Leading Your IT Organization By Design

NERCOMP SIG Workshop
November 13-14, 2007
University of Massachusetts - Amherst

As a leader you must...

• have the process not necessarily all the answers
• listen to people's opinions and give them the benefit of the doubt
• hold people accountable
• ask others "How am I doing as a leader?"
• ask people what motivates them
• be a coach - don't rescue
• know your responsibilities
• Be clear and fair
• make sure others know their responsibilities as an individual and as a team member
• ask new team members what they would bring from their old job/team to help the new job/team
• ask new team members what they would bring from their new job/team to help their old job/team
• help people understand that what they do impacts the people around them
• never give up!

Other Important Points:

• We judge ourselves by our intentions but we judge others by what they do - it's important to give others the benefit of the doubt. Don't assume you know why someone is behaving they way that they are.
• Intention: The result that you want from what you're doing - the result you get is proof of your intention.
• Leadership: Ideas, Communication, Process and Management
• Cornerstone behaviors that add value to a relationship: candidness & openness
• Trust: results; integrity; empathy

Educause 2007

Just got back from my first Educause Conference in Seattle, WA. I was extremely impressed with the quality of the presentations and presenters. The conference had record attendance and nearly every presentation I attended was totally packed.

Here are some of my notes...

Frequent topic themes

• Project prioritization challenges
• Lack of resources - "Doing more with less"

Other interesting stuff

• Open source SIS & LMS (e.g. Moodle, Sakai)
• UCLA uses Moodle and has an open source SIS (http://oit.ucla.edu/ccle)
• Standford uses Sakai and Shibboleth

Administrative Applications

Presentations

Wiki and Project Management (10/26/2007)
John Hopkins University

• Open source options such as twiki.org and mediawiki.org
• They use Confluence and JIRA, which integrate nicely (know.isis.jhu.edu)
• Macros pull from JIRA
• Can also feed macros with RSS data
• SharePoint connector for Confluence
• Openness fosters trust
• Use wiki for knowledge sharing among developers (departmental Intranet)
• Use for: Brain storming & raw collaboration, problem solving & consensus building, monitoring progress & status, blogging & personal status reports, sharing conference notes
• Benefits: Reduce organizational spam, improve communications, document management, reduce loss of knowledge, building relationships
• Executives do have access but aren't really using at this time
• Suggested: Wikinomics by Tapscott, et al and wikipatterns.com

Project Prioritization Scorecard (10/26/2007)
David Blum, CIO at Zane State College

• Need executive buy-in
• Move from qualitative value to quantitative scorecard
• Project sponsor - member of President's cabinet
• CIO sponsor of IT projects (this has worked ok so far)
• Governance Committee - adjusts initial prioritization
• Focus on holistic needs of the college versus silos
• Customers have become more proactive - no more "I needed this yesterday"
• Fit between governance and project management
• Track all tasks coming into IT department and prioritize - even helpdesk tickets!
• Don't take into consideration time in queue

Academic Applications

Presentations

Effective E-Learning in Higher Education (10/24/2007)
Professor Tom Reeves of University of Georgia

• Need to improve access to higher education for certain cohorts
• Want to improve higher education outcomes
• Introducing technology is never enough - must change business
• Mental models change slowly
• Australia is good model as they have a significant amount of online learning
• Problem: Most e-learning still involves using technology to deliver traditional forms of instruction (didactic pedagogy, text-based, weekly content, simple activites, quiz assessment)
• Effectiveness depends upon the degree that technology is aligned with appropriate pedagogical dimensions
• Keeping pedagogy ahead of technology is an ongoing struggle
• Stress instructional methods - not technology
• Suggested reading: What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain

The Pedagogy of Participation:
The Conjunction of Physical and Virtual Learning Space (10/24/2007)
Joanna Robinson, Research Associate at Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC): Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver, BC

• GNWC offers a Masters of Digital Media
• Interested in participatory pedogogy - options other than traditional lecture/seminar style
• Have created a Virtual Centre for Digital Media in Second Life
• They use Sloodle, which is an open source Virtual Environmnent Learning System
• Lecture style is still boring even in Second Life!
• Found some restrictions in Second Life such as how many people can be in sim (~30).
• Use technology, such as Second Life, to augment "real life" classroom - not replacement
• Videos available on YouTube (e.g. Blending Realities, Sloodle)

GTC Conference - CIO Academy

Keynote: Five Technologies in the Next Five Years
David Pogue, Technology Columnist
The New York Times
http://www.davidpogue.com/

• GrandCentral.com
• Google Cellular 46645
• T-Mobile @ Home
• futurephone.com
  –Free International Calls
• Voice to Text (e.g. Callwave.com)
• Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID)
• YouTube.com; revver.com, metacafe.com
• Digg.com – News, Videos, Podcasts, Blogs, etc
  –place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web
  –collectively determine the value of content
• Web 2.0 – Social Media

Performance Measures & IT

Kevin Belden CIO
NYS Office of the State Comptroller

• GPRA – 1993 & CCA – 1996
• E-Government Act ’02
• Customer Usage/Satisfaction
• Performance Reference Model (PRM)
• Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA)
• Business Reference Model (BRM)

Tim Bass
Senior Advisor to Governor Kaine
Commonwealth of Virginia

• Create a performance driven culture in state government
• Innovation to improve productivity
• Tightly scoped, high ROI Projects
• Operational review
  –Improvements in efficiency and effectiveness
• Outcome based performance counters
  –Instead of process based or widget counters

Tom Herzog
CIO, NYS Department of Corrections

•Framework
-Measured Objectives - What will be measured?
-Measures - What is the measure?
-Methods - How will we count it?
-Targets - What is the desired performance?

•Goals
–Transparency of government
–Environment of responsibility
–Accessibility to services
–Workforce development

The Changing Face of New York
Ron Crouch, Director
State Data Center, University of Louisville
Nationally known demographic expert

• The U.S. is going through a major demographic revolution
• Diversity by race and age are critical issues
• “Middle-aging” of our population
• Economy is changing and we are not ready
• Costs of an aging society are unsustainable – must rethink what is old
• Need health care system instead of sick care system

What it Means to be a CIO
Bob Samson - Featured Speaker

•Panel
–Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart
New York State CIO
–Mr. Paul Cosgave
New York City Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and CIO
–Dr. Norman J. Jacknis
Westchester County CIO
–Susan
IBM Internal CIO

• Building relationships
• Think huge and get started
• Do more with less
• Get out of silos
• Aging population
• Security
• Consumerism and customer expectations
• Globalization

Planning for Innovation
•Adapting to the innovation economy
•Reducing our cost structure
•Investing in infrastructure
•Policy development

Obstacles to Innovation
•Unsupportive culture
•Funding shortage
•Internal workforce issues
•Process immaturity


•You are a Change Officer, a change agent
•Responsibilities
–Facilitation
–Get people to work together
–Make sure enterprise is effective
–Educate organization on ways to be more effective
–Challenge the status quo
–Enterprise view of organization

•Technical vs. non-technical skills
–Tech wiz kid not required
–High level knowledge regarding tech trends
–Surround yourself with smart tech folks (strong team)
–Strategic and business talents are important

•Indications of your effectiveness
–Do people consult with you?
–Do you understand your customers and what their problems are?
–Are your efforts valued?

Major Takeaways

•Never stop learning/growing
•Push yourself to go outside your comfort zone – this is where you will grow!
•Challenge the norm
•Surround yourself with talented individuals and delegate
•Keep the train running, but don’t forget to spend time innovating
•Align IT efforts with goals of organization