Streamline the traditional approach to make BCP development manageable and repeatable.
Your Challenge
Ineffective business continuity planning (BCP) leads to:
Regulators and customers demanding a functional BCP.
Progress is limited or stalled – no effective approach to make this a manageable project that can actually be completed.
No clear sense of appropriate recovery objectives or how to get there.
Do-It-Yourself Implementation
The slides in this our Best Practice Blueprint will walk you step-by-step through every phase of your project with supporting tools and templates ready for you to use.
Project Accelerator Workshop
You can also use this Best Practice Blueprint to facilitate your own project accelerator workshop within your organization using the workshop slides and facilitation instructions provided in the Appendix.
Let us help you plan your project
Onsite Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn’t enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our Project Workshops.
Onsite Expert Advice
Our expert analysts will come onsite to help you work through our project methodology in a 2-5 day workshop. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a road map in place to complete your project successfully. In some cases, we can even help you to complete the project while we are onsite!
This file was presented by me during the study circle meeting at the Mangalore Branch of Southern India Regional Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
Let’s understand the concepts of business continuity and Disaster Recovery in brief. To know more, visit: www.eccouncil.org/business-continuity-and-disaster-recovery
This file was presented by me during the study circle meeting at the Mangalore Branch of Southern India Regional Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
Let’s understand the concepts of business continuity and Disaster Recovery in brief. To know more, visit: www.eccouncil.org/business-continuity-and-disaster-recovery
This handout was provided at the OCNC Business Emergency Preparedness Series workshop hosted by the Orange County Emergency Services and The Chamber on April 11, 2019.
Planning and implementing a VMware disaster recovery (DR) plan is not a task to be taken lightly. Download this new white paper that will function as a checklist, that can guide you on the creation of a top-notch VMware disaster recovery plan.
Building a Business Continuity CapabilityRod Davis
A detailed overview of the business continuity / disaster recovery planning process. Gives numerous tips for effective execution of plan development. Emphasizes development of a true recovery capability through exercises which reveal weaknesses in the plan or technology leading to improvements.
IT-Centric Disaster Recovery & Business ContinuitySteve Susina
This presentation was delivered to the Business Resumption Planners Association of Chicago meeting on 3/11/2010.
IT leaders who assume responsibility for their firm's DR/BC efforts need to understand how to build a cross-organization strategy that transcends IT organizational boundaries. In the presentation, we discuss the need for IT leaders to reach across the aisles to work with Line-of-Business leaders, and present a six-step framework on how to accomplish a cross-business IT-centric strategy.
Business continuity and disaster recovery are not the same but complement each other. Planning on BCP and DRP is necessary for all business. This slide contains information on how to achieve and maintain them.
This handout was provided at the OCNC Business Emergency Preparedness Series workshop hosted by the Orange County Emergency Services and The Chamber on April 11, 2019.
Planning and implementing a VMware disaster recovery (DR) plan is not a task to be taken lightly. Download this new white paper that will function as a checklist, that can guide you on the creation of a top-notch VMware disaster recovery plan.
Building a Business Continuity CapabilityRod Davis
A detailed overview of the business continuity / disaster recovery planning process. Gives numerous tips for effective execution of plan development. Emphasizes development of a true recovery capability through exercises which reveal weaknesses in the plan or technology leading to improvements.
IT-Centric Disaster Recovery & Business ContinuitySteve Susina
This presentation was delivered to the Business Resumption Planners Association of Chicago meeting on 3/11/2010.
IT leaders who assume responsibility for their firm's DR/BC efforts need to understand how to build a cross-organization strategy that transcends IT organizational boundaries. In the presentation, we discuss the need for IT leaders to reach across the aisles to work with Line-of-Business leaders, and present a six-step framework on how to accomplish a cross-business IT-centric strategy.
Business continuity and disaster recovery are not the same but complement each other. Planning on BCP and DRP is necessary for all business. This slide contains information on how to achieve and maintain them.
Business Continuity for Mission Critical ApplicationsDataCore Software
Unplanned interruption events, a.k.a. “disasters,” hit virtually all data centers at one time or another. While the preponderance of annual downtime results from interruptions that have a limited or localized scope of impact, IT planners must also prepare for the possibility of a catastrophic event with a broader geographical footprint.
