Chief Interesting Officer – Vireloup Pty Ltd

February 20, 2022

Is Business Analysis the next big thing?

Beautiful, but not tulips — Route de Vireloup

Business Analysis is the next big thing – or so they say! But are we sure it isn’t like the tulip mania of 1637, the railway speculation of the 1840 or the dot com bust of the 2000s?

Well, I for one have taken the punt and thrown my whole energy into a career in business analysis over the last 15 years. On balance I would say that I have ended up with a “Win”, but life is complicated and it might help if I took you through my story.

In a land far, far away, a long time ago I graduated as an engineer and spent 20 years progressing up the corporate ladder and enjoying work immensely. Over the time I was dragged into the IT universe and left my engineering role to become a Chief Information Officer and travel the world.

CIO roles are somewhat bruising and after a while I decided on a third career change. I had seen time and again the challenges of delivering effective technology solutions. I had always recruited great project managers, but the penny dropped that pairing strong project management with excellent business analysis was important for project success.

As time went on I realised two more things – firstly that projects are not always the best way to develop successful technology; and secondly that excellent analysis early on in an initiative was critically important, but often lacking as the skills were not available.

My final career move was from CIO to business analyst (easier to do than the other way around). I grew my career again through some challenging periods and arrived at a destination which gives me great pleasure. I now run my own Business Analysis consulting company (Vireloup Pty Ltd) providing the quality advice that I found so hard to source as a CIO. I have the flexibility to choose interesting projects and work when it suits me. Financially business analysis has been good to me.

One consistent thread through my career has been engagement in industry associations. Paraphrasing Max Weber “civilisation is created through the slow boring of hard boards”. I have done a lot of this, reaching the zenith of President of the Australia Chapter of IIBA for 3 years. It may just be coincidence that my career succeeded while I put immense effort into voluntary roles, but I don’t think so.

So my gamble on business analysis seems to have paid off. I’m not sure that everyone can say that, and I would be interested to hear your experiences.

December 14, 2017March 23, 2018

Is cyber security going anywhere?

It seems to be the new gold rush – everyone wants to get into cyber security. It isn’t surprising given the salary differential between IT operations staff and IT security staff. There are new education options popping up, all with a hefty price tag. I have a friend who printed a business card, registered for a course and got a gig working in IT security for more money than he could get in IT operations.

While I accept that there is a specific skill set for IT security, I am cynical as to how it is approached in industry. I can understand why the considerable investment in cyber security is not reducing the problem!

So let me give you my perspective on how cyber security influences senior management. The first thing to say is that it does have a place on the agenda of boards and senior executives and this is a good thing. Typically it will take more time than questions about how IT is improving productivity or how technology changes are influencing the current business model, and this is a bad thing.

The initial triggers have come from either a security breach, news of breaches in similar organisations or the regulatory changes being introduced (such as mandatory reporting of certain breaches). A consultant might brief the board and executive and tell them that there is a significant risk that is not being effectively managed. The potential for dire consequences will be spelled out followed by a proposal for an expensive consulting engagement to determine current state and propose rectifications.

The board may feel relieved that they have dodged a bullet and fulfilled their duty by getting in expensive “experts”. Fast forward a couple of years and the whole cycle will repeat. There is little evidence that things are getting better despite the resources devoted to cyber security – an overhead that doesn’t by itself deliver business value.

The trouble is that the experts are expert in the wrong things. They might know about firewall policies, denial of service attacks and (maybe) IT management frameworks. All these are needed, but not sufficient. What you really need to know is how your business manages its data.

The truth is that modern businesses manage data everywhere in their operations. There are staff with laptops, tablets and devices throughout the business collecting, processing, sharing and deleting data. Any system that considers the data without understanding the business processes that act on it is doomed to failure (read ISO 27001).

If senior managers want to manage the cyber security risk they need to put more effort into understanding how their business really works. There is precedence for this; most organisations have a significant effort on understanding their financial data. The accountants and book-keepers who delve into financial transactions generally have a good understanding of data around money. Imagine putting the same resources as are applied to finance into all the other data sources in the organisation – asset, customer, people, health and safety, environment, social, suppliers etc.

Fortunately there is a way around this. Many business areas do have a good understanding of their business processes, their skills and their technologies. Rarely, however is a consistent view available to the executive.

The answer to managing your cyber security risk is therefore to manage your business better – on a holistic level rather than a financial or compliance approach. Putting in place consistent approaches to documenting and monitoring business activities is a good start. Many departments will be undertaking business analysis work within their current scope, so we are not talking about a brand new expenditure line.

