CIOs Practices for Dealing with Economic Uncertainty

 According to an article on CIO.com, economic uncertainty is one of the main concerns that keep a CIO (Chief Information Officer) up at night. Below I share some ways CIOs can mitigate the impact of changes to the economy.

Cost Optimization: CIOs should closely analyze their IT budgets and identify areas where costs can be optimized without compromising critical operations. They can explore options such as cloud migration, outsourcing non-essential tasks, renegotiating vendor contracts, or consolidating systems to reduce expenses.

Risk Assessment: Conduct a thorough risk assessment of the organization's IT infrastructure and operations. Identify potential vulnerabilities and develop contingency plans to mitigate risks. This may involve enhancing cybersecurity measures, implementing data backup and recovery solutions, and ensuring business continuity plans are in place.

Agile IT Operations: Implement agile methodologies within the IT department to improve responsiveness and flexibility. Agile practices enable faster decision-making, rapid adjustments to changing circumstances, and efficient resource allocation. This approach allows organizations to adapt quickly to economic fluctuations.

Strategic Technology Investments: Evaluate technology investments carefully, ensuring they align with the organization's long-term strategic goals. CIOs should prioritize initiatives that drive efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage. They should also consider emerging technologies that can enable cost savings and improve productivity, such as automation, artificial intelligence, and data analytics.

Collaboration and Communication: Foster collaboration and open communication channels with other executives and departments within the organization. Engage in regular discussions to understand business priorities, challenges, and opportunities. This collaborative approach helps align IT initiatives with the overall business strategy, ensuring technology investments are focused on areas that deliver the most value during uncertain times.

Scenario Planning: Develop various scenarios based on different economic outlooks and assess the potential impact on IT operations and projects. By having contingency plans for different scenarios, CIOs can be better prepared to respond quickly and effectively to changing economic conditions.

Continuous Monitoring and Analysis: Establish mechanisms for continuous monitoring of economic indicators and trends. Stay informed about market conditions, industry developments, and regulatory changes that may impact the organization. This ongoing analysis allows CIOs to make informed decisions and adjust strategies accordingly.

Talent Management: Focus on talent retention and development within the IT department. Invest in upskilling and reskilling programs to ensure that the IT team possesses the skills needed to adapt to changing business needs. Retaining key IT personnel during uncertain times is crucial to maintaining stability and continuity.

Vendor Management: Strengthen relationships with key technology vendors and partners. Collaborate closely with them to negotiate favorable terms, explore cost-saving opportunities, and leverage their expertise in navigating economic uncertainty. Effective vendor management can help optimize IT investments and minimize disruptions.

Transparent Reporting: Establish clear reporting mechanisms to provide regular updates to stakeholders on IT initiatives, progress, and the value delivered. Transparent reporting builds trust and confidence among leadership, employees, and external stakeholders, especially during times of economic uncertainty.

By implementing these strategies, CIOs can proactively address economic uncertainty and help their organizations navigate through challenging times while maintaining operational efficiency and supporting business objectives.

Simply Ask "Why"

 It's more common than we think. Lack of end user perspective will ruin a product.

Yes these images are real. Check out this old post from 2009 https://sys-eng.blogspot.com/2009/04/one-way-to-ruin-great-product-idea-when.html

Looking at these three images at three different projects, its clear that even if on paper the design seemed feasible, the implementation team must have noticed the a little more than average steep driveway, or a little too high ATM, they even went out of their way to accommodate an opening 😱 for the lamp post in the balcony's floor.

👀 Did the implementation teams just throw a blind eye to the issue?

🙊 Maybe they assumed it would go away?

🏋🏼 Thought it was an undiscovered innovation?

These are just examples of everyday business issues that happen all the time. Sometimes minor like losing a customer, in others pretty devastating like losing an entire product line.

Allowing teams to speak freely their minds, and giving team members the authority to question decisions, and promoting respect and accountability are a few ways to mitigate errors in organizations.

The need becomes increasingly important with large portfolios, digital transformation initiatives and situations where projects are too fast or too slow.

Just go back to the simple question, WHY?

