Shows
Cut the $hITBridging the Gap Between Business and ITThis week, Bryan is joined by the Founder and Managing Director at Bridging Business & IT, LLC, Dave Burrill. Dave initially started his professional career as an academic; however, he quickly changed career paths to pursue the goal of becoming a VP of IT. From working in account to starting a consulting firm, Dave's vast experience makes him the expert on this week's topic, so much so that he even named his business after this principle, bridging the gap between business and IT. He reflects on the importance of communication between businesses and their IT departments and how improving these...2024-04-301h 00
Bridging Business & ITS3 Ep9 Brent Session 2 Part 2These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd li...2023-04-3045 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep8 Brent Session 2 Part 1These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a failure to communicate that causes 75% of all IT project failures and costs the US $1.8 Trillion every year—8% of US GDP! If you don't want to become one of these statistics and want to learn about an easy way to avoid it, please visit our website and schedule a free consultation. Alternatively, if there's some topic you'd li...2023-04-1550 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep7: A Conversation with the CIOs of Marriott, IRS, FDA and JPL Part 2But we're talking to just one man. Today is the first part of our conversation with a uniquely accomplished IT professional, Jim Rinaldi. Over Jim's long career he's been the Vice President of IT for Marriott Hotels, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which is managed for NASA by Caltech (the California Institute of Technology). Needless to say, he's seen his fair share of what he refers to as "business projects that just happen to be enabled by technology" (aka, IT projects).2023-03-3148 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep6: A Conversation with the CIOs of Marriott, IRS, FDA and JPL Part 1But we're talking to just one man. Today is the first part of our conversation with a uniquely accomplished IT professional, Jim Rinaldi. Over Jim's long career he's been the Vice President of IT for Marriott Hotels, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which is managed for NASA by Caltech (the California Institute of Technology). Needless to say, he's seen his fair share of what he refers to as "business projects that just happen to be enabled by technology" (aka, IT projects).2023-03-1648 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep 5: Nalin Vail Part 2This is part II of a conversation with Nalin Vahil. Nalin is a professional Sales leader who has worked at some of the biggest brands in Silicon Valley. Part I talks about some of his background and operating philosophy. Part II kicks off with some of the groups commentary on the state of the economy and the role of IT leaders during a macro economic downturn. Nalin shares more about his career evolution and the various jobs he held inside some hyper growth tech environments. He shares about how to manage execution with a rapidly growing team a...2023-02-2850 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep4: Nalin Vahil Part 1This wide ranging conversation with Nalin Vahil Part 1 spans Dan and Nalin's history of friendship and Nalin's career history. With parents that wanted him to become a Doctor, Nalin forged his own path first as an Entrepreneur and then as a Sales Professional for some of Silicon Valley's hottest tech companies. Nalin has an expertise in applying the latest technology to run a highly effective sales organization. He also is a passionate student who studys the ways that new Enterprise IT infrastructure enters a company. And in this conversation he explores the role of end users and b...2023-02-1553 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep3: 2022 PMI Global Summit Presentation - The Biggest Constraint in IT Projects is the Human BrainIn December, 2022 the Project Management Institute held their Global Summit Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada . Of the more than 250 talks and break out sessions, about 10% were featured live. These were selected to showcase the most important issues in project management. As fate would have it, Dave was asked to give one of those live talks.It's widely known that IT projects fail at an alarming rate. What's not widely known is that the cause of 75% of those failures is our inability to communicate. What's even less well known is that the cause of that inability is the...2023-02-011h 05Bridging Business & ITS3 Ep2: A Candid Look at the Road from College to Tech VC and PE Partner: Part IIIf you're in the tech sector and looking for investment funding, it a good idea to understand a little bit about the people you're pitching. Today’s conversation is a continuation of our last episode with one such investor, Brent Granado. Brent's a JD, MBA who started out as a corporate attorney working on deals, moved in-house running corporate development and M&A doing deals, then jumped over to the funding/investment side. He's currently Managing Partner at Sweetwater Private Equity. Prior to that Brent was a General Partner at Sway Ventures. Both firms are focused exclusively on the tec...2023-01-3153 minBridging Business & ITS3 Ep1: A Candid Look at the Road from College to Tech VC and PE Partner: Part IAfter an unexpected hiatus, we’re back at it. If you're in the tech sector and looking for investment funding, it really helps to understand a little bit about the people you're pitching to. That's why today’s conversation is with an old and very close friend, Brent Granado. Brent's a JD, MBA who started out as a corporate attorney working on deals, moved in-house