Anticlue

Gartner Blogs

This is a nice to see, Gartner has a running blog list found here.

In the IT matters blog, the recent entry is asking the right questions. The entry is a best practices kind. How many are in place at your organization?

-- Snipped from Gartner --
1) Don't talk about IT, talk about what IT enables. IT by itself does nothing. What matters is what IT enables the business to do differently or better.
2) Don't ignore change management. Your business must be able to absorb the change in technology, processes and people. Developing a competency in adapting to change will differentiate one business from another.
3) Focus. There are two major components to your IT budget: expenditures that are necessary simply to keep the "IT lights on" and discretionary investments where you actually have an opportunity to improve your business. The problem is that just keeping the lights on consumes, on average, 80 percent of our budget. Don't let it consume 80 percent of your time. Focus on that precious 20 percent of IT investments that can transform your business.
4) Be proactive. Don't be a victim of a business strategy that someone else defined. IT should be represented at the table when the strategy for the business is defined. Proactively bring ideas of what IT can enable to the discussion.
5) Become a business process expert. The processes of your business are where the realization of your business strategy meets infrastructure constraints. Understand the top 10 expense and revenue-generating processes of your business and proactively bring ideas to the table on how IT could improve these.
6) Make IT an enabler, not an inhibitor, to changes in the business.
7) Speak in their language not yours. MIPS and MHz carry no weight. Customer retention rates and reductions in inventory shrinkage do.