Such disasters cannot be circumvented simply by using high availability configurations in servers or storage. What is needed, especially for mission-critical applications and databases, are strategies that can help organizations prevail in the wake of “big footprint” disasters, but that can also be implemented in a more limited way in response to interruption events with a more limited impact profile.
DataCore Software’s storage platform provides several capabilities for data protection and disaster recovery that are well-suited to today’s most mission-critical databases and applications.
A to Z of Business Continuity ManagmentMark Conway
Business continuity is a far reaching topic that many business owners and managers do not think about until it is too late. ‘It will never happen to me’ until it does and then the majority of businesses cease to exist within 2 years of a serious incident.
Yes, business continuity can take a few months to implement properly. Yes, it takes some effort, resource and money to implement and maintain and Yes, it takes some focus away from all the urgent things on your to do list for a short time. BUT an implemented, tested and accredited Business Continuity Management System can win you new business, help you retain existing business and ultimately, should the worst happen, keep you in business!
In this A to Z I’ll be talking about some of the main terminology that Business Continuity Practitioners will bamboozle you with. I should know, I am one!
The 5E Framework is a methodical approach to align business strategy and IT consolidation. With no reprieve from a budget deficits on the horizon and greater investment scrutiny, this framework – comprised of expenditure, effectiveness, efficiency, exposure and execution – allows CIOs to facilitate the due diligence discussion, prioritize projects and formulate a strong business case.
The Disaster Recovery Plan Sumanth Lagadapati[email protecte.docxtodd241
The Disaster Recovery Plan
Sumanth Lagadapati
[email protected]
Introduction
Many companies don’t have a disaster recovery plan often there is a desire for a DRP.
The level of effort and\or cost required to create DRP can cause this project to have a low priority relative to other more immediate projects.
A DRP is viewed as "nice to have" or "just insurance that will not be used ", and not as a critical business component.
That is, until there is a failure that causes a significant outage or loss of data (often at a significant cost to the business).
It is my opinion that every company could benefit from both a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan (BCP)
Investing in a DRP and BCP is just as an important for most business in my opinion.
Where do you start?
The first step is to create a DR team and this includes an:
Executive sponsor.
DR coordinator.
Team leaders (there will be several groups and possibly subgroups).
Team members.
This people should be designated as either primary or backup for position, with every position having more than one person assigned this to minimize people as a single point of failure.
The goal is to have the expertise to help develop the various recovery procedures, and is committed to success of the overall effort.
Where do you start? cont…
The next step is to define business goals.
The goal should address items such as:
What functional areas need to be recovered?
What length of time is acceptable for recovery?
What amount of data loss is acceptable?
This often involves prioritization and a cost-benefit analysis to determine the worth of recovery (i.e. something that may be premature at this phase of the project).
Understand the business goals and objectives
To find out what that really entails you must know:
What are the critical systems?
What are the key processes and applications?
What are the dependencies on other systems?
This includes:
Data transfers.
Manual processes
Remote processing
Then documents these processes.
Because there is interaction with dependencies on other systems and user interface, and the sensitivity of the data.
Once the systems have been identified, attempt to quantify their impact relative to the overall business goals.
Identify specific requirements
Everyone involve with this effort (including upper management within a company) needs to have a single vision of what success look like, without this you risk wasting time and money on a plan that may be viewed as a failure.
Identify key personnel
These people may not be part of the DR team, but they are important. (For example who has the authority to declare a disaster?)
This list should be maintained both by name and by role; it should be validated and updated frequently.
Identify single point of failure
The overall goal of this step is to mitigate unnecessary risk.
The scope of this effort includes people, software, equipment, and infrastructure.
It i.
Your Challenge
As the market evolves, capabilities that were once cutting edge become default and new functionality becomes differentiating.
Vendors use a lot of marketing jargon, buzzwords, and statistics to sell their solutions, making objective evaluation rather difficult.
The endpoint protection (EPP) market is overcrowded and fragmented, resulting in information overload and consequently, a difficult vendor assessment.
Disparate product solutions are being bundled into one-off solutions or suites, often resulting in less efficient solutions than the more niche players.
