driven approach to support decision making.
Technical challenges:
-
Access to all relevant data
-
Ability to distinguish between positive or negative outcome
-
Existence of historical patters
-
Lack of skills in machine learning
-
Computing resource challenges
-
Still need lot of manual intervention and tuning
-
Spurious correlations, not always a casual relationship
Another big issue - the creepiness factor! Big brother factor. Watching people at work to see if you can automate their job. Have to think about how these techniques are applied.
Expect that by 2017 virtual personal assistants will collect data from applications you are using, will contextualise this. Give you advice and recommendations.
By 2020 will be dominan specific knowledge extraction and reuse systems. Eg HR systems will have built into them analytical tools. Will predict turnover etc.
Need to look at our business activities where we have a lot of data and start to think about automating the extraction of knowledge. Look at areas where we can increase our data collection. Architect, procure and deploy new applications aiming to create feedback loops between automated knowledge extraction and decision support or automation. Talk to our vendors to see where they are going in this area. Identify high priority areas with minimal technical challenges.
Need to track industry responses to cultural, legal, security, compliance and ethical questions.
Interesting session, and some thinking to be done about areas where we might implement some of these ideas. After all, we do have a lot of data! How can we turn this into knowledge?
Digital workplaces
I'm at the Gartner Digital Workplace summit in London for the next couple of days, bit of a last minute booking, as this is a new summit and I hadn't spotted it until recently. Am hoping it ties in nicely with the work on digital strategy we want to start soon. I'll try and take as many notes as I can of the sessions. Will definitely be in note form and not joined up English, so bear with me! I'm also using a new blogging tool on my iPad as my previously one has died, so who knows what posts will look like.
Opening keynote is entitled "Workplace Reimagined, Agile, Empowered, Engaged"
Digital Business is the creation of new business by blurring the digital and physical worlds. Three components people, things and business. Difference to 10 years ago is that the things are smart.
Digital workplace.
Engaged employees are more enthusiastic. By promoting employee engagement digital workplaces create a workforce that makes discretionary contributions to business effectiveness. Has to be based on trust. Building tougher increases trust.
Need to bring consumer like experiences into the workplace. Our most sophisticated computing environment these days is often in our home. Digital workplaces have an explicit goal of creating a consumer like computing experience that enables teams to be more effective. Need to strive for digital dexterity. The things people want to use, will always change. Don't chase the tools. Chase what people want to do.
Use smart technologies and people centric design. Instead of us becoming digitally literate, our computers need to be people literate. Digital workplace strategies exploit rmerging smart technologies and people centric design to support dynamic non routine work. Need to connect people to people, people to things and things to things.
There is no one vendor that will provide what we need. It's like an ecosystem of vendors that we need to stitch together. Need to use lighter weight technologies that will interact. Our teams need specialists who are not technologists. Need to have people who understand people.
IT will be measured in the future by internal customer satisfaction, not by how much money they save!
People need a more natural way of working. The way we interact with computers is improving. Apps that can talk and listen are not new, but apps that can interpret, learn and evolve are. Gartner predict that by 2018 25% of large organisations will have an explicit strategy to make their core computing more consumer like.
Emotion detection, already being used in some call centres. Facial recognition being used in marketing. What might these things mean in workplaces. Teachers with wearable cameras. Really will have eyes in the back of their heads. Workers in dangerous situations such as oil rigs wearing sensors to measure fatigue and stress levels.
HCI will become CHI where the computers are interacting with us.
Access to data, technology and people needs to be universal. Smart machines needed to create contextual experiences. Not talking about AI, ie replicating the way people think, but processing information and feeding it to us in a way we want. Building better tools.
How many people in room use things like Dropbox, when they're not allowed to? Loads. Convenience always trumps security and regulations! Need to change our policies, but also our language.
To really achieve a digital workplace, we need to involve people from outside of IT, eg HR, FM.
People will not only bring their own devices and apps to the workplaces, but will be bringing their own digital assistants. Different ones for different purposes. Amy from x.ai works across time zones to schedule meetings. Amelia from IPsoft handles front line queries and learns from experience. We will be opening up our data eg email and calendars to these digital assistants.
WYNIWYGWYNI great acronym! What you need is what you get when you need it.
Reimagine the workplace. Make it natural, make it universal, make it helpful.
Thursday, 30 April 2015
Achieving Digital Agility with Bimodal IT without making a mess
So, What does that mean? Biomodal IT is the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability, and the other on agility.
Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasising safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and non linear, emphasing agility and speed.
That's the text book definition, and we spent a lot of time unpicking what it actually meant.
Gartner estimates that by 2017 75% of organisations will have a Bimodal capability. Half will make a mess.
Bimodal IT is not a nice to have - we will have to embrace it.
So, here are some notes of my key take-aways.
Bimodal is not:
Anything that splits in two.
Agile development
Pace layering
An IT capability, it's a business capability. Requires engagement from the business.
An operating model or organisational chart change
Shadow IT
This slide perhaps illustrates what the differences are between Mode 1 and Mode 2
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Key risks in implementing bimodal IT:
Really important that both modes are connected. You need to work in a collaborative style with shared alignment.
You fall into the timid middle Because second mode can look scary, there is a temptation to de-risk it. Wrap it in comfort blanket.
Technical debt. Inevitable that you will take shortcuts. Have to monitor and manage it
Create an us and them situation. Need to create equity between teams
Renovating the core. A lot of agility in second mode comes from what you do with your core applications, so need flexibility in those
Need to apply filters to decide which projects you apply Mode 2 to. Customer experience, mobile, social, all are common
Mode 2 is always iterative. Apply the principle of producing the smallest viable product. Then use and iterate.
Have to delegate the autonomy to the team.
Need innovation management as part of governance. Prune ideas. Fail visibly and fail fast.
If the organisation is not prepared to accept failure, then it won't work. Need to identify people who can work in this way.
Start before you think you are ready
Some people start with an innovation lab
Or innovation team
Others start with agile
Then show how you can apply this to your digital strategy
Everyone starts small
Important thing is to start
Answer these 3 questions in order, as you go through a project:
Does this idea has value ?