Do good business analysis, broadly and consistently throughout the organisation. Collect and leverage the information through some (uncomplicated) architecture. Insist that the effort improves business performance. These are the key tenets for success. With this in place your cyber security consultants can add value and advise on solutions that don’t break the bank.

October 23, 2014April 16, 2016

Unleash the analyst in you

I have recently made a big change in my life, leaving a CIO role to join a top notch consulting firm. My business card calls me a Strategic Analyst, I get half the pay and have twice the fun. So how different are the jobs of an analysts and a CIO?

I have come up with 4 areas that highlight the similarity:

The CIO as a strategist – The heart of any strategy is analysing current state, developing a vision of a future state and working out what is needed to get from one to the other. The future state is developed with the help of research, providing insight into trends in customer, marketplace, regulations and technology.The output from this enterprise analysis work may be a strategy and roadmap or a business case, all of which need to be bread and butter for a CIO
The CIO as a builder – Much of the executive focus goes into the projects that IT are working on. While these typically represent only 30% of IT expenditure, projects are exciting and presage business change. While many see the skills of project managers and business analysts as the key to success, the CIO should be thinking at the program level. A well designed program focuses on how to integrate many initiatives to deliver an outcome that furthers the business strategy.Pulling good programs together needs enterprise analysis. CIOs need to be thinking about how all the moving parts of projects, programs and BAU knit together to deliver an outcome. The more components that are in motion, the greater the risk and the more strategic the analysis needs to be.
The CIO as an operator. IT systems are not much use if they are not working! CIO careers can easily come unstuck when outages and security breaches cause embarrassment to the businesses.
To operate IT systems well, the analysis effort needs to go into the IT processes up front. With a good service management framework in place, the CIO needs to ensure that operations are adequately resourced with skilled people committed to outcomes
The CIO as a leader. One key skill for CIOs is as a leader of their team and as a networker / leader of stakeholders. Leadership is open to analysis. There are management techniques that are known to succeed and some CIOs develop a formal relationship architecture.In the end, relationships are about people and your personality type has a big impact here. You don’t have to be extrovert to be a CIO, but you do need empathy and excellent communication skills.

For me, CIO as an operator was my Achilles heel. I could never see how fixing the CIO’s phone was more important than keeping a mine site running or ensuring the intensive care ward was operating. I can now focus on what I am really good at – enterprise analysis, strategic thinking, business case development and program formulation.

So how many of the areas above does your CIO tick off?

March 26, 2014April 16, 2016

Gregory House for CIO?

Being in a household full of teenage kids, it is hard to find TV programs that everyone wants to watch. One series that we all agree is intriguing and entertaining is House – the story of a brilliant doctor saving his patient’s lives through his intellect. Along the way he struggles with drug addiction, dysfunctional personal relationships and, most intriguingly, managing a high performing team.

I see all sorts of similarities between this evidently contrived medical environment and my experiences as CIO trying to get the best out of my team for their own sakes and to deliver to the organization.

So how does Dr House stack up against my principles of what makes a good leader and especially a good CIO?

Integrity. For me this trait stands above all others in importance (as it does for any executive). On the face of it, House lacks integrity – he lies consistently, is always taking money off Wilson and almost always avoids answering questions. Behind this somewhat dispiriting façade, you know that House holds certain values with incredibly high integrity. He puts his patients first in front of his career or image. He is open and honest about the life that he leads, even if it doesn’t fit society’s norms; and he bases his decisions on fact and not prejudice.
Strategic thinking – CIOs need strategic bones in their bodies (see The Reluctant CIO!) and this takes a certain thought process. They have to be comfortable “in the fug”, not having the full picture but still being confident enough to move in one direction. This is House’s life: a patient presents with lots of data, but insufficient information to diagnose. He has to weigh up the risks of each test or treatment against the risk of inaction (usually the patient will die). He never just sits and holds his head; he always picks a path and follows it.
Domain expertise – This is a tricky area for CIOs; they need domain expertise but it needs to be in the right area. They should not be experts in configuring routers or writing code. They do need to be great at managing risk, optimizing architecture, process management and governance functions. House is the ultimate domain expert in managing risk. He doesn’t know the diagnosis any more than his team (until the last 5 minutes), but he can weigh up the risks of various options and tells the team to “Go!”
Communications – A core requirement of a CIO is to communicate the opportunities, challenges, risks and achievements of information technology. In this area you would have to say that House fails dismally, at least at face value. He interacts rudely with his patients (he would rather not talk to them) and prefers to hang out in the morgue or with coma guy. To counteract this perspective, we know that House is the best asset of the hospital, so somehow the word has got out. Maybe he really does know how to communicate – just in unconventional ways.
Relationship building – I have always thought that the relationship web that a CIO weaves is his or her biggest asset. The CIO must work up, down and across developing trust and enthusiasm. House has a strange set of relationships with Cuddy (up), his team (down) and Wilson (across). The recurring challenge with his team is to let them make their own decisions (and mistakes) but not let them kill the patient (which sometimes happens). This is like any CIO challenge – let the Operations Manager manage operations, but know when you have to step in to save a disaster.

