Bridging Business & IT
Meet your hosts, Dave and Dan, a father and son team interviewing experts from around the IT ecosystem. Dave’s a serial entrepreneur, CIO, board member, author, speaker and advisor with a lifetime of frontline tech industry experience. He wants things to work—perfectly! His son and cohost Dan, is Head of Sales for PlanetScale (a Silicon Valley software company). He wants to get things done—now! While they certainly have their differences, they’re both driven to understand what business customers need so they can deliver the best possible solution. That’s why these two have joined forces (along with a lot of industry heavyweights) to help resolve the biggest challenge in business technology: How to successfully bridge the gap between what a business needs and how its IT department and vendors address that need. This podcast is for those in the trenches, for professionals with hands-on experience who are striving to overcome the multitude of challenges standing between them and the successful deployment of technology to advance business objectives. Each episode is filled not only with humor and sarcasm, but with tricks of the trade and lessons learned. Connect with their stories, experiences, shortcomings, failures, and successes. Let them be your guide on this unvarnished, irreverent and entertaining look at business and IT. Subscribe, listen, and laugh while getting a true appreciation for the fact that in your day to day tech challenges, you’re not alone and solutions are out there.
Episodes
25 episodes
S3 Ep7: A Conversation with the CIOs of Marriott, IRS, FDA and JPL Part 2
But we're talking to just one man. Today is the first part of our conversation with a uniquely accomplished IT professional, Jim Rinaldi. Over Jim's long career he's been the Vice President of IT for Marriott Hotels, the United States Internal ...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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48:59
S3 Ep6: A Conversation with the CIOs of Marriott, IRS, FDA and JPL Part 1
But we're talking to just one man. Today is the first part of our conversation with a uniquely accomplished IT professional, Jim Rinaldi. Over Jim's long career he's been the Vice President of IT for Marriott Hotels, the United States Internal ...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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48:07
S3 Ep 5: Nalin Vail Part 2
This is part II of a conversation with Nalin Vahil. Nalin is a professional Sales leader who has worked at some of the biggest brands in Silicon Valley. Part I talks about some of his background and operating philosophy. Part II kicks off with ...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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50:29
S3 Ep4: Nalin Vahil Part 1
This wide ranging conversation with Nalin Vahil Part 1 spans Dan and Nalin's history of friendship and Nalin's career history. With parents that wanted him to become a Doctor, Nalin forged his own path first as an Entrepreneur and then as a Sal...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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53:44
S3 Ep3: 2022 PMI Global Summit Presentation - The Biggest Constraint in IT Projects is the Human Brain
In December, 2022 the Project Management Institute held their Global Summit Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada . Of the more than 250 talks and break out sessions, about 10% were featured live. These were selected to showcase the most important is...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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1:05:39
S3 Ep2: A Candid Look at the Road from College to Tech VC and PE Partner: Part II
If you're in the tech sector and looking for investment funding, it a good idea to understand a little bit about the people you're pitching. Today’s conversation is a continuation of our last episode with one such investor, Brent Granado. ...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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53:01
S3 Ep1: A Candid Look at the Road from College to Tech VC and PE Partner: Part I
After an unexpected hiatus, we’re back at it. If you're in the tech sector and looking for investment funding, it really helps to understand a little bit about the people you're pitching to. That's why today’s conversation is with ...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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1:12:02
S2 Ep 4 - Society for Information Management Seminar
This episode is a little different. In late 2021 Dave was asked to conduct a seminar for the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Information Management to talk about the findings and focus of Bridging Business & IT. A small group of ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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1:12:10
S2 Ep 3 Agile Epiphanies at a $41B Company
We were very fortunate today to have Barb Mastrianni, AVP and Senior Program Manager for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Inc. Barb shares the lessons that Chubb has learned about what it takes to do Agile "right" and how they've g...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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1:41:12
S2 E2: IT Product Management
Our guest today is Jeffrey Sherow. Jeff has spent a long career at the intersection of business and technology. He started out with Andersen Consulting, rose through the ranks to become an Accenture partner, and stayed there for sev...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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1:29:19
S2 E1: Four IT Perspectives: Public, Private, Customer & Vendor
Today we’re talking to Joyce Hunter, former CIO of the USDA and currently CEO of Vulcan Enterprises. Joyce brings a long and storied career full of insights from both the public and private sectors, from both sides of the fence—she’s been both ...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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1:36:33
S1 E10: Negotiating IT Agreements
This episode is with Dan Kelly, founder and CEO of The Negotiator Guru. Dan is the person we have to thank for our podcast as he was the one who originally invited Dave to be on his, “The State of the CIO”. The feedback from that show was so go...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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1:26:04
S1 E9: Data, Analytics & Reporting
Roger Moore (no, not 007) is our guest today. Roger currently teaches Analytics at the University of Chicago where he’s also an alum of their MBA program. Over his 30-plus year career he’s been with a number of major consulting groups such as B...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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1:34:17
S1 E8: Ethical EQ in IT Project Management
Our guest in this episode is Jomo Starke, Director of Innovation at Canton & Company. Jomo’s 30-plus year tech career started with developing video games—which he almost sold to Atari before they realized he was twelve. From his early days ...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:16:04
S1 E7: Nestles, SAP & the Greater Good
We’re joined today by Ray Weale, currently COO of IDMerit and formerly Director of Digital Innovation at Nestle. Ray helped lead the global unification of literally thousands of Nestles processes and systems on to 34 standard processes on SAP—r...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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1:30:36
S1 E6: Five Ground Rules for Every Tech Team
In the last episode we talked about how a CIO (or IT leader) needs to prepare their business counterparts for their roles and responsibilities in an upcoming tech-enabled business project. In this episode we talk about IT department leadership,...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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1:20:36
S1 E5: Five Things to Share With the Business Before the Project Starts
This episode shares five things that the tech team needs to share with business executives, project sponsor(s), process owners and subject matter experts to set their expectations and explain their obligations before a project kicks off....
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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1:12:27
S1 E4 Part 2: The Solution - The Business Execution Lifecycle
Part 2 of this episode builds on the foundation of part 1 and is dedicated to examining the details within each of the four stages and twelve steps of the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL”).Suggested readings:“
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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1:00:32
S1 E4 Part 1: The Solution - The Business Execution Lifecycle
This episode introduces a simple solution to bridge the gap between everything the business knows and what they communicate to the IT project team. We propose a checklist of questions to cover each step in the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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47:59
S1 E3 Part 2: The Cause - Our Brain Doesn’t Work the Way We Thought
Part two continues where part one leaves off by attempting to explain—as well as a non-scientist can—seven unconscious and uncontrollable ways our brain works to unwittingly sabotage IT projects. These “sinister seven” are by no means unique to...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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51:45
S1 E3 Part 1: The Cause - Our Brain Doesn’t Work the Way We Thought
Our entire approach to running IT projects is based on an unspoken assumption that is so deeply engrained in our culture it’s treated as a given. There’s only one problem with this assumption—it’s wrong. Humans are not rational actors who contr...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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35:48
S1 E2: The Biggest Problem with IT Projects
We take a deep dive into the nature of the divide between business and IT. We lay out our research on the frequency, costs and cause of roughly 75% of all enterprise IT failures. The primary cause is usually labeled a communications issue. It’s...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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52:44
S1 E1: Welcome to Bridging Business & IT
Introduction to a journey and your hosts. A father and son tech team sets out to explore the biggest challenge and most persistent problem in business technology—how to bridge the chasm between what a business needs and how IT addresses that ne...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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49:37