Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
Corporate leaders commit enormous sums to technology investment and often, despite reams of “business cases”, on a hope and a prayer that this money will actually buy solutions to their problems. Investments in information technology are particularly mysterious, because it is so new and constantly changing. Nevertheless, it now accounts for half of all capital…
Performance improvement is a top business priority in the “new normal” as organizations seek to perpetuate the cost savings they achieved during the economic downturn and leverage even greater value from their existing assets. While many performance improvement efforts are undertaken informally and within individual departments, others represent board-level initiatives and span the entire operations…
The CIO’s job is not an easy one: equal parts IT innovation salesman; global project manager knitting together the wares of multiple suppliers into a coherent, reliable and cost-effective technology strategy; and prognosticator on the success or failure of major vendors in an industry where repeated waves of change regularly swamp unwary incumbents. Just consider…
Who’s making the deal for the business? And how does that impact IT? Historically, corporate finance and procurement have held the reins for vendor and contract management; not surprising given its responsibility for the corporate bottom line. While this seems reasonable on the surface, the results for IT have been mixed. Financial management teams typically…
Every revolution throughout history has been the result of an evolution — evolving thoughts, needs and capabilities. The move to services thinking is no different. In today’s world, services oriented architecture (SOA) proposes more reusability across enterprises, which decreases development effort, time, and cost. These benefits can help organizations as they face budget shortfalls, are…
The economic downturn forced deep cuts in IT budgets. Now, as CIO’s plan for the recovery, they are facing unprecedented demand for IT services from the business. At the same time, organizations are still keeping spending tightly under control. As CIOs prepare for next year’s budget cycle, it is unrealistic to assume that they can…
Throughout my 29 years of IT service management experience I never once doubted the value of having well defined and well implemented IT service management processes. Over time, it became part of my belief system. I had faith that IT service management (ITSM) provided real value to an organization even though that faith was sometimes…
A colleague recently attended a concert at the new 80,000-seat Croke Park football arena in Dublin, Ireland. As she learned, the sparkling state-of-the-art stadium was built in a residential area with little available parking, and accessibility mainly by public transportation. In fact, during the event, the neighborhood was closed for blocks in all directions, allowing…
When leaders measure the success of a project, or check-in on its status, they usually ask the project manager, “Is the project on schedule? Will it be completed by the due date?” This focus on meeting project deadlines and schedule ripples through the organization and influences how a project manager and a project team approach…
In past articles I have talked about building your IT-business alignment efforts, credibility and relevance by basing your IT priorities, budget and conversations on the things that the business cares most about. Critical to getting this done is to have conversations with your business stakeholders to understand what is important to them. You then need…