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Building know-how from the ITX team blog

Why Client Advocates Are the New Currency in the Age of Digital Disruption

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The sooner business leaders turn their attention from Profit to Advocacy as the primary measure of success, the sooner they will see growth in both. Profit offers a snapshot of success, but Advocacy is predictive of future success. As long you as continue its care and feeding, Advocacy will remain the gift that keeps on giving.

Building a client base of advocates gives you a big leg up on the competition. It means that you’re surfing the wave of digital disruption instead of being dragged along the jagged reef below. It may even mean that you are the disruptor – not only of competitors in your space, but of yourself too. That’s a good thing. And advocates help you do both.

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Could IT Legacy Modernization Have Kept the Lights on in Texas?

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Consider the recent weather-related tragedies in Texas. Most seem ready to pin the blame on Texas’ near-total isolation from the rest of the U.S. power grid. And they’d be right – but only in part. The Lone Star State’s grid independence actually got its start nearly 100 years ago as a way to avoid federal regulators.

Still, that piece of trivia ignores what many are calling leaders’ longstanding indifference to IT infrastructure problems that, when examined critically, could bear responsibility for the widespread power outages, extensive property damage, and tragic loss of life throughout Texas.

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IT Computer aligned with Texas and a heartbeat

Can Large Enterprises Innovate Effectively?

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Pathways to Growth for Mature Organizations and Startups

Of course, large enterprises can innovate, but it is harder for them than for startups. Many do not know where to begin. They look back and recall how, as a startup, they discovered the product-market fit that made them successful. And now, in full growth mode, they attack innovation with the mindset of growth they have today – which does not work.

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How To Create – and Curate – Effective Documentation

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There’s more to creating effective documentation than merely gathering information. As a consumer of documentation, you know this to be true. Because you’ve been there. We all have.

At first enthused by the seeming treasure trove of information assembled to guide your learning and project progress, your excitement is quickly dashed as your search for the proverbial needle in a haystack drags on. What first appeared as the holy grail of actionable knowledge becomes a fruitless quest for that one elusive piece of information you need to move forward on a task. Sheepishly, you turn to a more experienced colleague and ask for a lifeline.

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New ITX Integration Connects Threat Modeling Process to Jira

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OWASP Accepts Tool For Re-use, Acknowledges as ‘Best Practice’
When a team of ITX developers recently created – and contributed – a new integration to the Open Web Application Security Project’s (OWASP) threat modeling tool (Threat Dragon), they were simply living the company’s culture. Continuous innovation, thriving together, and giving back to the community are pillars of the ITX value system.
The integration automatically pushes open, non-mitigated security threats created in Threat Dragon directly into our Jira backlog. ITX contributed the integration back to OWASP because we know there are a lot of dev teams in our community using Jira to manage their product backlog – especially if they’re doing it in an Agile mindset.
OWASP has accepted the contribution, even acknowledging ITX as a “Company Collaborator” and posting the integration as a best practice on its website.

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Overcoming Barriers To Successful Product Discovery

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To those in the digital product space, the term “Discovery Phase” will likely wash over us like many of the other oft-touted buzz words of our industry. But a healthy discovery process allows us to understand product-market fit and identify key user needs. What’s keeping us from incorporating this valuable learning into our products? We believe it’s either ignorance, intuition, or inertia that stands in the way of successful discovery.

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How To Design Secure Systems That Support Remote Teams

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If you’re concerned about security now that your team is working remotely, you’ve been doing it wrong.

Even as the economy slowly reopens, the global coronavirus pandemic is forcing many businesses to ask employees to continuing to work from home. While system security is always a top priority, a number of clients have only recently shared their security concerns now that their folks are working remotely.

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Vitals Update App Creates Hope Through Innovation

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With the launch of the Vitals Update app, everyone at ITX Corp. is so incredibly proud to take a stand in the fight against novel coronavirus. We developed the Vitals Update software solution to enable healthcare professionals to monitor potential COVID-19 cases while patients report their symptoms from quarantine.

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ITX Product Momentum Podcast – Episode 23: The Product Leader’s Path to High Performance

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As a community, have we gotten better at product leadership? And if we haven’t, what’s it going to take to get there? The answer to both depends on who we ask and by what yardstick we use to measure our performance. For example, is there alignment between the big organizational vision and our individual product vision? Have we mastered the softer skills to bring together such a diverse group of people? And do our teams know how to think through complex problems and adapt when the ground shifts beneath them?
In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean and Paul pose these questions to Richard Banfield, VP of Design Transformation at InVision. Richard’s natural curiosity provides some helpful takeaways:
The notion of high performance is not new; powerful examples exist in every industry and sector. Find one that works for you and imitate it.
Effective product people first need to be people people.
Building a practice of high performance requires us to teach our teams how to work together, think together, and decide together.

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