Help! You have just asked to make a formal 30-minute presentation to senior management on the on the new cloud application you just moved into production.  What do you do? The answer, consider the following: At a high level, begin your presentation with a short (five minutes maximum) PowerPoint based overview of the system’s overall data and functionality, followed by a live demonstration of the system, and ending with a short question/answer session. Regarding your short (yes, I said short again because it’s really important) opening PowerPoint, you could potentially include the types of slides listed below. When reviewing this list, note that the goal here is simply to give your audience a context that enables them to understand (and appreciate) the live demonstration of the system.  Slide 1: An opening slide contains the system’s name and your name This is important to orient your audience as to what you will be showing them. A typical senior manager’s day is going from meeting to meeting. As a result, it would be good to remind them why they are there. Slide 2: A very high level overview of the data contained in the system As an example, this slide could say the system includes company financials, sales forecasts/pipeline, inventory levels, staffing levels, market share statistics, etc. Slide 3: A very high level overview of the system’s primary functionality As an example, this slide could say the system has standardized reports, ad hoc reporting capabilities, drill down capabilities, advanced analytics, etc. Slide 4: Ask [...]

As IT professionals, we belong to one of the few professions that can work in almost any industry.  When trying to choose the best industry for you to work in, ask yourself the following questions: 1. Do you have any non-IT experience in a specific industry? This experience could be of value because you will understand the software applications you are building from the user/business perspective. 2. Do you have any educational credential, such as a biology degree or a stock broker’s license that relates to a specific industry? Professional business-related credentials in your industry not only provide you with knowledge of the applications you are building, but it also helps give you professional credibility with those in the business-side of your company. 3. Is there a specific industry that is predominant in your geographical area? This is important information for you to know because it relates directly to your future marketability where you live. What you will find as your career progresses, and you move to more senior positions, it gets harder and harder to switch industries. For example, because my technical background is primarily financial services, I am much more professionally marketable within financial services than I am in, say, biotech or retail. 4. Is there an industry you like the most? My point here is that if there is an industry you really love, you might as well work in an industry that you find interesting. 5. Is there an industry where you have close, highly placed connections? Very [...]

If you are in a typical business analyst role you live in two worlds. You have one foot in the specified business area you are supporting and the other foot in IT.  Even worse, often you have to keep the peace when IT and your business users don’t get along. That said, there are a number of soft skills that would be well worth your while to master. These include the following: Negotiation skills: This will be of value when facilitating negotiations between IT and business users, you and IT regarding development resources, and you and the business users trying to minimize project scope creep. Active listening: This will be of great value when trying to collect business requirements, provide quality internal client service, and when gathering information for status reports. Dealing with conflict: This will be of value when IT and users disagree and/or when deadlines are being missed and tensions are running high. Quality client service techniques: </strong> As a representative of the IT community, providing quality client service to the business users you support is critical to your job performance and career advancement. Decision making: There are many formalized decision making techniques, such as a decision matrix, that can help you make quality, business appropriate, and defendable decisions that can help you to best service your internal clients and maximize your job performance. Problem solving: Like decision making, there are formalized problem solving techniques, such as Five Whys and Brainstorming that can help you discover a problem’s root cause [...]

Whether you are looking for a job, pushing for a promotion, trying to start your own company, or looking for a date to your sister’s wedding, building your personal brand can be of great help. This week’s blog can help you with the above three listed professional goals. Regarding your sister’s wedding, you’re on your own. Your personal professional brand is your reputation in the workplace. Do they like you? Do they respect you? Do they think you’re honest, ethical, hard working, and so on?  A second aspect of your professional brand is your accomplishments and credentials.  Let’s talk about them both. You build a quality reputation by trying your best, being helpful, and treating people with respect.  From a knowledge and technical perspective, it means being very good at what you do.  For example, if you are a Java developer, be the best Java developer you can be. By best, I don’t just mean trying hard. Being your best also means keeping up on the latest technology upgrades, trends, products, vendors, techniques, and methodologies in your professional area. Lastly, it means sharing this knowledge with those you work with. It’s this combination of deep knowledge and a willingness to share that transforms you from just a programmer, using the Java example, to a thought leader. Regarding your professional credentials, they can be categorized in the following ways: Business accomplishments Educational credentials and certifications Industry activism Your business accomplishments can be accumulated by doing your job well and keeping a list of [...]

There are a number of things you can do to help assure a quality start to your new job. As you will see, some can be done before your first day of work, others can be done as early as your first day of employment, and they are all related to learning about your new work environment. Things you can do prior to your first day of work. Learn as much as you can about the company, including its products, locations, history, revenue, and number of employees. This can be done by a combination of studying the company’s website, doing web and Twitter searches on the company’s name and its product names, and if the company is publicly held, analyze its stock price over the last year and any available investment research notes. Learn about the industry if your new employer is in an industry you are not familiar with, (for example, healthcare, financial services, construction, etc.). This will help you gain a better understanding of the environment in which your company operates. Use LinkedIn and other means to find someone who previously worked for the company. By talking with an ex-employee, you can generally get an unbiased and honest opinion of the company, including internal politics, things to watch out for, and how to best succeed. Learn about the IT group’s vendors, methodologies, and technologies based on any information you gained during your interview process. Having a general understanding of these topics will save you a little study time once your [...]

