Dear CIO/IT managers,

This CPTTM CIO newsletter is to bring useful news to you, CIO/IT managers in Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or recommend your friends to subscribe, just email me at kent@cpttm.org.mo. Old issues are available here.

Topics in this issue:

• Introduction to Scrum
• Agile has become mainstream
  
• Smart uses of smartphones
• Using your help desk to show a professional image of the IT division
• Upcoming courses for CIO/IT managers

Introduction to Scrum

What is Scrum? Scrum is a popular agile project management process. If you know XP, you can take Scrum as XP with all the engineering practices (e.g., testing, pair programming) removed, so that it can be applied to all kinds of projects, not just software development projects. The following are the key points in Scrum:

• Follow Plan-Do-Check-Act on multiple scales. In fact, this is a tried and true project management best practice. On a monthly scale (called a sprint), you plan what you'll do in the month, then you do it and at the end you check how well you did and how to improve. On a daily scale (called a daily scrum), you plan what you'll do in that day, then you do it and at the start of next day you check how well you did and how to improve.
• Self-organization. The manager (called the Scrum master) is there to remove obstacles encountered by the team members instead of dictating team members on how to do their jobs. The manager is not to tell them what to do either, as that is provided by the customer (called the product owner). The idea is that it is the best to let the person doing the work to decide how to do the work. If he often fails to deliver, it's better to hire a replacement than spend your precious time to micro-manage him.

Agile has become mainstream

According to a survey, 45% of developers are using agile. It means that methodologies like Scrum and XP have become mainstream (among them, Scrum is the most popular). In terms of organizations, adopters include IBM (7,000 developers onboard so far), Microsoft (1/3 using agile), Google and etc. In addition, PMI (the organization that created the PMP certification) has also created an agile community in response to the interest in agile.

Smart uses of smartphones

• You can use it as a security token for multi-factor authentication (verifying that you have the phone, or verifying your voice by talking to the phone. See PhoneFactor).
• Are you issuing membership cards to your customers? Why not issue soft copies to install into their smartphones in the form of a small application? They can present their phones and in a snap, you get their membership number and etc.
• If you're a restaurant, why not offer to stream your menu updates to your customers and offer a one-click order application to them?
• A patient could tell the the phone to call an ambulance by shouting "Help me!" and his current location information will be sent automatically.
• So on....

Using your help desk to show a professional image of the IT division

That's what ITIL has done. It has summarized the best practices into different processes that can be implemented in your help desk. To learn about them, join our upcoming ITIL v3 Operational Support and Analysis Capability Course. It costs only half as much as the same course in Hong Kong, a very little investment that could advance your career.

Upcoming courses for CIO/IT managers

Feedbacks

Any questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at 28781313 or kent@cpttm.org.mo. We also have two other newsletters: Network administrator newsletter and Software developer newsletter, your staff may like to subscribe.

Until next time, 

Kent Tong