Bridging Business & IT

These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

But we're talking to just one man. Today is the first part of our conversation with a uniquely accomplished IT professional, Jim Rinaldi. Over Jim's long career he's been the Vice President of IT for Marriott Hotels, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which is managed for NASA by Caltech (the California Institute of Technology). Needless to say, he's seen his fair share of what he refers to as "business projects that just happen to be enabled by technology" (aka, IT projects). We spend a lot of time talking about why IT projects tend not to be successful and what needs to be done to change that. Perhaps more importantly, we talk about the role of a leader in IT organizations and what a successful leader must do to understand and serve the needs of his team and organization. We throughly enjoyed this conversation. We hope you do too. These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

But we're talking to just one man. Today is the first part of our conversation with a uniquely accomplished IT professional, Jim Rinaldi. Over Jim's long career he's been the Vice President of IT for Marriott Hotels, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which is managed for NASA by Caltech (the California Institute of Technology). Needless to say, he's seen his fair share of what he refers to as "business projects that just happen to be enabled by technology" (aka, IT projects). We spend a lot of time talking about why IT projects tend not to be successful and what needs to be done to change that. Perhaps more importantly, we talk about the role of a leader in IT organizations and what a successful leader must do to understand and serve the needs of his team and organization. We throughly enjoyed this conversation. We hope you do too. These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

This is part II of a conversation with Nalin Vahil. Nalin is a professional Sales leader who has worked at some of the biggest brands in Silicon Valley. Part I talks about some of his background and operating philosophy. Part II kicks off with some of the groups commentary on the state of the economy and the role of IT leaders during a macro economic downturn. Nalin shares more about his career evolution and the various jobs he held inside some hyper growth tech environments. He shares about how to manage execution with a rapidly growing team and how to drive consistency that is balanced with continuous improvement and innovation. Nalin describes a very innovative use of the Agile methodology to run his own Sales Organization. This process is complete with a backlog, leading indicators, sprint periods and a process for measuring the rate of improvement. Overall you'll hear a thoughtful discussion about growth, aligning business priorities within a team and personal development. We hope you enjoy this great conversation. These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

This wide ranging conversation with Nalin Vahil Part 1 spans Dan and Nalin's history of friendship and Nalin's career history. With parents that wanted him to become a Doctor, Nalin forged his own path first as an Entrepreneur and then as a Sales Professional for some of Silicon Valley's hottest tech companies. Nalin has an expertise in applying the latest technology to run a highly effective sales organization. He also is a passionate student who studys the ways that new Enterprise IT infrastructure enters a company. And in this conversation he explores the role of end users and bottoms up decision making that is often leveraged by Sales teams to land new accounts. This part wraps up with a great exploration about the role of sales in a software evaluation along with the dark side of the reputation that sales has earned when they are not always necessarily looking out for the absolute best interest of the customer. These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

In December, 2022 the Project Management Institute held their Global Summit Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada . Of the more than 250 talks and break out sessions, about 10% were featured live. These were selected to showcase the most important issues in project management. As fate would have it, Dave was asked to give one of those live talks. It's widely known that IT projects fail at an alarming rate. What's not widely known is that the cause of 75% of those failures is our inability to communicate. What's even less well known is that the cause of that inability is the human brain. This presentation explains how and why our brain sabotages our communications, and offers a simple way to fix that problem. The title of the Dave's presentation was "The Human Brain: The IT Kiting Constraint We Never Consider". Obviously this is a topic we've talked a lot about on this podcast. Given the response of the 300+ people in attendance, we're going to be talking about it a lot more. It was great to give this talk because it was so nice to be able to interact with a live audience again and get their reactions. We wondered when we started to explore the chasm between business and IT three years ago whether the problem was really that bad. After watching 300 heads nod up and down in agreement for an hour and getting to talk to so many great people afterwards, it's clear this is an issue we must deal with. I hope you enjoy the recording. Here's some select references if you're interested: Charette, Robert, (2014) Why Software Fails - We waste billions of dollars each year on entirely preventable mistakes, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Spectrum magazine Eagleman, David (2011) Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Random House Gawande, Atul (2009) The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Picador Hawkins, Jeff (2021) A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, Hachette Book Group Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking Fast & Slow, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Kapur, Narinder editor, (2011) The Paradoxical Brain, (Dror, Itiel E. The paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong) Cambridge University Press Krasner, Herb, (2021) The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2020 Report, Consortium for Information & Software Quality McKinsey & Company and the BT Centre for Major Programme Management at Oxford University, (2012, 2020), Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget and on value, Sapolsky, Robert (2017) Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Penguin Books Standish Group, (2020) Standish Group Annual CHAOS 2020 Report, StandishGroup.com These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

