Dan’s Security Resource Educational Column (#020)
Leadership is fundamental to success. Without leaders the organization, the project and the team will certainly founder. Project management is also a core fundamental, especially to the success of our IT and business initiatives.
Without the ongoing management of the complex environment IT and business initiatives operate in, projects will be late, over budget, or fail to meet client expectations -- perhaps all three.
This week’s resources are focused on increasing your understanding of the importance of leadership, project management, and audit assurance. Each of these activities contribute significantly to the complex system we operate in.
Have another great week.
1. The Leadership of Profound Change
Deep changes—in how people think, what they believe, how they see the world—are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve through compliance. Reflecting on 20 years of leading change toward more value-based work environments, retired Hanover Insurance CEO Bill O’Brien says, “What people pressuring for management to ‘drive’ cultural change don’t understand is: a value is only a value when it is voluntarily chosen.” http://www.spcpress.com/pdf/Senge.pdf
2. #1 Reason Why Project Managers Fail: Too Soft!
You don't have to be rude, insensitive, arrogant, or a bully to avoid being too soft. None of these attributes is acceptable—ever! Listed here are examples of project manager actions (or inactions) that are indicative of too-soft behavior. Do you recognize familiar behavior here? http://www.nealwhittengroup.com/snippets.asp
3. MD&A & Other Performance Reporting
The Canadian Performance Reporting (CPR) Board is responsible for providing vision and leadership to the work of the CICA in advancing the measurement and reporting of organizational performance other than financial statement reporting (which is the mandate of Canada's Accounting Standards Board). The CPR Board publishes working paper reports, guidance documents and recommended practices that it considers to be in the best interests of the public. http://www.cica.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/247/la_id/1.htm
4. Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity
In 2000, GAO published an exposure draft of Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity (ITIM). The exposure draft reflected current accepted or best practices in IT investment management, as well as the reported experience of federal agencies and other organizations in creating their own investment management processes. This new version updates the exposure draft to take into account comments that GAO has received; GAO's experiences in evaluating several agencies' implementations of investment management processes and the lessons learned by these agencies; and the importance of enterprise architecture (EA) as a critical frame of reference in making IT investment decisions. Using the framework to analyze an agency's IT investment management processes provides: (1) a rigorous, standardized tool for internal and external evaluations of these processes; (2) a consistent and understandable mechanism for reporting the results of assessments; and (3) a road map that agencies can follow in improving their processes.
http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/summary.php?recflag=&accno=A09396&rptno=GAO-04-394G