I am very proud to announce that we have published the first version of our IT Core Service Catalogue for our university. We started this process in November 2012 and I described the approach in a post called : Introducing IT Service Management Using a Core Service Catalogue. This post described our approach to building… Read More »
Developing strategies and approaches to change this culture is key to moving our organizations to a Service Management model. It all starts with taking the time to plan, analyze and implement processes. Not easy but the end results are far more effective than ad hoc solutions created in a time of crisis. We don’t need another Hero!
Career Path for Management Roles There are three job descriptions in the management career path for our IT department. The entry level position is Team Leader. The Team Leader role has day to day operational responsibility for the services delivered by their team. The role also has tactical responsibility for project resourcing and reports to… Read More »
We discussed Who is Your Customer? in my previous post, now it is time to start to think about what services we deliver to our community. After running an exercise on identifying our customers and the categories they fit in, we started to work on the services we deliver to our University community. The IT… Read More »
When I joined the IT Department at the American University of Sharjah as the Director, I was presented with an organizational structure challenge. I found out that I had 21 direct reports and that my department did not have a concept of operational management! I had just come from being the Manager, Business Application Services… Read More »
Hard to believe that time has gone so quickly in my CIO role. On March 17, 2013 I have been the Director of Information Technology at the American University of Sharjah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates for 180 days. It has been a huge change for me especially after spending 20 years at the British Columbia… Read More »
I am always surprised (and I really shouldn’t be) that we do a great job of responding to critical incidents but almost always fail to document what we did so it can be referenced in the future. As IT leaders we need to proactively document the impacts of planned and unplanned changes. Whethere it is… Read More »
Every IT leader at one point or another will be asked to conduct project assessments. Sometimes it is a project that was initiated by your department and others it is a project that was started in a different part of your organization. Rarely are successful projects reviewed (even though we should, as we are missing… Read More »
Over the past couple of weeks, our American University of Sharjah IT Helpdesk and other teams have been working on creating a simple Service Coverage Matrix. We found that we had a knowledge gap with the distributed IT support structure at AUS. Not everyone knew who was the primary and the secondary service support analysts for… Read More »
I have been here for 45 days in my new adventure as the Director of Information Technology at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). I still wake up and wonder where I am some mornings. I am so fortunate to live in a time of the Internet, Facebook and particularly Skype. I seriously underestimated the… Read More »