Richard Barton

Richard Barton

he/him

Agile Coach at Cornwall Council

Recent Posts

Control of IT can be centralised or distributed - Binary Thinking Hex No. 2

less than 1 minute read

Why has IT management become so cursed with Binary Thinking? No. 2: Control of IT can be centralised or distributed Binary Thinking: CIOs need to make a fundamental decision for their organisation. Either they will control all IT staff, assets and projects across the enterprise centrally or they will delegate everything out to local managers on a geographic and/or business-line basis. Unless a CIO chooses the centralised option they should probably resign.

Binary Thinking - a hex on IT management

less than 1 minute read

When Alan Turing was developing his ideas about computing he was not constrained by the binary number system so why has IT management become so cursed with Binary Thinking?

There is IT and there is Business - Binary Thinking Hex No. 1

1 minute read

Why has IT management become so cursed with Binary Thinking? No. 1: There is IT and there is business Binary Thinking: Everything that exists within an organisation (strategies, policies, processes, people, teams, assets, budgets, requirements, projects etc) can have a label of “IT” or “Business”. Nothing can carry both labels. Organisations need to work hard to make sure all of the “IT” things and “business” things are aligned but merging any of these things would be a mistake. Usually “business” people prevent “IT” people from participating in “business” activities. If “business” people work with “IT” suppliers it is bound to cause problems.

Organising the service-oriented IT function

5 minute read

This is first of a series of follow ups to my blog post about a service-oriented operating model for IT. These posts are based upon some of my insights and experience of putting this model into practice and I hope they will either help you develop your own thinking or provoke you to share your own ideas. In these follow up posts I am going to cover: engaging the rest of the organisation mapping out the IT value chain developing the IT bill of materials designing the IT organisation structure aligning funding and resources implementing the change. Most of the comments and reactions to the original blog post concern organisation so I am going to start there although, logically, it is the fourth step.

Step away from that corporate app store

4 minute read

The app store concept has become an accepted feature of consumer electronics remarkably quickly. When Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams were writing about producer/consumers in Wikinomics in 2006 major corporations like Apple and Sony were trying to block their customers efforts to open up their devices and add new functions. It was another two years before Apple added their app store into their ecosystem and yet now it is hard to remember not having access to thousands of applications on your smart phone. The app store user experience quickly caught the imagination of other sectors. When I wrote about the UK public sector IT strategy in 2011 (link to article on PA Consulting site) Apple’s success had already made a big impact and, perhaps, the concept is now poised to disrupt corporate IT in the same way. Or maybe not!