So how would you like to be in Houses’ team? A mixed blessing I think!

January 28, 2014April 16, 2016

To interim or not to interim?

There is an approach that is gaining popularity in Australian organizations called “Executive Transition”. This is where the departure of an executive leads the organization to take stock of where it is, where it wants to go and what kind of executive it needs to get there. They might bring in an interim specialist manager who can immerse themselves in the organization, reviewing existing strategies and updating them to reflect contemporary thinking. The interim can then paint a picture of what the replacement executive should look like and assist with recruitment and ongoing support once appointed.

So how well would this approach apply to replacing a CIO?

There are some real positives for the organization:

Many executives have real frustration over the performance of IT in their organization. Complaints are often met with the mantra that IT does not have enough resources, yet they see money being wasted on ineffective IT projects and high third party costs. Getting a reliable and reasoned perspective from an experienced interim CIO is very valuable
There are basic practices in IT that are widely accepted as fundamental to an organization realizing value from technology. These include a business case approach, project management, IT governance, enterprise architecture and service management. An interim can assess the performance in these areas and in a short timeframe restore broken processes.
Different organizations needs different CIOs. In some cases, the CIO is there to keep the infrastructure running – particularly when a business feels that there is little threat from IT enabled market pressures. Where IT is a key part of a transformation agenda, a strategic CIO is needed to ensure that the broader opportunities from IT are leveraged.

Of course there are also down sides to this approach:

Developing an IT strategy involves stakeholders from throughout the organization. To be effective, the stakeholders have to hold a degree of trust in those implementing it. If the replacement CIO does not feel that they own the strategy, the strategy can become a hinderance rather than an enabler.
A critical part of any IT turn around is the IT team. To perform consistently at a high level, the IT department must have the right people with the right motivations, meaning a career structure and associated accountabilities. An interim only has so much influence here as this is the critical work of the permanent CIO.
The time that an interim is in place may seem like treading water. The interim must balance the need to take long term decisions against the reality that they will not be in place to implement them.

I have held roles as interim CIO and as permanent CIO. I believe there is an underutilization of executive transition in Australia. As an interim CIO I can bring a range of experience and knowledge that you would not normally find in the market. Developing strategies, creating relationships with stakeholders and engendering turn-arounds are all high on the list for my “high satisfaction” days.

Do you think your organization could do with an executive transition program for IT?

June 26, 2013April 16, 2016

Innovate in the Cloud

One of the hallmarks of the digital world is the ability to innovate. People can convert a good idea into a saleable product with much less investment than 10 years ago. There are all sorts of digital tools being made available in the cloud either for free, or very inexpensively, in every area from knitting to customer relationship management.

Our new generation of digitally enabled workers, see the opportunities from these tools and want to apply them in the business context. Individuals with a passion to improve the quality and quantity of their work will put in the extra discretionary effort to utilize cloud solutions in the workplace. Unfortunately if they ask the IT Department how they can do this, the answer is often “NO!”

In my CIO roles, I was constantly challenged with finding ways to enable these digital evangelists to innovate. Unfortunately we really did not understand the information that might be shared using these tools. It could be as benign as a list of building defects, or as sensitive as the plans for a military base. There are real risks from putting unknown information in the cloud with minimal opportunities for contractual redress if it is shared or stolen.

So how can an IT Department enable cloud innovation and manage the risks? I have a few suggestions:

1. Categorize information. Make sure that the organization has a single categorization of sensitivity (e.g. unclassified, restricted, confidential, and secret). The ideal way to implement this is through an enterprise content management system, but make sure you get an intuitive system that your Grandmother would be comfortable with.

2. Educate the managers. Most managers deal with business risks on a day to day basis. If they are informed of the risks inherent with the cloud, they should be able to balance that against business value, and assume accountability. This is not about frightening managers with worst case scenarios but about realistically assessing and documenting the risk in the enterprise risk framework.