Imminent obsolescence is an issue. Previous EPP solutions have not adapted with the rapidly evolving threat landscape and are no longer relevant, resulting in breaches or vulnerabilities.
Critical Insight
Don’t let vendors and market reports define your endpoint protection needs. Identify the use cases and corresponding feature sets that best align with your risk profile before evaluating the vendor marketspace.
Your security controls are diminishing in value (if they haven’t already). Develop a strategy that accounts for the rapid evolution and imminent obsolescence of your endpoint controls. Plan for future needs when making purchasing decisions today.
Endpoint protection is a matter of defense in depth and risk modelling, there is no silver bullet protection and mitigation solution. As end-client-technology providers release regular product/software updates, security tools will become outdated. Multiyear endpoint protection commitments will leave you playing a constant game of catch up.
Impact and Result
The solution is a holistic internal security assessment that not only identifies, but satisfies, your desired endpoint protection feature set with the corresponding endpoint protection suite and a comprehensive implementation strategy.
Use this blueprint to walk through the steps of selecting and implementing an endpoint protection solution that best aligns with your organizational needs.
Your Challenge
Companies understand the importance of business process improvement (BPI) and recognize the touted benefits: cost savings, waste elimination, and process efficiency.
With this said, 70% of companies that embark on process improvement initiatives fail.
The high probability of failure is attributed to a number of factors, including lack of continuous improvement and failing to define measurable outcomes.
Our Advice
Adopt a forward-facing outlook. Don’t focus solely on the current state, set improvement targets upfront to drive the initiative.
Break problems down into root-cause variables. Don’t look at the symptom, dive deeper and alleviate the root cause.
Empower business analysts. Create a practical process improvement methodology that your analysts can follow.
Impact and Result
Kick off process improvement by identifying the goals and defining the improvement targets.
Start by referring to the operating model and identifying level 1, 2, and 3 processes. Once the team understands the relationship between processes, they can begin to map a level 3 process using a standard mapping notation.
Use qualitative and quantitative techniques for analyzing the root cause rather than the symptoms.
Ensure the design is aligned with the initial improvement targets. Focus on value-added activities.
Consistently monitor the process and assess the root-cause variables to gauge the success of the process improvements.
Your Challenge
Internal stakeholders usually have different – and often conflicting – needs and expectations that require careful facilitation and management.
Vendors have well-honed negotiating strategies. Without understanding your own position and leverage points, it’s difficult to withstand their persuasive – and sometimes pushy – tactics.
Software – and software licensing – is constantly changing, making it difficult to acquire and retain subject matter expertise.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Conservatively, it’s possible to save 5% of the overall IT budget through comprehensive software contract review.
Focus on the terms and conditions, not just the price.
Learning to negotiate is crucial.
Impact and Result
Look at your contract holistically to find cost savings.
Guide communication between vendors and your organization for the duration of contract negotiations.
Redline the terms and conditions of your software contract.
Prioritize crucial terms and conditions to negotiate.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure, by focusing on the reliability, availability, and serviceability of existing platforms, is perceived as a cost center rather than a business enabler.
Business stakeholders look to external vendors, rather than Infrastructure, to exploit emerging technologies. This leads to duplication of effort, inconsistent standards, and ineffective IT governance.
Infrastructure directors are unable to draw a line showing how their activities directly support the overall business goals.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Think of the roadmap as a service, not a product. Its value is inversely proportional to the time since its last update.
Alignment perception issues can be addressed by having the infrastructure practice formally engage and communicate with business stakeholders.
Shadow IT can provide business-ready initiatives that need only to be tweaked to align with Infrastructure’s internal goals.
Impact and Result
This blueprint will help you build:
A formal channel and way of communicating value bottom-up and top-down between IT and the executive team.
A methodology to prioritize and create projects that generate business value.
A tool that can produce multiple outputs of value for different audiences using the same data.
An ongoing roadmap process, rather than a static document, that is able to adjust and react to evolving business circumstances.
Your Challenge
Risk is an unavoidable part of IT. And what you don't know, can hurt you. The question is, do you tackle risk head-on or leave it to chance?
