TransformIT

Reinvent the Role of IT
IT is well positioned to drive change across the enterprise. How can IT become more biz-strategic?
   10 years ago
#TransformITChange How Work Gets DoneIT has an unprecedented opportunity to deliver strategic value & modernize enterprise-wide services.
Top Votes
Chris Pope
What are the top ways you can change the way IT currently works? (fix your own house).
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Stephen Mann
#IT needs to address a number of challenges that don't relate to the IT
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Cloud Sherpas
Evolving the business analysts layer; helping other LOBs understand and capitalize on tools like #ServiceNow
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Stephen Mann
Realize that #IT isn’t about the technology – it’s about what gets achieved through the technology
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Jason Wojahn
IT for and through the business, IT as a significant influencer to revenue, satisfaction and efficiency
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Shane Carlson
The first and best start is to focus energy on solving real business problems and enabling business opportunities. If IT is a barrier to Business success, it is a burden.
Stephen Mann great point Shane - seeing the bigger (enterprise) picture is critical to #IT success
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Jon Crane
Think outside the box and align IT with your core services rather than thinking of it as a way to simply keep the lights on.
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Beau Christensen
Build deployment tools that everyone can leverage. Obfuscate the infrastructure (cloud or private) away from the users and make IaaS economic decisions opaque to everyone but ops & finance.
Chris Pope Great point, a focus on solving the problem with a consistent platform and capabilities, and not letting the traditional barriers be an inhibitor #IT #servicenow
John Roberts is your def of 'dev 4 everyone' mean biz users building apps?
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Cloud Sherpas
It's not just about buying a piece of software, it's seeing a grander vision to bridge the gap between process and technology
Farah Remtulla
Technoids jump too quickly to the solution. Stay in the problem space w the biz as long as possible to truly understand desired outcome b/c sometimes they don't know either. Gotta agree with @itsmpundit - we need to run more marathons with the business!
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Shane Carlson
another one from Paul Moulton, when he hires outside the company for an IT Leader, they spend 6 months in a business unit before they come to IT.
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Chris Pope
Great point Farah...focusing on the 'how' and not the 'what' is a common trait....#transformIT
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Valor
but how do you teach that perspective? “Great developers can architect and build applications. Amazing developers do it with an eye focused on the business." -John Coggeshall
Tony Fugere gotta get developers with biz exp!
Farah Remtulla It's our fault for pushing our devs to be so code focused and allowing them to build a tech bubble. Allow them to slow down so they can speed up.
ServiceNow Great point. Can it be taught?
Tony Fugere @ServiceNow I think teaching someone how to build apps can be easier than teaching them business sense... time to recruit from outside of Comp Sci
Valor @servicenow you have to start sending devs to b-school. @sitare21 mentioned, we never teach comp scientists to do anything but solve tech probs
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Stephen Mann
@itsmpundit a trend for #CIO s to be business people too?
Shane Carlson Seeing a lot of CIOs come from an operations background these days.
Farah Remtulla We need to scare the pants off of IT. How about more business CIO's? #mashup
Shane Carlson
We in IT need to stop seeing ourselves as a separate entity and Industry. A CEO recently said that regardless of the business he is in, he is a technology company first and foremost. IT is as much a part of the business as operations.
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Jason Wojahn
And further those businesses need technology solutions to their problems and opportunities
Tony Fugere I concur @jason_wojahn and @ITSMPundit Wasn't Frank Slootman at K13 saying future CIO's not being from IT in the trad'l sense? Open the flood gates. :-)
Shane Carlson While I agree, those conversations need to primarily focus on Business Outcomes rather than the technology used to enable them.
Jason Wojahn This is further validated by the emergence of roles like the CDO (Chief Digital Office) emerging in companies today
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Stephen Mann
customers in a recent webinar said something similar http://community.servicenow.com/blog/stephenmann/7-practical-tips-marketing-it-business-stakeholders
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Jeff Frick
Too many people think of IT as necessary evil, opportunity for IT to be competitive service providers their customers need
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Stephen Mann
the CIO saw himself as a business problem solver not an IT provider.
Shane Carlson I was at a CIO summit in Miami last week where the theme was all about IT Relevancy and Transformation. All business focused conversations.
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Sandeep Sidhu
| Agreed | Eminent is #CIO presence at the Executive Board
Jon Crane
IT can be proactive, reaching out to core business functions, identifying their services and asking "how can we help?" IT should be the center of service support. We're not about geeks piled into a server room anymore. We're here to help you do your job..
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Tom Alday
Identify their pain points and swoop in with a elegant solution that's best for them and their customers. That's what we're doing with other departments..
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Joanna Duff
right - less infrastructure-centric and more service-centric
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Valor
Unfortunately, the Biz sees IT as a black hole. You have to market your solution potential and not be "the company IT guy"
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Stephen Mann
#IT definitely needs to be more proactive in looking for opportunities to help, not just sitting waiting for work
Mark Carroll
Why do IT Practitioners still believe that their end users are unaware of technology? End Users consume relevant technology at home and then come to the 80's IT dungeon in the Enterprise. It is time to level up!
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Stephen Mann
I think it depends - there is a wide spectrum of end user (customer) understanding
Jeff Frick that's true, but at the end of the day, people just want to get their job done, and are looking for assist from IT, not an additional layer of pain. That's why the problem solvers are heroes!
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John Furrier
best technology imho should be invisible that is the benefit of platforms
Beau Christensen 100% agree!
Shane Carlson I've always said, that the best day in any IT org is the day the business stops thinking about you.
John Furrier Shane and Beau YES and speed to value is result of being good.. everyone wins business and people #profit #citizenship #futureofwork
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Jeff Frick
Agreed, the mystery behind the curtain isn't so mysterious anymore. Is that attitude part of what drove the rise of shadow it?
