Graham Oakes

Graham Oakes helps people untangle complex technology, processes, relationships and governance. He helps them define business and technology strategy, and hence to set up and execute projects which will deliver that strategy.

Governance: nine steps to good decision making

Organisations that avoid discussing governance end up spending a lot of time on it. They define it afresh for each decision. They argue endlessly about decision rights.

They end up with little time to actually make the decisions.

So they make poor decisions.

by Graham Oakes 19 August 2011 09:31am 3 comments

How reliable is the cloud?

Datacentres go down. It doesn’t matter who runs them, nor how much redundancy you build into them, eventually something happens that takes them down.

It could be an earthquake. It could be a flood. It could be (most often is) human error. You may be able to mitigate such things, but you can’t prevent them entirely. The Cloud doesn’t change that.

by Graham Oakes 20 July 2011 09:36am 1 comment

Central or devolved governance?

Say the word “governance” and what springs to mind?

For a lot of people, the first thing is “bureaucracy”. Some central body to define a thick manual full of policies. Endless reviews and compliance checks. Long-winded approval processes.

The next thing they think about is finding ways to bypass all the controls so they can actually get some work done.

It doesn’t have to be that way...

by Graham Oakes 01 July 2011 10:07am 4 comments

How to specify Cloud infrastructure

When resources are scarce, you grab them and hold onto them. This has been true throughout history, and it's currently how most organisations manage servers. It’s probably why most data centres are built like fortresses. An expensive strategy but, conceptually, a pretty simple one.

The Cloud changes all this. By pooling and sharing resources, the Cloud makes it possible for us to treat servers as if they are abundant. This in turn means we must change our management style.

by Graham Oakes 23 May 2011 15:36pm 0 comments

Why should I care about governance?

My favourite definition of governance comes from the Institute on Governance: governance is “the process whereby societies or organisations make important decisions, determine whom they involve and how they render account”.

Organisations that don’t address governance end up spending a lot of time on it. They discuss it over and over again for each decision as they argue about due process and decision rights and accountabilities. They end up with little energy for the decision itself. So they make bad decisions.

by Graham Oakes 13 May 2011 09:27am 3 comments