TechEd 2007 - Day 3

10:00 Good morning from TechEd Barcelona.  I finished yesterday's sessions with an overview of Microsoft's Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimisation (BPIO) and a Q&A of the IT Management speakers.  Microsoft's BPIO (http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/bizinfra/default.mspx) is a maturity model and there is a short evaluation exercise on the site that can help to identify - in business optimisation terms - how mature services are in your organisation with advice on how to improve.  It's worth running through the exercise, though as with all such exercises get some of your team or your peers to fill it in too as some questions are open to interpretation!

The Q&A session was quite informative and eye-opening; not about the subjects we discussed directly, but more the state of the IT industry itself.  Indeed, the majority of the Q&A was dominated by questions in two areas - either "My business is trying to outsource my services, what can I do?" or "The tool you've just presented looks good, but have you got another tool that will set it up for me?".  The Gartner research is proved out really - the industry is changing - has changed - and business wants to know what we're here for.  IT groups that are still working on the principle that "We're IT, so we're important - we'll tell the business what to do" are going to have to change themselves before more radical action is taken on their behalf.  And I think that can only ever be a good thing.  I'll close on a quote:

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.  Pat Riley