Project Management and Change

Example of Technical Debt and Its Cultural Consequences with Ken Knapton

How about a specific example of technical debt and its cultural consequences? Ken Knapton shares a real world example where tech silos and cultural silos reinforce each other. This company had several overlapping solutions that wasted money and created at least $5 million in cash expense — while individuals were losing their jobs!

If you’re struggling to articulate the case for why technical debt is holding your enterprise back, listen to this episode for the real world implications, criteria to evaluate and quantify, how to know you have a problem, and how to leverage your tech debt to the tune of 50%.

IT Needs to Say No Sometimes with Heather Darring

How to say “No” in IT is tricky. Heather Darring shares with us what’s even trickier: saying Yes too frequently, projects going out of scope, and then reading an IT audit that says, “You suck.” Okay, okay it didn’t actually say that she and her 1 colleague sucked, but it described missed expectations and she took it personally. Years later she’s able to share how that experience turned into an opportunity to reset expectations across the entire business, to grow, to learn, and ultimately expand her department and become the CIO.

Listen in to this episode with Heather, the CIO of an international nonprofit, as she shares what happens when IT doesn’t say No to their business colleagues (and should) and how they’re mortals like us not magicians! ha!