Author Archives: Don Boylan

As organizations grow, the IT processes that support them need to mature. I like to use the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) scale when thinking about IT processes. The CMMI scale was invented by Carnegie Mellon University in 1987 and has five levels of maturity: Level 1 – Ad hoc – Processes are done uniquely …
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Even companies without a formal incident process in place will have something in place to address users’ break/fix issues. The process may be ad hoc (Maturity Level 1) or something that is repeatable but not well documented or able to be reported against (Maturity Level 2). Regardless, most organizations don’t throw away computers when they …
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Vision, Mission, Charter

March 16th, 2020 | Posted by Don Boylan in Leadership - (0 Comments)

I have been in leadership positions in multiple organizations across my career and I have found it useful to create a Vision, Mission, Charter document for my teams. It will help guide both their daily actions and it gives them a clear understanding of the team’s long-term goals. Vision The vision is the list of …
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I have been in rotating on-call roles for several decades of my professional IT career. Everywhere I have worked, there have been unwritten rules regarding the transfer of this role between teammates. I’ve recently joined a team that doesn’t seem to have had experience with on-call rotations and doesn’t know these unwritten rules, so I’m …
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I’ve encountered a lot of confusion about the difference between Metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and Critical Success Factors (CSFs) so let’s talk about that.* First let me just say that Metrics unto themselves are useless. This is a Metric. Isn’t it lovely? Just a dot on a graph. Of course it has a value …
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My Eclipse Experience

August 25th, 2017 | Posted by Don Boylan in Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

Here is a summary of the trip with the details about the eclipse at the end. The Trip- Four of us drove from Seattle to a desolate area in Oregon just north of John Day in a 15 year old Honda Element. Here are some of the more memorable moments: Leaving Seattle at 8:00 Sunday …
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  ITIL’s guidance on Risk Management has changed through the years. In ITIL v2, it was based on C.C.T.A.’s Risk Analysis Management Methodology (the acronym is CRAMM, I kid you not). It looked at the combination of Assets, Vulnerabilities, and Threats to derive a Risk score to which Countermeasures were applied.   ITIL v3 2011 defers Risk …
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