This post was first published in my “Developing IT Leaders” column on CIO.com. The war for talent in key IT technologies, such as cloud, cybersecurity, and machine learning continue to grow in both intensity and geography.  The intensity is increasing because of the accelerated movement to the cloud, security breaches growing in both frequency and magnitude, companies scrambling to add AI functionality into their systems, and a host of other related IT megatrends.  Geographic competition has expanded as a result of COVID-19, forcing companies to be more open to hiring remote staff and allowing employees to demand a permanent work-from-home option.  This two-sided coin has allowed companies to widen the size of their hiring pools and employees to look for new jobs outside their physical location. The interaction of these factors has made it harder to hire and retain high quality IT talent. Harnessing the combination of your IT team’s hidden and transferable skills and knowledge can dramatically reduce your hiring and retention difficulties. Hidden skills and knowledge are not really hidden as the name implies.  They are just not being used in the employee’s current job role.  For example, you may have a programmer working on accounting systems who has an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics or a business analyst who was a high school science teacher.  Neither of these employees are hiding their background in mathematics or teaching, it’s just that no one in the office knows about these skills because they are not relevant to the person’s current job. [...]

This post was first published in my “Developing IT Leaders” column on CIO.com. As an IT executive, your ability to influence others in the workplace is an essential component of professional success. Just think of all the times you need the assistance or approval of your C-suite peers to achieve your objectives. This includes everything from gaining the support of your business partners on an important IT initiative or facilitating companywide adoption of a recently implemented technology to raising the awareness of cybersecurity threats or convincing a vendor to give you their best consultants. The list goes on and on. Here are seven techniques that will help you maximize your influence in the workplace. 1. Action Reaction With this influence technique, as the name suggests, you act in a specific way with the goal of getting others to also act in a particular way.  To quote Steve Jobs, “A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.”  The best way to get your IT team to act in specified ways, such as driving innovation or providing proactive internal customer service, is to exhibit those actions yourself. 2. Ad Hoc Committee Leadership When an ad hoc committee begins, it follows the same four stages of group development as formalized permanent teams.  These four stages, based on research by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, are forming, storming, norming, and performing. Therefore, when an ad hoc group first begins, if you take an early leadership role, simply by handling the group’s logistics (when and [...]

This post was first published in my “Developing IT Leaders” column on CIO.com. IT pros at the top of their careers as individual contributors are often faced with few career choices: Go into management or stay where they are. Establishing an IT Technical Fellow career track can change that, providing a new way to recognize and retain top talent Close your eyes and imagine if your top technical individual contributor within software infrastructure, cybersecurity, software development, and data center operations all came to you tomorrow and, each for his/her own reasons, gave notice that they were leaving your company.  How would you feel? Certainly, your IT organization would survive, but would it be a major loss in IT corporate knowledge, creativity, resilience, and operational capability?  If your answer is yes, then you might want to consider new ways to motivate and retain these key technologists throughout their careers, including establishing an IT Technical Fellow career track. What is a technical fellowship program? The concept of “technical fellow” job titles for extraordinary and experienced technical professionals has been around for many years, typically for individuals working in the product/mission and R&D sides of their organizations.  The IBM Fellows program, for example, was started in 1962 to promote creativity among the company's "most exceptional" technical professionals and is granted in recognition of outstanding and sustained technical achievements and leadership in engineering, programming, services, science, design and technology. The  Boeing Technical Fellowship program began in 1989, and these engineers and scientists help set Boeing technical [...]

This post was first published in my “Developing IT Leaders” column on CIO.com.  Many IT practitioners of all organizational levels have longstanding opinions on the value of personal involvement in professional associations.  They vary widely from considering it the most important factor in their professional success to being a total waste of time.  I know senior IT leaders who strongly suggest their staff become involved in industry-related activities, and others who strongly discourage membership or attendance at professional association meetings, user conferences, and other collections of IT executives or practitioners. It’s been my experience, both personally and through the observation of others, that the value you receive from professional associations is directly correlated to your level of personal participation and involvement.  Participation is showing up at meetings, listening to the speakers, and networking with others as the meeting schedule/agenda allows.  Involvement is joining the local chapter’s board of directors, helping plan an event, or otherwise contributing to the association. The value of professional associations is not from simply going to an event now and again based on the speaker’s topic or having nothing better to do that evening.  The value comes from attending meetings month-in and month-out, regardless of the topic or meeting format. Ongoing participation in the IT association of your choice helps you: Stay current on IT trends and technologies by talking with meeting sponsors and vendors. Widen your perspective on the IT profession by listening to the speakers and engaging in conversations with other association members. Gain insights into [...]