How Verizon designs customer-valued chatbots

Verizon didn’t set out to build a customer-facing chatbot. But around ten years ago, the company was hot off the launch of Fios, its fiber-optic network. And technicians were having problems. “[They] used to have a huge amount of difficulty when they needed to look at our systems to access [the] customer network or if…

CIO succession planning in the digital age

Hiring and retaining talent to keep pace with competition and market demands is a big part of a CIO’s job. Equally as important is grooming successors, or IT leaders with the technology chops and management skills to keep the business humming in the event the CIO departs. It’s a critical task at a time when…

The do’s and don’ts of negotiating a raise

Salary’s not the most important aspect of a job, but it can make a difference in your overall satisfaction and engagement. Because dissatisfied employees leave and disengaged employees end up costing their employers money, employers may be more amenable to giving you a raise than you might think — especially in a tight tech hiring market.…

8 agile certifications to take your career to the next level

Agile has revolutionized the face of software development and project management, and has increased demand for IT professionals with understanding of the methodology and its many flavors — Lean, Scrum, Kanban and Scaled Agile, or SAFe, for the enterprise. The methodology, which emphasizes cross-functional teams collaborating incrementally and iteratively on projects in a flexible and…

7 tips for improving employee retention

How confident are you that you can keep key positions filled with qualified employees over the next five years? If you’re like most IT leaders, the answer is: Not very. And it’s not just because of pipeline and skills gap problems. Your best employees are likely hot targets for savvy recruiters — and some may…