The Enterprise Digital Podcast

This week’s podcast is a short discussion between Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison (who we learn is officially an ‘inventor’ – with a patent..!!). The topic is on Improvement, and the constant stiving for constant betterment and higher levels of quality. Do we always need to do this? Why can’t some businesses and customers just be satisfied with what they have got and say that they are happy with? Are we too obsessed as an industry with always needing to upgrade our tech? Listen on for the wisdom of 160 Million years (yes tadpoles – OK it’s a tenuous link..)

In this episode Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison explore some current themes around truth – how do we know what is real and correct as opposed to fake and plain wrong, or even just bad..? This is a universal topic at present around social media, and political discourse, however we explore some elements of how our industry deal with these issues. In particular we discuss the way that we communicate ideas and standards, frameworks etc – do we make this accessible and clear enough or can we end up being usurped by marketing content? As we move away from just talking amongst ourselves in IT this becomes a priority… This is a must listen (and short) session.

This week’s guest is the irrepressible Ollie O’Donoghue, lead analyst at Cognizant, and we are once again chewing the fat on the future (if there is one..) of the workplace, work and of course, workers. The impact of Ai and automation is being assessed at many levels and some of Ollie’s recent research looks at the effect this will have on entry level and also expert level jobs. Does Ai remove the need for some levels of work and also the time that is required to develop skills and knowledge? There are no clear answers to this but many mind-blowing connotations, and Ollie, Ian and Barclay all take some different positions on how this might play out…

With @ian aitchison @Barclay Rae

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This week’s guest is Randy Silver a Product Management expert – originally from the US and based in the UK. We explore the definition and clarification of what Product Management is and how this also overlaps and interacts with Service Management. Product is different from Project Management in perspective and scope – a project has an endpoint, a product is a lifecycle. We also discuss pioneers, settlers and town planners – not sharks – but how product management is about direction, communication and making better decisions. How to balance appropriate personality types for specific types of work – not just ‘winging it’. This is a good conversation about Product Management works and how we can converge around Service Management. The shark reference relates to the musical preferences of mammals – form the inevitable trivia that starts off the discussion…

This podcast is about leadership and management - how we can improve the quality of leadership, via the ability to unlearn and relearn. Our guest Karren Ferris joins us again on the podcast to discuss the 'Remarkable' qualities required. The challenge is avoiding the temptation to go back to pre-2020 management and really move forward as leaders. This can be scary and takes humility and courage to open up to, plus a balanced view of new monitoring technology and workplace models. ‘People get promoted to managers in their 20s/30s but don’t get management training until their 40s..’! Management by mushrooms is also mentioned... (you have to listen to find out..) 

This episode is a great conversation with Daniel Breston, on the occasion of his final curtain call in the ITSM industry. We discuss his career, achievements, challenges and areas of interest, including ongoing focus on Mental Health and Women in ITSM, to name a few. Mostly we have a good chat about Dan the man and his place in the universe, and the IT industry, and his favourite tipple, and more…..

This week we look at how we are improving and making Knowledge and knowledge management work. Some of the challenges in the past have been with how can use tech to support this and tech has significantly helped us to improve and make e.g. KCS and Shift Left work for us. We discuss a number of related topics like ESM and problem management, as well as how we can be successful in re-using knowledge. There’s also some stuff about lab grown pet food and philosophers writing SLAs but that’s  a bit silly.

Ian Aitchison’s great grandmother used to say ‘never push code to production on a Friday’ – and yes we all know what has happened. Ian and Barclay discuss the fallout in terms of people, lives, businesses, oh and who will pay. What should we learn? What can we do as people and organisations, if or when this inevitably happens again? What does this all say about our current high dependency on tech? We know it will happen again and we know we should do better… So this is not over. 

We’d also love to hear your stories and reactions – come on and join us on the podcast. [email protected]

This discussion includes robot faces made from human skin, robot Hari Kari, and a mini rant about shiny new things and why we shouldn’t throw away good stuff… But its mostly about some of the new areas around DEX/XM - some practical and strategic discussion around experience management – new tools and ways of working. We also talk DEX teams and XLAs and how we need to ensure that we capture and recognise improvements and benefits that are made with AI and other developments – before they become accepted as normal. It’s also important that we still are able to engage with  real business people and get their feedback. New ways of working must be set in context and used with proportionality.

Is #ITSM still dead..?! The latest episode features ex analyst and #ITSM guru extraordinaire KENGON Ken Gonzalez, who started the whole ITSM and Death thing with @Charlles Araujo a few weeks ago. We discuss some of the features around how #ITSM# is perceived and used, as well as misappropriated, and why, in Kens view, this is an ex framework. We also discuss the value of assessments and how we should look forward. Somehow we also relate this to the mutation of a caterpillar to a butterfly, but perhaps drink had been taken by this point.