About
Hi, my name is Tim Darby. I have been working within the IT/Digital arena for 37 years. I wrote code for 15 years and subsequently managed projects and programs of work, most recently specialising in IT/Digital Delivery & Governance. I have been living and working in China since 2011; I am a UK national and hold Permanent Chinese Residency
Over the years I have met and found solutions for a number of common obstacles faced by IT leaders, in different geographies and across several industries. Some of these are fairly recent in nature, and some have been prevalent for over 30 years
ITConsult can partner with you and your teams to identify and address the real, underlying reasons behind the challenges you face leading your IT/Digital function. If you would like an objective view on any of the subjects, outlined on this website, or any challenges you may be facing setting up or growing your Digital function in China; then please contact me for an initial discussion and to to find out if I can be of assistance
Improvement Themes
I have seen, first hand, how addressing any of these common themes can bring tangible and measurable benefits
Reduce Waste
E.g. Lean processes, SMART Requirements, Co-located Agile Squads, less re-work, right-first-time, minimise under-used functionality
Increase Autonomy
E.g. Agile mindset, continuous funding, simpler approval matrices, accountability at working level
Lower Response Times
E.g. Co-located Agile Squads, continuous funding, maximise in-house staff, minimise vendor contracting, lean IT Governance
Move Focus From ‘Cost’ to ‘Value’
E.g: Identify Value Drivers, undertake Cost Benefit Analyses (not just cost reductions), and measure success
In-source
E.g. Retain knowledge with flexible in-house staff, support employee satisfaction, contract vendors to handle peaks in demand, minimise purchasing cycles
Continually Improve
E.g. Retrospectives, Post Project Reviews, Benefits Realisation, Start, Stop, Continues
Transformation, whether it’s organisational, digital or process focused; always starts with a first step; when you choose to improve any one of these areas, then you’ve started your journey
Please contact me if you’d like to discuss how you could address any of these areas
Or take a look at the Digital Challenges Dashboard to identify specific problems which I could help with
Digital Challenges
Have you encountered any of the following?
Data Governance
E.g. Is it difficult to know who owns data? Is your team asked to ‘fix’ production data? Do technical team members have direct access to production databases?
IT/Digital Governance
E.g. Does your team feel that IT Governance is optional? Do team members spend too much completing ‘mandatory’ process steps which have little value?
Requirements Management
E.g. Are business requirements not fully understood, leading to sub-optimal functionality, multiple UAT failures and costly re-work? Are all requirements considered top priority?
Workforce Planning
E.g: Are some new staff struggling in their roles or are asked to take on assignments not matching their roles? Is the internal and external staff balance not right? Do employees spend a lot of time writing SoWs and managing vendors?
Approval Process Madness!
E.g. Must approval seekers follow the approved approval process to obtain approvals from the approved list of approvers in the approved time-frame? Or do they just spend an inordinate amount of time on non-value add activities?
China Digital Office
E.g: Are some company defined ‘Global’ processes and systems not suitable in China? Are foreign employees assigned to senior positions without considering local alternatives?
Technical Staff
E.g. Do your technical staff not receive the recognition they deserve? Do you jave a high turn-over of technical staff?
Post Project Reviews
E.g. Do you document project lessons learned? Can you measure the Business Benefits projects have delivered?
Finance
E.g. Are one or more of your departments’ Cost Centres ‘Restricted’? Would you like your department to be viewed as a Profit or Value Centre and not a Cost Centre?
Cross Dept. Cooperation
E.g. Are there barriers preventing good cooperation with other supporting functions; e.g. Finance, HR, Purchasing, Compliance?
Vendor Management
E.g. Do your vendors swap their own staff in and out of your projects without telling you? Are the contracted SLAs too stringent to be enforced or too relaxed to be meaningful?
Cybersecurity
E.g. Do you have Red, Blue and Purple Teams in place? Are you reliant on vendors to ensure your systems and data are secure?
China Website Presence
E.g. Do you struggle to engage with your Chinese customers? Do you need to localise your website to suit a Chinese audience?
Data Governance
Data is at the very heart of all things IT & Digital; Data is the ‘I’ in IT!
Data Governance is the structure and associated processes under which Data is managed, protected and made available for use, or in very simplistic terms; data is owned by the business, IT/Digital is tasked with looking after it, according to agreed rules
Authoring, deploying and maintaining systems and applications of any kind, is one level of complexity. But governing and managing data, migrating it from one place to another and guaranteeing its integrity and availability; is a far more complex undertaking
Nearly all data related projects either fail, or take far longer and cost a lot more than originally forecast, due solely to underestimating just how complex these projects can be. E.g.
