Category: Best Practices

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has changed IT for the worse. OK, now that I have your attention, let me be fair: ITIL has benefited many aspects of IT (e.g., help desks, infrastructure management, service delivery, etc.) by bringing structure, standards, and consistent, repeatable processes to what was previously a free-for-all. The problem is that IT […]

Never waste your time; it is too precious. There are never any guarantees we will have tomorrow. —Catherine Pulsifer, Author “I don’t have enough (fill in the blank)” is a common refrain in the face of new demands. It’s normally followed by that much-loved phrase “We need to prioritise.” I’ve observed that the challenge is […]

Many of my conversations with AWS customers are about their attempts to build developer experience platforms that simplify software development and operations, automate deployments, improve software quality, reduce costs, and ensure security and compliance. Unfortunately, not all platforms live up to their expectations. The most frequently cited problem is development teams rejecting the platform that […]

As an Enterprise Strategist, I find multicloud topics come up in many discussions rife with confusion, false certainty, and tentativeness. Companies are bombarded with conflicting messaging telling them either to never adopt a multicloud approach or to not miss out because “everyone is switching to multicloud.” There are good reasons for either pursuing or avoiding […]

It won’t surprise you to hear that there’s been lots of excitement and speculation about generative AI in our meetings with AWS customer executives lately. The question on their minds is: “What does this mean for my business?” That’s a good way to frame the question; it’s not about what generative AI can do, but […]

Sometimes an idea becomes so ingrained in conventional wisdom, such an embedded assumption in everything we do, that it demands to be questioned. Think about how often you hear someone in a meeting say, “We need to prioritize,” or ask, “Is this a priority?” When something goes wrong, it may be blamed on a failure […]

We often advise AWS customers embarking on digital transformations to consider that cloud migration is part of digital transformation, and digital transformation must be driven by business outcomes. The effectiveness of your governance programs determines the success of your cloud migration and digital transformation. There will be an end to the cloud migration portion of […]

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist & philosopher Thinking is hard; energy intensive even. Perhaps that’s the reason we obsess about food. One estimate indicates we make over 200 food-related decisions a day. Another popular internet statistic boldly states that the average human makes […]

With data at the centre of every application, process, and business decision, nearly every organisation I talk to describes a quest to become more data-driven to discover and act on insights rapidly. They know there is gold to be found within the troves of their data, but—frustratingly—it usually doesn’t materialise in a timely way for […]

Background As an Enterprise Strategist at AWS, I spend the majority of my time in two key areas when I meet with customers: all things digital transformation—people, process, technology, culture, aligning technology investments to business outcomes, cloud migration, organizational change, etc.; and security, compliance, risk, and privacy topics, due to my experience as a former […]