Now that Big Data has become the latest business technology hype and paradigm, let’s ask the question:

What exactly is Big Data?

Simply put, big data is data that’s too large or complex to be effectively handled by standard database technologies currently found in most organisations.

According to the conventional definition, for data to be regarded as “big”, it should possess a number of key attributes – volume, velocity and variety:

• Volume is just what it sounds like: lots of data. To put this in context, YouTube users upload 48 hours of new video every minute of every day.
• Velocity occurs where the data is time-sensitive and needs to be processed and stored quickly. One example is the real-time profiling of internet display adverts that are customised according to your usage pattern.
• Variety covers the various forms that data can take, from neatly-structured tabular data, to unstructured data containing items such as images, emails, spreadsheets, social media conversations and streaming media. Currently, there is no universally accepted “one-size-fits-all” approach to handling this data variety.

What about the other V’s?

That brings us to some of the the other, lesser considered but probably more important Vs:

• Validity - the interpreted data having a sound basis in logic or fact – is a result of the logical inferences from matching data. One of the most common errors being the confusion between correlation and causation.
  • Volume -Validity = Worthlesness?
• Veracity - conformity to facts; accuracy –  Do we need a spell checker to get data consistency?
  • Big Data – Veracity = Incorrect inferences being drawn?
• Value  -the importance, worth, or usefulness of the data to those consuming it – is probably the most relevant to organisations.  Data in and of itself has no value.
  • Big Data = Data + Value?
• Visibility - the state of being able to see or be seen – is implied.  Data from disparate sources need to be stitched together where they are visible to the technology stack making up Big Data. Critical data that is otherwise available, but not visible to the processes of Big Data may be one of the Achilles Heels of the Big Data paradigm
  • Big Data – visibility = Black Hole?

In summary, Big Data, just like Cloud and other business technology ecosystems has it’s place, and can be a game changer and deliver real value. Trick is to ensure your Big Data delivers what’s expected and is not only a Black Hole for cost and effort, but most importantly, also does not lead to incorrect decisions making because some of the key Vs were not clearly understood.

The post Big Data or Black Hole? appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

Easier said than done?

The concept of lifetime employment with a single employer is a distant memory for many, and is especially relevant to those involved in the IT industry, where volatility and disruption are the norm – paradoxically, mostly as a result of IT.

In many ways, a single employer is unlikely to provide all the opportunities for you to acquire the broad range of skills and experiences needed to guarantee sustainable career resilience and adaptability.

Should you? ….

1. Continue to entrust your career to your employer, and let them steer your career? After all, you’re really valued and the environment’s great (at the moment!)
2. Stay in your ‘industry’, after all it’s an important service that is, you think, largely immune from major change. Society will always need firefighters, right?
3. Expect your boss to meet your IT mentoring needs? (i.e. Will your boss provide the support and guidance for you? More importantly, do you see your boss as a good role model?)
4. Actively seek alternative positions within your employer in unrelated areas to broaden your skills base in the hope that it leads to future opportunities. Might be hard if you’re really good at your current job.
5. Switch employers the minute you stop learning new things? … or don’t get along with your new boss?
6. Look at doing something quite different, such as retraining in a completely different career or industry, or even start your own business if you think you’re in a decaying business or industry?

At the end of the day, the combination of your appetite for risk, personality type, skills, drive and experience are the types of factors that will either help or hinder the achievement of your career and personal goals. Testing your assumptions on how best to get to the next stepping stone in your job and career is not as easy as it may appear. Test your career and personal assumptions, then develop a ‘go forward’ strategy that is relevant and meaningful to you, which is also sustainable – but expect it to change.

So, broadly speaking, how should you plan for making it to the next stepping stone?

• The persistent approach: Set an ultimate, long term career goal, and steadily working towards that goal – and hope you get there. Like a military route march.
• The adaptive, proactive approach: Once you have developed your core skills, start working on acquiring as many supplementary skills as you can, expose yourself to differing experiences and gain fresh knowledge in related or even unrelated areas, then go for opportunities are they present themselves to you (or created by you) – all while being acutely aware of, and interpreting and seizing the opportunities offered by the volatile environment we all live in.

At the end of the day, managing your career requires deliberate investment of your time and energy. Just like investing in an income generating asset. In that light , do you see your career is an income generating business, for the most part?  If you are an IT professional, whose primary value lies with the technical skills you possess, will your boss provide the objectivity and IT mentoring perspective for you to move on to bigger and better things?

