Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. The traditional project plan tries to manage risks by itemizing them in a register and proposing a mitigation plan for each one. Risks are mitigated to the extent necessary to bring the plan back into line—in other words, to adjust the initiative so the initial business case and plan are maintained. But the uncertainties in the IT domain go deeper—it might be that … [Read more...]
The 3 Real Risks Every Project Manager Should Focus On
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. It turns out that people are pretty terrible at assessing probabilities and risk. In my last book, A Seat at the Table, I cited several examples to make this point—examples that I love because even knowing the right answer I still can’t convince myself it is right. The first example had to do with the TV game show Let’s Make a Deal, in which the contestant is asked … [Read more...]
Quick Guide to DevOps for the Non-IT Business Leader
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. What is DevOps 1) Small Teams of T-Shaped People DevOps is practiced in small teams, say five to nine people. Small teams can communicate among themselves face-to-face, thereby avoiding the overhead of passing around and perfecting documents. Each team is cross-functional, with skills in software development, testing, infrastructure engineering, operations, and … [Read more...]
The Battle of Borodino: Business as a Complex Adaptive System
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. In War and Peace, Tolstoy writes of the battle of Borodino, in which Napoleon (sort of) defeats Russia and wins the opportunity to watch Moscow burn, though not much more. The day before the battle, he walks the battlefield and gives his commanders orders for the disposition of the troops—orders which are, for the most part, ignored. During the battle, he stands in … [Read more...]
Unlock Your Enterprise’s Digital Transformation by Changing Your Relationship with Technologists
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. Leaders of digital transformations often look around their organizations and see heads nodding. Everyone seems to agree that change is needed to survive in the digital age. Everyone understands that it’s urgent and that there is a risk of being disrupted if the company doesn’t transform quickly enough. Capital markets are demanding growth and innovation, while the board … [Read more...]
Q&A with Mark Schwartz and Gene Kim – A Seat at the Table
Recently, Gene Kim had a chance to speak with Mark Schwartz about Mark's new book, War and Peace and IT, Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age: Gene Kim: What inspired you to write a book about IT management for business leaders? Mark Schwartz: I meet with executives from over a hundred large enterprises each year. It’s amazing how patterns emerge: so many of them are trying to transform digitally, trying to find new sources of growth and to survive disruption—and yet … [Read more...]
