IT Projects: Expert Witness, CIO, In-House Counsel & Litigation Forum

Why this blog? Why now? Why YOU?

“IT Projects: Expert Witness, CIO, In-House Counsel & Litigation Forum

... engaging IT best practices, turning around IT projects, & understanding IT litigation issues” http://blog.wsrcg.com

Despite great changes and/or advances during the last 20 years in the shape of the world (it’s flat again), science, medicine, publishing, distribution, communications, the price of gasoline, the world-wide web and 9/11, two related areas of technology have failed to keep pace: IT system project success and the IT Law that supports it.

Did you know that:

1. The success rate for software development/implementation projects has not exceeded 35% (per the Standish Group’s “Chaos Reports”) during that period?

2. Scrapped software projects accounted for $55 billion in the USA – just a few years ago (per the National Institute of Science & Technology)?

3. The promised cost, schedule and functionality benefits from outsourcing IT have not been realized in 50% of the North American & European companies that use it?

4. Lawsuits between many large software companies, their Fortune 500 customers, and the giant IT consulting/systems integrator firms have grown from virtually nothing into a steady stream of specialized litigation?

Is there nothing we have learned during the past 20 years to improve the odds of a successful implementation that meets functional, quality, cost & schedule requirements and ROI, tolerable risk levels & stakeholder expectations? 

Seven IT Tips for surviving the recession

Author:  Cath Jennings        Originally posted on 1/13/09 at:     http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/01/13/authors/articleauthor.aspx?liArticleID=234171

The global recession and how to cope with it will inevitably dictate the business and IT agendas during 2009. While the general consensus is that IT budgets are likely to remain relatively flat overall, circumstances will vary from industry to industry, with sectors such as financial services and travel being hardest hit. Government and utilities will see investment remain relatively buoyant.

Gartner indicates that, although 46% of CIOs believe their budget will increase, 21% expect expenditure to fall and a further 33% anticipate that there will be no change. Mark McDonald, global vice president of executive programmes at Gartner, says: "Some companies are going through large budget declines, while increases are very modest, which is holding the overall number down."

Nonetheless, many IT organisations are already shelving nice-to-have, discretionary projects and getting rid of costly on-site contractors, while at the same time adopting a somewhat longer-term, wait-and-see approach.

Why Systems Fail and Problems Sprout Anew!

Here's a very thoughtful "oldie but goodie" from 1980!!!  What do you think?  WSR

Commentary on the principles of "Systemantics"

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Review of the book. Systemantics; how systems work... and especially how they fail by John Gall. New York, Pocket Books, 1978

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Introduction

At last those concerned with social change have a basic textbook to explain why "things generally are indeed not working very well" despite our many efforts. As is remarked on the cover: "Have you ever wondered why the unsinkable Titanic sank... or the poor in India eat better bread than the rich in America... or hospital patients are blamed for not getting well... or why, in general, things that don't work badly don't work at all ?" Similar questions are of deep concern to those working in international organizations.

The author, John Gall, explains his point of departure in the following words:

"The religious person may blame it on. original sin. The historian may cite the force of trends such as population growth and industrialization. The sociologist offers reasons rooted in the peculiarities of human associations. Reformers blame it all on "the system", and propose new systems that would, they assert, guarantee a brave new world of justice, peace, and abundance. Everyone, it seems, has his own idea of what the problem is and how it can be corrected. But all agree on one point- that their own system would work very well if only it were universally adopted.

CIO strategy: 10 qualities of IT greatness

December 29th, 2008

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 9:53 am

Categories: IT issues, CIO issues

Tags: CIO, Information Technology, Successful IT Group, Paul M. Ingevaldson, Strategy...

Successful IT groups are resilient, flexible, and highly responsive to organizational business needs. For many CIOs, this goal appears elusive and completely disconnected from the daily grind of servers, users, downtime, and help desks. Despite the difficulty, CIO success depends on connecting the chaotic, often crisis-driven, IT environment to high-level strategic and business priorities that matter to the broader organization.Linking a tactical IT culture rooted in reaction and response to broader strategic goals is a worthy, if difficult, challenge, which requires understanding the areas of intersection between IT and the business. Despite the obstacles, IT must cross this bridge without disrupting its own operational ability to deliver projects on-time and within budget while still achieving planned scope. To be sure, this balancing act requires careful and delicate choreography!

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo as Ford, GM and Chrysler

Previously Posted December 22nd, 2008

by Larry Dignan

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11314

Could Google, Microsoft and Yahoo be the equivalent of Ford, GM and Chrysler more than 60 years ago?

That thought provoking question was raised by Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, who cooks up weekend missives designed to make you go hmmm. The argument is an interesting one. Lindsay notes that the downturn of 2001 to 2003 in Web advertising–AOL imploded and Yahoo fumbled–allowed Google to emerge.