running corporate development and M&A doing deals, then jumped over to the funding/investment side. He's currently Managing Partner at Sweetwater Private Equity. Prior to that Brent was a General Partner at Sw...2023-01-151h 12Bridging Business & ITS2 Ep 4 - Society for Information Management SeminarThis episode is a little different. In late 2021 Dave was asked to conduct a seminar for the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Information Management to talk about the findings and focus of Bridging Business & IT. A small group of senior IT executives were invited and this is the recording of that roundtable. SIM New Jersey Website: https://njsim.org/These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. W...2022-05-021h 12Bridging Business & ITS2 Ep 3 Agile Epiphanies at a $41B CompanyWe were very fortunate today to have Barb Mastrianni, AVP and Senior Program Manager for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Inc. Barb shares the lessons that Chubb has learned about what it takes to do Agile "right" and how they've gone from a somewhat shaky start to an exponential growth in successful project outcomes. The secret is all about determining where you want to go before you try to go there, and putting governance guardrails in place to be sure that everyone (the business, IT, PMO, analysts, etc) understands the route and the destination before you set off. T...2022-05-021h 41Bridging Business & ITS2 E2: IT Product ManagementOur guest today is Jeffrey Sherow. Jeff has spent a long career at the intersection of business and technology. He started out with Andersen Consulting, rose through the ranks to become an Accenture partner, and stayed there for several years. Jeff has become extremely interested in the role of the product manager. The primary reason for this interest is his belief that the product manager needs to be someone who intimately understands the customer and what a business needs to do to delight their customers. In a perfect world the product manager is responsible for delivering value to customers an...2022-03-311h 29Bridging Business & ITS2 E1: Four IT Perspectives: Public, Private, Customer & VendorToday we’re talking to Joyce Hunter, former CIO of the USDA and currently CEO of Vulcan Enterprises. Joyce brings a long and storied career full of insights from both the public and private sectors, from both sides of the fence—she’s been both customer and vendor. We discuss the similarities between the public and private sector, talk about some terrible project failures and some great successes, and explore the key reasons behind each.Guest LinkedIn Profile: Joyce HunterThese podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at differ...2022-01-151h 36Bridging Business & ITS1 E10: Negotiating IT AgreementsThis episode is with Dan Kelly, founder and CEO of The Negotiator Guru. Dan is the person we have to thank for our podcast as he was the one who originally invited Dave to be on his, “The State of the CIO”. The feedback from that show was so good it convinced us to launch our own. As the title implies we’ll be talking about (among other things) the tricks of the trade when negotiating large enterprise software licenses. Dan shares some very frank observations about the predatory behavior of some vendors, the general lack of awareness and prepar...2021-12-151h 26Bridging Business & ITS1 E9: Data, Analytics & ReportingRoger Moore (no, not 007) is our guest today. Roger currently teaches Analytics at the University of Chicago where he’s also an alum of their MBA program. Over his 30-plus year career he’s been with a number of major consulting groups such as BCG, Gartner, Booze and PWC. He’s currently running his own Data and Analytics firm. This conversation is foundational. Roger helps us unpack the critical components and structures of a good data, analytics and reporting organization / strategy. Unfortunately, due to the enormous expanse of this topic, we weren’t able to get into detailed discussions on the m...2021-12-011h 34Bridging Business & ITS1 E8: Ethical EQ in IT Project ManagementOur guest in this episode is Jomo Starke, Director of Innovation at Canton & Company. Jomo’s 30-plus year tech career started with developing video games—which he almost sold to Atari before they realized he was twelve. From his early days as a 17 year old wunderkind analyst to his years in project management, sales and biz dev, Jomo shares his insights into what makes tech enabled business projects successful and the simple, yet critical oversights that so often cause them to fail. Guest LinkedIn Profile: Jomo StarkeThese podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap betw...2021-11-151h 16Bridging Business & ITS1 E7: Nestles, SAP & the Greater GoodWe’re joined today by Ray Weale, currently COO of IDMerit and formerly Director of Digital Innovation at Nestle. Ray helped lead the global unification of literally thousands of Nestles processes and systems on to 34 standard processes on SAP—realizing staggering benefits along the way. Our conversation starts with Ray’s background and carries into how Nestle accomplished this remarkable global integration and unification. Personal note: I must confess to feeling a bit sycophant-ish as we fawned over Ray’s story. However, I think anyone who’s been around a large transformation effort knows the challenges of pulling it o...2021-11-011h 30Bridging Business & ITS1 E6: Five Ground Rules for Every Tech TeamIn the last episode we talked about how a CIO (or IT leader) needs to prepare their business counterparts for their roles and responsibilities in an upcoming tech-enabled business project. In this episode we talk about IT department leadership, expectations and accountability. We share five “ground rules” that tech leaders need to share with