What shape should this idea take?
How do we scale this idea ?
Mistake is to start with last question, or nothing will get off ground
Bimodal is very experiential, you have to do it to learn it.
You have to find a part of the business to work with you in this way. If they won't, find a different project.
Select projects which have minimal interaction with mode 1 team
Important to avoid tension between teams, Need to make sure there is equity between teams in terms of recognition and reward. Be careful with language . There has to be more that unites them than divides them - common goals, values, priorities
Some examples from other places:
One University uses students to come up with and develop ideas - they are a cheap resource and enthusiastic.
Provide some money to have a competiton and let them work with you over the summer to develop something.
Another University has created a small innovation team in IT. 2 people - one a developer and one with a web marketing background. Exploring gamification. Also have students working on mobile app development.
How do you transfer things into services? Especially if developed by students
Easy to develop a bright shiny object, and then move on to next bright shiny object
Organisation needs a clear understanding of what "done " is
Mode 2 needs to take responsibility for something to be useable.
Going back to 3 questions, when you get to last one, have to decide whether you can afford to scale it or not.
A very interesting workshop, and something I am keen to take forward.
Thursday, 4 December 2014
Diamond and MOOC hype
Our new building, The Diamond is really coming along now - it looks fantastic. The base layer of the cladding is on, you can see the pods inside, and the spiral staircase has been installed. hopefully the aluminium cladding will start to go on in the next few days. There's a great webcam of the construction site here. This screenshot taken a couple of minutes ago shows the huge study pod from the east of the building, and the cladding panels stacked up ready to go on the left.
We're on target to open for September 2015, and this week we've been having discussions about commissioning and fitting out the building. There's a lot of work for us to do! The network to commission - this building will increase the size of our campus network by 10% - the teaching technologies in the pool teaching space to install and commission, over 700 PCs to install, and all of the creative media spaces to be kitted out. We'll be looking to dedicate people to work on this to make sure everything goes to plan.
Also this week we've had an call with a Gartner analyst about the future of technolgies in teaching. Some of the up and coming ones including Learning Analytics and Adaptive Learning, and existing ones such as MOOCs. Interestingly Gartners latest education hype cycle have MOOCs heading off into the trough of disillusionment, and disappearing before they ever reach a plateau. That's mainly due to a lack of a sustainable business model for them, and their view is that once the hype surrounding them has gone, they will transform into something different. This year's hype cycle has some interesting stuff on it - must find time to study it in a bit more detail.
We're on target to open for September 2015, and this week we've been having discussions about commissioning and fitting out the building. There's a lot of work for us to do! The network to commission - this building will increase the size of our campus network by 10% - the teaching technologies in the pool teaching space to install and commission, over 700 PCs to install, and all of the creative media spaces to be kitted out. We'll be looking to dedicate people to work on this to make sure everything goes to plan.
Also this week we've had an call with a Gartner analyst about the future of technolgies in teaching. Some of the up and coming ones including Learning Analytics and Adaptive Learning, and existing ones such as MOOCs. Interestingly Gartners latest education hype cycle have MOOCs heading off into the trough of disillusionment, and disappearing before they ever reach a plateau. That's mainly due to a lack of a sustainable business model for them, and their view is that once the hype surrounding them has gone, they will transform into something different. This year's hype cycle has some interesting stuff on it - must find time to study it in a bit more detail.
Monday, 17 November 2014
Final thoughts...
The networking was excellent, and it was good to mix with CIOs and senior IT managers from all sectors. This year I though the ITExpo was very good, with many vendors to talk to. In the evening receptions, there was some very interesting ways of attracting you to their stands....
The difficulty now is capturing the excitement I feel when I'm there, and translating it into real things we can do back at base. There's a number of things I have taken away and am definitely going to act on:
Digitalisation, Digitisation, Digital Moments. whatever words you use, we need a Digital Strategy and should be working on a Digital First, or Digital by Design strategy. We need to idenitfy those "digital moments' that will improve the student experience, support our researchers better or improve processes and use technology to implement them. Use technology to digitalise our processes, not just digitise them
Look at the top ten business and technology trends - make a top ten list relevant to the University of Sheffield. To socialise this with stakeholders and CiCS to get some joint ownership. To build the lists into strategic and tactical planning and refer to them frequently. And refresh the list every 6 months
The Internet of Things - what could we use it for? Are there "things" that we could make smart to improve our services to students for example? Could we increase the number of self diagnosing things to reduce our Helpdesk calls? Our printers already do this. What else could we do?
Think about implementing Bimodel IT
Saturday, 15 November 2014
Shadow IT
Final session of the conference was a workshop looking at Shadow IT. Lovely defined as investment in acquiring, developing or operating IT solutions outside the control of a formal IT organisation. If nothing else we were clearly told to take away the message that Resistance is futile! IT is now son engrained in everything we do, and the consumer IT space so pervasive, then "IT" is going to happen everywhere. And given that many sessions I've been have been about digitalising the business, we are actively encouraging it. That's not to say that there should be controls in place, and many business critical systems, support and infrastructure should still rest with the central IT department.
So how do we adapt our role to cope with it?
First thing we need to do is take it out of the shadows. Enter a discovery phase, find out what is going on. Then have a plan.
We had a group discussion on our tables, and I was sitting between the CIO of
the European Parliament and the CIO of Europol. We had some interesting debates about what was appropriate. They couldn't really get their heads around our very open attitude!
Then we looked at some examples of good practice, summarised below:
Engage
Need to engage. Will change the role of the IT department.
Get some visibility, find out how much is going on. Share it .
Redefine accountability.
If people are developing or implementing shadow IT they have to be accountable for it. For support, security etc. Put in place processes to do this.
Guide.
Provide guidance to the organisation
Establish boundaries
What areas is it legitable and sensible to allow end user development. What areas are no go areas.
Use this 2 by 2 grid
Things can start in one quadrant and move. Need to keep under review.
Create red lines.
