New Year’s Resolutions for Reaching Level 3

 
Some suggestions for IT leaders who are determined to drive up the business value and impact of Information Technology during 2008:

I resolve to be more effective in raising awareness of the potential for information technology to drive business growth.  I will bring ‘marketing thinking’ to my IT organization, and focus on improving our business communications.  [...]

Reflections on 2007 - En Route to 2017 (Part 2)

I reflected in my last post on several significant milestones that mark 2007 on the journey to 2017 for IT organizations.  When students of IT organizational evolution look back on 2007 ten years from now, what might this year be remembered for?  I’ll continue this theme now.

 Enterprise Systems unmasked as “no big deal” after all!

A veritable [...]

Reflections on 2007 - En Route to 2017

It seems like a good time of the year to reflect on significant milestones or events that somehow mark 2007 on the journey to 2017 for IT organizations.  Ten years from now, when students of IT organizational evolution look back on 2007, what might the year be remembered for?  I’ll split this into a couple [...]

Did You Accidently Outsource Your Enterprise Architecture?

I’ve referenced Enterprise Architecture several times in this blog, and see it (or lack thereof!) as a common “sticking point” (see, for Example, Enterprise Architecture and Level 2 Sticking Point) as it’s one of those things that does not naturally “grow” out of less mature practices (IT Architecture, for example) but takes a different twist [...]

CIO vs. CTO - What’s The Difference?

One of the blogs I’ve been monitoring lately has the intriguing subtitle “Organizations Get the IT They Deserve” - a one-liner I’ve used from time to time (and something I truly believe!)  The latest post “Starting a High Tech Business: You Need a CTO” is, per its title, oriented towards high-tech start-ups.  However, it’s a good discussion of [...]

CIO Turnover - The Price to Pay for No More Mr. Nice Guy?

We are seeing signs of increasing CIO turnover following several years of relative stability (at least since the mid-90’s when CIO was coming to mean “Career is Over!” I suspect it is in part a byproduct of increasing business-IT maturity, and the “take no prisoners” approach many CIO’s have taken to standardizing and consolidating IT infrastructure, [...]

Business-IT Maturity: Theory Of The Case - Part 2

I want to pick up on this theme as we head into the holidays.  In Part 1 I talked about the drivers that are impacting business-IT maturity - Universal, Business and Internal IT.  Now I want to look at some of the overarching principles I’m seeing in business-IT maturation.  The idea is that these principles [...]

“Weed Pulling” and IT Maturity

I was working with a client earlier in the week on their IT process model.  In common with many IT shops, their processes were heavy on finding, starting, and managing new stuff.  However, they were woefully light on stopping, killing or retiring old stuff!

Many (many!) years ago, I shared an office with a guy who [...]

Does Your IT Organization Embrace the Future?

I talked in my last post (Business-IT Maturity: Theory of the Case - Part 1) about IT leadership either being “victims” of the trends and drivers around them, or leveraging them for advantage.  I want to expand on that thought today.
I’m afraid if history is any indicator, the natural behavior of IT leaders is to [...]

Business-IT Maturity: Theory Of The Case - Part 1

I’d like to begin examining and making explicit a theory of the case for “Next Generation IT Capability.”  By theory of the caseI mean to identify the major drivers behind increasing business-IT maturity, and lay out some basic principles of business-IT evolution - how today’s IT shops are evolving to capitalize on emerging technologies (e.g., Web [...]