Instead of buying Google, the future search giant went public and owned the sector. Fast forward a bit and MySpace, YouTube and Facebook had no shot at going public. Facebook had its IPO shot, but blew it. Lindsay says: Will the current downturn provide the condition for the next Google to emerge – and if so where will it come from? The problem today is that today’s internet players have formidable cash piles which they can use to buy up almost anything. The venture capital players that brought the internet sector into being have generally less cash to hand and are becoming increasingly interested in other sectors.

The parallel with the auto industry? Buick, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet were the high tech startups industry of the 1940s. They were gobbled up to become GM. I thought Lindsay was stretching a bit when I read through his research note. But then I pondered Yahoo, which has Flickr, Delicious, Rivals.com, Zimbra and a bunch of other properties in its collection. Are these properties really any different than the nameplates and brands that GM and Ford have?

Future Bits: Google’s Machiavellianism

Remember my "Executive Musical Chairs" comments in previous comments to articles presented here (e.g.Whose on Google, What's on Microsoft, and Nobody's on Yahoo?).  Did you know there was going to be a test?  Make a list of all the top tech execs moves in 2008, and for extra credit, make some predictions for the next round of "chair grabbing"  ahead in 2009.

Previously posted on December 24, 2008

By Saul Hansell 

The New York Times Bits

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/future-bits-googles-machiavellianism/#more-2127

Defining Moment of 2008: Google’s offer to help Yahoo fend off Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid.

Google’s response to Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo may represent one of the most brilliant acts of corporate Machiavellianism in recent history. Two days after the hostile offer was announced, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote a post on Google’s blog opposing the deal and aligning itself with Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and chief executive, who wanted to keep the company independent.

Google’s support helped embolden Mr. Yang and encouraged him to play hard-to-get with Microsoft until the software giant withdrew its offer. Google then agreed to help bolster Yahoo’s profits by selling some search advertising for it — a deal that was ultimately scuttled in the face of scrutiny by the Justice Department.

The upshot of all this is that Google continues to gain share in the search market and Internet audience, and all its competitors remain in disarray. Yahoo has lost two tiers of top management. Microsoft just hired one former Yahoo executive to develop yet another Internet strategy. And AOL, which has been negotiating possible combinations with both Microsoft and Yahoo, remains in play, reportedly unloved by Time Warner, its corporate parent.

While Microsoft’s dream of mounting a true challenge to Google’s search dominance is elusive, the market for display advertising remains divided and up for grabs. But it is display advertising that has been hardest hit by the recession.

Defining Question for 2009: Can Google get its act together in display advertising before its rivals do?

Keeping the competition divided has bought Google more time, but it hasn’t won the battle. It is still trying to integrate DoubleClick, the advertising technology firm it bought, and it has yet to explain to the market the advantage of the combination.

The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism

How about someone taking on the re-telling of Deep Throat's story, now that there are people telling more of the facts, not just feeding the grist mill of sensationalized journalism?  Any ideas about candidates who could do the story justice?  I vote for Oliver Stone to put it on film!  And for Adam Sandler and Will Farrel for the roles of Woodward and Bernstein. 

Marlene

Previously posted December 22, 2008

By George Friedman

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_and_crisis_journalism

Mark Felt died last week at the age of 95. For those who don’t recognize that name, Felt was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame.  It was Felt who provided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post with a flow of leaks about what had happened, how it happened and where to look for further corroboration on the break-in, the cover-up, and the financing of wrongdoing in the Nixon administration. Woodward and Bernstein’s exposé of Watergate has been seen as a high point of journalism, and their unwillingness to reveal Felt’s identity until he revealed it himself three years ago has been seen as symbolic of the moral rectitude demanded of journalists.

In reality, the revelation of who Felt was raised serious questions about the accomplishments of Woodward and Bernstein, the actual price we all pay for journalistic ethics, and how for many years we did not know a critical dimension of the Watergate crisis. At a time when newspapers are in financial crisis and journalism is facing serious existential issues, Watergate always has been held up as a symbol of what journalism means for a democracy, revealing truths that others were unwilling to uncover and grapple with. There is truth to this vision of journalism, but there is also a deep ambiguity, all built around Felt’s role. This is therefore not an excursion into ancient history, but a consideration of two things. The first is how journalists become tools of various factions in political disputes. The second is the relationship between security and intelligence organizations and governments in a Democratic society.

CIO strategy: 10 qualities of IT greatness

December 29th, 2008

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 9:53 am

Categories: IT issues, CIO issues

Tags: CIO, Information Technology, Successful IT Group, Paul M. Ingevaldson, Strategy...

Successful IT groups are resilient, flexible, and highly responsive to organizational business needs. For many CIOs, this goal appears elusive and completely disconnected from the daily grind of servers, users, downtime, and help desks. Despite the difficulty, CIO success depends on connecting the chaotic, often crisis-driven, IT environment to high-level strategic and business priorities that matter to the broader organization.Linking a tactical IT culture rooted in reaction and response to broader strategic goals is a worthy, if difficult, challenge, which requires understanding the areas of intersection between IT and the business. Despite the obstacles, IT must cross this bridge without disrupting its own operational ability to deliver projects on-time and within budget while still achieving planned scope. To be sure, this balancing act requires careful and delicate choreography!