Deploying a new data infrastructure can, to some degree, be planned and implemented in a matter of months; but ensuring that the data is holds is accurate, can be made available when needed, can be used by all staff to make good business decisions; requires a large effort, quite a lot of it manual in nature
Are you embarking upon your own data journey or need to improve your company’s data ecosystem? Would you value some real-world advice on data related matters? If so, please contact me for a confidential first discussion
IT/Digital Governance
IT Governance is a topic which can divide members of the IT/Digital department, is often viewed quite negatively by staff from other departments and has the potential to have a significant positive or negative impact on delivery
If employed with a ‘Minimum Viable Bureaucracy‘ mind-set, good IT Governance can efficiently guide projects to successful conclusion, maximise business benefits, while ensuring that Legal & Regulatory and compliance related non-functional requirements are fully satisfied
Bad IT Governance can include cumbersome fixed overheads and rule books, with a PMO Manager acting as a police officer! This approach hinders delivery, generates frustration and is a key reason for business leads to run their own IT projects, with the potential to compromise system and data security
Would you value an objective, appraisal of your current IT/Digital Governance structure, methodologies and processes; with recommendations on how these could be nuanced to better support delivery?
Please reach out for an initial conversation
Requirements Management
Engaging with your business stakeholders is more art than science, but there are ways to organise and structure your business touch-points which will greatly improve relationships and help foster an ‘Us’ way of thinking. One of the main reasons for the business and IT to talk to each other is:
Requirements Management:
– Capture: Replace free-hand descriptions with a structured approach
– Qualification & Understanding: Make requirements 100% clear for the development teams to avoid costly re-work and delays
– Alignment with Business Objectives: Align requirements with Business Objectives
– Prioritisation: Not all requirements ARE ‘Must Haves’, or are ‘No. 1 Priority’; introduce a methodical approach
– Change Requests: Be flexible, but manage these scope changes in a structured manner to avoid business disruption
Implementing solutions to these very common problems will deliver the following benefits:
– Fewer UAT Failures, increase ‘Right First Time’ metric
– Shorter delivery times and less re-work
– But most importantly, greater value realisation for the company
If you have noticed this issue affecting your department, please contact me for an initial conversation
Workforce Planning
Understanding your people’s mix of skills, capabilities, experience and aspirations in order to build and manage effective teams, can be a daunting, time-consuming process
Many organisations approach Workforce Planning (WFP) and Organisational Design (OD) from a subjective perspective, focusing on what is felt to be the right number of a certain type of employee. With this approach, it is, however, quite easy to end up with an imbalanced and potentially inefficient and discontented team
Just a few key considerations:
– Do you try to employee staff who have a Primary, and one or two Secondary skill-sets? These staff are more adaptable and capable of taking on variety of tasks
– Do you have an optimal balance between internal and external staff? If not, your employees can spend a large proportion of their time writing SoWs, running procurement processes and managing vendor delivery
– Do you take other departments’ Organisational Designs into account when planning your own OD? If you consider your department’s OD in conjunction with other departments, this will naturally foster a collaborative atmosphere and optimise delivery
A good approach is objectify this process, to drive out the realities of what your department needs to be successful. One method, that I have used with success, utilises SFIA (Skills for the Information Age)
If you would like to discuss your own particular WFP challenges in confidence, please contact me for an initial conversation
SFIA
Skills for the Information Age (SFIA) is a framework which allows IT Leaders, HR and other staff to fully understand the skills and capabilities staff members and potential employees possess. SFIA can also be used, very effectively, in vendor contracting to concisely ask for, and procure the right resources for the right task
Here is the current SFIA Framework
This SFIA Framework can be the basis for robust Role Descriptions and simplified Job Descriptions which can be used to attract the right talent to your organisation
If you’d like to discuss how SFIA could be effectively used in your organisation, please don’t hesitate to reach out for an initial conversation
Approval Process Madness!
Yes, that’s right; it’s Approval Time! The most anticipated and unwaveringly enjoyable task of asking people to approve something they have either already approved on multiple occasions, or have absolutely no knowledge of, requiring you to explain in detail; again
You can perhaps detect the mild under-tone of sarcasm in the above passage; but there is a more serious side to this nonsense. A lot of time (and consequently money) is wasted on delinquent approval processes which frequently mandate individuals to manually request agreement from approvers, often in the form of ‘wet’ signatures. I have personally witnessed junior members of staff spend a whole day dashing between departments, on different floors of their office building, begging people to approve small, budgeted sums of money to be allocated to planned projects, which will deliver significant business benefits
Departments tend not to trust one another, with leaders unwilling to be accountable. This leads to statements like ‘I’ll approve if he approves’ or ‘you need to get her approval first, before talking to me’
Delegation Models and simplified Approval Matrices would a make employees feel more valued, empowered and trusted; and improvements in delivery times and business benefits would be noticeable. These are also the first steps towards Agile Delivery and an improved ‘Minimum Viable Bureaucracy‘
Please get in touch if your staff are suffering from this process, and would like discuss how to build and implement potential solutions
China Digital Office
Challenges in how your HQ interacts with your China office will depend on how China Operating Model
How does your China Digital Office operate?
