When should an SMB draw the line with ITIL best practices?

Where does ITIL fit in with SMBs? It seems more organizations are following ITIL best practices in their overall IT operations and service delivery -- creating some form of a service catalog, practicing change management strategies and focusing on service design -- but not following ITIL frameworks...
Reactions to Scrum and waterfall mix for agile projects

To quote one respondent to my last blog post on whether agile projects should mix Scrum and waterfall: “I have been on projects within the U.S. government where they...
Mixing and matching Scrum and Waterfall for agile project development

I talked to a few CIOs recently who were using Scrum and Waterfall for agile project development. One was using a combination of the two to develop a portal and services for...
New England GiveCamp: One NERD and multiple IT project success stories

A lot of projects fail. If business requirements aren't clear or gathered effectively, or if the scope of the project is inaccurate, failure happens. But this past weekend, at New England GiveCamp (a Microsoft-sponsored volunteer weekend held at
When it comes to an agile model, failure is an option

It’s OK to fail when taking an agile approach to a business service or software development project, but if you fail, fail fast. As one expert explained to me, if you don’t fail, you don’t really...
IT talent is in high demand, so focus on employee retention strategies

If employee retention strategies haven't been a priority for you as of late, now may be a good time to refresh your staff priorities, because IT talent is in high demand. According to the June Dice report, 71% of technology recruiters and hiring managers expect to add more staff in the second...
Why using social media is like sex

"Social [media] is like sex -- fun to read about, fun to look at, but to really understand it, you have to do it." How's that for an attention getter? That's how Nigel Fenwick, principal analyst at Forrester Research, ended his session on social media for the CIO at last week's Forrester IT...