Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
General leadership skills just don’t translate into IT. There too many differences between line of business ops and what IT does. But all too often these difference are overlooked in general leadership programs. by Marc Schiller “Leadership is leadership. There’s nothing special about IT and there’s no such thing as IT leadership.” This is what…
Icebergs and sinking ships This is the point in the story where most advisors, consultants and offshore outsourcing vendors will start preaching the mantra that prevention is the best cure. Not a single CIO will disagree with that premise, but such a recital isn’t helpful when the iceberg has already hit and the ship has…
Failed deliverables from offshore outsourcers are a common experience as evidenced by the size and number of LinkedIn discussions, other social media and community posts, and court queues. There are, of course, numerous excuses rendered, few accepted, and passionate arguments on both sides. But when you cut through the noise and look at what you’re…
Oliver Bussmann joined SAP as CIO in 2009 — the eve of the tablet trend and a year that saw smartphone sales reach nearly 54 million units. Since then he’s deployed more than 8,000 iPhones, 17,000 BlackBerry handsets and 14,000 iPads. In this Q&A with CIOUpdate’s sister site, CIO Insight’s Michelle Maisto, Bussmann describes how…
Connecting the dots Now more than ever in future-focused organizations, the CIO is being looked upon to play an executive leadership role in the organization. Note the purposeful use of the word executive. I use this to denote the new expectations of the CIO role, a role in which the CIO plays an integral and…
by Frank Petersmark of X by 2 Despite several generations of executive-level maturity, the CIO role still finds itself playing second fiddle when it comes to full integration with its business peers. Many CIOs say there’s still a fundamental disconnect between them and their business-executive peers on several key strategic issues, including the need to…
Once considered one of the most valued positions in IT, the business analyst role has been decimated by the recession as cost cutting and a myopic focus on lean ops have done away with much of the bridge building between IT and the business. Now that it appears the economy has finally turned a corner,…
Look to the future and the past When developing measures and improvement plans, it can be easy to focus solely on results. However, the organizations studied by APQC emphasize predictive factors as well as outcomes when developing measures. The organizations look both at leading indicators that provide a foundation for performance (such as employee training…
by Becky Partida of APQC In Part 1 of this series, we looked at five best practices that contribute to new product and service innovation. These practices included expanding idea sources beyond areas traditionally associated with innovation (including looking outside the enterprise for innovative ideas) and acknowledging that different types of innovation require different terminologies…
by Jason Druebert of AT&T Professional Services When an IT folks look to improve they most often take the approach of “Let’s do a project to fix this list of items.” The assumption of course being it will result in a big one-time improvement gain. As a consultant this type of work is my bread…