Archive for June, 2010

I don’t know if you are following the World Cup games in South Africa. I am not a big soccer fan but I still enjoy loosely following this special event. I am especially fascinated with the connection between team sports and business management, and leadership in general.

All teams are made out of players who don’t usually play together, with no financial incentive to win. So what drives them? Ego, national identity or simple competitive spirit? To make all of these work, you need a leader. To take a bunch of talented players and make them tick leadership is required, the same leadership that is required in business, in military, in politics and in many other fields.

It was amazing to read about the British team eliminating their goalkeeper from the opening team due to a mistake in the first game. Guess what?  The second game ended at 0:0. A very simple axiom in management is that you can’t manage with fear! You need to support your team even if they don’t succeed. A regime of fear will kill innovation and motivation and you will get 0:0.

Remember that! Lead, don’t scare! See the spirit Maradona is driving into his guys…

ITIL- Information Technology Infrastructure Library, probably the most popular methodology for running IT. Many organizations adopted this methodology over the course of the last 5 years. This adoption started with what is categorized by ITIL as Service Transition and Service Operation, including: Change Management, Asset and Configuration Management, Knowledge Management, Release Management, Deployment and Decommission management, Request Management, Event Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Access Management and Coffee Making Management , just joking!

All, as you can see, are part of running IT operations, hence companies appointed ITIL process owners from the delivery side of the house - the folks who make things happen, the doers. In the last few years, companies have started getting to the maturity level where they want to adopt the services design and services strategies components of ITIL as well in order to not only operate IT but also manage the business of IT by following ITIL process for Service Portfolio Design, Catalog Management, Service Level Management, Supplier Management, Capacity Management, Service Economics, IT Financial Management, and IT Demand Management.

It’s funny, but it seems like this part is handled by folks in the organization that are less into ITIL. Often you will find IT Financial Management and Vendor Governance folks performing these tasks, but not from an ITIL perspective and not connected to the ITIL folks in the organization. It seems like ITIL is still for IT ops folks, and IT Finance, Vendor Management, Demand, and Economics are different folks in the organization.

Will a merger happen or will this line between IT ops and IT Business Management always exist? Will ITIL be the bridge? Time will tell…

Seems like the good old discussion about chargeback vs. showback has come to life again. Several esteemed writers have recently touched on this subject.

Well truth needs to be told, the majority of companies still don’t perform full billing and chargeback for IT services. Statements like “We tried it but the hassle was not worth the benefits“ are still heard in IT corridors and conference rooms. That said, Chargeback is definitely getting some back wind recently and more and more companies are considering doing full chargeback. This is driven by the move to centralized shared IT and the growing adoption of shared virtualized resources, in which case you must breakdown cost by usage.

Also the growing awareness of running IT in a cost effective manner is driving organizations to empower BU’S to take responsibility over their IT spend by performing chargebacks. Here comes into play a method that seems to be very popular recently as well, show back, a lightweight, less formal version of chargeback. This method is the process of showing BU’s and P&L’s what was the actual IT spend of their organization but not actually charging back. This is much easier to achieve as you don’t need to deal with setting a price/ rate list, which chargeback requires.

Personally, I find that the difference between companies who perform chargeback and those who just do show back is less a matter of taste and choice but more a function of the business structure. Companies who are divided into multiple legal entities and P&L’s will usually do full chargeback. They simply need to for tax and regulatory purposes. Companies who have a simpler structure will stick with show back as a method for behavior changing.

Back from a week in classic Europe and on my way to the East Coast. Spent some time in England, Switzerland and Spain with customers and prospects at IBM, Steria, BT, Telefonica, Capgemini, and HMRC.

Spending more than 50% of my time on the road definitely gets tiring, especially with 2 young daughters and a pregnant, beloved wife at home. But it is all worth it when I meet customers who use our software. Of course, I’ve already told you about that and don’t want to bore you.

I love Europe. The history, the culture, the character, the colors, and real people who have perspective on life and know how to live it! I’ve been recently criticizing the western world, stating that we spend more than we produce, take loans we can’t return, that many of us don’t really create anything but just trade and deal, and that government debt is inherent to democracy. After all, to win elections you need to win a popularity test, and anyone who ever managed people knows you can’t be popular if you make the hard, right decisions. How can you be fiscally responsible if you need to win a popularity test every 4 years?

But after a few days in Spain and in other European countries, all my economic theories break down, and I’m thinking, we need them! The world just won’t be the same without Madrid, Rome, Athens, or London.

I was lucky to have Madrid on my tour agenda this visit. I simply love it. The historical buildings, the lively atmosphere, the amazing tastes, the joyful people, the passion, and the passionate language rolling off their tongues.  And the food – oh, the food. I can’t spend time in Madrid without sitting at a local restaurant and having a good glass of local wine with a big dish of Cordero Asado, lamb grilled slowly for many hours in an oven with just water and salt sprinkled on it. It’s a simple, heavenly dish. No sophisticated spices, just pure, soft-as-butter lamb meat that melts in your mouth. I think Laith, my director of EMEA PS got scared seeing me enjoy it so much…

All of you who have any doubts, make no mistake – the world needs Europe. I asked Vince, my CFO, to prepare a proposition for our board to buy Spanish government bonds in return for a steady supply of Cordero Asado.

Just kidding