Mark Wilson CITP Assessment Interview
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The document summarizes Mark Wilson's skills and experience as a Chartered IT Professional. It begins by outlining the areas of IT Strategy and Architecture that best describe his role, settling on Consultancy. It then provides three examples of projects he has worked on: Transformation, Vision and Scoping, and as a Trusted Advisor. The document also notes his emphasis on managing people through direct and indirect leadership, mutual respect, communication, and bringing people together. It concludes by stating that while his job title is Architect, his role is most akin to a Consultant, where he leads technical deliverables to drive business value from existing Microsoft investments and engages with various stakeholders.
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Mark Wilson CITP Assessment Interview
- 1. Chartered IT Professional Skills Assessment Interview MARK WILSON BSC (HONS), MBCS
- 2. Agenda • Strategy and Architecture – but which skill? • Three examples of my work • Managing people
- 3. Strategy and Architecture – but which skill? • IT Strategy and Planning? • Solution Architecture? • Technical Specialism? • Consultancy? • A little bit of all of these but Consultancy is the closest match to my current role The creation, iteration and maintenance of a strategy in order to align IT plans with business objectives and the development of plans to drive forward and execute that strategy.Working with stakeholders to communicate and embed strategic management. The development and communication of structural frameworks (hardware, software and other components) which meet the present and future requirements of an organisation, and the interrelationships between these components. The management and provision of expert advice on a specific technical specialism. Examples of specialism can be any technology, technique, method, product or application area. The provision of advice, assistance, and guidance in any area associated with the planning, procurement, provision, delivery, management, maintenance or effective use of information systems and their environments.
- 8. Managing people • Direct and indirect management • Emphasis on people. Not resources! • Mutual respect and understanding • Communications • Bringing people together
- 9. Testimonials
- 10. Summary • Architect by job title, Consultant at heart • Variety of work within my specialism: • Technical: Microsoft products and services – increasingly cloud- focused • Role: Lead from the front; responsibility for technical deliverables; drive through a strategy to deliver business value from existing investments • Engage with: colleagues, business partners, customer stakeholders (up to and including CIO), other suppliers
- 11. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- Good morning – and thank you for giving up part of your weekend to assess whether I have the requisite skills, knowledge and responsibility to become a Chartered Information Technology Professional. My name is Mark Wilson and I currently work as an Architect for Microsoft’s UK Partner of the Year.
- My understanding of this assessment is that you have already seen my CV and my CITP application form – so you understand my career history and some of the ways in which I demonstrate autonomy, business skills, complexity and influence. So, this presentation doesn’t focus on any of the information I’ve already given – instead I’d like to talk about my skills within the area of Strategy and Architecture; to talk about three examples of my work; and to highlight how I manage people to work together and achieve better results.
- The first challenge in preparing this presentation was to determine which skill most appropriately relates to my work. Without running through my CV, over the last few years, I’ve covered many areas: (1) I’ve written white papers, blog posts and effectively used social media to influence others in a manner that some might call “thought leadership”. I’ve aided customers in writing strategies for aligning IT plans with business requirements. (2) I’ve created and managed the internal frameworks to align solutions to a taxonomy and enable standardisation in designs. (3) I’ve built and managed a technology-aligned practice of designers, architects and project managers; whilst performing the lead architect role in a particular technology (Microsoft Messaging technologies). (4) I’ve carried out pre-sales activities, assisting customers in the selection of technologies and services to meet their business requirements. I’ve implemented technical solutions for customers, becoming a trusted advisor on a particular set of Microsoft products and services (Office 365) But at the heart of all of this I’m a Consultant, providing advice, assistance and guidance to help my customers plan, deliver and make effective use of their investment – in Microsoft technologies, specifically Microsoft Online Services around Office 365 and Azure. And, in order, to do this I lead virtual teams of subject matter experts in order to ensure that the solutions I create are appropriately designed, matched to requirements, with no gaps!
- Ten minutes isn’t long to sum up 60 hours a week over a number of years, so I’m going to highlight three pieces of work that I hope, together with the examples in my application form, underline the level of knowledge and understanding I have, together with the level of responsibility I demonstrate.
- The first is around transformation: I’m working with a UK Government organisation to transform their approach to IT service provision. Exiting their managed services contract, I’m leading the technical team that is moving their Microsoft-based applications to the cloud (using software-as-a-service solutions where applicable), and moving the remaining servers to a new virtual datacentre in Microsoft Azure. At the end of the project there will be almost no infrastructure remaining on premises. Over the course of the project, I’ve helped the CIO to determine his minimum licence commitment (for budgeting, but also to secure volume licence discounts) and advised the CTO in several key decisions – for example demonstrating that their original approach to connectivity would not be viable and advising on a more appropriate solution. I’m also leading 9 technical workstreams (each with their own subject matter experts) and providing input to discussions about supporting the environment. Following successful exit from the existing managed service, there will be a second phase of work to look for service improvements and to further reduce costs (e.g. by moving from infrastructure-as-a-service to platform-as-a-service database provision). (IaaS, migration, DPM, Exchange, Skype, OneDrive, SQL, identity, management)
- One of my favourite types of engagement is what we call a “vision and scoping” exercise. In essence, I spend some time with a customer, gaining an understanding of their IT systems, their business challenges and pain points (which can be seen as opportunities). Then, I create a report, working with a project manager to create a costed programme of work to transform the IT landscape. The presentation of the report is accompanied with a playback session to key stakeholders. In the last year I’ve carried out activities like this with a financial services company, an industry regulator, a Premier League football club, and a global leader in air traffic control.
- The third example I want to cite relates to one of my consultancy assignments last year. I was working with a large distribution company to help them design and deploy the supporting infrastructure for their move to Office 365. Over time, I became a trusted advisor within their architecture team, with multiple extensions to my original engagement. My challenge was that they had started to ask for me, rather than for more assistance from the company I work for. To try and work around this situation, I brought in other consultants and delegated parts of my engagement to them, in order to demonstrate the value of the company – far more than just one individual. (What does that mean right now? Well, I’m the Architect aligned to their account team and I’m working with the Account Director to grow our footprint – we’re unlikely to oust their strategic services partner, but there are lots of tactical projects to assist with – I’m playing the long game!)
- In my last role at Fujitsu, I managed a team of 17 people. I also performed a career management (performance reviews and mentoring) role for almost 10 years. I’ve found that respect is absolutely key to building good relationships and getting results from people. Remember that they are people, with personal lives and career ambitions – not just resources. And goodwill built up previously helps when you need to get things done quickly! I like to think that I lead by example – I took the same exams that I wanted my team to study for. And I built “community days” into the business plans for my practice – an important opportunity to bring a geographically dispersed team together as one both for training and for relationship-building, often making use of technology partners (e.g. Microsoft) to host us and to provide some of the content for the day.
- Before wrapping up, I’d just like to highlight what some of the people who have managed me in recent years have to say about my skills and abilities. These are not my CITP supporters, because the time they managed me didn’t cover a wide-enough period, but they are no less valuable!
- In summary, I’m an Architect by job title but a Consultant at heart. I cover a variety of work in my specialism – be that technical; leading from the front and driving strategy; or engaging with colleagues, business partners, customer stakeholders and other suppliers.
- I think my 10 minutes is up – thank you for listening – and I believe you have some questions for me?