Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.

Situation: You know how important stakeholder engagement is in ensuring project success so you have made a genuine effort and have spent a lot of time trying to get stakeholders involved only to find that they are disinterested, or even worse, against the project altogether. You ask: ‘What am I doing wrong?’

The key to engaging stakeholders in any project is to have a good understanding of their priorities, Kaylene O’Brien, a technology partner at Deloitte Consulting, said. As much as you may want your project to be at the top of their minds, show that you understand they have other business demands and priorities.

“Quite often there is push back from the business units and the stakeholders because often that expectation comes from very little notice and the stakeholders continue to have their business-as-usual demands.

More of the Computerworld article from Rebecca Merrett

Takeaway: Thoran Rodrigues explains “network effects,” which is the effect that users have on the popularity and reach of a service or product. Will cloud computing break some of these traditional networks?

Network effects are some of the strongest forces in the world of technology today. They are partly responsible for the success of both traditional software, such as the Windows OS, and of services such as Google and Facebook. But what exactly are these network effects? As Wikipedia tells us, a network effect is the effect that the user of a service (or product) has on the value of the service (or product) to other users. Social networks such as Facebook are the quintessential example: the more users are in a network, the more valuable that network becomes, both for participating users and for potential new ones. After a while, people join the network simply because everyone they know is there.

Companies are always keen on exploiting network effects since they create a subtle form of lock-in. Users won’t change networks unless a significant percentage of people change first, so it is much harder for new players to enter the market. This was recently demonstrated by Google+. In spite of Google’s brand and marketing power, only a small percentage of users effectively adopted this new social network. The user’s viewpoint is this: “All my friends are on Facebook, so I’ll only go to Google+ if they go too.” But their friends will only go if all their friends’ friends go, and so on.’

More of the TechRepublic post from Thoran Rodrigues

A CIO turned CEO shares lessons learned as he climbed the C-Suite ladder.

These days you hear a handful of stories of CIOs making the jump to CEO. Once a rare occurrence, such a career move has now entered the realm of the possible for some executives. Although it’s certainly not an easy path, if executed correctly, it can be very rewarding. As a former CIO of a large technology company who recently became a CEO, I’d like to share my firsthand experience.

I’m now CEO of Numara Software, a provider of integrated IT management solutions. Before joining Numara, I was general manager of Enterprise Solutions and Cloud Management at CA Technologies, where I was responsible for the creation and development of a portfolio of cloud products and enterprise solutions. And, before that, I led CA’s Security Business Unit and served as the company’s CIO.

Why Make the Jump?

Becoming CEO was not the ultimate goal for me when I began my IT career. I was extremely lucky to have been given the opportunity to serve as CIO at CA Technologies. I learned more from that role than I ever could have imagined. Because every single process and department in the company relies on technology, CA CIOs play a role in all lines of business.

More of the CIO Insight article from Dave Hansen

Some hacks are epic not merely for their significance in IT security, but for their sheer creativity and novelty. They’re those in-your-face hacks that both entertain and educate, and crack those things we take for granted in our everyday lives.

For the fifth year in a row, Dark Reading has compiled an end-of-the-year list of the coolest hacks executed by those imaginative, inquisitive, and resourceful hackers who dare to go the distance to try some of the most unique — and sometimes bizarre — hacks.

Some of this year’s coolest hacks are downright chilling in that they could mean life or death, like the ones that tampered with the dosage dispensed by popular insulin pumps, or that remotely shut down the power on industrial control systems that run power plants. Others were both charming and precocious, like the 10-year-old hacker who found a major flaw in her favorite mobile gaming app after getting bored and looking for a way to progress further with it.

More of the Darkreading.com post from Kelly Jackson Higgins

Know anyone like this?

If they changed their ways, IT managers could have enormous impact on their organizations

Organizational psychologist Billie Blair IT managers and their staffs are different from the rest of us.

They view the world in terms of “us against them” and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe, says Billie Blair , who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology and heads Change Strategist Inc., a Los Angeles-based management consulting firm.

Organizational psychologists have an understanding of management and psychology. They use that knowledge to help firms and organizations understand behaviors that can impinge on the ability to implement required changes, said Blair.

More of the ComputerWorld post from Patrick Thibodeau