1. Satellite Office. Your China office is essentially a satellite of your HQ. It’s managed directly by staff, who are part of the HQ organisation, and whose ‘Leader 1’ is their functional lead at HQ. With this model, the China office would be no different from a satellite office in the same country as your HQ
2. HQ Controlled. Your China office can, to some extent, operate autonomously but has to conform to ‘Global Standards’ regarding processes, systems etc.
a) In this model, most, if not all the senior staff in China will be hired from the HQ, or are existing HQ staff assigned to work in your China office for a few years
b) Few opportunities will exist for Chinese staff to progress into senior roles
3. Localised Office of international company, operating in China. With this model, the China office would, for the most part, operate as a Chinese company. Nearly all employees’ ‘Leader 1’s’ would be employed by, and located in China. Most staff would be Chinese nationals, or have Chinese residency; with only a small percentage being ‘International Service Personnel’ provided by the HQ on assignment
4. Joint Venture (JV). The international company has formed a JV with a Chinese company. With this model, the JV is, to all intents and purposes, a Chinese company; with nearly all staff being Chinese, and Chinese will be the default business language. Any assigned international staff will have little or no influence on company operations
To discuss any China Office related challenges, please contact me for a confidential first discussion
Technical Staff
It is quite common for technical staff to not feel ‘part of’ the rest of the business, or even the IT/Digital department to which they belong. This can be for a number of reasons:
1. They do not possess the people skills that others take for granted, that others believe they should have
2. Other departmental staff do not understand or have any desire to understand what it is that they do and how much they contribute
3. Technical staff are sometimes labelled as ‘just’ techies, leading to unfortunate stereotypical viewpoints, condescension and derision
The result of these, rather unfortunate, circumstances can be a disenfranchised group of people existing in your department. This can be compounded by a Performance Review process having a strong focus on personal presentation and visibility to other departments. Since your technical teams probably have very little direct interaction with other departments, it often happens that the feedback they receive is at best apathetic, and at worst dismissive
The above is not pleasant reading, but it is the reality for many companies
So, what can be done?
What I’ve seen work quite well, is to:
1. Revisit the grade structure to create People and Role Grades along with the appropriate pay bands that align better with the type of work these staff undertake and how the person’s technical skills, attributes and capabilities can be measured:
（a）E.g. A ‘Leader’ or ‘Senior Manager’ is not necessarily someone who is managing a team, or sits in an office
（b）Could a technical employee, who is known as the go-to person for a particular technology, also be promoted to ‘Senior Manager’, even though they do not manage a team?
（c）Would having parallel Person and Role Grade Structures, provide the basis upon which your technical teams could flourish?
（d）Sought after technical skill sets and capabilities can sometimes be at odds with the pay levels associated with standard grades, e.g.
A skilled IT security professional with 2 years, verifiable experience, could be considered highly experienced in that field; but HR may deem that level of experience to be ‘junior’ when comparing to more mature skill-sets, like Project Management. It can then, consequently, be a big challenge to retain this niche skill-set since other companies are willing to pay more for their services
2. Nuance the Performance Review process so that it can be a better framework for assessing technical staff
（a）Since many of your technical employees do not interact very much or at all with other departments; elements of your company’s Performance Review process which mandate cross-departmental interviews and feedback, should be changed
（b) I have been in Performance Review meetings when technical staff have been ‘interviewed’ and other panel members have sometimes described them as introverted, quiet, sullen and incapable of ‘selling themselves’
If you would like to discuss your own particular WFP challenges in confidence, please contact me for an initial conversation
Minimum Viable Bureaucracy
Minimum viable bureaucracy (MVB) refers to the least amount of structure and process needed for an organization to function effectively and deliver value. It’s about finding the right balance between control and autonomy, ensuring agility and productivity without stifling innovation. I.e. Eliminating waste and non-value add work
MINIMUM VIABLE BUREAUCRACY CALLS FOR GUIDELINES, NOT DOCTRINES
The focus should be enabling employees by minimizing requirements to only those that add value to projects
Every organisation has bureaucracy, but how valuable is it? Minimise effort while maximising benefit
Where:-
N: the number of people who are required to take action. The fewer people required, the better.
F: how frequently they need to take action to keep this request current. The less often this needs to happen, the better.
E: how much effort each person needs to fulfil this request. Faster is better.
B: the value the business will gain from this request. Try hard to put an honest value here.