Privacy, security and compliance. Lines which must not be crossed, and there must be consequences.
Requires clarity, training and education.
Exploit Bimodal IT
Become more agile and flexible.
Offer services
Eg vendor and contract management. Hosting. Project management.
Offer tiered support.
Different levels of support for different systems.
Consider accreditation
Train staff, bring them into central organisation and teach them. Then might trust them more.
Have an end user board.
Not just IT department policing things. Let a board come up with polices etc. are risks though!
Use Audit!
Get them on board. Put the policing action on audit, not us.
All very interesting and useful. And reflects closely what we're trying to do in our IT as a shared service project.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
So how do we adapt our role to cope with it?
First thing we need to do is take it out of the shadows. Enter a discovery phase, find out what is going on. Then have a plan.
We had a group discussion on our tables, and I was sitting between the CIO of
the European Parliament and the CIO of Europol. We had some interesting debates about what was appropriate. They couldn't really get their heads around our very open attitude!
Then we looked at some examples of good practice, summarised below:
Engage
Need to engage. Will change the role of the IT department.
Get some visibility, find out how much is going on. Share it .
Redefine accountability.
If people are developing or implementing shadow IT they have to be accountable for it. For support, security etc. Put in place processes to do this.
Guide.
Provide guidance to the organisation
Establish boundaries
What areas is it legitable and sensible to allow end user development. What areas are no go areas.
Use this 2 by 2 grid
Things can start in one quadrant and move. Need to keep under review.
Create red lines.
Privacy, security and compliance. Lines which must not be crossed, and there must be consequences.
Requires clarity, training and education.
Exploit Bimodal IT
Become more agile and flexible.
Offer services
Eg vendor and contract management. Hosting. Project management.
Offer tiered support.
Different levels of support for different systems.
Consider accreditation
Train staff, bring them into central organisation and teach them. Then might trust them more.
Have an end user board.
Not just IT department policing things. Let a board come up with polices etc. are risks though!
Use Audit!
Get them on board. Put the policing action on audit, not us.
All very interesting and useful. And reflects closely what we're trying to do in our IT as a shared service project.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
The Art of Innovation
Today's keynote was from Guy Kawasaki, the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple.
He talked about the art of innovation, from his perspective of working with innovative companies such as Apple and Google, and as a venture capitalist. It was an excellent talk, the best so far at the conference, and I wouldn't do justice to it by blogging about it in detail. It was recorded, and hopefully will be on line soon so I'll post a link to it. He gave us top ten lessons to be successful in innovation, and illustrated each one with beautiful stories. Sometimes moving, sometimes funny. I'll just list the lessons so you get a feel for what he spoke about.
1 Make meaning, not just money.
Desire to make the world a better place. You'll probably also then make money.
2 Make mantra
Not a mission statement!
Two or three words.
What is it you deliver. Describe your innovation in 3 words that everyone understands.
3 Jump to the next curve,
Innovation is always at the next curve, not the one you're on.
Step back and define yourself not by what you do, but by the benefit you provide. Example of ice factory. Non of them became refrigerator factories.
Good example of curve jumping companies, Uber, airbnb, task rabbit
4 Make great products.
great products are smart, intelligent,complete, empowering and elegant.
5 Don't worry, be crappy
It's ok to ship a product if there's element of crappiness in it, if it's still better than what was before
6 Let 100 flowers blossom
See what happens.
Example of Apple with the Macintosh. It was including desktop publishing which made it a success, not the standard software on offer on PCs.
Or Avon and their Skin so soft product, designed to moisturise skin, but now sold mainly as an insect repellent
Let the market decide.
7 Polarise people
Some people will hate things, whilst others love them.
Great products polarise people. Apple good example. Great products produce emotions
8 Churn baby churn
To be an innovator you have to be in denial. Ignore people who tell you it won't work. Then flip to listen to people when you have a product. And then improve it
9 Niche thyself
Need to be unique and high value.
10 Perfect your pitch
Innovators have to pitch, for funding, partnerships,
Customise your introduction. Show you know your audience.
Follow the Kawasaki rule of PowerPoint
Limit slides to 10.
Talk for no more than 20 mins
Optimal point size is 30
11 Don't let the Bozos grind you down
If someone tells you you'll fail, you might. But if you don't try, you'll never know.
As I said, great talk, and I was lucky enough to meet him afterwards and get a signed copy of his book.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
He talked about the art of innovation, from his perspective of working with innovative companies such as Apple and Google, and as a venture capitalist. It was an excellent talk, the best so far at the conference, and I wouldn't do justice to it by blogging about it in detail. It was recorded, and hopefully will be on line soon so I'll post a link to it. He gave us top ten lessons to be successful in innovation, and illustrated each one with beautiful stories. Sometimes moving, sometimes funny. I'll just list the lessons so you get a feel for what he spoke about.
1 Make meaning, not just money.
Desire to make the world a better place. You'll probably also then make money.
2 Make mantra
Not a mission statement!
Two or three words.
What is it you deliver. Describe your innovation in 3 words that everyone understands.
3 Jump to the next curve,
Innovation is always at the next curve, not the one you're on.
Step back and define yourself not by what you do, but by the benefit you provide. Example of ice factory. Non of them became refrigerator factories.
Good example of curve jumping companies, Uber, airbnb, task rabbit
4 Make great products.
great products are smart, intelligent,complete, empowering and elegant.
5 Don't worry, be crappy
It's ok to ship a product if there's element of crappiness in it, if it's still better than what was before
6 Let 100 flowers blossom
See what happens.
Example of Apple with the Macintosh. It was including desktop publishing which made it a success, not the standard software on offer on PCs.
Or Avon and their Skin so soft product, designed to moisturise skin, but now sold mainly as an insect repellent
Let the market decide.
7 Polarise people
Some people will hate things, whilst others love them.
Great products polarise people. Apple good example. Great products produce emotions
8 Churn baby churn
To be an innovator you have to be in denial. Ignore people who tell you it won't work. Then flip to listen to people when you have a product. And then improve it
9 Niche thyself
Need to be unique and high value.
