{"id":8386,"date":"2021-11-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8386"},"modified":"2021-11-12T12:12:27","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T12:12:27","slug":"step-back-from-the-problem-and-think-about-what-good-looks-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2021\/11\/step-back-from-the-problem-and-think-about-what-good-looks-like.htm","title":{"rendered":"Step back from the problem and think about what “good” looks like"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few weeks ago, I sat down with a Chief Information Officer (CIO) who has a problem. He’s in the middle of a messy “divorce” (professionally, not personally). He is transitioning services from a shared services agreement with another public sector body to a new managed service. His own organisation’s IT maturity is low. There’s an expectation that the new managed services partner will take on everything (except it’s not in a state that is ready to take on). And the shared service provider is both making transition difficult (preserving its revenue stream) whilst ramping up the price to carry on providing services. The divorce metaphor is very apt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was brought in (alongside a colleague with relevant sector experience) to help smooth the pain. I needed to understand what’s holding up the process – why is it so difficult to provide basic information for the managed services provider to take on the service? What are the gaps? How quickly can they be filled? And what is needed to move to the next stage? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not my usual role, but I’ve been around this industry long enough to be able to take a step back, look at the problem, and try to work out what “good” looks like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenges<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The CIO presented me with two challenges: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Visibility – of what’s happening. What will be done by when and how far off the target is the transition?<\/li>
  2. Passiveness – don’t just sit and wait. Bang down some doors and ask for information. If it’s not forthcoming, then flag it. There is no time for delays. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Searching for a solution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The next day, I was mulling over the issues and I bumped into a friend (on the market in the town where we both live). We went for a coffee, and I told him about my problem (without compromising any confidentiality). My friend has a military background, followed by IT Service Operations and, more recently, security (he’s a Chief Information Security Officer – CISO) so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the advice he gave me. The way he saw it was that there are a bunch of service transition “packages” but the business as usual (BAU) service isn’t complete. Meanwhile the CIO has no visibility and would like to see where things are and the plan for where they will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After our conversation my mind was clear. I needed a way to track progress. I wanted a dashboard<\/em> to tell me the state of each service component or process. Then, the applications, servers and other infrastructure could fall in beneath – but I needed to know there is a service to transition them into.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There are many problems with dashboards (though the etymology of the word is about protecting riders on carriages from what might be thrown at them from below<\/a>… so maybe that’s quite appropriate after all). Red\/Amber\/Green (RAG) statuses can be problematic too (both for cultural reasons<\/a> and because of accessibility, although that can be overcome with appropriate design<\/a>). But I didn’t want perfect – I needed functional. At least for the first iteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The chosen approach<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The Microsoft-focused Solution Architect in me was thinking Power BI<\/a> but I lacked the skills, time and access to licenses. I needed something that could be developed quickly and updated easily. My initial PowerPoint deck with, “this is what we said we would do”, “This is where we are today” and lots of red, turning amber then green was quickly pushed aside by a colleague in favour of Excel. In fairness, the world runs on Excel – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. With the addition of a few formulae, some data validation and some conditionally formatted cells, we soon had a dynamic report. It highlights missing information. It highlights support status. It highlights key dates (and missed dates – because I’m also realistic).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Answering the exam question<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The summary sheet should answer the CIO’s visibility issue (once it’s securely shared) and constantly pushing for the detail should strike out any perceived inactivity or a lack of initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It’s not innovative, but it is elegant. And it works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So I have the tech in place – now for the difficult bit (the part that involves people) – dragging out the missing information to turn cells from red to amber to green. And the good thing is that, based on a meeting yesterday, it feels like there are a bunch of people in the managed services organisation that can see the value and are invested in the solution (they are even adding sheets for extra information – like tracking risks, issues and dependencies). That’s half the battle. “All” I need now is to get the various projects that hold the information on the various applications, servers, etc. to join in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I may return to this subject with an updated post when everything goes live. Or I may not, for commercial reasons, but here goes… wish me luck! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Featured image: author’s own.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few weeks ago, I sat down with a Chief Information Officer (CIO) who has a problem. He’s in the middle of a messy “divorce” (professionally, not personally). He is transitioning services from a shared services agreement with another public sector body to a new managed service. His own organisation’s IT maturity is low. There’s an … Continue reading Step back from the problem and think about what “good” looks like<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[768,218,38],"tags":[770,407,769,559],"class_list":["post-8386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-technology","category-inane-waffle","tag-business-intelligence","tag-cio","tag-excel-2","tag-project-management"],"yoast_head":"\nStep back from the problem and think about what "good" looks like - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When presented with a set of challenges by a CIO, this is the approach I took to step back from the problem and address them head on, in search of "good"\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2021\/11\/step-back-from-the-problem-and-think-about-what-good-looks-like.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Step back from the problem and think about what "good" looks like - 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Some are likening the \"IPocalypse\" to the Year 2000 bug. Others say it's a non-issue. So what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2395,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/03\/why-the-consumerisation-of-it-is-nothing-to-do-with-ipads.htm","url_meta":{"origin":8386,"position":1},"title":"Why the consumerisation of IT is nothing to do with iPads","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 22 March 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, I wrote a post on the Fujitsu UK and Ireland CTO Blog about the need to adapt and evolve, or face extinction\u00a0(in an IT context).\u00a0 IT consumerisation was a key theme of that post and, the next evening, at my first London Cloud Camp, I found myself watching\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3686,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/03\/a-week-of-byod-discussions.htm","url_meta":{"origin":8386,"position":2},"title":"A week of BYOD discussions","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 8 March 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"My corporate laptop infuriates me* - which might explain why I'm such a big\u00a0advocate\u00a0for the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model that a lot of people are talking about right now (and which I've written about previously). This week saw the culmination of a couple of initiatives I've been working\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2712,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/03\/adapt-evolve-innovate-or-face-extinction.htm","url_meta":{"origin":8386,"position":3},"title":"Adapt, evolve, innovate – or face extinction","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 16 March 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I've written before (some might say too often) about the impact of tablet computers (and smartphones) on enterprise IT. This morning, Andy Mulholland, Global CTO at Capgemini, wrote a blog post that grabbed my attention, when he posited that tablets and smartphones are the disruptive change lever that is required\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3445,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/10\/cloudwashing.htm","url_meta":{"origin":8386,"position":4},"title":"Cloudwashing","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 11 October 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Cloud this, cloud that: frankly I'm tired of hearing about \"the cloud\" and, judging from the debate I've had on Twitter this afternoon, I'm not alone. The trouble is that the term \"cloud\" has been abused and has become a buzzword (gamification is another - big data could be next...).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2700,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/04\/azure-connect-the-missing-link-between-on-premise-and-cloud.htm","url_meta":{"origin":8386,"position":5},"title":"Azure Connect – the missing link between on-premise and cloud","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 18 April 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Azure Connect offers a way to connect on-premise infrastructure with Windows Azure but it's lacking functionality that may hinder adoption. While Microsoft is one of the most dominant players in client-server computing, until recently, its position in the cloud seemed uncertain. \u00a0More recently, we've seen Microsoft lay out its stall\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8386"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8398,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8386\/revisions\/8398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}