7 attributes every IT leader must have

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Leadership has little to do with one’s title or seniority; it’s an attribute that’s earned over time through study, practice and commitment. Are you prepared to become a true leader?

Becoming a true IT leader — someone who inspires teams to consistently reach new heights — requires skills that can only be acquired over time through hard work and a commitment to succeed.

Transformational leaders are typically described as lively, passionate, engaging and energetic. Such individuals aren’t focused only on helping teams achieve their planned goals; they also work hard to help team members reach their full potential.

Becoming a respected and prized leader isn’t easy, but it’s a goal within reach of just about anyone who’s willing to commit to the task. Here are seven fundamental attributes every IT leader needs to possess — and how to acquire them.

  1. Agility
  2. Vision
  3. Empathy
  4. Steadiness
  5. Authenticity
  6. Accessibility
  7. Curiosity

Get more details HERE

How to build a resilient IT culture

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The pandemic has underscored the importance of thriving through hardship and uncertainty. IT leaders discuss how they’re adjusting their leadership practices to help foster this key IT trait for the long haul.

The word ‘resilient’ is cropping up a lot lately as a cultural cornerstone for coping with the pressures the pandemic has foisted on IT. CIOs have played a significant role in enabling organization-wide remote work strategies at speed while accelerating digital initiatives central to the business in uncertain times.

For many, the ability to shift gears, double down and navigate hardship has been a testament to an IT culture capable of withstanding and recovering quickly from difficult challenges. For others, rising to the occasion has been a crash course in resilience, offering hard-earned lessons in what it will take to thrive in IT in the months and years to come.

“The last few months have been a huge social experiment for every company around the world,’’ says Jacqui Guichelaar, CIO of Cisco, who adds that many leaders discovered their staffs can be just as productive working remotely as in the office. The upshot? Leaders must model certain behaviors in this new way of working, she says. “Traditional tactics don’t work in the new reality.”

Here, IT leaders discuss what makes an IT organization resilient, and how they are adjusting their leadership practices to ensure IT can foster this key trait for the long haul.

Put people first
Keep connected
Find common purpose
Foster career growth
Establish mutual respect
Take care of yourself as well

More Details HERE

7 attributes every IT leader must have

/in , , , , , /by

Leadership has little to do with one’s title or seniority; it’s an attribute that’s earned over time through study, practice and commitment. Are you prepared to become a true leader?

Becoming a true IT leader — someone who inspires teams to consistently reach new heights — requires skills that can only be acquired over time through hard work and a commitment to succeed.

Transformational leaders are typically described as lively, passionate, engaging and energetic. Such individuals aren’t focused only on helping teams achieve their planned goals; they also work hard to help team members reach their full potential.

Becoming a respected and prized leader isn’t easy, but it’s a goal within reach of just about anyone who’s willing to commit to the task. Here are seven fundamental attributes every IT leader needs to possess — and how to acquire them.

  1. Agility
  2. Vision
  3. Empathy
  4. Steadiness
  5. Authenticity
  6. Accessibility
  7. Curiosity

Get the details HERE

Project Engineer Opportunity With A Growing Company in Dallas, TX

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Our client, a Professional Services company, is looking for a Direct-hire (not contract, not C2C) Project Engineer.

Job Description: The Project Engineer (PE) is a senior-level role responsible for the design and implementation of LAN/WAN, Server and Cloud Services technology. PEs are required to work closely with our Design Desk (system architect) and deliver technical solutions that meet a client’s business requirements, and therefore must be able to communicate effectively across all levels of a corporate structure. The PE will provide some tier 3 technical support to clients and internal support team members.

Position Functions:

    • Virtualization (VMware and Hyper V)
    • Physical and Virtual Host Server Hardware
    • Windows Server and Active Directory
    • RDS/Remote App | Citrix
    • SQL Server
    • VoiP and PBX based telecom
    • Enterprise Storage Solutions including SAN, NAS, and Tiered/Cloud Storage
    • Enterprise Backup and DR Solutions
    • Cloud Services including Azure and O365
    • Email Services including Premise and Office 365
    • Wireless Access Technologies
    • Security and compliance technologies
    • Desktop and Mobile Device Technology
    • Application Software with 3rd party coordination

• Travel to client sites to provide onsite service and support as necessary (95% DFW local)

• Work closely with vCIO and Design Desk to solution technology to meet client business objectives

• Participate in on call support rotation

• Onboarding and accurate documentation of client systems.

• Provide pre-sales design and support to internal team members.

• Evolve internal professional services processes in response to rapid industry changes.

• Document internal processes and procedures to maintain consistent results and efficiencies, including creation of network diagrams and technical process documentation and checklists.

• Effectively communicate with clients and manage their expectations, support the project coordinator/manager.

• Manage and transport products and inventory for assigned projects.

• Attend and conduct internal and client meetings.

• Maintain industry product knowledge through training and certification programs.

• This role will also include

  • the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications, collaborating with the project manager and design desk team to do so;
  • the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems (OS’s) or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications provided by the design desk;
  • and the design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of OS’s.