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Cloud Sherpas
IT departments need ways to better engage their customers - #ServiceNow's Content Management portal capability is one way we've seen our customers have success in this area
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Shane Carlson
you know, only 2 industry refer to their customers as "users" one is IT, the other is drug rehab. #justsaying
Tom Alday Oh man, good point. I strive to use "customers" but sometimes fall back on "user" out of habit.
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Shane Carlson
these days, most employees walk around with more power in their pocket than you give them on their desktop and most legacy app servers for that matter.
Jeff Frick
Is Mobile the lever to drive this transformation? Show real customer service to the users by literally delivering to the palm of their hand?
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Dan Turchin
Smartphones are tools. Mobile-first is a culture shift. Making customer service part of the org. DNA is what drives transformation.
Jeff Frick Culture shift and demographic shift, for new employees, customers, and suppliers personnel - Do your kids to email on laptop or phone? (if they do email at all?)
Jason Wojahn I agree, mobile is only one method by which IT can deliver value through efficient, customer and business centric services.
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Stephen Mann
and be better prepared for the management of cloud delivered services and, where appropriate, outsourced services
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Shane Carlson
depends on the culture, but the key is support the customers as natively as possible. Wherever and however they use and consume the services. Mobile, Web, Telegraph, whatever suits how people actually work. The 9-5 support models are dead.
Dan Turchin Or smoke signals :). First understand how the business defines success. Then deliver compelling technology experiences that support business objectives.
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Joanna Duff
Not everything needs to be or should be on mobile. Knowing when not to use mobile is just as important as knowing when to use it
ServiceNow Great point. But what defines the balance?
Joanna Duff @servicenow The "voice" of your customer
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Chris Pope
Its another angle for sure, but its about letting me consume how I want to consume, but delivering an outcome in the most efficient way, as Joanna Duff rightly mentions, not everything is a fit!
John Roberts
How can IT effectively manage or assist non-IT service departments like HR or facilities?
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Mark Carroll
A request is a request is a request, no? Send me an email and I'll get back to you (sarcasm)
Tony Fugere along those lines though, it's just that and as @stephenmann said, they are SP's, get them task-based tools with workflow automation! hint hint #ServiceNow
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Stephen Mann
Human Resources (#HR), like the enterprise #IT organization, is a corporate service provider
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Tom Alday
HR is generally archaic in their processes. Update them and streamline their offerings. Make people WANT to contact HR
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Stephen Mann
While service relationships are well defined and automated within the #IT organization – thanks to IT best practice frameworks and fit-for-purpose IT service management (#ITSM) products – service relationships in other business functions are often not
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Mark Laucus
They can use ServiceNow!
Fruition Partners @MarkLaucus, yes Mark- they can use @ServiceNow! We broke down the Top 5 Reasons to Extend SN to all biz units: http://bit.ly/1b3JMh0
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Stephen Mann
The growing use of #ITSM and #ITIL outside of the IT organization and other statistics http://community.servicenow.com/blog/stephenmann/growing-use-itsm-and-itil-outside-it-organization-and-other-statistics
Shane Carlson We have to be very careful how we position those conversations, many outside of IT do not view "IT" best practices as applicable nor better than what they have. The term ITIL is often unknown at best in the biz and sometimes carries negativity
Stephen Mann Very true Shane - I'd like to think that it is demonstrated such that others can see the worth, rather than just applied
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Stephen Mann
. @KPMG_US survey: 87% of survey respondents already leverage the #ServiceNow platform for non-#ITSM applications
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Joanna Duff
understanding why and how they do things, what their pain points are and what they need, their drivers and translating that info into functional requirements
Farah Remtulla
IT needs to walk a mile or two in the shoes of the biz. We tend to use ESP (6th sense) in order to deliver services we think they need rather than support outcomes the biz needs to deliver to customers.
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Chris Pope
Personas are a great tool, but sitting with an end user and watching them perform daily tasks can be a rude awakening and insightful also... #IT #servicenow
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Shane Carlson
more like run a Marathon...
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Beau Christensen
DevOpsBiz. Oh no... I'm not sure I could stay awake during the Finance scrum meetings...
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Shane Carlson
Paul Moulton (Costco CIO) said last week that he prefers to hire people from the business he can train in IT.
Farah Remtulla A serious skill shortage: technoids with a balance between IT and business knowledge.
Chris Pope A book wont tell you how, nothing better than living in the trenches or putting a headset on..live a day in the life, then realize what you offer versus what they need..stunning outcomes will come!
Jeff Frick Makes sense as the services are getting easier to deliver as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) builds out, at least for a lot of the 'mundane' from messaging to cloud storage
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Stephen Mann
We need to look up from the technology to see the people struggling to do what they need to do to fulfil their business roles
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Mark Laucus
I think that technology professionals are constantly in the business. We are tasked constantly to understand an outcome and provide a solution. That requires us to provide structure and then a solution.
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Stephen Mann
we also need to be more involved in requirements definition rather than be told what the "solution" is by business colleagues
Adam Mason
I keep thinking that we should change the discussion from #metrics to #money. Then the conversations with business should change #ITAM #ITSM @dturchin @sitare21
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Shane Carlson
Agree, uptime and resolution rates don't matter if you can't link them to positive or negative business outcomes (read as $$ impact).
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Stephen Mann
Someone smarter than me once pointed out that #IT talks in 1s and 0s, everyone else talks in $s
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John Roberts
Good point Adam. Why even have metrics if they don't align to a cost or impact to the business?
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Farah Remtulla
The IT guy at a flower shop: WOOT! We met all our SLA's! 99% availability. The Customer: But your site was down on Mother's Day. Metrics need to incorporate experience. Else MEH.