Get a handle on risk management quickly using Info-Tech's methodology and reduce unfortunate IT surprises.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
1. IT risk is business risk.
Every IT risk has business implications. Create an IT risk management program that shares risk accountability with the business.
2. Risk is money.
It’s impossible to make intelligent decisions about risks without knowing what they’re worth.
3. You don’t know what you don’t know.
And what you don’t know can hurt you – so find out. To find hidden risks, you need a structured approach.
Impact and Result
Stop leaving IT risk to chance. Transform your ad hoc IT risk management processes into a formalized, ongoing program and increase risk management success by 53%.
Take a proactive stance against IT threats and vulnerabilities by identifying and assessing IT’s greatest risks before they happen.
Involve key stakeholders including the business senior management team to gain buy-in and to focus on IT risks that matter most to the organization.
Share accountability for IT risk with business stakeholders and have them weigh-in on prioritizing investments in risk response activities.
Your Challenge
Service desk managers with immature service desk processes struggle with:
Low business satisfaction.
High cost to resolve incidents and implement requests.
Confused and unhappy end users.
High ticket volumes and a lack of root-cause analysis to reduce recurring issues.
Wasted IT time and wages resolving the same issues time and again.
Ineffective demand planning.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Don’t be fooled by a tool that’s new. A new service desk tool alone won’t solve the problem. Service desk maturity improvements depend on putting in place the right people and processes to support the technology.
Service desk improvement is an exercise in organizational change. Engage specialists across the IT organization in building the solution, and emphasize how everyone stands to benefit from the initiative.
Organizations are sometimes tempted to track their work under a single ticket type. Unfortunately, the practice obscures the fact that incidents, requests, and projects require radically different amounts of time and resources, and can create the impression that IT is underperforming. Distinguish between incidents, requests, and projects, and design specific processes to support and track the performance of each activity.
Remember, the value of any IT service management (ITSM) tool is a function of the processes it supports and the adoption of those processes. The ITSM tool with the best functionality is worth little if you do not build the right processes, configure the tool to support them, and work to improve tool adoption in your organization.
Impact and Result
Increase business satisfaction.
Reduce recurring issues and ticket volumes.
Reduce average incident resolution time and average request implementation time.
Increase efficiency and lower operating costs.
Enhance demand planning.
Your Challenge
Companies are approving more projects than they can deliver. Most organizations say they have too many projects on the go and an unmanageable and ever-growing backlog of things to get to.
While organizations want to achieve a high throughput of approved projects, many are unable or unwilling to allocate an appropriate level of IT resourcing to adequately match the number of approved initiatives.
Portfolio management practices must find a way to accommodate stakeholder needs without sacrificing the portfolio to low-value initiatives that do not align with business goals.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Failure to align projects with strategic goals and resource capacity are the most common causes of portfolio waste across organizations. Intake, approval, and prioritization represent the best opportunities to ensure this alignment.
More time spent with stakeholders during the ideation phase to help set realistic expectations for stakeholders and enhance visibility into IT’s capacity and processes is key to both project and organizational success.
Too much intake red tape will lead to an underground economy of projects that escape portfolio oversight, while too little intake formality will lead to a wild west of approvals that could overwhelm the PMO. Finding the right balance of intake formality for your organization is the key to establishing a PMO that has the ability to focus on the right things.
Impact and Result
Eliminate off-the-grid initiatives by establishing a centralized intake process that funnels requests into a single channel.
Improve the throughput of projects through the portfolio by incorporating the constraint of resource capacity to cap the amount of project approvals to that which is realistic.
Silence squeaky wheels and overbearing stakeholders by establishing a progressive approval and prioritization process that gives primacy to the highest value requests.
Read this Executive Brief to understand why your team should make the case to modernize your communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Understand why it's time to move forward with modernizing your communications infrastructure.
Discover the productivity and efficiency gains you can achieve.
Redefine how you think about communications.
Learn how to build a strategy that addresses both unified communications and collaboration.
Understand Info-Tech's methodology and approach to modernizing communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Your Challenge
Organizations have to adapt to a growing number of trends, putting increased pressure on IT to move at the same speed as the business.
