Monthly Archives: September 2019

Master Data Management: How is data governance different from project and portfolio governance and IT Governance?

To truly manage data as a valued enterprise asset, data governance must be managed as a business function like finance or human resources.

Master data management is more than just an application, it is a composition of people, tools, methods, and policies that mold the future as organizations seek to exploit the value of the corporate information asset, data governance is primarily concerned with policies and strategies that address the creation and use of granular data as inputs into a system.

By ensuring that quality data is stored in your data warehouse or business intelligence application, you also ensure the quality of information for dependent applications and analytics, so that next, enterprise information management is the continuous development of people, processes, technology and operative work to manage information properly and to develop the value of that information.

It is intuitive to expect that better data will result in better outcomes, but the approach to building your governance team and where it fits in your company depends on your business structure and priorities, observing MDM policies will establish a level of trust in the quality and usability of master data together with information creation, use, governance and management and alignment of information management needs to enterprise architecture and future conceptual architecture planning, data modelling and design assessment, design and development of the data is required to support business operations Information lifecycle planning. 

Unified governance and integration provides you with complete information management and governance solutions for analytical insights to create business value through data, while helping you ensure compliance, thus lowering cost and risk, think of data management as an IT effort that aims to organize and control your data, whereas data governance is the business strategy that is more holistic and includes stakeholders throughout an organization.

The speed and scale of enterprise data is increasing exponentially, over the last few decades, companies have become increasingly aware of the need to leverage data assets to profit from market opportunities, you have to be able to take the different assets that have to touch and play with data from your business processes to your data architecture to your data models and bring that all together in one data platform.

Policy management encompasses both the formal creation of policy, the decision-making process that has led to your policy being what it is, and the management and, if needed, alteration of existing policy, among the most noteworthy trends identified is the elevation of data governance, which is now considered as important as data management; important and redundant information/data keeps on piling over time, which needs to be managed.

In order to efficiently organize and use data in the context of your organization and in coordination with other data projects, data governance programs must be treated as an ongoing, iterative process, an innovative and powerful data governance facility provides end-to-end support for the discovery and cleansing of corrupt, invalid, or incomplete data in this case education, when combined with ongoing communication, can strengthen awareness of both data governance and modeling best practices, inadequate communication of model requirements and system changes is a common cause of deliverable failures.

Contract Lifecycle Management: How important are criteria to your organization when selecting IT service providers?

Contract management, sometimes referred to as contract administration, refers to the processes and procedures that companies may implement in order to manage the negotiation, execution, performance, modification and termination of contracts with various parties including customers, vendors, distributors, contractors and employees, additionally, ITIL includes lists of challenges, risks, critical success factors, and key performance indicators that your organization can use in its pursuit of effective supplier management,

Beware of outdated methods of contract management workflow which allow important details to be overlooked.

Managing software licenses is one thing, managing contracts is another, a lot of the processes and methods used for managing licenses are transferable, but there are other elements that need to be included, there are several solutions that deliver a suite of applications that can help your organization manage customer agreements, service delivery, customer billing, and supplier contracts.

Even though deployment and operations are an important part of the traditional SDLC, due to the explicitness of the service level agreements, support contracts, compliance, security, and shared infrastructure; activities during the Operating phase are critical for the success of SaaS operations, where subscription management is the process of managing your subscribers, and preferences across the lifecycle.

Service acceptance criteria (SAC) a set of criteria used for service acceptance testing to ensure that an it service meets its functionality and quality requirements and that the service provider is ready to operate the new service when it has been deployed for instance as a public cloud allows your organization to purchase services, delivered via the internet, from a third-party provider.

When thinking about Change Management, it is important to recognize there are strategic, tactical, and operational changes that need to be defined and managed to support your organizational service goals, Enterprises use product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions to help manage information and processes throughout the product definition lifecycle from concept to design, during manufacturing, through maintenance, and with their supply chain partners.

IT leaders need to recognize that the quality of solutions definition processes determines the quality of requirements created, the issues that are discovered in the build, the bugs that are found in quality testing and the number of incidents that are in service delivery, in market research studies in a wide array of technology service markets, it is found that price is often low on the list of criteria that end-users consider when selecting and evaluating service providers.

Software License Management: Which software is used?

Software License Management allows you to consolidate your hardware and software license, usage, and inventory data to seamlessly track and manage IT investments and abandon Excel spreadsheets, find a product to automate software packaging, deployment, network auditing, computer power management, network protection and other network management tasks. Many software companies offer special licensing agreements to your organization as incentives for them to purchase and use software products.

Inventory management software is used to track inventory levels, sales processes, orders, and deliveries, software asset management enables end to end software life cycle management from a single platform to optimize software spend and reduce license compliance risk for instance the risk of indirect use Software license management; companies are more interconnected and digitally positioned than ever, however the process of digital transformation is putting them increasingly to the test.

