Forging Connections that Drive Success Have you ever wondered why you’re not succeeding as a CIO? You have the technical knowledge, you know the ins-and-outs of anything and everything technology related, but your projects never make it past the board. What is going on? Why is it that you have great ideas but nobody else sees or cares about them. It’s probably due to the relationships that you should have built but haven’t. Let’s take a look at an important and often overlooked concept: relationship building. The First Year Your first year as a leader is filled with excitement. Normally
Author: Dino Cajic
Future-Proofing IT Initiatives in a Dynamic Landscape I spoke with one of my friends recently about the technology that’s employed in his new company. He recently got a new role and realized how dated the previous business was. The conversation started like this. “So, guess what I’m working on,” he asked. “I’m not sure I follow,” I responded. “Guess what kind of computer I’m on,” he reiterated. “Dude, you got a Dell,” I jokingly replied. “A laptop,” he said, “a laptop in a docking station.” He and I were having this conversation about a couple of weeks prior to him
Guiding Tech Strategy and Innovation While highly dependent on the organization that employs the CIO, there are certain responsibilities that surface more often than not. Those include: managing technology infrastructure, overseeing IT security, managing data, and collaborating with other executives to align IT strategy with overall business objectives. Managing Technology Infrastructure My favorite phrase uttered by IT Leadership is, “we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this infrastructure and it works for us.” While there are budgetary constraints that do affect those decisions, most of the time the reasoning is a lot simpler: they just don’t want to do
How CIOs Drive Tech Integration Success One expected place where a CIO will exist is in Merger and Acquisition deals. They need to do their due diligence, integrate IT into the acquisition, and manage cultural differences. These are just a few concepts outside of the regular key responsibilities that any CIO needs to perform. https://medium.com/geekculture/key-responsibilities-of-a-cio-5028833d7ebd Due Diligence In a merger and acquisition (M&A) scenario, the CIO plays a crucial role in assessing the IT systems, infrastructure, and operations of both the acquiring and the target organizations. The CIO must perform due diligence to identify any potential risks, opportunities, and challenges
The CIO’s Essential Skill As the top technology executive in an organization, the CIO needs to communicate effectively with the executive staff to ensure alignment of technology strategy with overall business strategy. I’ll frequently state that I can tell the maturity of the marketing department in an organization by one key word: digital. For example, if a marketing department states that they need a digital marketer, I automatically know that the marketing department is not up-with-the-times. Digital-Marketing is Marketing now and businesses can’t live without it. Similarly, when a mid-sized+ business states that they don’t need a CIO, I know
The CIO’s Vital Business Continuity Role Someone has to plan for disaster. The CIO normally takes on the role of business continuity planner. Technology is so finely integrated into each business that most business continuity plans involve IT in one shape or another. Why Even Do Business Continuity Planning? Business continuity planning helps to minimize downtime in the event of a disruption, which can help to reduce the impact on customers, employees, and the organization’s reputation. It helps to protect the organization’s revenue by ensuring that critical business processes and systems remain operational during a disruption. This can help
Business Continuity Strategies from a CIO Perspective Developing business continuity strategies is a critical responsibility for the CIO. If you’ve wondered by reading through the articles whether the CIO ever sleeps, the answer is no. Identify critical IT systems and infrastructure The first step in developing business continuity strategies is to identify the critical IT systems and infrastructure that are essential to maintaining or restoring business operations in the event of a disruption. This may include identifying critical applications, servers, databases, and network infrastructure. Conduct a business impact analysis (BIA): This involves assessing the potential impact of a disruption on
Unleashing the Power of Purposeful Achievements I noticed something about myself a few days ago. It’s something that I knew this whole time but it really hit home a couple of days ago when I thought about abandoning a goal. The goal that I’m about to share is not something that most people would find inspirational. It’s very materialistic :). The goal was to get an R35 GT-R by summer time of next year. I devised a list like I normally do: paint the interior of the house, finish the book on PHP, and finish the book on Laravel.
Dockerizing Your Development Environment from Scratch I frequently speak with individuals on how to setup work environments. There’s still a large community that rejects Docker; I’m assuming because they don’t know how to use it fully. In this article, I want to show how to use Docker to setup an environment on your computer. That’s all you need. You won’t need anything else and it doesn’t matter which operating system you’re using. Never will you have to worry about changing versions on your computer. You can do it all through Docker. New Projects If we visit the Laravel documentation,
Overcoming Challenges to Keep Programming It’s been a few years since I’ve transitioned my role out of software development and into management. I remember after the first 6 months, I jumped back into some code and realized how much of a refresher I needed. It wasn’t just the code that I was having a difficult time with, it was the overall structure of the project. It didn’t take long for me to pump out code again at the same level (about a week or two), but it was an eye-opening experience: I couldn’t believe how much I forgot in such