3. Simple business cases. Staff who want to trial cloud based solutions should be encouraged to document the outcomes that they hope to achieve. They should undertake a post implementation review and evaluate whether solution should be maintained, scaled up or discontinued.

The paradigm required to successfully innovate in the cloud is a co-operative relationship between stakeholders. Businesses are using technology to evolve outside the purview of IT, and this isn’t going to stop. There will always be information and systems that require the robust processes of an IT Department. Where this overhead is not justified, the business should be given every opportunity to hop on the digital bus through easily accessible cloud solutions.

Does anyone out there think they have control over innovation in the cloud?

May 31, 2013April 16, 2016

Awesome Bill

I watched with great fascination the visit of Bill Gates to Australia this week. His session on Q&A was excellent with great questions from a diverse audience. He was also good at the Press Club lunch, although the questions from the press were decidedly average (proving that no journalist can go a lunch and desist from drinking a full bottle of wine).

Bill was spot on the money with his message – that properly targeted resources can make a real difference to the tough problems in the world. He showed us the outcomes, highlighting the reduction in infant mortality as a key indicator of success. He also highlighted the influence that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has had in driving towards that success.

This set me to thinking why a “software geek” should be so effective when countless billions of aid money from other sources has done less. I think there are a few imperatives that he has learned as a CEO of Microsoft that stand him in good stead for the task:

1. Outcome driven. There was very clear purpose in the work that Bill presented. The purpose could be expressed simply (eradicate Polio) and no matter how complex the issues, all initiatives could be measured against this target.

2. Information Technology. Bill knows that IT is really about the information and not the technology. You have to gather good information, work out what the problem / opportunity is, postulate a solution, implement and measure, react to the outcomes with new programs or improvements to existing programs. Technology allows you to do this at scale, but information and analysis point you in the right direction.

3. Governance. Bill understands how powerful a force governance is. As the world’s richest man, he must be tempted to decide unilaterally, but evidently that is not his style. His position on GM foods was telling – don’t stop the science, but put in place governance structures for countries to decide whether the risk outweighs the benefit.

I contrast this with my experience as CIO for the International Red Cross. I was besieged by donors wanting to put technology in the hands of the poor. The purpose was to provide wings so the poor could fly! I would emphasise that technology costs resources to operate and unless the value proposition is clear it withers (as happened to innumerable high tech aid projects). Where resources are needed is in the systems and data that can be used to improve livelihoods.

Well done Bill for squeezing $80M from Julia for his cause celeb, and well done for inspiring us to keep trying to make the world a better place. I have just one request – please don’t die before you eradicate polio!

May 3, 2013April 16, 2016

How much should we spend on IT?

Times are tough, as everyone playing in the consulting game would know. The March quarter Westpac pulse survey shows business is generally getting more optimistic, but this has not translated into increased sales and revenue. Organizations have streamlined and cut back on costs over the last 3 years and the IT department has participated generously in this (with another 10% cut in overall expenditure last year).

Is it still reasonable for executives to ask whether there are further cost savings available? The answer is of course yes and no. To illustrate I have taken a graph published by MIT’s CISR – a fantastic resource for IT research. The graph represents the IT spend graphed against technology maturity. In this case they measure maturity in the effectiveness of an enterprise architecture.

The baseline is 100% for an IT Department in an immature organization. This is typified by different services being offered to different parts of the business and dispersed infrastructure. If you are in this position you are definitely spending too much on IT.

A solid effort on standardizing hardware and software, consolidating infrastructure and improving procurement will deliver a 15% saving. The next 10% comes from standardizing and simplifying business processes onto core enterprise systems.

The surprising outcome is where businesses go next. Once the IT monster has been tamed inside the IT department and the business, organizations become more comfortable about investing in IT. They actually increase their IT spend as it delivers real business value and the IT budget ends up 20% higher than when they started.

So where do you think your organization is on the maturity curve?

April 15, 2013April 16, 2016

Upgrade or perish

The Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched in 1977 and will continue operating until 2020 (43 years), approximately 18 billion Km from earth. The NASA team built a dedicated control room for this and other deep space missions. This means they can continue to use the original computer and communication systems through the decades without continually upgrading operating systems.

A few years ago I visited the European Space Agency Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany where they had developed new approaches to dealing with the technology cycle and were building shared control rooms for their multi year missions like Rosetta and Cluster II. This is a complex challenge as operating systems become unsupported, programming languages change and engineers move on or retire.