Agree?

The Impact of Multi-Factor Authentication

 

According to Google, using Multi-factor Authentication can block up to 100% of automated bots, 99% of bulk phishing attacks, and 66% of targeted attacks that occurred during its investigation, as reported earlier this year in a BusinessWire release which estimates the MFA market to reach $28 billion by 2026.

One of the most important factors in the success of an MFA deployment is user adoption. My experiences deploying MFA for thousands of end users is to engage early with the end users. Engagement typically follows a multi-stage process:

1. Leadership Education

It is important for the technology team to reach out to the leadership team on the business and end user side, to explain the benefit, impact to business risk reduction and improved data integrity. Discussions should also include a very high level of the technology and how it works (the concept of Who You Are, and What You Own).

2. Managers Engagement

Managers will be crucial when time comes for go-live to ensure all users have followed the instructions to activate MFA on their accounts. Managers will also provide lists of the users in their departments and their email addresses for the IT team to enable the feature on their accounts, which will allow end users to activate.

• Background on Cyber Security threats and risks
• What is MFA?
• Value Proposition and Benefits
• End User Impact
• Deployment Schedule
• User Guide
• Technical Support
• Learn More

3. End Users

End users will benefit the most from easy to follow user guides that include screenshots, clear step by step process to follow and information to provide the assurance they are moving in the right direction. A short 2-minute video will come in handy, as well as instructions on how to contact technical support should there be access issues. A table of contents of a good user guide is shown below:

• What is MFA
• Why MFA?
• When Will the Change Take Place?
• What Will the Change Look Like?
• Where Can I Find Information on Activating My Account?
• What to Do if I Have Questions?

Speak Up

Ever been in a meeting when someone is presenting a topic, or making a statement and then the discussion goes on, towards the end the facilitator asks if there are any questions or comments, and its all silence. Ten minutes after the meeting is over the complaints starting roaming around on emails and phone calls. People whining and complaining about that idea that was thrown out there, or that comment that was made in the meeting. Sounds familiar? So how does a project manger handle office rumors, perceptions, she said, he dictated. It's simpler than it seems, just speak up.

Speak up on calls, that is why we have them. to share your points and opinions and be heard. Otherwise keep your peace forever and do not complain off-line.

ETL Move to Production Considerations

Extract, Transport and Load (ETL) work is a common method to connect systems using manual or scheduled batch jobs. Blow are common items worth considering when building an ETL and turning it over to your operations team. We holding knowledge transfer meetings the items below are usually of most importance.

 

Functional description

Batch / Automated Job Names

Frequency / Timings of Batch Jobs

Potential Errors

Error Handling

Exception Handling

Escalation Path

Diagrams

Interface Names

Server / System Names

ETL Tool Version / Vendor Support

Security Parameters

Are You Asking Your Engineer to Do the Impossible?

It is important for engineers building systems to understand how the organization will support the utility of their end product. I was asked to weigh in on a dispute between an IT vendor and a large multinational corporation. The vendor claims the IT security work has been delivered and they installed the systems and built the infrastructure needed. The IT sponsor at the corporation claims the implementation is not working.

 

Upon closer observation and after discussions with the technical team members I was able to identify the root cause of this confusion. Both entities were correct, the vendor indeed did deliver the work per technical spec, and indeed it was not serving the business objective the sponsor expected.


In a nutshell, the technical implementation was done correctly. However the way it was used by end users was not what both parties had envisioned causing certain portions of the solution to go out of sync with other components in the system, causing configuration errors yielding diluted value of the implementation. What was missing was an organizational policy that guides end users to follow certain process changes. Once the end users would follow the new organizational policy, and back doors were no longer allowed, the system components would be in sync and operate correctly.

 

The summary of this experience is that for a technology implementation to work properly the following need to occur in advance.

• Clearly articulate the updated operational process flow
• Ensure governance and policies support the new process flow
• Develop controls in the IT implementation to to enforce the policy

Without the three components the net realized value and user experience will be suboptimal. This is of course assuming all other standard best practices of system development have been followed from concept to deployment.