If you're in the tech sector and looking for investment funding, it a good idea to understand a little bit about the people you're pitching. Today’s conversation is a continuation of our last episode with one such investor, Brent Granado. Brent's a JD, MBA who started out as a corporate attorney working on deals, moved in-house running corporate development and M&A doing deals, then jumped over to the funding/investment side. He's currently Managing Partner at Sweetwater Private Equity. Prior to that Brent was a General Partner at Sway Ventures. Both firms are focused exclusively on the tech sector, primarily on Software as a Service. We got into Brent's background the last time. Today we dig deeper into a discussion of venture funding in the tech space, the mechanics of that environment, how that landscape has changed over the years, and where things seem to be headed now These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

After an unexpected hiatus, we’re back at it. If you're in the tech sector and looking for investment funding, it really helps to understand a little bit about the people you're pitching to. That's why today’s conversation is with an old and very close friend, Brent Granado. Brent's a JD, MBA who started out as a corporate attorney working on deals, moved in-house running corporate development and M&A doing deals, then jumped over to the funding/investment side. He's currently Managing Partner at Sweetwater Private Equity. Prior to that Brent was a General Partner at Sway Ventures. Both firms are focused exclusively on the tech sector, primarily on Software as a Service. We start off talking about the value and gift of multi-generational friends and mentors. How an older guy (Dave) mentors a younger friend (Brent). Time goes by. Everyone gets older. The once young friend starts mentoring the undergraduate son (Dan) of his now “Silverback” buddy. That new relationship blossoms. The son’s career is accelerated. In about decade Dan enters the executive ranks. The mentoring cycle starts to repeat and the family of friends grows. Why genuine, honest, authentic, trust-based relationships are the most important part of your business career. And why if you ever forget that business is all about people, your life won’t be worth living. We pivot into Brent’s career journey. From there we get into a discussion of venture funding in the tech space, the mechanics of that environment, how that landscape has changed over the years, and where things seem to be headed now. The conversation was so expansive we’re breaking it into a couple of parts. The second half is coming in a few weeks. We hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. ----- These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

This episode is a little different. In late 2021 Dave was asked to conduct a seminar for the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Information Management to talk about the findings and focus of Bridging Business & IT. A small group of senior IT executives were invited and this is the recording of that roundtable. SIM New Jersey Website: https://njsim.org/ These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

We were very fortunate today to have Barb Mastrianni, AVP and Senior Program Manager for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Inc. Barb shares the lessons that Chubb has learned about what it takes to do Agile "right" and how they've gone from a somewhat shaky start to an exponential growth in successful project outcomes. The secret is all about determining where you want to go before you try to go there, and putting governance guardrails in place to be sure that everyone (the business, IT, PMO, analysts, etc) understands the route and the destination before you set off. The idea of doing a pre-charter assessment to understand the project and rigor Chubb wraps around that process is particularly worthwhile. This is a must listen for any organization looking for ways to improve their Agile practices. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Barb Mastrianni These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

Our guest today is Jeffrey Sherow. Jeff has spent a long career at the intersection of business and technology. He started out with Andersen Consulting, rose through the ranks to become an Accenture partner, and stayed there for several years. Jeff has become extremely interested in the role of the product manager. The primary reason for this interest is his belief that the product manager needs to be someone who intimately understands the customer and what a business needs to do to delight their customers. In a perfect world the product manager is responsible for delivering value to customers and has P&L responsibility. Unfortunately, that perfect world rarely exists. Jeff shares our concerns that in many companies those on the business side have abrogated their responsibility to drive customer value through the intelligent deployment of technology. Too often business people view 'IT projects' as the IT department's problem and have lost sight of the fact that these are never IT projects. They are business projects that just happen to be enabled by technology. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Jeffrey Sherow These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

