Month: April 2017

Deming’s 14 Points of Quality Mgmt…

“I would recommend looking at toxic culture through the glass of Deming’s 14 Points on Quality Management.” – Jonathan Merrill – From:  Deming’s 14 Points

  1. Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.
  2. Adopt the new philosophy.
  3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
  4. End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.
  5. Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
  6. Institute training on the job.
  7. Adopt and institute leadership.
  8. Drive out fear.
  9. Break down barriers between staff areas.
  10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
  11. Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
  12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
  13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
  14. Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.

\\ JMM

My Next Chapter: Lanvera – Delivering Documents With Intelligence

I am happy to announce I have accepted the position of Director, IT Infrastructure with Lanvera, Ltd. I am excited by this opportunity to work with leaders John Baldridge, President, Steve Taff, CIO, and Ronnie Howell, CTO, leading this organization to the next technology evolution.

Thank you to those close friends and colleagues that helped with leads and encouragement. I am honored and humbled to have an great collection of network of professionals.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison

Now, onto the next chapter.

\\ JMM

Being an Agent of Change…

“Thank you for being an agent of change. Continue to be a voice for ideas for empowering our department to the next level. We don’t always express appreciation for the people who care about us.” – A Manager in Accounting

Agent of change.  What a great way to describe a person.  Please read “5 Characteristics of a Change Agent”.  This picture from the website describes it perfectly:

5 Characteristics of a Change Agent
5 Characteristics of a Change Agent

\\ JMM

The Passivity of Enterprise IT…

“Unless you are an OS vendor or tools company, if your business has to care about operating system end-of-life announcements, IT has failed.  If your business has to care about audit/compliance exposure due to old operating systems, IT has failed.  If, as a business what operating system you run is a point of contention, IT has abdicated its responsibility.” – From Can You DevOps from Windows, Steven Murawski (Blogger)

Heavy conversation this week around engineering technology infrastructure, cloud, DevOps, and why companies are struggling with this shift.  This article popped into view and perfectly explains the problematic nature of IT at large organizations.  Steven describes it as “The Passivity of Enterprise IT”, liking IT leadership as order takers and janitors of the software world.

DevOps core values are described by the acronym CAMS:  Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing.  DFW hosts an DevOps user group and the re-occurring theme is not the A-M-S, although there are legacy challenges there too.  In my experience, start with C, Culture.

What’s the point?  This week’s quote is about IT’s real role:  providing business value.  Steven goes on to say, “IT is not just responsible for executing projects. IT is responsible for making sure the project will return business value.  IT is responsible for making sure projects are done in a supportable manner.”

What’s your IT look like?  Are you an order taker or doing what information technology’s real role is:  provide business value.  And please read Steve’s post.  How Microsoft does DevOps will continue to garner large interest.  How that’s done will get you a hundred different answers.

\\ JMM

We are not swans…

“Some animals were meant to carry each other, to live symbiotically for a lifetime – star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not those animals. The slower we move, the faster we die. We are not swans. We’re sharks.”
– Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air (2009)

I was sitting at a table with a collection of other IT professionals this past week at a local networking event, when the conversation turned to turning forty. And, while I expected the usual aches and pains conversation, the informal comments and questions were on assessing careers at that milestone. Are you making and meeting your goals? Are you staying engaged or keeping the status quo? Are you slowing down as time goes on or keeping pace with the competition?

This quote popped into my mind during the event. We are sharks. We stay engaged. We practice life long learning. We improve and grow. And we teach. Because we are sharks.

\\ JMM