Paula Ziehr
Product Marketing Manager at Software AG
Recent posts
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Strategic Portfolio Management -
Strategic Portfolio Management
Sustainability and its tradeoffs: how your IT is key to finding the right balance
Tradeoffs have been a part of life for all of history. But in the age of sustainability, as we race to prevent climate catastrophe, we're confronted with more of them than ever. Consider the case of my friend, Christopher, whose teenaged daughter is taking a "gap year" working on a farm in South America. When Christopher began making plans to… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
All Together Now: How OKRs and strategic portfolio management help make the right IT investments
“One, two, three, four, can I have a little more?” So begins The Beatles’ All Together Now, a lighthearted number that appears on the group’s tenth studio album, Yellow Submarine. Sung by Paul McCartney atop a grainy acoustic guitar, the verse is part of a track that’s meant to be a children’s sing-along. Yet its lyrics also have lessons for… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
Keep your eye on the prize: Align your IT investments with business strategy
For one of the greatest mountaineers in history, Reinhold Messner is an unassuming figure: a slight man, now in his late 70s, whose gentle demeanor and inviting blue eyes conceal a lifetime of adventure. When I met him this spring, on a trip to one of his Mountain Museums in South Tyrol, Italy, I was starstruck—not only because of his… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
It’s NOT the end of the world as we know it
Hopefully 2022 started off well for you. In reading the Forrester report, “Predictions 2022: Tech Leadership and Innovation,” it looks like we’re in for continued – and some new – challenges. Of course, the pandemic persists in confusing and confounding the best-laid plans. But this doesn’t mean planning should stop. On the contrary, you need to keep planning – and planning and… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
Enterprise architecture: Less is more… still
In summer 2021, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) was reopened after six years of renovation. The building was originally architected in the late 1960’s by German-American Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and is the epitome of his modernist architecture style. The refurbishment – mostly targeting safety concerns, construction weaknesses and structural damage – was trusted to David Chipperfield Architects, who painstakingly worked… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
The Hard Truth about Digital Transformation
If you’ve seen our video snippet inviting you to the Alfabet presentation at Software AG’s Release Update Virtual Conference, you’ve seen my colleagues, Uli and Ali, standing in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in a hubbub of traffic moving from east-to-west and west-to-east. Thirty years ago there was a 10-foot concrete wall just behind where they are standing, with only small groups… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
Do you have the right tools for freedom?
In my last blog about using enterprise architecture to optimize service management, I wrote about a recent RV trip I took using New Mexico’s state park campgrounds for our overnight stops. Our new company slogan “Freedom as a Service” had just been launched and I couldn’t help thinking that this is personified by what the state parks system offers. The freedom to… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
Quality Service does not Happen by Accident
On our recent RV vacation through New Mexico and Texas, my husband and I spent most nights at the campgrounds offered by the US state park system. This is a wonderful service for travelers – your basic needs are met in breathtaking settings – and I crafted my retirement plans then and there around being a volunteer camp host. I… -
Strategic Portfolio Management
The Enterprise Architect’s Journey
Gone are the days when the enterprise architecture (EA) team’s remit was to document the lay of the land in corporate IT. That’s when modeling software was still an adequate tool for an EA practice. But organizations came to realize that, while it may be important to understand how the pieces of the IT puzzle fit together (for example, for…