If you have this experience, feel you are a fit for this position, and are interested, please answer the questions below:

    Your Email (required)

    Position You Are Applying For?

    What is your availability to start?

    Are you open to a direct-hire position?

    What is your current salary or pay rate?

    Are you currently eligible to work for any employer in the US?

    When is the best time to contact you and what # can you be reached at for this opportunity?

    Upload Your Resume

    Regards,

    Mike Hanes
    ProVisionTech

    10 tips for modernizing legacy IT systems

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    IT modernization is a key component for establishing an agile, responsive enterprise. IT leaders lend advice on how to transform legacy tech into digital assets.

    This year’s extraordinary events have accentuated the need for a modern technology environment agile and responsive enough to meet rapidly changing business dynamics — whether those are emerging revenue opportunities or work-from-home mandates.

    And that means having a strategic plan for modernizing legacy apps.

    “Getting rid of legacy is a perennial issue, but modernization is a top issue now more than ever,” says Diane Carco, president and CEO of management consulting company Swingtide and a former CIO.

    CIOs see modernization as critical for delivering better quality software faster, running IT with more controls and insights, integrating more security, and more quickly meeting the needs of the business, according to The State of Modern Applications in the Enterprise, a 2020 report released by cloud solutions provider Ahead.

    IT has plenty of work ahead to achieve those objectives, as 26% of organizations are only at the beginning stages of IT modernization, while 19% have made only moderate progress, according to The State of IT Modernization 2020 report from IDG and tech company Insight.

    To move your modernization initiative forward, Carco and other leading technologists advise keeping the following 10 tips in mind.

    1. Know what you have
    2. Prioritize projects based on business value
    3. Calculate total cost of ownership
    4. Create a business-backed modernization roadmap
    5. Take an incremental approach
    6. Elimination is a viable option
    7. Don’t shortchange governance
    8. Be selective with microservices
    9. Skip ahead
    10. Take a product-based approach

    Read more HERE

    With IT salaries dropping, some hard-earned skills still pay

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    Employers are still willing to pay highly skilled IT staff a premium — but certification is making much less of a difference than it used to, a study shows.

    Even with more IT workers looking for jobs in the wake of COVID-19 than were prior to the pandemic, highly skilled staff are able to demand higher pay. Increasingly, however, it’s on-the-job experience and not certifications that employers are valuing the most.

    The average premium paid for tech certifications fell to 6.8% of base salary in the third quarter, the lowest in 7 years, according to Foote Partners’ latest IT Skills & Certifications Pay Index, while non-certified skills earned workers an average bonus of 9.6% of base salary, the same as in the previous quarter — and the highest in the past 20 years.

    Those bonuses are all the more important to employees when, as Foote Partners found in a separate survey of IT jobs, not yet published, salaries dropped over the past year for 41% of job titles. Among those titles hardest hit are jobs in mobile platform computing, business systems analysis, .NET, digital product development, IT architecture, enterprise messaging, web systems, and SAP. Overall, across the 516 certifications the company tracks, the average premium for certifications declined by 1.5% during the quarter, and by 6.7% over the year to Oct. 1.

    In some categories, notably cybersecurity, architecture and project management, the decline accelerated in the third quarter, although there was a slight increase in bonus pay offered for some certifications in networking, communications, app development and programming languages during the same period.

    Read more HERE

    6 hidden risks of IT automation

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    6 hidden risks of IT automation

    Automation is increasingly seen as a key IT strategy for competitive advantage, but pitfalls await those who fail to heed precautions.

    Across nearly every industry automation is fast becoming king. Whether it’s through IT automation, robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) or some other means of eliminating or reducing manual processes, enterprises across the spectrum seek to speed up all manner of functions to remain competitive — and IT is right in the middle of this movement.

    The potential benefits of automating processes can be compelling: faster completion of tasks with fewer errors and at lower costs, for example. It’s not surprising then, that demand for automation tools is on the rise.

    A September 2020 report by research firm Gartner projects that global RPA software revenue will reach $1.89 billion in 2021, an increase of 20 percent from 2020. Despite economic pressures caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the RPA market is still expected to grow at double-digit rates through 2024, the firm says.

    Among the key drivers for RPA deployments is the ability to improve process quality, speed, and productivity, each of which is increasingly important as enterprises aim to meet the demands of cost reduction during the crisis, Gartner says.

    The report predicts that 90 percent of large organizations worldwide will have adopted RPA in some form by 2022, “as they look to digitally empower critical business processes through resilience and scalability, while recalibrating human labor and manual effort.”

    Automation can also come with risks, however, if organizations don’t take the needed precautions or if they fall into bad practices. Here are some issues and strategic misfires to look out for when deploying automation in the enterprise, so you can avoid unnecessary risk.

    ·        Automating processes before optimizing them
    ·        Allowing ‘automation complacency’ to take hold
    ·        Poor communication among stakeholders
    ·        Process automation misfit
    ·        Overlooking end user input
    ·        No consideration of interaction design

    Read more HERE