The business, seeing that IT is slower to react, looks to external solutions to address its challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
IT and business leaders don’t have a clear and unified understanding or definition of an operating model.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The IT operating model is not a static entity and should evolve according to changing business needs.
However, business needs are diverse, and the IT organization must recognize that the business includes groups that consume technology in different patterns. The IT operating model needs to support and enable multiple groups, while continuously adapting to changing business conditions.
Impact and Result
Determine how each technology consumer group interacts with IT. Use consumer experience maps to determine what kind of services consumer groups use and if there are opportunities to improve the delivery of those services.
Identify how changing business conditions will affect the consumption of technology services. Classify your consumers based on business uncertainty and reliance on IT to plan for the future delivery of services.
Optimize the IT operating model. Create a target IT operating model based on the gathered information about technology service consumers. Select different implementations of common operating model elements: governance, sourcing, process, and structure.
Info-Tech is the most innovative firm in the industry, and we pride ourselves on delivering better research than anyone.
Become a member and unlock a range of data-driven tools and resources to drive systematic IT improvement.
Your Challenge
It is difficult to start the project, engage the right people, and find the necessary requirements to drive the value of an enterprise architecture operating model.
It is challenging to navigate the common enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks and right-size them for your organization.
The EA practice may struggle to effectively collaborate with the business when making decisions, resulting in outcomes that fail to engage stakeholders.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The benefits of an EA program are only realized when all components of the operating model enable the achievement of the program goals and objectives. Many times organizations overplay the governance card while ignoring the motivational aspects that can be addressed through the organization's structure or stakeholder relations.
Info-Tech’s methodology ensures that all components of an EA operating model are considered to optimize the performance of the EA program.
Impact and Result
Place and structure your EA team to address the needs of stakeholders and deliver on the previously created strategy.
Create an engagement model by understanding each relevant process of COBIT 5 and make stakeholder interaction cards to initiate conversations.
Recognize the need for governance and formulate the appropriate boards while considering various policies, principles, and compliance.
Develop a unique architecture development framework based on best-practice approaches with an understanding of the various architectural views to ensure the creation of a successful process.
Build a communication plan and roadmap to efficiently navigate through enterprise change and involve the necessary stakeholders.
Your Challenge
Business transformations are happening, but CIOs are often involved only when it comes time to implement change. This makes it difficult for the CIO to be perceived as an organizational leader.
CIOs find it difficult to juggle operational activities, strategic initiatives, and involvement in business transformation.
CIOs don’t always have the IT organization structured and mobilized in a manner that facilitates the identification of transformation opportunities, and the planning for and the implementation of organization-wide change.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Don’t take an ad hoc approach to transformation.
You’re not in it alone.
Your legacy matters
Impact and Result
Elevate your stature as a business leader.
Empower the IT organization to act with a business mind first, and technology second.
Create a high-powered IT organization that is focused on driving lasting change, improving client experiences, and encouraging collaboration across the entire enterprise.
Generate opportunities for organizational growth, as manifested through revenue growth, profit growth, new market entry, new product development, etc.
Craft an End-to-End Data Center Consolidation Strategy to Maximize BenefitsInfo-Tech Research Group
Your Challenge
Data center operating costs continue to escalate as organizations struggle with data center sprawl.
While data center consolidation is an attractive option to reduce cost and sprawl, the complexity of these projects makes them extremely difficulty to execute.
The status quo is also not an option, as budget constraints and the challenges with managing multiple data centers continues to increase.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Despite consolidation being an effective way of addressing sprawl, it is often difficult to secure buy-in and funding from the business.
Many consolidation projects suffer cost overruns due to unforeseen requirements and hidden interdependencies which could have been mitigated during the planning phase.
Organizations that avoid consolidation projects due to their complexity are just deferring the challenge, while costs and inefficiencies continue to increase.
Impact and Result
Successful data center consolidation will have an immediate impact on reducing data center sprawl. Maximize your chances of success by securing buy-in from the business.
Avoid cost overruns and unforeseen requirements by engaging with the business at the start of the process. Clearly define business requirements and establish common expectations.
While cost improvements often drive data center consolidation, successful projects will also improve scalability, operational efficiency, and data center redundancy.