10 Perfect your pitch
Innovators have to pitch, for funding, partnerships,
Customise your introduction. Show you know your audience.
Follow the Kawasaki rule of PowerPoint
Limit slides to 10.
Talk for no more than 20 mins
Optimal point size is 30
11 Don't let the Bozos grind you down
If someone tells you you'll fail, you might. But if you don't try, you'll never know.
As I said, great talk, and I was lucky enough to meet him afterwards and get a signed copy of his book.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Embracing eccentric executives...
.... and that really is the title of this session.
Senior executives may not be normal! Research shows that there's a larger proportion of eccentric behaviour in senior executive teams. May be related to common undiagnosed, mild or hidden mental disorders.
Statistics show that we are probably working with or for someone who exhibits eccentric behaviours.
Three categories of eccentricity: impulsive, egotistical, compulsive.
Impulsives
Very high energy
Difficulty saying on task, exited by certain stimuli
Or extreme risk takers. Extremely innovative. Have lots of ideas
Tendency to not believe that anything takes any time. Find us obstructive.
Also forget about ideas they've had.
Not operationally focussed and maybe reckless
Compulsives
Tend to fixate on details. Extreme micro managers
Require huge volumes of data.
Often give impression that they don't trust you.
Low risk takers
Treat minor issues the same as major ones
Extremely consistent and reliable
Egotistic
Highly motivated to achieve goals
Very competitive
Low degree of empathy.
Can be aggressive or bullying. No sense of the effect they're having on others.
Psychopathic tendencies
Very focused. Not distracted by normal distractions.
Also can have combinations of above.
As you become more senior in n organisation, behaviour often becomes exacerbated.
Are we eccentric? If we believe that everyone around us is behaving strangely, it's probably us!
So how do we embrace the wonderful aspects of eccentricity, and deal with the more difficult ones?
Some organisations surround eccentrics with "handlers" ie people who've learned to deal with them.
Or contain them.
Also compensate with different characteristics. Surround impulsives with doers
Need to set boundaries, can be much more effective than trying to reason with them. If they are unreasonable by normal definitions, no point in trying to reason with them.
Don't pander to the eccentricity.
Really interesting talk, and of course we all played the game of spotting people in each category. None in our senior management team obviously!
I've got a copy of the full research paper, and there are some detail on coping strategies, embracing the positive aspects of eccentricity and dealing with some of the challenges it can create.
I'm off to study it.....
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Senior executives may not be normal! Research shows that there's a larger proportion of eccentric behaviour in senior executive teams. May be related to common undiagnosed, mild or hidden mental disorders.
Statistics show that we are probably working with or for someone who exhibits eccentric behaviours.
Three categories of eccentricity: impulsive, egotistical, compulsive.
Impulsives
Very high energy
Difficulty saying on task, exited by certain stimuli
Or extreme risk takers. Extremely innovative. Have lots of ideas
Tendency to not believe that anything takes any time. Find us obstructive.
Also forget about ideas they've had.
Not operationally focussed and maybe reckless
Compulsives
Tend to fixate on details. Extreme micro managers
Require huge volumes of data.
Often give impression that they don't trust you.
Low risk takers
Treat minor issues the same as major ones
Extremely consistent and reliable
Egotistic
Highly motivated to achieve goals
Very competitive
Low degree of empathy.
Can be aggressive or bullying. No sense of the effect they're having on others.
Psychopathic tendencies
Very focused. Not distracted by normal distractions.
Also can have combinations of above.
As you become more senior in n organisation, behaviour often becomes exacerbated.
Are we eccentric? If we believe that everyone around us is behaving strangely, it's probably us!
So how do we embrace the wonderful aspects of eccentricity, and deal with the more difficult ones?
Some organisations surround eccentrics with "handlers" ie people who've learned to deal with them.
Or contain them.
Also compensate with different characteristics. Surround impulsives with doers
Need to set boundaries, can be much more effective than trying to reason with them. If they are unreasonable by normal definitions, no point in trying to reason with them.
Don't pander to the eccentricity.
Really interesting talk, and of course we all played the game of spotting people in each category. None in our senior management team obviously!
I've got a copy of the full research paper, and there are some detail on coping strategies, embracing the positive aspects of eccentricity and dealing with some of the challenges it can create.
I'm off to study it.....
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Making good decisions
Today's talk at the CIO lunch was from Noreena Hertz who was described as a decision making guru. Her book, Eyes Wide Open, is the conclusions from her research into how we can make better decisions in these complex, challenging times.
These were her tips:
Don't blindly follow experts. They get things wrong.
The IBM president who in 1948 said there's room in the world for 5 computers
Or Bill Gates, who said in 2004 spam will be solved in 2 years.
Experts no better than a monkey throwing a dart at a board.
Become a smarter information hunter gatherer
Today, knowledge has been democratised. We can all gather it.
Local knowledge is very valuable.
Listen to the wisdom within an organisation
Also, information widely available of people's own experiences in many areas.
Old fashioned cooperation and collaboration very important.
Gratuitous clip of baby pandas collaborating to avoid taking medicine.
Use Google trends, look at what search terms are being used. All as valuable as published data.
Apparently the PMs office tracks certain search terms and there was chaos in number 10 on 6 October 2011 when there was a huge peak in the search for "Jobs." Work it out :-)
Seek out divergent points of view.
We tend to like getting information that confirms what we believe. Yet innovation is not just about creation of ideas but about their destruction.
Need to seek out people who disagree with us.
Who's our challenger in chief, and are listening to them?
Create teams based on difference
Vast body of evidence that diverse teams solve problems better and are more innovative.
Bletchley park employed diverse teams. Not just mathematicians, but philosophers, Egyptian scholars, classicists. Critical to them cracking enigma code.
Get into decision making shape
Emotions affect decision making.
Stock markets react to how national football teams perform.
Moods affect decisions. Notice what mood you're in.
Physical shape also important. Worst decisions often made when you're tired.
Also, hunger, thirst.