Today we’re talking to Joyce Hunter, former CIO of the USDA and currently CEO of Vulcan Enterprises. Joyce brings a long and storied career full of insights from both the public and private sectors, from both sides of the fence—she’s been both customer and vendor. We discuss the similarities between the public and private sector, talk about some terrible project failures and some great successes, and explore the key reasons behind each. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Joyce Hunter These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

This episode is with Dan Kelly, founder and CEO of The Negotiator Guru. Dan is the person we have to thank for our podcast as he was the one who originally invited Dave to be on his, “The State of the CIO”. The feedback from that show was so good it convinced us to launch our own. As the title implies we’ll be talking about (among other things) the tricks of the trade when negotiating large enterprise software licenses. Dan shares some very frank observations about the predatory behavior of some vendors, the general lack of awareness and preparation among many business buyers, and the fairly simple steps most buyers can take to make better purchasing decisions and save a lot of money along the way. It’s a lively conversation to put it mildly. We think you’ll enjoy it. And don’t forget to check out the “State of the CIO” podcast. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Dan Kelly These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

Roger Moore (no, not 007) is our guest today. Roger currently teaches Analytics at the University of Chicago where he’s also an alum of their MBA program. Over his 30-plus year career he’s been with a number of major consulting groups such as BCG, Gartner, Booze and PWC. He’s currently running his own Data and Analytics firm. This conversation is foundational. Roger helps us unpack the critical components and structures of a good data, analytics and reporting organization / strategy. Unfortunately, due to the enormous expanse of this topic, we weren’t able to get into detailed discussions on the mechanics of the process. Fortunately, Roger’s already agreed to come back for deeper dives in the near future. Stay tuned. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Roger Moore These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

Our guest in this episode is Jomo Starke, Director of Innovation at Canton & Company. Jomo’s 30-plus year tech career started with developing video games—which he almost sold to Atari before they realized he was twelve. From his early days as a 17 year old wunderkind analyst to his years in project management, sales and biz dev, Jomo shares his insights into what makes tech enabled business projects successful and the simple, yet critical oversights that so often cause them to fail. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Jomo Starke These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

We’re joined today by Ray Weale, currently COO of IDMerit and formerly Director of Digital Innovation at Nestle. Ray helped lead the global unification of literally thousands of Nestles processes and systems on to 34 standard processes on SAP—realizing staggering benefits along the way. Our conversation starts with Ray’s background and carries into how Nestle accomplished this remarkable global integration and unification. Personal note: I must confess to feeling a bit sycophant-ish as we fawned over Ray’s story. However, I think anyone who’s been around a large transformation effort knows the challenges of pulling it off successfully. In this case, after learning from their first failed attempt, both Nestles and SAP should be commended for this incredible achievement. This is a story well worth hearing and an excellent example of what an organization can accomplish once they realize they’re not running an IT project—they’re running a business project that just happens to be enabled by technology—Dave Guest LinkedIn Profile: Ray Weale These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

In the last episode we talked about how a CIO (or IT leader) needs to prepare their business counterparts for their roles and responsibilities in an upcoming tech-enabled business project. In this episode we talk about IT department leadership, expectations and accountability. We share five “ground rules” that tech leaders need to share with their teams to position them for project success and to provide better service to their business counterparts. We are again joined by our CIO guest, John Fisher. Guest LinkedIn Profile: John Fisher These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

This episode shares five things that the tech team needs to share with business executives, project sponsor(s), process owners and subject matter experts to set their expectations and explain their obligations before a project kicks off. We’re joined on this episode by an old friend and colleague, John Fisher, who has held multiple CIO positions over his 35+ year career and currently teaches at DePaul University. Guest LinkedIn Profile: John Fisher These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com

Part 2 of this episode builds on the foundation of part 1 and is dedicated to examining the details within each of the four stages and twelve steps of the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL”). Suggested readings: The Checklist ManifestoThinking Fast & SlowIncognitoThe paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong”“The Coming Software ApocalypseThe Lost Language of Execution”www.bridgingbusinessit.com/solutionsThese podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd like to hear more about, or you have an idea about how we might better serve our listeners, please shoot us an email at dave@bridgingbusinessit.com. We'd love to hear from you. http://bridgingbusinessit.com