CIO Toolkit - Where there are no standards, there is only chaos.

IT
Written By Russell Futcher

Health Checks proposes a set of IT Standards for IT teams to follow. IT teams tend to use a variety of disjointed technical standards or none whatsoever. This situation leads to IT departments with:

1.     A complete lack of professional or industry standards.

2.     Multiple standards in use.

3.     An absence of a good process.

4.     Multiple sources of technical truth.

5.     Scripts as a quick fix panacea.

6.     Production support band-aide solutions.

7.     A high number of manual fix activities.

8.     A lack of automation.

9.     Poor systems implementations.

In some of the IT departments and teams that I managed, I noticed there were standards in use that produced significant benefits. These standards became the Best Practice IT Standards – use of these can be directly linked to:

1.     Cost savings.

2.     Better software implementations (Due to staff training being up to date.)

3.     Fewer service delivery failures and need for rework.

4.     IT intranet as a single source of truth.

5.     Automation of recurrent manual activities.

6.     Better hardware risk mitigation.

7.     Removal of redundant hardware, systems software, utilities, and tools.

8.     Higher-quality projects.

9.     Technical excellence.

10.  Consistent 99.9% systems availability.

11.  Higher staff morale and job satisfaction levels.

When the High-Performance IT process is rolled out, each IT team uses a Current/Target Position template to assess these two positions. The target position is based on the Best Practice IT Standards plus the teams’ own functional objectives.

Russell Futcher

Russell Futcher lives in Melbourne Australia as an IT/Business Change Management Consultant. He is a recognised High-Performance Management and Teams specialist, an author, researcher and blogger. His 40-year career to date has been focussed on Change Management where he has gained a hard-earned reputation for someone who takes on complex jobs and gets things done. Frank and direct, highly regarded by peers and customers alike, highly motivational and passionate about fixing problems, improving performance and developing management and team talent.

Russell has held senior management positions across the Insurance, Banking, Health, Transport, Retail, Superannuation, and Technology sectors in some of Australia’s largest corporations. Qualified in Business and Executive Coaching, Management Development and Training and Education, he is also the developer of the ‘Best Practice IT Standards’ and the ‘High-Performance Management and Teams’ management model, author of five management books and three courses.

An experienced electronic and print media presenter who spends much of his spare time doing research into Management and Team behavioural dynamics. His favourite subject he says is - people, stating that “Everyone is fascinating, and I just like everyone".

http://russellfutcher.com
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