Be careful of the stories you tell yourself
We're not unique.
Even selfies were around in the twenties
And finally, carve out time to think. Every day.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
These were her tips:
Don't blindly follow experts. They get things wrong.
The IBM president who in 1948 said there's room in the world for 5 computers
Or Bill Gates, who said in 2004 spam will be solved in 2 years.
Experts no better than a monkey throwing a dart at a board.
Become a smarter information hunter gatherer
Today, knowledge has been democratised. We can all gather it.
Local knowledge is very valuable.
Listen to the wisdom within an organisation
Also, information widely available of people's own experiences in many areas.
Old fashioned cooperation and collaboration very important.
Gratuitous clip of baby pandas collaborating to avoid taking medicine.
Use Google trends, look at what search terms are being used. All as valuable as published data.
Apparently the PMs office tracks certain search terms and there was chaos in number 10 on 6 October 2011 when there was a huge peak in the search for "Jobs." Work it out :-)
Seek out divergent points of view.
We tend to like getting information that confirms what we believe. Yet innovation is not just about creation of ideas but about their destruction.
Need to seek out people who disagree with us.
Who's our challenger in chief, and are listening to them?
Create teams based on difference
Vast body of evidence that diverse teams solve problems better and are more innovative.
Bletchley park employed diverse teams. Not just mathematicians, but philosophers, Egyptian scholars, classicists. Critical to them cracking enigma code.
Get into decision making shape
Emotions affect decision making.
Stock markets react to how national football teams perform.
Moods affect decisions. Notice what mood you're in.
Physical shape also important. Worst decisions often made when you're tired.
Also, hunger, thirst.
Be careful of the stories you tell yourself
We're not unique.
Even selfies were around in the twenties
And finally, carve out time to think. Every day.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Why is the CFO on the executive board and the CIO not?
Interesting session about why the CFO is usually on the executive board, and the CIO isn't. Why we should be, and what we should do about it.
Lot of comparison with the CFO :-). So, if someone in your organisation decided they didn't want to use the central finance system and went and opened a Swiss bank account, the CFO would soon stop them. So why do we let people do the same with IT? And why is there reluctance when we say we should have oversight of it all?
What should we do to improve our visibility and get our organisations to understand the strategic importance of IT?
Clarify and communicate business value of IT operations. Expand the CIOs operational responsibilities
Ensure that the CIO addresses full end to end business risks of IT and that the Board recognises their impact.
Expose total technology spend across whole enterprise including shadow IT. Show value of CIOs oversight of it all.
Communicate CIOs strategic value. Join major non IT projects. Talk about strategic impact of IT and digital revolution.
Build board members understanding and confidence about ambiguities and risks the CIO controls. Link digital business issues to enterprise success and survival
Assess and understand the issues. Build valued partner relationships with board members.
Use coaching, mentoring to identify personal development goals. Concentrate on business credibility. Demonstrate personal maturity in your enterprise. Build CEOs trust.
Really interesting session, and lead to lots of discussion afterwards with colleagues, about whether we really wanted to be on the Executive Board.
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Tuesday, 11 November 2014
Banks, vendors and networking
This afternoon's keynote is an interview with Oliver Bussmann, the Group CIO of UBS, a global financial services company. Cue another huge attendance in the auditorium, loud music, flashing lights and a fancy stage setting.
Interesting hearing someone for the banking sector talking about some of the pressures they face, especially around risk management and security. They have to spend a lot on regulatory compliance.
They are also facing a number of disruptive influences, eg ApplePay which are taking advantage of new technologies. Even the underlying technology supporting Bitcoin is making the banks change the way they work.
He confirmed that the role of the CIO is changing, away from the back office function, to a digital leader. Working with the business to drive innovation forward. Something I often bang on about, when people think of us as just the IT department....
The other interesting part of the discussion was the fact that he tweets, apparently this is unheard of from a CIO. He was quite laid back about it, but most of audience horrified.
I also took some time this afternoon to walk round the exhibition. Last night there was a fairly mad reception in there, where I spent most of my time collecting cocktails and freebies! Today I had a much more leisurely stroll round and had some interesting conversations with vendors. There's a lot here, some familiar to us, and some new. This picture shows only about half of the exhibition floor.
Also spent some time in the EXP Lounge ( Gartner equivalent of VIP) networking with colleagues from other institutions, and from other sectors. It's a very pleasant place to spend the breaks, good wifi, lots of power points, a juice bar, and a balcony overlooking the sea. You can even get a massage if sitting in too many sessions gets to you! As there are many sessions running at the same time, you can also catch up with those you've missed as they are all recorded and available in the lounge on demand.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Interesting hearing someone for the banking sector talking about some of the pressures they face, especially around risk management and security. They have to spend a lot on regulatory compliance.
They are also facing a number of disruptive influences, eg ApplePay which are taking advantage of new technologies. Even the underlying technology supporting Bitcoin is making the banks change the way they work.
He confirmed that the role of the CIO is changing, away from the back office function, to a digital leader. Working with the business to drive innovation forward. Something I often bang on about, when people think of us as just the IT department....
The other interesting part of the discussion was the fact that he tweets, apparently this is unheard of from a CIO. He was quite laid back about it, but most of audience horrified.
I also took some time this afternoon to walk round the exhibition. Last night there was a fairly mad reception in there, where I spent most of my time collecting cocktails and freebies! Today I had a much more leisurely stroll round and had some interesting conversations with vendors. There's a lot here, some familiar to us, and some new. This picture shows only about half of the exhibition floor.
Also spent some time in the EXP Lounge ( Gartner equivalent of VIP) networking with colleagues from other institutions, and from other sectors. It's a very pleasant place to spend the breaks, good wifi, lots of power points, a juice bar, and a balcony overlooking the sea. You can even get a massage if sitting in too many sessions gets to you! As there are many sessions running at the same time, you can also catch up with those you've missed as they are all recorded and available in the lounge on demand.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Digitalising processes
Now a session on digitalising processes. I'm not sure that digitalising is a word, but we'll see....
