This is my 500th post on this blog, Social, Agile, and Transformation (and almost 700 across all websites), so I hope you will celebrate this milestone with me!
I started this blog back in 2005 when a friend told me that my startup needed to be “plugged into the blogosphere.” I interpreted that to mean that I should start a blog and called it CTOtoDevelopers. I imagined using the blog to share technical best practices, and my first posts on application logging and on using agile to develop coding best practices remain classics.
The Technical Early Years of CTOtoDevelopers
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| Dashboard of Isaac Sacolick’ Articles |
Every year I adjusted the topics I covered. The posts from my first couple of years were technical, and I shared our learnings on java web 2.0 application development. I also have some real classic posts, including this letter to Michael Dell, my thoughts on Oracle buying MySQL, and my two cents on Google buying YouTube.
Mind you, I was just writing what was on my mind. I had no aspirations at the time to write a book, become a speaker, develop agile certification courses, run digital transformation workshops. or launch my company, StarCIO.
In 2007 I pivoted and left the world of startups to being a CIO at companies that were thrown into digital transformations well before the buzzword became popularized.
For the next decade, I shared my advice and learnings on leadership, culture, agile practices, innovation, and architecture. Some of my favorite posts from the early years of my CIO days include:
- Top 5 Reasons Why Agile Development Spurs Innovation
- How to get a Team to Think Agile
- What is Really Meant by Failing Early, Failing Often, and Failing Cheap?
- Top 10 Guidance Tips to New CIOs and IT Leaders
- Getting from Software Projects and Maintenance to Agile Programs
As CIO: Rebranded to Social, Agile, and Transformation
I rebranded the blog Social, Agile, and Transformation to reflect three pillars of my leadership principles and style. Then from 2010-16, I started to cover bigdata, data science, DevOps, digital transformation, and citizen development. I celebrated my 300th post in 2016, and my favorite posts from this period include:
Digital Transformation
- What is Digital Business and Digital Transformation?
- Ten Ways To Improve IT Culture with Agile, DevOps, Data, and Collaboration
- 5 Things CIO Should Do in First 100 Days of Leading Digital Transformation
Agile
- 5 Ways to Improve Agile Team Velocity
- How To Handle Difficult Agile Product Owners
- 20 Bad Behaviors of Agile Development Product Owners
DevOps
Data
- The Problems with Siloed Databases Part 2
- Dear Spreadsheet Jockey, Welcome to Big Data
- 10 Attributes of Data Driven Organizations
Driving Digital and StarCIO
2017 was a milestone year. My book Driving Digital came out, and I focused the blog on providing best practices beyond what I covered in the book. 2017 is also the year I launched StarCIO, where we guide organizations of all sizes and across industries on developing strategic advantages with data and technology.
Here are some of the top posts from the last few years.
AI, Data, and Analytics
- 10 Questions before starting a Machine Learning POC
- What is Data Governance? Data practices that address risk and drive opportunities
- How to Select a Data Visualization Platform for Citizen Data Scientists
- What are Seven Types of Big Data Debt
- What is Proactive Data Governance?
Agile, DevOps, and Architecture
- Meeting notes for your agile and scrum meetings? Here’s why they are important and some options to implement
- What is the Role of the Tech Lead in Agile?
- Defining Your Agile Release Management Strategy
- Is Continuous Deployment right for your business?
- 12 Warning Signs of Bad Application Architecture
Digital Transformation and Leadership
- Why You Should Avoid Calling it Automation
- How Business Transformation is Fundamentally Different from Innovation
- Transforming the Workforce with Governed Citizen Development
- Why YOU Should be Driving Digital!
- The #1 Reason Why Digital Transformations Fail
Digital Leadership 2025 – 2030
Since last year, my writing and speaking are more focused on the next decade of digital transformation. I have finished a new book and am working on editing and publishing it.
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