The Benefits of Outsourcing the Company

I have always been an advocate of IT outsourcing but over the last several years it has become apparent that services available from many sources has made outsourcing of other business processes a viable option, as well. I was talking with a friend recently and had an epiphany regarding this subject: Just like IT, there…

Just What is the CIO’s Role?

There has been a lot of discussion in many forums about the role of the modern CIO. To me it’s fairly simple and it’s in the title: Information. The CIO’s role is about information. Information to make strategic business decisions; Information to make tactical business decisions; Information about the state of the business; Information about…

From Strategic to Commodity – Managing the Transition

Technologies change constantly. When a technology becomes ubiquitous, i.e., it’s only noticed when it’s not there, it’s become a utility and probably a commodity. What happens when a technology moves from being a strategic direction to being a utility? How can you tell and how do you measure and manage it? A strategic technology is…

Establishing a Culture of Change

When a company hires a consultant to assess their systems, they are really asking if everything is being done well. They’re also asking is there anything that should change — and therein lays the rub. Change is difficult for many people and particularly hard if you don’t know why things should change. I’ve had the…

IT Leadership – The Dual Role of Today’s CIO

There is a question about the evolving role of the CIO that is making the rounds on the blogs. Essentially the question is this ― What do you consider the role of the CIO to be? Is it focusing on creating value through technology or running an efficient IT shop? From where I sit as…

IT Project Management 101: 3 Teams, 1 Successful Outcome

As a business manager, what do you do when your IT team tells you a strategically important project can’t get done because there are too many other business critical projects ahead of it? Do you arbitrarily prioritize your project ahead of the others? Do you know what those other projects were going to do for…

Cloudy (Computing) Days are Coming

There are a few coalescing trends that will make the next few years very interesting. One trend is demographic: there is a new generation of folks coming into management that is very comfortable with technology since they have never known a world without it. The members of this group view technology as a given. Like…