Moving from paper based process to mobile device is a great advance, but it's not enough value. Can get more value by adding other technologies.
First step on journey is atoms to bits, paper to device
Then human to machine. What work can a machine do that a human does now.
Rethink the work itself. What's the right resource to do it. Human, machine or joint?
Then enable more variable handling of work. So, not about standardisation. If you are a global company, need to take account of differences in culture, in law, in products. Need to scale and keep consistency and manageability
Atoms to bits. Digitising processes. Some examples:
Pay cheque in by taking a picture of it on a mobile phone.
ApplePay. Credit card stored in mobile phone.
Huge improvement in convenience for customer.
Good example of difference between digitising a process and digitalising one of a nurse in a hospital. Give them a tablet to do data entry....
Illustrated in five slides below.
Utilising the Internet of things, adapters, sensors etc. Everything relating to the patients care is instrumented. So everything nurse used to collect, and a lot more, is now collected by machines. Because so much data being collected, can analyse and look for patterns. Eg by instrumenting the bed can monitor how much sunlight the patient is getting and adjust so that patient gets more.
Use technology to transform work, not just digitise it.
Does take some investment, but paybacks will be significant.
Automation for years has meant replacing physical labour with machines. In IT context it's been about standardising work and reducing paper handling. But, is that enough of an improvement?
We should be digitalising processes to transform people's working lives.
Some more examples...
The quantified self. Wearables, constantly monitoring ourselves. Lots of opportunities to use that data. Who would you share it with and why? Personal trainer? Your doctor? Your insurance company....
Jetdry, make mobile heaters for working in arctic conditions. If they break, they use a mobile machine to heat up the local area and the equipment so it can be repaired. Used to fly a technician out to do repair. Now use a pair of glasses on local field worker to give remote technician a video view so local worker can do the fix. Man/machine cooperation.
Get customers to do the work for you. Report things like broken traffic lights, potholes through a mobile app.
John Dere Combine Harvester, cost about $0.5m. If it breaks down, can miss the harvest. They have instrumented the equipment with sensors, and set up remote service to monitor the data coming in, analyse it, and predict problems and provide guidance about preventative maintenance.
Not just about reducing paper and standardising. Go beyond this. It's about augmenting work or replacing it.
Race with the machines, not against them.
Think about automation and digitalisation
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Moving from paper based process to mobile device is a great advance, but it's not enough value. Can get more value by adding other technologies.
First step on journey is atoms to bits, paper to device
Then human to machine. What work can a machine do that a human does now.
Rethink the work itself. What's the right resource to do it. Human, machine or joint?
Then enable more variable handling of work. So, not about standardisation. If you are a global company, need to take account of differences in culture, in law, in products. Need to scale and keep consistency and manageability
Atoms to bits. Digitising processes. Some examples:
Pay cheque in by taking a picture of it on a mobile phone.
ApplePay. Credit card stored in mobile phone.
Huge improvement in convenience for customer.
Good example of difference between digitising a process and digitalising one of a nurse in a hospital. Give them a tablet to do data entry....
Illustrated in five slides below.
Utilising the Internet of things, adapters, sensors etc. Everything relating to the patients care is instrumented. So everything nurse used to collect, and a lot more, is now collected by machines. Because so much data being collected, can analyse and look for patterns. Eg by instrumenting the bed can monitor how much sunlight the patient is getting and adjust so that patient gets more.
Use technology to transform work, not just digitise it.
Does take some investment, but paybacks will be significant.
Automation for years has meant replacing physical labour with machines. In IT context it's been about standardising work and reducing paper handling. But, is that enough of an improvement?
We should be digitalising processes to transform people's working lives.
Some more examples...
The quantified self. Wearables, constantly monitoring ourselves. Lots of opportunities to use that data. Who would you share it with and why? Personal trainer? Your doctor? Your insurance company....
Jetdry, make mobile heaters for working in arctic conditions. If they break, they use a mobile machine to heat up the local area and the equipment so it can be repaired. Used to fly a technician out to do repair. Now use a pair of glasses on local field worker to give remote technician a video view so local worker can do the fix. Man/machine cooperation.
Get customers to do the work for you. Report things like broken traffic lights, potholes through a mobile app.
John Dere Combine Harvester, cost about $0.5m. If it breaks down, can miss the harvest. They have instrumented the equipment with sensors, and set up remote service to monitor the data coming in, analyse it, and predict problems and provide guidance about preventative maintenance.
Not just about reducing paper and standardising. Go beyond this. It's about augmenting work or replacing it.
Race with the machines, not against them.
Think about automation and digitalisation
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Mobile Scenario
First session this morning is from Nick Jones again, looks at what's happening in the mobile area.
Mobile impacting our businesses on process level. Very good way of improving efficiency and effectiveness. Also the business methods dimension eg Uber, matching supply and demand and using dynamic pricing. Business moment opportunuities, eg in marketing using location based services.
Can use mobile to change business in novel ways.
Android dominates in handset world and will continue to do so. iOS still very strong. Windows still very niche, struggling to get customer acceptance.
In tablets, android dominating again because of price. iOS still strong. But windows just not there
Laptop market is going down, people buying tablets instead.
Blackberry almost non existent now. Under 0.5% of market share.
The smartphone will be the universal link to the Internet of things. In three ways:
Personal networks, eg wearables
Personal bubbles - devices close by using proximity services, eg smart TVs etc
Cloud connected devices, using smart phones to monitor what's going on in cloud.
By end of 2015 will be 7bn connections in the world.
Major players are Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung (especially in smart home area).
Technology trends. In short term: more sensors eg for biometrics, curved and flexible devices, wireless video, accelerometers, new blue tooth and wifi standards
Medium term: personal biometric sensing, new display technologies, new UXs for wearables, increased use of 3D, rich touch
On network front, LTE rollout is continuing, faster in Japan that Europe. 5G total hype at the moment, could be 2020 before deployed. IoT driving new types of networks, new versions of Bluetooth.