Your Challenge
Organizations are struggling to keep up with today’s evolving threat landscape.
From technology sophistication and business adoption to the proliferation of hacking techniques and the expansion of hacking motivations, organizations are facing major security risks.
Every organization needs some kind of information security program to protect their systems and assets.
Organizations today face pressure from regulatory or legal obligations, customer requirement, and now, senior management expectations.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Performing an accurate assessment of your current security operations and maturity levels can be extremely hard when you don’t know what to assess or how to assess it.
Alignment can be a difficult area for security to get right when it’s trying to balance both regular IT and the business.
Communication is needed between the business leaders, IT leaders, and the security team for an effective security strategy to be in place.
Impact and Result
Info-Tech has analyzed and integrated regulatory and industry best practice frameworks, combining COBIT 5, PCI DSS, ISO 27000, NIST SP800-53, and SANS to ensure an exhaustive approach to security.
Through this process, a comprehensive current state assessment, gap analysis, and initiative generation ensures that nothing is left off the table.
This project will elevate the perception of the security team from being a hindrance to the organization to an enabler.
Your Challenge
Even though organizations are now planning for Application Integration (AI) in their projects, very few have developed a holistic approach to their integration problems resulting in each project deploying different tactical solutions.
Point-to-point and ad hoc integration solutions won’t cut it anymore: the cloud, big data, mobile, social, and new regulations require more sophisticated integration tooling.
Loosely defined AI strategies result in point solutions, overlaps in technology capabilities, and increased maintenance costs; the correlation between business drivers and technical solutions is lost.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Involving the business in strategy development will keep them engaged and align business drivers with technical initiatives.
An architectural approach to AI strategy is critical to making appropriate technology decisions and promoting consistency across AI solutions through the use of common patterns.
Get control of your AI environment with an appropriate architecture, including policies and procedures, before end users start adding bring-your-own-integration (BYOI) capabilities to the office.
Your Challenge:
As Portfolio Manager, you’re responsible for communicating portfolio results and future capacity to your steering committee.
Business and IT leaders need more accurate information on project status and resource availability to decide when to start and stop projects.
You need to better understand the needs of the PMO and assess the costs and benefits associated with different tools and approaches to PPM.
Our Advice - Critical Insight:
PPM is a practice, not a tool. Before succeeding with a commercial tool, you need to establish discipline and trust around reporting processes, which can be done using spreadsheets and other simple tools.
Portfolio management is separate from project management. Think of it as the accounting department for time. Project managers report into the portfolio and are held accountable to it, but it isn’t simply an extension of project management.
Our Advice - Impact and Result:
Decrease the wasted portfolio budget by reducing the number of cancelled projects and other sources of efficiency.
Establish the portfolio as the “one source of truth” for project reporting by increasing rigor around project status updating and reporting.
Align project intake with resource capacity to improve throughput, quality of estimates, and stakeholder satisfaction.
Your Challenge:
Implementing a shared services model is a difficult process to undertake, and is comprised of many different components. Becoming a shared services provider is comparable to becoming a vendor and most IT groups don’t have the capabilities to easily make the transition.
Most companies look to achieve cost reductions through offering a shared services model. Adopting a shared services model doesn’t always result in these intended cost reductions. Simply combining the operations of two IT organizations doesn’t necessarily result in economies of scale and cost efficiencies. Before leaping forward with your shared services implementation, determine if the project will deliver value to your organization.
Our Advice - Critical Insight:
Implementing a shared services model needs to be viewed as more than simply extending a current service to other sites. The organization providing services essentially turns into a vendor. As a vendor, think of the IT service you’re offering as the “product.”
Remember that there are people, process, and technology capability pre-requisites to successfully becoming a shared services provider. These capabilities are not typical for the average IT shop, and need to be taken into consideration when you look to transition to a shared services model.
Our Advice - Impact and Result:
Before jumping into the implementation of your shared services project, assess your customer requirements and your current people, process, and technology capabilities to assess whether your organization is ready to implement a shared services model.
Understand the financial implications of moving to a shared services model prior to implementing. Make sure there is a strong case for implementation.
