Welcome CIOs, CTOs and IT Executives to FromTheRanks™ of IT.
This is a new site, dedicated solely to IT Fundamentals, containing information that I believe will help you improve your IT organization.
If you’ve searched the web recently for “CIO”, you would have discovered that there are literally millions of related articles and references; even more on IT in general. At a very quick passing glance of this site, it may seem to you that there is nothing new here either. But quick glances can be misleading.
What is so new and special about this web-site?
The strategies, approaches, plans, organizational structures, solutions and advices that you will find on these web pages come “from the ranks”.
They come from someone who has, to use a well worn cliché, “been there and done that”. Each article is based on what has worked time and time again. And what has not, time and time again. These dichotomy pair gradually evolved into a re-discovery, a re-learning of the Fundamentals of IT.
What you won’t find on this site are “ivory tower” pieces based on surveys of what “everyone else” is doing. You may have noticed that what “everyone else” is doing is not working all that well. I address this particular “management method” in an upcoming article entitled: “NotesOn: The Sinking Ship Theory Of Business Management”.
Each article, or Post in the parlance of blogs, that will appear on FromTheRanks™ of IT is based solely on years of personal, direct, hands-on interaction with thousands of IT members. It was gained while building and supporting hundreds of systems in numerous IT groups of varying sizes for a wide range of companies and corporations, including several Fortune 500′s. If you wish to learn more about my background, please see the “About DP Harshman” page.
You have a difficult job. No two ways about it. There are challenges every direction you turn. This site is intended to help you resolve challenges, not add to them with more unclear often ambivalent advice. Towards this end, please treat each Post, each presentation as not only information but an opening dialogue about which you may anonymously comment if you wish. Without the taint of “politics” or “push back”. You might consider them focused brain-storming sessions.
Why am I doing this? Simple really.
I have a great passion for IT.
Unfortunately, for too many years now IT has been sinking into the muddy, dank, forgotten backwaters of Business. A sad state, considering nearly 100% of businesses world-wide rely on, depend on, IT in some form.
There is a way out of the dilemma that presently defines IT, however. A dilemma apparently, though not actually, created by “tough economic times”, unhappy users and clients, ticked off IT teams, shadow IT groups, organizational snarls and bickering, constantly changing technologies, pressure from high-paid consultants and low-balling vendors, going-green initiatives, lack of meaningful metrics, …
The way out has nothing to do with the above, save peripherally. Nor does it require or desire near wholesale out-sourcing, near-shoring and/or off-shoring as “the” solution … Although I certainly recognize how these “outs” could look like a darned good idea at times. And they could be. Except for one salient fact.
Broad based out-sourcing and <fill in the blank>-shoring doesn’t work. A solution is not a solution if it generates more problems than it solves and costs more in the not-so-long run.
Which brings us back to FromTheRanks™ of IT.
This site is committed to helping you and your entire IT team find a way out of the murky waters that are rising around you.
To find out how this site can be of assistance, subscribe to upcoming Posts via the RSS or E-mail feed. In the days, weeks and months that follow I will be regularly adding new topics, which are pointedly relevant to the success of you and your IT organization. If you wish to contribute to the comments please register.
You will find your investment in time to be well worth while. And, I believe, profitable.
Thank you for visiting. As long as you follow this site’s Rules Of The Road (see that page under About) you are welcome back anytime.
DP Harshman
