Artificial Intelligence is an evolving toolset that is becoming prevalent across the IT sector. But is it right for your organisation, should you adopt it and how can you do so safely? AI invokes the idea of fully automated decision making, freeing up time for people to do the tasks that computers cannot. However, AI should be viewed as a continuum of tools, on a scale that allows more, or less autonomy depending on the task you give it. For example, predictive text has been around since 1995 and only gets better with every release. It allows us to type with abandon to have our spelling corrected, or to prompt us for the word it expects us to write. However, all the decision-making rests in the hands, or fingers, of the user. Another familiar example would be the use of facial recognition. Many phones enable this feature; you no longer have to hold your face to a specific distance, angle, without glasses, in good light to be recognised. Instead, you glance at the camera and the phone recognises the user. This is a good example of using autonomous biometric analysis to “decide” if the similarities between photos is good enough to provide a positive match. At the other end of the scale, you have an AI who is making decisions that can impact many people’s lives – the common example being self-driving cars. It builds on semi-automated driving projects by the US DARPA 1984, and technology embedded in highways in 1991; to successfully apply AI to the problem in 2017 when Waymo trialed the first fully automated car. Image source: MoD, Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy (June 2022), p 4: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1082416/Defence_Artificial_Intelligence_Strategy.pdf How can I use AI in my organisation? When it comes to using AI within your organisation you need to approach it as you would any new tool: What is the problem to solve? What am I trying to improve? What value does it provide? How will I mitigate risks? Where you have initiated a change within your organisation for some improvement or problem solving, solid business analysis of your current state regards people, processes and technology will give huge gains in planning to implement AI. Once you know what you need, the tool selection is where you will need to work closely with your Leadership Team and Board to ensure they understand the risks, benefits, and potential of your new AI tool. As it is part of a new suite of tools it comes with a lot of bias generated from personal experience and news items. Walking your leaders through the implications of AI will allow them to partner and champion your new application. The National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCSB) released guidance in January 2024 that helps to lay out the best way to approach embedding AI in your organisation. It’s been drafted in collaboration with 10 other country’s security centres to provide a secure way to embrace AI into your IT environment. The general premise is to approach it as you would any cyber security threat:
Many new frameworks are being developed to aid the use of AI throughout a normal development cycle. You can review and adopt the one that best suits your risk profile and flexibility requirements. Weaving these frameworks into your quality checks and overall governance posture will mean you can make informed decisions to get great outcomes with acceptable risks to your organisation. Can we partner with you for technology advice? If you are thinking of implementing a new AI tool in your organisation, as an application or as part of a process, take time to stop, plan, consider and seek out advice if you have a knowledge gap. Resolution8 can help with
-Louise Mercer louise.mercer@resolution8.com
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We had fun trying to demonstrate some of reasons why programme management is important in organisations running multiple projects. Check out our little animation! It's all too common for organisations and teams to have multiple projects on and staff still trying to still do their normal business as usual tasks. Getting a view of all those projects, who is involved and what is required of them helps businesses decide what projects are most important and can be done and when they can be done. It also helps with resource planning and staff retention!
Over the years we have seen many organisations try and put in programme management with little success, for different reasons; perhaps their leadership aren't that in to it, the process is way too much, it creates too much burden on the projects. The common outcome is everyone (from CEO down) start trying to get around the PMO. The way you introduce your programme management is as crucial as to what you do to manage those projects and programmes. The team at Resolution8 specialise in project and programme management, hit the Contact Us button to have a chat about starting your journey into programme management. We all do projects, IT or otherwise, and problems occur. This isn't news, however, its surprising how common the cause of the problems are. Our little animation demonstrates some of those common mistakes. How would you solve them? Hopefully, there are less explosions in your projects! But I bet you have seen the same outcomes and problems in projects you've been around. What's the solution to all these problems? Is it a new project management style? Would Agile fix it? Would PRINCE2 fix it? That latest project management or team management software? Well, yes and no. All those things help but on their own none of them are going to stop big problems from happening. We believe it comes down to three critical ingredients:
Whether or not you think there is value in taking independent IT advice depends on what you are doing and what you want to achieve but, basically, the answer is a big fat yes.