Your Challenge:
Situation
Enterprise Architecture increases the organization’s ability to provide consistent services, accessible information, scalable infrastructure, and flexible technology integration on demand. It helps bridge the gap between business and IT and creates a shared enterprise vision.
Complication
EA programs that are run without the required EA capability level are prone to failure.
EA capability optimization and EA operating model design skills are not common, as they are not everyday tasks.
Our Advice:
Critical Insight
Using this research while assessing and optimizing your EA capability will help you:
Architect the EA capability by applying four architectural perspectives: Contextual, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical. Develop an EA Operating Model starting at the contextual level, and proceeding through to the physical.
Develop a sponsored mandate for EA capability. Identify and engage EA capability stakeholders. Determine organizational scope, i.e. responsibility and authority of EA. Identify business drivers for optimizing an EA capability. Analyze organizational context. Secure executive support and authorization to execute.
Establish EA capability purpose and strategic direction. Write EA capability vision statement. Craft EA capability mission statement. Define EA capability goals and measures. Create EA principles. Assess current and determine target EA capability level.
Document EA management process. Define EA management practices. Define interactions between EA management and other processes. Define EA capability performance and value measurement approach.
Design EA organization and roles. Design EA organization structure. Define EA roles. Define required skills and proficiency levels for EA roles. Determine required EA staff capacity.
Standardize EA tools and work products. Establish an EA repository. Decide on EA tools to be used. Define EA artifacts and work products.
Develop an EA capability improvement plan. Consolidate and refine steps required to roll out the target EA operating model and improve EA capability. Draw an EA capability improvement roadmap.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered Quality
Develop a Business Continuity Plan
1. The challenge with traditional scenario planning is that it’s impossible to predict every possible incident. Instead, the goal here is one plan
that can be adapted to different scenarios, which also reduces the effort to maintain your BCP.
a. Policies and procedures manuals, if they exist, are often out of date or incomplete. Use these as a starting point, but don’t stop there.
Identify the “go-to” staff members who are well-versed in how the business unit runs and interview them to identify the informal and
undocumented processes.
b. “Working from home” is a common contingency plan, but validate that it is a realistic option during an incident. For example, if there
is a regional power or network outage, employees’ homes may also be affected. If their homes are not affected, is there a process to cover
long-distance or data charges? Are they dependent on inputs from other staff and is there a means to facilitate that workflow from home?
c. If processes are not documented, use this as an opportunity to create standard operating procedures (SOPs) to drive consistency and
process optimization, as described in the Info-Tech blueprint “Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace
of Mind.”
a. Account for hard copy files as well as electronic data. For example, case files that lawyers carry in their briefcases are information
necessary to carry out their tasks. If that information was lost, is there a backup? To meet the RPO for that information, you may need to
formalize copying case files on a regular basis (e.g. creating an electronic case file that can be backed up).
b. Expect that the RTOs/RPOs will need to be adjusted after determining the cost of projects required to achieve desired recovery
objectives, especially if the cost is greater than the resulting impact of downtime. This is part of the process of finding the balance between
the cost to prevent downtime and the potential cost and impact of downtime much like an ROI analysisTabletop planning had the greatest
impact on meeting recovery objectives (RTOs/RPOs) among survey respondents.
Be the turtle – improving business continuity capabilities is a long-distance run, not a sprint. Even if budget is not a concern, understand that
change for the better is still change, and introduces risk; and massive changes introduce massive risk. Make incremental changes to minimize
disruption.
a. Define an incident response plan for an event that requires at least temporary relocation so it is comprehensive enough to also cover
other scenarios. The goal is one plan that can be adapted to multiple scenarios, not a separate plan per scenario.
b. Organizations often fail to put the same effort into their procedures for “returning to normal.” However, many of the same risks apply
– including data loss and downtime for the business. Apply the same rigor to your “return to normal” procedures as you do for the initial
recovery.
a. Expect to find conflicting priorities and uncover new dependencies as you complete the BCP for remaining business units. Assign the
same BCP Coordinator to each business unit to identify and resolve these issues as they come up.
b. Incident response team leaders are not necessarily those with the most senior title on each BC/DR team. It’s more important that the
team leader has the appropriate skill set than the bigger title.