How (and why) to create an emerging technology heat map

An emerging technology heat map can be a valuable tool to illuminate the various emerging and disruptive technologies on your organization’s radar. When sourced internally across your organization’s various divisions and departments, it can serve as a rapid assessment tool to help reveal and set priorities as well as areas for further collaboration and coordination. …

Making sense of Microsoft’s new certifications scheme

Over the past few years Microsoft has dramatically changed its approach to certification, moving away from qualifications connected to specific products to instead align them with common job roles. The idea is to provide experience-based learning delivered and assessed in small chunks, rather than forcing IT pros to cram for a long, theoretical exam every…

4 ways to diversify your IT hiring pipeline

The tech industry has traditionally relied on hiring new talent from colleges and universities, severely limiting its pool for recruiting, as college isn’t accessible to everyone and there are plenty of qualified candidates who may be well past their college graduate years. By hiring with such a narrow focus, organizations miss out on plenty of…

Looking to advance your IT career? Join the club

Many IT practitioners of all organizational levels have longstanding opinions on the value of personal involvement in professional associations.  They vary widely from considering it the most important factor in their professional success to being a total waste of time.  I know senior IT leaders who strongly suggest their staff become involved in industry-related activities,…

How Audible innovates in a new media category

Audible is the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling for millions of listeners every day. Along with superior programming, the organization uses a customer-centric approach to technological innovation in order to elevate it in a new media category. Join us to learn how they’re both innovative and resilient with their technology platforms. Read…

CSM certification: What you need to know

CSM certification Agile practices are being rapidly adopted in project and product management across many industries, and the Scrum master is an important leadership role in agile development. The Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) certification, available through the Scrum Alliance, is an entry-level certification aimed at providing professionals with an awareness of the methodologies and values of…

11 dark secrets of application modernization

More than 95% of Fortune 1000 companies still use IMS, IBM’s ancient hierarchical DBMS. At least, that’s the number according to TwoBitHistory.org. My own informal survey, in contrast, reveals that approximately zero percent of the best IT developers have any interest in working in that environment. [ Learn from your peers: Check out our State…