If you wish to continue working for organisations as a employee in one form or another, consider your job in the light of  ‘runing your own  business’, that is

….. ‘you have one client, that’s your employer of choice, not necessity!’. 

Reflect on this from time to time, not so easy when you’re so busy and distracted with doing your job – it could be the game changer for you!

The post Running your business with one client? appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

Well…. not totally correct…… Organisations do have the potential to identify likely risks, implement countermeasures, hope that the risks never eventuate and when they do that the countermeasures work.

The spectrum of risks in  running an organisation are well studied and there are numerous risk management frameworks in place which are, for the most part effective – or we would like to believe.

The almost absolute dependency on technological in our organisations adds another dimension to the risk landscape. The pervasive adoption of business technology is a given – illustrated by the accelerating adoption of smartphone, Cloud and similar technologies. Much of this technology is new, emerging, disruptive and can crash through conventional enterprise risk management processes and frameworks.

Do you rely on your IT consulting firm to guide you and your organisation through the technologically altered risk landscape? That may in fact introduce further risks!  The best mitigation is to own, understand and manage the risks – after all, it’s your organisation at risk.

Let’s explore these in a bit more detail:

Technical Risk

The meticulous identification, categorization and ranking of all likely technical and functional risks is at the heart of conventional IT risk assessment frameworks and certification models such as ISO 2700X. This is where the IT consulting firm can assist if appropriate. The underlying model is based on:

• Risk of a specific event = (Impact x Probability of that event occurring) + Risk Adjustment

Certification does not necessarily equal security or effectiveness of your risk management model, however it may provide some comfort that there is a system in place to identify, mitigate and frame your response should the risk materialize.  Often focusing primarily on the diverse range of functional and technical risks, does not account for the interaction between risks.

Systemic Risk:

In the context of your business, taking a broader perspective of risk will give you a better perspective of the actual risk, rather that what you think the risk might be.

Systemic risks are those with the greatest potential impact as they affect the entire system (ie: Organisation, government, country, world…)

• Case in Point: Why was the financial sector, being one of the most regulated industries, invests heavily in risk management technologies and processes the cause of the current global financial problems?

Systemic risk for the enterprise is the silent killer and is often the hardest to identify.

Organisations that think that the catalogue of risks – known as the risk register – is a true measure of the  systemic risks may be taking a risk!

The post The perfect storm of Systemic risks appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

By definition, Shadow IT is under the radar of enterprise governance and as such presents a systemic risk to the organisation – something that should be, but is often not, raising alarm bells in organisations concerned about data protection, governance and risk.

A recent survey conducted by ReRez Research covering some 3,236 organizations in 29 countries (commissioned by Symantec)  noted that three-quarters of all organizations surveyed had put business sensitive information into the cloud without appropriate oversight.

The fact is that given the increase uncertainty and volatility facing Australian organisations, whether public, private or government,  tends to drives technology decision making which is increasingly focussed on the short term. Expediency in meeting short term targets is no guarantee of long term success.

IT consulting firms should also be aware of the potential adverse consequences to their reputation of being engaged to deliver enterprise IT services without the appropriate authority, as could occur under a Shadow IT regime.

Non-IT executives need to consider the impacts of Shadow IT, unless of course, they are not planning to be around long enough to find out!

The post Shadow IT in broad daylight? appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

Right now, some organizations are discovering that getting their various enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems to play together nicely is far from a simple task. In fact, managing the disparate technologies, risks, and contracts that are pulled behind a wagon train of cloud providers requires that you hone your vendor-management skills and processes, and understand how the separate SaaS systems are constructed so that they all can work together. The playing field of new and emerging technology has just got a bit more complex.

For these reasons, it may be tempting to turn all that complexity and governance over to a cloud services broker (CSB). At that point, one might legitimately ask, “Why will I need an IT department when all my applications are running in the cloud and I’ve outsourced the management of those applications to a CSB?”

Click here to read more

The post Don’t let your Cloud success be your business failure appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

On the one hand, IT technologists sometimes have difficulties in dealing with stakeholders in the organisation that ‘don’t get it’, or don’t really care.   After all, technology requires accuracy and precision and is unforgiving if it breaks. Whilst on the other hand, business is seen as volatile, imprecise, messy and thrives on opinion and influence. IT mentoring can give you the blueprint for building the bridge of communications between the two sometimes frustrated sides.

In this rational world of precision, there’s not much room for perceptions and personal opinions?  Or is there?

Reality is Reality, Facts are Facts, however in the mind of others in the business, Perception is Reality.

How do you go about trying to influence an outcome when you know you’re right?