A powerful asset management solution contains information about every piece of hardware in your company, every piece of software installed on it, when licenses for that software expire, and to whom or which department the hardware is assigned, and has the capability to manually and/or automatically assign cases to organization staff, for review and monitoring.

Companies are forced to conduct internal software audits to ensure compliance as well as be prepared for external ones initiated by software vendors, software license management protects time and money investments made in your software and increases ROI for your business.

Implementing a blockchain system for software license management can improve the traceability of software licenses throughout their lifecycle, managing all the moving parts in your IT environment can be time-consuming and difficult without the right tools, although where Saas and mobile has made all consumers familiar with new subscription and usage based purchasing, whilst business customers increasingly want to switch to concurrent licensing, making their license inventories easier to use and manage.

When your organization has a comprehensive and efficient license management program in place, it reduces costs and ensures that your organization remains in compliance, a tool helps you maintain your licenses-from the start of the application process from start to finished license authorization, giving ample time to proactively prepare for new licenses so software license compliance is not solely the responsibility of the staff and organizational unit where the software resides.

CTO: Is each business unit and function assigned a BRM?

A chief technology officer (CTO), sometimes known as a chief technical officer or chief technologist, is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupation is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization, the CTO and the deputy director(s) collaborate and work as a team regarding department administration, however, each deputy director will focus on several assigned areas of responsibility.

While there are numerous factors driving the evolution of the CTO function, in the main, the role has evolved as new technologies have emerged.

Over the last several years, the function of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) has become increasingly important to the success of almost every type of organization, CTO as a service is a flexible way to gain expertise without taking on the financial burden of a full-time employee with a similar resume, moreover, speaking about a tech startup, an experienced CTO can bring progressive ideas to your organization and find advanced tech solutions.

After understanding and clarifying requirements from the business units the CTO creates a technology solution to fulfill those requirements while keeping the enterprise architecture goals in mind, for taking critical technological decisions in every organization, a Chief Technology Officer or CTO plays a vital role.

As a CTO one is responsible for establishing your organizations technical vision and strategy and also leading various aspects of your organizations future technology development, a Chief Technology Officer provides sound technical knowledge and leadership in all aspects of your business.

In a startup environment, a CTO needs to have very deep technical knowledge of what the company does and how it relates to the industry AND is also very capable (communication/soft skills) to convey that to all other functions AND customers.

Accountable for the delivery of all technology products and projects in assigned areas including managing the scope, schedule, resources, budget, and quality of each project, when considering any technical solution, as a part of analysis, the CTO always explores whether a cloud solution (especially SaaS) is available and whether it makes sense for your business requirements and financial models.

The CTO role IS the key contact between business units and the technology vendors, helping to articulate business needs and strategies.

Configuration Management: Does it understand the business?

Management, internal auditors, users, system developers, and security practitioners use configuration management to gain an understanding of the basic security requirements most IT systems should contain, Information about each configuration item is recorded in a configuration record within the configuration management system and is maintained throughout its lifecycle by service asset and configuration management, many contemporary CIOs and IT executives understand this well.

To cover the key theoretical and practical considerations you need to understand when starting on your configuration management journey, change management for business agility it requires a change management solution optimized to support the dramatic increase in volume and complexity of change within the modern enterprise, as a rule, enhance common understanding of the subject, promote the use of configuration management and assist management in your organization in applying configuration management to improve performance.

Each of the configuration items are evaluated upon a defined schedule for the purpose of reporting on compliance and for auditing purposes, Configuration management is generally referred to as an overall process of which keeps track of what version of the code is on what server, how the servers are setup (and the install scripts to do so at many places) thus enabling faster approval of finance for the purchase of software to support service asset and configuration management.

Within the industry, conditions and requirements are always changing, such include tracking and prioritization, task management sprint planning, release planning, team velocity, forecasting, and many other functions related to the management of an agile project to prepare for software updates management.

There are several definitions, goals, and objectives that a service owner must understand in order to successfully apply service asset and configuration management, It service management is the implementation and management of quality it services that meet the needs of the business, and is performed by it service providers through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology and needs configuration management to assess the impact of changes to the IT environment and to provide a definitive store for the release package.

Knowing when such changes took place, what changed, and who made the change without a change monitoring tool is nearly impossible, successful and robust vulnerability management requires incorporation of various security components, the most critical of which are the risk, patch, asset, change and configuration management.

Understanding project management requirements whatever its dictionary meaning, requirements management is an integral part of a process in project management , configuration management platform governance is helps bridge the communications gap between the business and technological groups; ensure ROI, mitigate risks associated with IT projects impacting the environment, and provide a key cog for IT service delivery and capability of service.

Requirements management is the process of collecting, analyzing, refining, and prioritizing product requirements and then planning for delivery, for best practices in release and deployment management, automation is a great place to start. Automation enables you to do repetitive tasks without tying up valuable human resources subsequently ensuring changes are are fit for purpose, stable and so reliable so that the business views IT as a trusted provider.