their teams to position them for project success and to provide better service to their business counterparts. We are again joined by our CIO guest, John Fisher.Guest LinkedIn Profile: John FisherThese podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between busi...2021-10-151h 20Bridging Business & ITS1 E5: Five Things to Share With the Business Before the Project StartsThis episode shares five things that the tech team needs to share with business executives, project sponsor(s), process owners and subject matter experts to set their expectations and explain their obligations before a project kicks off. We’re joined on this episode by an old friend and colleague, John Fisher, who has held multiple CIO positions over his 35+ year career and currently teaches at DePaul University.Guest LinkedIn Profile: John FisherThese podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we...2021-10-021h 12Bridging Business & ITS1 E4 Part 2: The Solution - The Business Execution LifecyclePart 2 of this episode builds on the foundation of part 1 and is dedicated to examining the details within each of the four stages and twelve steps of the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL”).Suggested readings:“The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande“Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman“Incognito” by David Eagleman“The paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong” by Itiel E. Dror“The Coming Software Apocalypse” by James Somers in the Atlantic“The Lost Language of Execution” by David P. Burrill at www.bridgingbusinessit.com/solutionsThese podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between bus...2021-09-151h 00Bridging Business & ITS1 E4 Part 1: The Solution - The Business Execution LifecycleThis episode introduces a simple solution to bridge the gap between everything the business knows and what they communicate to the IT project team. We propose a checklist of questions to cover each step in the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL”). Execution is not a one-off, linear exercise, but rather a continuous cycle with four distinct stages (Do, Manage, Assess, Refine) that is common to every business process. If you understand the BEL framework, you can create a checklist to unpack the details of a process (or project) to ensure that you’ve covered everything you need to cover.Co...2021-09-0147 minBridging Business & ITS1 E2: The Biggest Problem with IT ProjectsWe take a deep dive into the nature of the divide between business and IT. We lay out our research on the frequency, costs and cause of roughly 75% of all enterprise IT failures. The primary cause is usually labeled a communications issue. It’s actually a function of silence. It’s the sum total of all the details the business forgets to share, all the questions IT never knows to ask, and all the assumptions they both make but never confirm.These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspe...2021-08-2152 minBridging Business & ITS1 E3 Part 2: The Cause - Our Brain Doesn’t Work the Way We ThoughtPart two continues where part one leaves off by attempting to explain—as well as a non-scientist can—seven unconscious and uncontrollable ways our brain works to unwittingly sabotage IT projects. These “sinister seven” are by no means unique to IT or business. They inject themselves into and impact every human interaction. Suggested readings:“Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell“Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman“How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer“Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst” by Robert Sapolsky“The Brain: The Story of You” by David Eagleman“Inc...2021-08-2151 minBridging Business & ITS1 E3 Part 1: The Cause - Our Brain Doesn’t Work the Way We ThoughtOur entire approach to running IT projects is based on an unspoken assumption that is so deeply engrained in our culture it’s treated as a given. There’s only one problem with this assumption—it’s wrong. Humans are not rational actors who control their thoughts and actions. We don’t control our brain. Our brain controls us in ways, and to an extent, we never imagined. Part one of this episode begins to unpack this discovery and explain its consequences.Continue to Part 2 Suggested readings:“Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thin...2021-08-2135 minBridging Business & ITS1 E1: Welcome to Bridging Business & ITIntroduction to a journey and your hosts. A father and son tech team sets out to explore the biggest challenge and most persistent problem in business technology—how to bridge the chasm between what a business needs and how IT addresses that need. Each brings a different perspective and approach with the goal of meeting in the middle. These podcasts are dedicated to bridging the gap between business & IT. Each episode looks at different aspects of this relationship as we explore ways to help the two groups better communicate. We're passionate about this topic because it's a fai...2021-08-1749 min
State of the CIOEpisode 37 - Avoiding IT Failures with Dave BurrillDave Burrill is a senior executive (President, COO, CIO), entrepreneur, author, speaker, board director, and advisor. He’s been part of three successful tech companies taking each from co-founding or early stage to exit (1 IPO, 2 acquisitions) that have earned national recognition for innovation and growth. Dave is a trusted C-Suite advisor and peer with the expertise to cross disciplines from finance, operations, and IT to sales and marketing. He has over 30 years of technology project management experience leading successful teams for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 50.Dave shares so many great insights for avoiding IT failures. He...2020-11-0359 min