Digital Natives in Our Midst

WHO ARE YOUR KEY USERS? DIGITAL NATIVES OR DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS? AND HOW SHOULD THAT AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM DESIGN, USER INTERFACES, SOFTWARE SELECTION PROCESS AND EVALUATION CRITERIA? your training? your hiring?   warren

ORIGINALLY POSTED MON, JUN 16, 2008 13:22 EDThttp://advice.cio.com/abbie_lundberg/digital_natives_in_our_midst

POSTED BY: Abbie Lundberg in Soapbox TOPIC: Enterprise Management BLOG: Difference Engine CURRENT RATING:  COMMENT: 1

If there’s anyone under 30 working in your company, you’ve got Digital Natives. Marc Prensky coined this term in 2001, in a paper titled, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” His starting point: “today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.” Things need to change, and they need to change fast. Since 2001, many of those students have graduated, and they’re working for you.

Digital natives grew up immersed in technology, according to Prensky, while digital immigrants adopted the new technology later in life. Why does this matter? “As Digital Immigrants learn to adapt to their environment,” Prensky writes, “they always retain, to some degree, their ‘accent,’ that is, their foot in the past..... Our Digital Immigrant instructors... are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.”

Would you sign off on this audit? What’s a going concern in this business climate?

The suggestion here is for audit companies to re-connect with their real core value.  Perhaps the wording should be "to find what's been missing ...their real core  value."              Marlene

Previously posted by Brian Sommer December 17th, 2008

http://blogs.zdnet.com/sommer/?p=267

Are Audited Financial Statements of Value Anymore?

Auditors will surely do a lot of head scratching in the coming months as they decide which of their clients’ books are prepared as:
- going concerns
- breakup basis
- going concern but with an expression of doubt as to the firm’s future

I’ve looked at the last audited statement for Bear Stearns and the audit was essentially unqualified and yet Bear Stearns failed. I don’t have time to examine the annual reports for Circuit City, General Motors, Tweeter, Wachovia, Citi, Mervyns and many other firms that have struggled in 2008 but I bet a number of them had audits that were prepared on a going concern basis.

This question is at the heart of some concern as to the role of auditors. Are auditors really taking a close look at all of the forces that are impacting the viability of a firm or are they concerned mostly with the historical financial statements? The latter is acceptable if an accountant is making no judgment call re: the immediate viability of a firm. But, if employees, shareholders and other constituents are relying on auditors to perform a thorough assessment of a firm’s situation, then auditors must do more.

Specifically, auditors should and must opine on the following:

- Audit clients that buy, sell, trade or originate ‘opaque’ financial instruments (e.g., collateralized debt obligations of sub-prime mortgages) are by their nature trying to hide the true nature of the product they are selling. Logically, one cannot render an opinion on the viability of a business that sells opaque products as one cannot understand the risks, liabilities or future obligations these products may manifest.

Google falls from list of most trusted companies for privacy

Wonder what affect the changes being made by Yahoo to remove data after 90 days will have on this list next year?  One would assume that others will follow Yahoo's actions.  Interesting --- Yahoo as leader and innovator----hmmmm.              Marlene

Previously appeared December 16, 2008
Author: Preston Gralla
http://blogs.computerworld.com/google_falls_from_list_of_most_trusted_companies_for_privacy

Privacy groups have long worried about Google's privacy policies --- and now it appears that consumers have followed suit. Google has dropped off the list of the most trusted companies when it comes to privacy protection. The Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe surveyed 6,486 consumers about which companies they felt were most trustworthy and protected their private information. They recently published the list of the top 20.

Last year, Google clocked in at number 10. Today, it's not even on the list. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has long worried about the massive amounts of data that Google has about people, and how that data might be used. EPIC, for example, testified that Google should not have been allowed to purchase the advertising firm DoubleClick because of privacy concerns.

Microsoft isn't on the list, either. In a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the survey, a spokesperson for the Ponemon Institute said "Google (and Microsoft) suffer from big company syndrome. People figure that if you're big and collecting data, there must be an issue."

That doesn't really explain Google's dropping off the list, though. After all, the company that took the number one spot is American Express, for the second year in a row. American Express isn't exactly a mom-and-pop operation. eBay (number 2), IBM (number 3), and Amazon (number 4), aren't corner-store sized either.

The issue is that Google, by its very nature, collects more information about people than any other company, and people are uneasy about the way that information might be used. Google has a long way to go to clean up its privacy policies.

Other high-tech companies on the list include Hewlett-Packard (number 6), Apple (number 8), WebMD (number 13), Yahoo (number 14), Facebook (number 15), AOL (number 16), and Dell and eLoan (tied for number 20)