D: the duration that this business value will last. Is this something that lasts?
Practical MVB means you have a minimal, precise reason for each individual process requirement
Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss how we could address this and any other inefficiencies in your digital delivery cycle
Post Project Reviews
Very few companies regularly undertake any form of Post Project Review or Agile Retrospective. Once a project has implemented a new capability with the appropriate support model in place; the project is considered ‘completed’, and the project team move onto new activities
A large effort is often expended in planning for, and executing a project; and projects are often prioritised based upon the estimated business benefits that they will deliver. So, it really is surprising that executing a Benefits Realisation process, which could validate the reasons for the project being executed, is extremely rare
If you see value in creating a Lessons Learned and/or Benefits Realisation process step into your project delivery governance, then please contact me, and we can discuss how this could be achieved
Finance
Common financial challenges faced by IT/Digital Functions include:
1. Being viewed as a Cost Centre with an overbearing focus on cost reduction, as opposed to value creation
2. Complex and time consuming financial approval processes
3. Lengthy budgeting cycles, minimising agility and responsiveness
Improvement Approach:
a) Work with your finance colleagues to build an Agile way of working to include perpetual funding for ‘Innovation’ or ‘Business Change’ so that IT does not need to ask for funding to be approved to satisfy every business request
b) Build Agile Squads with IT, Business and Finance teams co-located so that they work as one Team. This is the foundation of Agile and will break down barriers
c) Agree upon and implement a new joint IT/Finance Governance process to manage spend, calculate the delivered business benefits and allow the appropriate amount of autonomy
Please contact me to discuss how to this issue could be addressed
Cross Dept. Cooperation
This is probably the most difficult challenge to overcome from all the ones I have outlined on this website, because it is comprised approximately of 75% people, 20% process and 5% technology. Each function or department (or vertical) has their own metrics, KPIs, processes, deliverables, goals, and of course leaders. Each one can behave like an autonomous organisation
One way to improve these relationships is to take an elemental Agile approach; where each function becomes aware that they are all supporting the same company. By working together, in a similar way to Agile Squads, the company will become more successful. This, of course, mandates Top-Down direction and support, from the Board with CEO sponsorship; without which, the inter-departmental barriers will remain in place
Just imagine the IT/Digital Team sitting in the same desk area as their Finance, HR and Purchasing colleagues!
I have seen it work in action, and would like to see more companies fully embrace this type of working, as I am sure it will bring great benefits to their organisations
Please feel free to contact me to discuss how your organisation could realise this aspiration
Vendor Management
Effectively managing the delivery of services, being provided by a contracted vendor, is a niche skill-set and not a general one which every employee should be expected to possess. Vendor staff, no matter how skilled, enthusiastic or friendly, will always have their own company’s benefits upper most in their minds, rather than yours; even if they are filling a role in your company as part of an outsourcing arrangement
This may read as harsh, but this is often the reality. I once asked a vendor staff member to tell me how many software licences we had consumed to know if we should purchase more; it would have taken less than 1 minute to find out. But they refused because this was not in their scope of work!
This is just one of the ‘hidden’ costs of the long-term contracting of vendors to deliver core services, and why I would advocate the hiring of more internal staff, even if they are not 100% busy, all of the time
Many IT/Digital staff simply do not have the skills, experience or inclination to oversee vendor delivery, and minimising vendor contracting will also minimise financial approval discussions, purchasing cycles and allow for critical knowledge to be retained within your organisation
If you would value a conversation to discuss your departments Organisational Design and how you could right-size your team, please feel free to contact me
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting computer systems, networks, programs, and data from digital attacks, damage, or unauthorized access. A combination of technologies, processes, and human actions are required to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. In essence, it’s about defending against threats like malware, phishing, and ransomware to prevent data breaches, service disruptions, and financial extortion
All organisations need some form of Cybersecurity capability in their IT/Digital Teams to protect their organisations from eternal threats to their businesses
But, implementing the appropriate Cybersecurity capability can be a real challenge, not least because the required skills are in high demand and can seem expensive when compared with other technical roles
Key components of your Cybersecurity Team:
Red Team: Ethical hackers who simulate cyberattacks to test an organization’s resilience and find weaknesses
Blue Team: Defenders who detect and respond to cyberattacks
Purple Team: Combine offensive and defensive strategies for continuous improvement
If you would value a conversation to discuss your Cybersecurity concerns, please feel free to contact me
China Website Presence
If you would value a conversation to discuss your Chinese website concerns, please feel free to contact me
Get in Touch
contact@itconsult.digital
Please feel free to contact me regarding any of the topics outlined on this website, or any IT/Digital challenges you are facing
I would be happy to have a call with you to discuss your current situation to determine if I can help
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