Privacy an important issue. Mobile devices are collecting lots of personal data, where we are, what we're doing, how healthy we are. Can be analysed, correlated etc. Need to design in privacy to mobile apps, and may drive change in legislation.
Major challenges facing CIOs in the mobile area:
Skills shortages
New working practices and devices
Making mobile innovation safe and secure
Communication and collaboration tools on devices
Mobile app development and testing
Consumer facing apps coming into the enterprise.
We should be aiming for a future workplace with ubiquitous mobility. People will own multiple devices to which apps will be delivered to. Wearables, BYOD will be ubiquitous and there will be employee autonomy in processes, apps and devices. Employees will innovate. Continual loss of IT control.
In this area, everything moves fast. Need to adopt agile strategies. Focus on managing risk, using agile methods, working with innovative partners, lightweight governance. Bimodal IT fits well. Small, multidisciplinary innovation team using iterative, fast development processes.
Different types of apps:
Convenience, commodity apps eg approving leave. Have to have them, but not exciting!
Process support eg supporting sales force
Process transformation, developing innovative processes, changing the way we work.
Will need multiple app development tools, no one tool will provide everything.
Big challenge is user experience. Because of quality of consumer apps, expectation is higher for enterprise apps. Need to design in user experience.
In security terms, moving away from protecting the device, locking it down, to risk based security. Making innovation safe on untreated devices. Using contextual security, will be more fine grained.
Consumer applications are leading the way in innovation.
Smart spaces eg in retail. Proximity beacons will track where you are in shop, assistant will know who you are and what you've bought. Scary :-)
In app development, need to get these things right:
Deliver business vale
Unlock innovation
Create a user experience with the wow factor
Business processes have to be in place to support the app
Quality, bug free, resilient, scalable
Diversity, on device and platforms.
Things to so:
Sponsor ideation exercises, the mobile, future will be stranger than your current strategy imagines
Stop managing devices, manage data and apps
Adopt Bimodal IT
Pay attention to privacy and security
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Mobile impacting our businesses on process level. Very good way of improving efficiency and effectiveness. Also the business methods dimension eg Uber, matching supply and demand and using dynamic pricing. Business moment opportunuities, eg in marketing using location based services.
Can use mobile to change business in novel ways.
Android dominates in handset world and will continue to do so. iOS still very strong. Windows still very niche, struggling to get customer acceptance.
In tablets, android dominating again because of price. iOS still strong. But windows just not there
Laptop market is going down, people buying tablets instead.
Blackberry almost non existent now. Under 0.5% of market share.
The smartphone will be the universal link to the Internet of things. In three ways:
Personal networks, eg wearables
Personal bubbles - devices close by using proximity services, eg smart TVs etc
Cloud connected devices, using smart phones to monitor what's going on in cloud.
By end of 2015 will be 7bn connections in the world.
Major players are Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung (especially in smart home area).
Technology trends. In short term: more sensors eg for biometrics, curved and flexible devices, wireless video, accelerometers, new blue tooth and wifi standards
Medium term: personal biometric sensing, new display technologies, new UXs for wearables, increased use of 3D, rich touch
On network front, LTE rollout is continuing, faster in Japan that Europe. 5G total hype at the moment, could be 2020 before deployed. IoT driving new types of networks, new versions of Bluetooth.
Privacy an important issue. Mobile devices are collecting lots of personal data, where we are, what we're doing, how healthy we are. Can be analysed, correlated etc. Need to design in privacy to mobile apps, and may drive change in legislation.
Major challenges facing CIOs in the mobile area:
Skills shortages
New working practices and devices
Making mobile innovation safe and secure
Communication and collaboration tools on devices
Mobile app development and testing
Consumer facing apps coming into the enterprise.
We should be aiming for a future workplace with ubiquitous mobility. People will own multiple devices to which apps will be delivered to. Wearables, BYOD will be ubiquitous and there will be employee autonomy in processes, apps and devices. Employees will innovate. Continual loss of IT control.
In this area, everything moves fast. Need to adopt agile strategies. Focus on managing risk, using agile methods, working with innovative partners, lightweight governance. Bimodal IT fits well. Small, multidisciplinary innovation team using iterative, fast development processes.
Different types of apps:
Convenience, commodity apps eg approving leave. Have to have them, but not exciting!
Process support eg supporting sales force
Process transformation, developing innovative processes, changing the way we work.
Will need multiple app development tools, no one tool will provide everything.
Big challenge is user experience. Because of quality of consumer apps, expectation is higher for enterprise apps. Need to design in user experience.
In security terms, moving away from protecting the device, locking it down, to risk based security. Making innovation safe on untreated devices. Using contextual security, will be more fine grained.
Consumer applications are leading the way in innovation.
Smart spaces eg in retail. Proximity beacons will track where you are in shop, assistant will know who you are and what you've bought. Scary :-)
In app development, need to get these things right:
Deliver business vale
Unlock innovation
Create a user experience with the wow factor
Business processes have to be in place to support the app
Quality, bug free, resilient, scalable
Diversity, on device and platforms.
Things to so:
Sponsor ideation exercises, the mobile, future will be stranger than your current strategy imagines
Stop managing devices, manage data and apps
Adopt Bimodal IT
Pay attention to privacy and security
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Monday, 10 November 2014
The network always wins
Every day there is a special lunch for CIOs with an invited speaker. Today was the author Pete Hinssen and he was fantastic! His latest book, The Network Always Wins I supposed to be very good, but I shall let you know as we were given a copy!
His topic was disruption and he gave a fascinating, entertaining and humourous talk. I hope it was recorded as I'd like to show it to colleagues. I took some notes of the key points he made which are below, might be a bit disjointed but should give you a flavour of what he was talking about.
Technology has never been more interesting, and has never been more disruptive. Technology has become normal.
For example, in July 1980 10 megabyte hard drive was on sale for $4000.
Today you can buy a bracelet which turns into a drone which flies out and takes the perfect selfie, then turns back into a bracelet again. ( note to self. I want
Technology is addictive today. The world is hooked.
Technology is relevant today.
In the old world, technology was special. Not any more.
