So, I bet you’re wondering, who is this guy? If you have a minute, let me see if I can shed a little light on that subject and share with you a bit about my background. My job by day is CTO for IBM Technical Content and by night I’m a husband, father of 3 and avid reader of all things related to the intersection of technology and learning. I am an IBMer and my opinions are my own.
Now that is out of the way, let me share a bit about my history. I started work at IBM in late 1998 as a course editor in marketing before transitioning to the training web team. I spent the next several years there learning all I could about web technologies and running marketing campaigns. I was part of a team that rolled out a training web sales platform worldwide with localized country instances. This provided a lot of opportunities to work with various countries and I later became the global web master for the external IBM training web presence.
After a few years, I was asked to move to the CIO division in IBM and take on the role of Senior Architect for training. While in this role, I was able to lead international teams on developing solutions, influence some of the technologies that were implemented to support the training infrastructure and address several consolidation projects that resulted millions of savings to IBM annually. Back in 2015, the training business in IBM took a drastic shift in the model and we engaged 5 Global Training Providers to help deliver training globally so IBM could focus more on development of quality content and a digital delivery platform. It was at this time I was asked to join the fairly new IBM Training and Skills team as CTO and define the technologies and strategy for the next several years.
As CTO, I have had a lot of challenges leading global development teams and looking at implementing technologies that address older content, current training being created and future learning experiences. This has been a constant learning experience (no pun intended), but during the last two years, we have made incredible strides in technology and capabilities that were a distant vision when we first started down this path. I’ve been able to get teams to move from waterfall to agile development, from on-premises to cloud, from internally focused designs to design thinking solutions that resolve customer pain points just to name a few.
All of this has resulted in a steadily climbing NPS that has become a beacon of light in IBM with others asking how they can replicate our success. The answer is easy – listen to your customer and give them what they are looking for. Don’t design and build solutions that you think the customer wants. Go to the customer, ask their opinion, and then test your concepts and designs with them. You should anticipate the customer needs and directions. The net result will be a product that is much higher quality and positioned well for the future.
I look forward to continuing this journey as I am now working with expanded teams to replicate these concepts across all technical content in IBM and thereby improve the customer experience at every level.
As I continue on this journey, I’ll be posting thoughts and articles centered around learning technologies and leading development teams.
Join me on this journey by connecting with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.