Where individuals try to influence outcomes in discussions that revolve a ‘either/or’ approach usually find it a counter-productive .  Generally this ‘binary’ thinking allows the other party little room for discussion or for the exploration of alternative solutions to the issue at hand. The key is to how the discussion is managed.

Each of us has the ability to control our engagement with others, and recognising when the management of the conversation is more important than the conversation itself is the first step in the creation of enduring influence!

What other factors can you think of  in your attempt to improve your ability to influence others?  Time to put pen to paper and start listing these factors as you perceive them.  After all, your perception is your reality, but it may not be that of others!

One key to achieving success  is effective IT mentoring where your assumptions can be safely tested and a fresh, transformational and empowering perspective can be shaped – on your career, not only on your current job.  That’s sustainable.

The post What’s influence got to do with my IT career? appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

Modern, thriving and vibrant organisations require confident, competent, high performing career IT professionals and managers.  If the ‘soft skills’ elements of your job description is relegated to the back page -  ask yourself why? Did they go it alone or did they get guidance and a push along from an IT mentoring program or working with a seasoned business mentor ?

Imagine for a moment your working environment where people still ‘did their job’ with skill and proficiency, but at the same time also demonstrated effective skills in areas such as being able to:

• See both their jobs and their own contribution from other’s perspectives
• Professionally handle opinions and objections from influential non IT stakeholders
• Thrive in ambiguous or uncertain environments
• Work more collaboratively without feeling threatened
• Communicate more effectively in a range of unfamiliar situations, and
• Communicate complexity in terms that non-IT stakeholders understand

The post ‘Soft skills’ in the hard world of IT appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

The Slides of the presentation are available here on Rob Livingstone’s Slideshare Channel

Download the Podcast

The post Episode 47 – Exploring the opportunities and pitfalls of new and emerging technologies in Australian local government appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

The post Exploring the opportunities and pitfalls of new and emerging technologies in Australian local government appeared first on Rob Livingstone Advisory.

How does this relate to technology in business and, in particular, the phenomenon of Shadow IT? Is the humble spreadsheet another form of emerging technology that democratised technology for anyone needing to work with numbers?

Under cover of darkness, and most likely already thriving in your organisation, are Shadow IT departments.  These arise when users and department heads go it alone, provisioning and deploying IT systems (most often cloud services) that are sourced externally and funded from local discretionary budgets without the involvement of the IT department or even the knowledge of the CFO or CIO. New and emerging technology that is appealing and compelling plays into the hands of those trying to solve a problem.  Just like the spreadsheet.  Still viral and not necessarily subject to checking validation and rigour – yet still supports critical enterprise decision making?

A key risk associated with Shadow IT, as was the case in the R&R example cited above, is the short circuiting of effective validation and governance. If your organisation places importance on managing and mitigating future risk, costs and ensuring no governance or legislative breaches occur, then bring Shadow IT to the surface for scrutiny should be core to your enterprise governance. Once surfaced, and if Shadow IT is shown to produce net realisable value to the organisation and passes muster, then keep it out of the shadows.

It doesn’t take much for Shadow IT departments to sprout up in the typical commercial organisation. The pressure to do things faster, cheaper, and more easily makes it almost inevitable in the current climate of austerity.  Conditions are ripe for the growth of Shadow IT when a combination of factors exist. The most obvious a poorly managed IT function in an organization with ineffective or inconsistent enterprise governance.  Other factors include

• Broken IT-business communication
• User frustration with being stuck waiting in the queue for corporate IT services, and
• Vendor predation, by circumventing IT to pitch directly to line-of-business leaders, should not be understated. Vendor offers can be very compelling to someone with a short term sales or cost target to meet and an IT department that’s not helping him or her to meet it. The IT consulting game is highly competitive, and  filling pipelines and billable hours targets is a constant challenge for IT consulting forms .

So what’s so bad about Shadow IT? If it can help the business get its work done, what’s the harm?

Well, in its 2012 CIO New Year’s Resolutions, Gartner states: “Shadow IT can create risks of data loss, corruption or misuse, and risks of inefficient and disconnected processes and information”: a warning that should set off alarm bells in the boardroom.  What Gartner is talking about is not just an business technology problem but an organizationwide, systemic problem that requires an organizational response.

Typically, the CIO and CFO are both accountable for enterprise risk, but from different perspectives. CIOs are acutely aware of Shadow IT. Are CFOs?

If your organisation’s brand is important to you, if the reliability of your business processes matters, the Shadow IT phenomenon needs active exposure and management.

Not blocking (that’s futile), but active management.

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