Information Technology, possibly more than any other business capability, can be the key to long term business success or a reason for (completely unnecessary) business strangulation. By way of comparison, if you were considering how appropriate your current car or business fleet was and you went onto, say, a Toyota yard or website – what advice do you think you might get? Dollars to donuts you would be steered toward a decision that favoured Toyota. Not that I have anything against Toyota and, let’s face it, from their perspective, it makes sense to guide you to their cash register. And so it is with Information Technology. An excellent example of this was Independent IT Consulting’s first client. The organisation (let’s call them Acme) approached us wanting to understand if they were getting dollar and service value for their IT spend, which had been with the same managed services provider for over ten years. During the Discovery Phase, we questioned their supplier’s recommendation that they purchase a new Server and build a new Server room to accommodate it on site. Long story short (and sweet): The didn’t need a new server at all and certainly not a new server room. So, before we even got to the second phase of our service, the organisation had saved themselves somewhere North of $46,000. Now, you can’t blame the managed services company representative for recommending spending money with them but – and here’s the pointy bit – it was in their interests, not Acme’s. So, back to the original question: Is there value in independent IT advice? Absolutely there is! For more information and illuminating examples of how valuable independent IT advice can be when considering IT solutions, Contact us Note this is an older post from Independent IT Consulting now part of Resolution8 as Digital Advisory. Well, maybe not the whole business but you're definitely going to take a hit, which could be critical if you aren’t prepared for it. All around New Zealand businesses are being affected in different ways by different threats to their IT which in turn has a direct flow on to their business.
We’ve been talking to people around the Waikato, vendors and insurance brokers and have heard some horror stories. Like the engineering firm being hit by a Cryptolocker virus demanding a ransom, locking them out of their own IT files – in the end costing close to $20,000 to get it sorted and in lost income. Or the trading website being hit by a targeted DDOS attack, crippling their site, meaning their customers could not trade. After significant effort, they were able to address it and put in measures to negate/mitigate that and future attacks. Of course only after $500,000 in lost profits and remedial costs. Going further abroad, what about the company whose failed back up that ended up costing them $5.8 million. Their core system and switched to the failover system, that’s great, however, the backup had failed too, losing them 72 hours of orders, mailings and collections. The risks around IT and the impacts continue to grow day-to-day as business become more and more reliant on technology. Every process we put into a computer system, those spreadsheets, those IT programmes become a part of our business and its ability to run. How do avoid this risk? Do we stop putting things into computer systems, stop connecting our machinery to software that makes it run more efficiently? Go back to pen and paper? Well no, the old pen and paper had its own risks (WINZ documents littering central Auckland anyone?) and definitely some problems with scale and accuracy. No, we need to look at how we are using technology, understand each use and its risk profile. What do we mean by risk profile? Well, each time you make use of a new piece of technology, that technology and the way you use it defines the risk you now have in its continued use. Let’s take an example of a smartphone. Pretty common, pretty useful too! Some would say the most significant invention of the last 18-20 years (let's not start BlackBerry vs Apple…who created the smartphone first). You give these to your staff, great, now you can talk to them when you need to. Out on the job? No problem, ring-ring! Now you think, wouldn’t it be great if I could email them? Super! Let’s turn that feature on. Oh wait, your team lead left their phone on a site or in a meeting room. Was the phone locked? Can anyone see those emails? Now, someone you don’t know, your competitor say, can now see that spreadsheet you sent to good-old-bob with the costs and margins your running! Or your employee starts using the phone for things they maybe shouldn’t. Uh-oh! A virus gets back to your email server. Your handy phone just took out your communications for the next 48 hours while the IT staff frantically clear out the trojan horse virus running around your network. Sound unlikely, not so much, Waikato DHB’s IT systems were attacked by a similar process (a USB drive with the virus on it plugged into a computer on their network), weeks later they finally evicted the virus. Or, what if it's not about a person doing something wrong or accidentally, there's just plain old wear and tear that can take out a whole hospitals system. Just recently another DHB (sounds like I’m picking on hospitals, honest I’m not, you might say it reflects the underinvestment in technology – don’t get me started on that!) had a fire in their server room. They ended up running on paper for weeks. Every time an IT risk is realised it has a financial impact on your business, sometimes small, sometimes significant! So how do you establish your IT risk profile? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to do a self-assessment:
Call us for a free initial consultation about your business and technology or just to talk. "Project Management is for detail freaks and road blockers" These are slightly cynical, often unspoken (or spoken by our "I say it like it is" friends), statements of how Project Management and Project Managers are seen. In some circles a Project Manager can be seen as a road block or handbrake, so who would want to be one or use a project process! One of my favourite memories of a project was during a planning phase and trying to get the project scope right. A stakeholder got a bit frustrated with the process and asked that I "stop singing and dancing and get on with it". We worked through the process and all those involved in that project list it as a great success. So what does it really mean to be a Project Manager? Is it your job to stop people from getting on with the job? Or is it to plan to the n-th degree? Or is it to break out the busking shoes and guitar and do a jaunty jig? Well that all depends (except for the jaunty jig)! If you are creating a maintenance project for an oil rig that requires absolute accuracy and completion within a 1 hour period (because that's as long as you have before the company starts losing money) then Yes you will have to plan to the most minute detail. However, for many other projects it all depends on the questions you have to answer in order for the project to be a success. So the first question we need to ask is; what are the things that must happen for your project be called a success! But before you can get an answer to that question you need to know; who in the project team or the company can define what "success" means? Lets look at an example. Steve has been given a project to set up a new service. Steve quickly goes about deciding that he needs to purchase a new computer system to make the new service run. He also decides the most important thing about his project is to get it done on time. So he sets about procuring the system and getting contractors in to get the job done. Steve finishes his project and is promptly brought to task by his boss about his budget blow out and the fact that he didn't use technology that was aligned with the strategic vision of his company. Why was Steve brought to task? Because Steve's boss's version of success was a project on budget and in line with the company IT strategy - quite different to the way Steve planned and executed his project. So first step - identify who defines a successful project and get them to set out their criteria and measures of success. Now I'm making the bold assumption the person defining success can also balance the project tension triangle* - lets leave that for another post. Now we know what success is for your particular project, we can establish what questions need to be answered as part of your project plan. If success is keeping it in budget then you need to ask:
Lets look at those comments at the start, all of them have elements of truth to them, but like all generalisations (like how I just generalised?) they don't reflect reality or prove to be that helpful. "Project Management is for detail freaks and road blockers" There is a need for attention to detail but not all plans or approaches need extreme detail - as we saw at the start sometimes detail is required but sometimes not. As for "road blockers", if you are about to drive off a cliff they are quite helpful, however road blocking simply to follow a process when it isn't strictly necessary isn't going to help. "Why can't they just get on and get started with doing something!" There are times when this should be the case - when all involved have a clear view of the vision, scope, benefits and success measures. If you don't have those nailed then I strongly recommend you get them sorted...which, technically, is actually doing something! "Project Management = Microsoft Project right?" This is pretty common, actually often its more Project Plan = Gantt Chart. Neither is true. So, really, project management is actually about asking and getting answers to questions. Some questions need to be answered to plan the project, some questions are answered by doing the project. The nature of the questions directs what level of detail and planning you need to do. Using methodologies and techniques will help you with getting those answers or structuring your questions - Jaunty Jigs are fun but may not help in answer those questions. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle
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Peter Gilbert is the Director of Resolution8 and has a passion for good project delivery. ARCHIVES.
March 2024
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