Impact on society huge.
Huge changes in technology trigger changes in society.
Media, marketing and advertising, and retail have been disrupted.
Even software has, it used to be expensive and difficult now it's cheap and easy.
Information is core to everything we do. Information behaviour changes faster than information systems. It isn't static anymore. It flows.
We are all now connected.
But, networks run on platforms, and there are only five key ones, known as GAFAA they are:
Google; Apple; Facebook; Amazon; Alibaba
Key question for us - in this age of disruption are we going to be active or passive?
Cloud companies are springing up all ver. There's a new "sharing" economy with more than 7000 new platforms in last year. Some examples:
Rent the runway. Rent an expensive bag or dress for an evening.
Trunk club - for men who hate to shop. Get a box of stuff a month. Keep what you like, send back what you don't.
Airbandb Is enormous but it has an IT dept of 3 people. They do everything with Amazon web services
Everything is a network. Not about technology anymore. Networks are being fuelled with information.
Linear thinking is gone.
Organisations have to become networks.
Silicon Valley is changing. Because the role of technology is changing. A 26 year old in a hoodie could be the next big player.
We are in the age of disruption. Radical innovation is here. Look at the driverless car. Google have started delivering shopping in California. Why? Because they have Google maps, lots of algorithms, drones, driverless cars and robots. Soon a driverless car will deliver your shopping and a robot bring it to the door.
Watch the documentary called "Humans need not apply" about machines taking over jobs currently done by humans.
This year a robot built out of lego and a smartphone broke the world record for solving a solve a rubrics cube.
Summary - Technology is changing society and economics. Innovation is non linear.
Can we as CIOs reinvent ourselves to be active and not passive in this era?
Great talk, and my favourite slide was this one to illustrate a particular organisational culture....
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Gamification
In a session now on Gamification or :
Gamification is about engaging and motivating people, not about making them more efficient.
It is the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.
Three broad categories:
Changing behaviours
Developing skills
Driving innovation
Three target audiences:
Customers
Employees
Communities
Good examples of changing behaviour:
Nike+. Uses number of devices and sensors eg fuelband to measure progress eg for running. Gives you feedback, points and badges. Can connect to friends, integrate with facebook etc. 28m users. Has helped millions of individuals to achieve their goals. No direct selling.
Khan academy. Focuses on flipping the classroom. Do the learning and lecturing at home. Watch videos etc. time in classroom is higher quality time working through problems and issues.
10m students a month and 350,000 registered teachers.
Have demonstrated n improvement in learning.
Example of driving innovation:
Quirky. Founded in 2009, is a community of inventors. Anyone can submit an idea, and best ideas get voted up. If decide to make it, market research, detailed design etc. all done by the community. Rewarded by influence, a point system which is related to the royalties for the product.
334 products developed and have community of 970,000 inventors.
Gamification is not like a video game or rewards system. It is about motivation, not entertainment or compensation.
Motivation is driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose. To contribute to where we're going, to get better at things and to deliver a result that's larger than ourselves.
Gamification uses a digital engagement model. Solves a number of problems:
Scale: digital interactions can connect to audiences of any size
Time: digital interactions are asynchronous
Distance: digital interactions are available anywhere
Connectedness: friends are always close
Cost: digital interactions are lower cost than traditional face to face ones
Need to decide if you want to use gamification, what are you trying to achieve? Need to define what are the business objectives we're trying to achieve. Then who is the target audience and what are their goals. Need to align, ie business objectives have to be met by individuals achieving their goals.
If you can design a gamified solution for use in the workplace it can boost employee agility and engagement, enable different ways of working and exploit consumer oriented solutions.
Most common use cases include innovation management, crowdsourcing solutions, product development process improvement and health/wellbeing.
Employee performance has interesting benefits, but not mature yet, mainly used for sales and Helpdesk teams.
We should be looking to see if gamification could be used anywhere in our organisation, maybe put together a small interest group to research it.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Gamification is about engaging and motivating people, not about making them more efficient.
It is the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.
Three broad categories:
Changing behaviours
Developing skills
Driving innovation
Three target audiences:
Customers
Employees
Communities
Good examples of changing behaviour:
Nike+. Uses number of devices and sensors eg fuelband to measure progress eg for running. Gives you feedback, points and badges. Can connect to friends, integrate with facebook etc. 28m users. Has helped millions of individuals to achieve their goals. No direct selling.
Khan academy. Focuses on flipping the classroom. Do the learning and lecturing at home. Watch videos etc. time in classroom is higher quality time working through problems and issues.
10m students a month and 350,000 registered teachers.
Have demonstrated n improvement in learning.
Example of driving innovation:
Quirky. Founded in 2009, is a community of inventors. Anyone can submit an idea, and best ideas get voted up. If decide to make it, market research, detailed design etc. all done by the community. Rewarded by influence, a point system which is related to the royalties for the product.
334 products developed and have community of 970,000 inventors.
Gamification is not like a video game or rewards system. It is about motivation, not entertainment or compensation.
Motivation is driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose. To contribute to where we're going, to get better at things and to deliver a result that's larger than ourselves.
Gamification uses a digital engagement model. Solves a number of problems:
Scale: digital interactions can connect to audiences of any size
Time: digital interactions are asynchronous
Distance: digital interactions are available anywhere
Connectedness: friends are always close
Cost: digital interactions are lower cost than traditional face to face ones
Need to decide if you want to use gamification, what are you trying to achieve? Need to define what are the business objectives we're trying to achieve. Then who is the target audience and what are their goals. Need to align, ie business objectives have to be met by individuals achieving their goals.
If you can design a gamified solution for use in the workplace it can boost employee agility and engagement, enable different ways of working and exploit consumer oriented solutions.
Most common use cases include innovation management, crowdsourcing solutions, product development process improvement and health/wellbeing.
Employee performance has interesting benefits, but not mature yet, mainly used for sales and Helpdesk teams.
We should be looking to see if gamification could be used anywhere in our organisation, maybe put together a small interest group to research it.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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