Come Together: The BA and UX Unicorns

Welcome to 2020. Yes indeed, we’re at the very top of the new year, where going back to work as a consultant, with bright ideas and an invigorated sense of purpose, may seem challenging when we’re met with the ongoing challenges from pre-existing engagements prior to the holiday break. How can we negate these habitual thoughts of ‘business-as-usual’ and look upon our work moving forward with fresh eyes and perspective? Arguably there is no better time to do this than at the top of the year.… [Keep reading] “Come Together: The BA and UX Unicorns”

Improve Operational Communications by using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft proudly announced their fastest growing product hit 13 Million+ active users per month. It’s amazing how far the product has come in just 3 years!Infographic showing Microsoft Teams outpacing Slack in daily active users with 13+ million. Slack DAU based on public disclosures, matched with month of disclosure. For dates between disclosures, straightline linear growth was assumed.

It’s safe to say Teams has become the cornerstone of the intelligent workplace powering experiences from content collaboration to chat to modern meetings.  Of late I’ve been working on some not-so-typical use cases, ones that emerged with new features that became available in June 2019.

It reinforces the importance of keeping abreast of product updates as the simplest enhancement can unlock new use cases and drive efficiencies in areas you wouldn’t normally expect.… [Keep reading] “Improve Operational Communications by using Microsoft Teams”

Microsoft Teams Announcements and New Features – Enhance your meetings today

Microsoft Teams has just turned 2. To celebrate, new features have been announced and are coming your way soon. With this wave of new features there aren’t many reasons left not to adopt Microsoft Teams. Many of our customers are embracing Teams as they see the value in a connected collaboration experience that brings together voice, chat, content & meetings.

For me, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting. Though, as people embrace flexible working, are geographically distributed or constantly on the go, connecting with others can be challenging.… [Keep reading] “Microsoft Teams Announcements and New Features – Enhance your meetings today”

Create Office365 business value through the power of limitation

Recent consulting engagements have found me helping customers define what Office365 means to them & what value they see in its use. They are lucky to have licenses and are seeking help to understand how they drive value from the investment.

You’ve heard the sales pitches: Office365 – The platform to solve ALL your needs! From meetings, to document management, working with people outside your organisation, social networking, custom applications, business process automation, forms & workflow, analytics, security & compliance, device management…the list goes on and is only getting bigger!… [Keep reading] “Create Office365 business value through the power of limitation”

The struggle for meaning – Is the Intranet dead?

People struggle to find meaning in life. Our place in the world. The value we provide. Our political persuasions allow us to either rethink definitions or preserve our traditions & institutions. Funnily enough, this philosophical divide plays out in technology all the time.

The morbid question – Is the intranet dead? – seems to be popping its head up recently. I get it, the world is evolving, our expectations of ‘digital’ has changed and technology is at a point where it’s no longer a barrier to seizing opportunity.… [Keep reading] “The struggle for meaning – Is the Intranet dead?”

Reflections from the field – Tips for being a better consultant

Striving to be better at what you do is important for your development. Though, it typically translates into developing what you know rather than how you act. For consulting (or any job), there are two parts to the equation; Hard Skills & Soft skills. Balance is needed so you should learn to develop both.
I aim to help people develop their soft skills. They are typically harder to define and require more attention. Below are concepts I work on developing every day and hopefully you can take some away and start developing them for yourself.
[Keep reading] “Reflections from the field – Tips for being a better consultant”

Kicking Things Off – Writing the Right SOW

It’s one thing to convert a conversation around a broad scope of work into a well-defined and articulated, 3 to 4-page proposal (sometimes 20 +, depending on whose template you’re using), it’s another thing for a client or customer to read through this document, often, multiple times due to a review and response cycle, before finally agreeing to it.

Most don’t enjoy this process. Client stakeholders usually look for a few key things when it comes to the SOW: price, time (hours) and key dates.… [Keep reading] “Kicking Things Off – Writing the Right SOW”

The Yammer Roast

Taking my inspiration from Comedy Central, the Yammer Roast is a forum in which we can directly address resistances around Yammer, its role, and past failures in retrospect.
Some of my clients have tried with Yammer and concluded that for various reasons it’s failed to take hold. For some the value is clear and it’s a case of putting a compelling approach and supporting rationale to sponsors and consumers who remain sceptical. For others, they are looking for a way to make it work in their current collaboration landscape.… [Keep reading] “The Yammer Roast”

SharePoint Integration for Health Care eLearning – Moving LMS to the Cloud

Health care systems often face challenges in the way of being unkept and unmaintained or managed by too many without consistency in content and harbouring outdated resources. A lot of these legacy training and development systems also wear the pain of constant record churning without a supportable record management system. With the accrual of these records over time forming a ‘Big Data concern’, modernising these eLearning platforms may be the right call to action for medical professionals and researchers.… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Integration for Health Care eLearning – Moving LMS to the Cloud”

The Present [and Future] Landscape of Data Migrations

A rite of passage for the majority of us in the tech consultancy world is being a part of a medium to large scale data migration at some stage in our careers. No, I don’t mean dragging files from a PC to a USB drive, though this may have very well factored into the equation for some us. What I’m referencing is a planned piece of work where the objective is to move an entire data set from a legacy storage system to a target storage.… [Keep reading] “The Present [and Future] Landscape of Data Migrations”