Unfortunately most organizations do not have the luxury of ignoring the upgrade requirements from the technology cycle. IT departments put significant resources into continually upgrading products, often for no tangible business improvement. One of the biggest challenges around upgrades is the computer operating system. In April 2014 the XP operating system will no longer be supported by Microsoft and yet 38% of computers worldwide still use XP.

So how should organizations still running XP approach the end of support milestone. I believe that there are 3 items to discuss at the very highest level in the organization:

The Risk. The primary risk is that when XP stops being supported, Microsoft will no longer issue security patches for discovered vulnerabilities. So how many vulnerabilities remain in XP and how serious is it when they are exploited? The Stuxnet worm (used to destroy uranium enriching centrifuges) used 4 previously undiscovered vulnerabilities. It is a fair bet that someone out there has discovered more vulnerabilities and is waiting until end of support to deploy them and maximize return on investment.The end of support for XP is particularly attractive to hackers. You could end up with malware that is almost undetectable and provides hackers access to systems long after XP has disappeared from your network.
The resources required. There are 3 areas that will cost (and often dearly) – new licenses (either for the operating system or to update old software that does not run on 7); – testing for all the existing applications (almost guaranteed that some will not work first time); and the change project (including designing and deploying the new components and training). $1200 to $2000 per computer is the Gartner estimate, and I ran a project for 900 seats at $1.2M.
The technology options. It is really too late to start an enterprise upgrade project and have it completed inside a year. Even if you get organized internally, the integrators have their resources fully committed to enterprises that have started before you. The situation is particularly serious if your desktop management systems are not up to date.I suggest that you need to look at procuring a cloud based managed desktop. Talk to a few vendors to get a pilot up and running while you develop your procurement documents. Identify and prioritize application testing and ensure that there are nominated business reps to own the test outcomes. Start working with the HR department on a bring your own computer strategy. Most importantly, write a business case that frames exactly what you are trying to achieve and minimize the scope to tackle the core issues, leaving the “nice to haves” until the new technology is bedded in.

One last piece of advice – if your organization “simply does not have the money” for an upgrade, secure your superannuation and check out Seek.com. In the end, upgrades are non-negotiable for anyone except NASA!

April 9, 2013April 16, 2016

Don’t get comfortable, the internet of things is coming

The role of a chief information officer in a large company has its challenges. They have to intermediate between the messy world of business and the even messier world of IT. Their focus is on the risks, costs and opportunities of today and they have few resources to prepare for the future.

I would argue that the next big challenge in IT is something that most CIOs are not ready for. This is the integration of information technology (IT) with operational technology (OT). It is a question of how we manage the internet of things – devices communicating over the internet without human interaction.

To give a personal example, as CIO I supported the operation of a newly purchased ore crushing machine (OT) at a remote mine site. The machine needed to run optimization software that was hosted on the vendor’s computers. This meant connecting the machine through our corporate network (IT) to the vendor. The vendor had no security accreditation and did not offer the security tools that we insisted on from our regular IT suppliers.

The machine had been purchased and the investment in a second communications link was substantial. In the end we accepted an increased security risk, given the costs of mitigation.

There are 3 big challenges with the internet of things:

Security. As soon as we connect devices to the internet, there is massively increased opportunity for malicious attack. Hackers from anywhere in the world may obtain access, as highlighted by Mandiant. Many suppliers of OT do not have the resources to invest in properly secured systems.It is just a matter of time before serious mechanical or safety incidents occur. The Stuxnet virus destroyed hardware used to enrich uranium in Iran, but also infected over 200 Australian based devices. The Australian Government Computer Emergency Response Team found that 35% of attacks were non-targeted and indiscriminate.
Integration. As the complexity of internet of things devices increases, so does the ability to store and utilize data. This data needs to be exchanged efficiently with corporate IT systems, however there are few standards.One example I came across recently was from an engraving firm. They had a web site through which customers could place their orders. To get the details into the connected engraving machine required them to rekey all the data, leading to errors and wasted time.
Purchasing. The people buying OT hardware and software have a focus on the performance of the system. They are often less expert at understanding the license conditions and costs of ongoing support. It is not uncommon to see the same corporate license purchased more than once in an organization.

Some organizations are taking the bull by the horns. At the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, they have put the engineering services for recording and digital editing under the CIO. The critical infrastructure providers such as the utilities and airports have invested in professional approaches to OT. For many however, this is another problem just waiting to happen.

Do you have any plans for the internet of things?