CIO Dashboard » New CIO? Assess IT with 5 Questions

New CIO? Assess IT with 5 Questions

post by Chris Curran on May 10, 2010

As a new CIO, you have two choices for learning about your organization. You can “hit the road” and meet with most or all of the leaders, stakeholders and a sampling of others to get a broad picture or along with the meeting and greeting you can focus your efforts on key functions and relationships to ferret out the problems. A broad approach will uncover issues but won’t allow you enough time to dig in before moving on to your next meeting. Furthermore, if your assessment is not done in the first 3 months or so, the honeymoon is over and the problems are yours, whether you know them or not. So, you have to get it done fast.

if your assessment is not done in the first 3 months or so, the honeymoon is over

At PwC, one of the common questions we get is how to assess the health or maturity of an IT organization. As good consultants do, we have developed extremely comprehensive models, assessments, questionnaires and tools to develop these assessments. But for a new CIO, you don’t typically have the time to devote to such a detailed and comprehensive assessment in your first 100 days. To address this, I’ve distilled our best thinking into 5 questions that can serve as a proxy for a more detailed assessment. With these 5 questions, you can develop a good view of what’s going on and where the hot spots are. And, as my friend Chris Potts suggests, each of these questions should consider the management, operational and technical implications when it makes sense.

5 Question IT Assessment for New CIOs

Do business and IT leaders regularly interact?
Has scope been cut for any of the top 5 projects (by spend)?
Does the IT leadership group operate as a team?
Are any of the top IT support issues recurring?
Can business sponsors for top 5 projects describe the project’s business case in one sentence?

Do Business and IT Leaders Regularly Interact?

By regular, I don’t mean “Hey, nice to see you” in the coffee line regular. And, I don’t mean executive status meeting regular. I mean, is there a regularly scheduled time during which real issues are discussed and concrete planning is discussed - not in large groups, but one on one. I worked with an insurance CTO who had a weekly meeting with the head of strategy - now, we’re talking. Here are some of the regular meetings you should look for:

CTO/chief architect - head of strategy
CTO/chief architect - head of new product/service development
Head of Apps - business unit/functional leaders
Head of Ops/Infrastructure - head of customer service
IT person responsible for people - head of HR/recruiting
IT Controller - corporate controller

The other thing to explore is what kind of regular meetings your predecessor had with key leaders - CFO, Controller, Head of HR, business unit leads, etc.

Has Scope Been Cut for Any of the Top 5 Projects?

“On-time, On-Budget” has got to be one of the most over used and largely useless measures of project success. The reason is that many times this magic is done by cutting scope. In PwC’s 2010 Digital IQ survey, 60% of business and IT leaders said that their projects don’t regularly deliver their planned scope. So, just bypass the scope-budget metrics and go straight to the scope. Its the business capabilities that a project’s sponsor wants anyway. Cutting scope cuts business value and customer satisfaction.

Does the IT Leadership Group Operate as a Team?

As a follow-on to the first question, how regularly does the IT leadership team meet and interact? Are the meetings just the CIO’s staff meeting that follows a meaningless agenda or are they real issues-based interactions? The second part of this question is how well the team’s skills complement each other and how well each leader’s traits and skills align with their assigned jobs. Is the leader assigned to manage and track the IT portfolio really a better innovator and planner?

Are Any of the Top IT Support Issues Recurring?

MIT’s CISR’s research shows that firms who don’t have a stable service platform can’t do much else well. So, have a look at the top 10 or 20 high priority service tickets over the last few month and see if there are any patterns in who is logging the issues, what kinds of issues they are, how long they take to resolve, etc. You will also learn a lot about the organization’s attitude toward service, process maturity, staff, etc.

Can Business Sponsors Simply Describe Business Cases?

Every company has a different approach to business cases. One grocery company I worked with was satisfied with a “we know it’s a good project” to justify an investment (not advocating that, BTW). Instead of getting into the specifics, just ask the business sponsors to explain what they are getting out of the projects. See how simply they state the objectives, if there are any business metrics attached and make sure you can actually measure them.

With these 5 questions, you will learn about alignment, processes, projects, people, service and support and most importantly, business value. Let me know what you think and other ways you have seen CIOs get up to speed quickly.

Kyle Moore

Thanks for writing this, Chris. It is a great quick path to understanding your a new IT department and even gain some knowledge of the company. Next steps would still be to dive deeper in several areas. You aren’t suggesting this approach as an alternative to a thorough review, are you?
- Chris Curran
  
  Thanks Kyle - no, I’m suggesting this as a starting point to get to the root of the major problems quickly. -cc
Kyle Moore

Thanks for writing this, Chris. It is a great quick path to understanding your a new IT department and even gain some knowledge of the company. Next steps would still be to dive deeper in several areas. You aren’t suggesting this approach as an alternative to a thorough review, are you?
- Chris Curran
  
  Thanks Kyle - no, I’m suggesting this as a starting point to get to the root of the major problems quickly. -cc
Peter Kretzman

I like most of this, Chris, but your item about “cutting scope” took me aback. When I saw the caption, in fact, I actually anticipated that you were about to say that cutting scope would be seen a POSITIVE sign in this initial assessment — that rather than cling to what often are over-elevated and elaborate expectations of functionality, the company is showing its willingness to make tough choices. It’s deciding not to do some parts of the project initially, so that it can succeed in a phase-wise approach. But no, I discovered you were actually claiming the opposite. So my experience leads me to disagree.

I would take your last sentence in that section, “Cutting scope cuts business value and customer satisfaction”, and turn it inside out: FAILING to prune scope appropriately often tends to make a project bite off more than it can effectively chew. It can ultimately lead to overcomplex systems that detract from customer satisfaction.
Peter Kretzman

I like most of this, Chris, but your item about “cutting scope” took me aback. When I saw the caption, in fact, I actually anticipated that you were about to say that cutting scope would be seen a POSITIVE sign in this initial assessment — that rather than cling to what often are over-elevated and elaborate expectations of functionality, the company is showing its willingness to make tough choices. It’s deciding not to do some parts of the project initially, so that it can succeed in a phase-wise approach. But no, I discovered you were actually claiming the opposite. So my experience leads me to disagree.

I would take your last sentence in that section, “Cutting scope cuts business value and customer satisfaction”, and turn it inside out: FAILING to prune scope appropriately often tends to make a project bite off more than it can effectively chew. It can ultimately lead to overcomplex systems that detract from customer satisfaction.
Kuldeep Tanwar

Nice article. I do agree with Peter to a certain extent about cutting scope. Cutting scope is subjective. It depends on the business value the requirement is providing, and where it lies within the realm of all the project priorities.

Regards
Kuldeep Tanwar
Kuldeep Tanwar

Nice article. I do agree with Peter to a certain extent about cutting scope. Cutting scope is subjective. It depends on the business value the requirement is providing, and where it lies within the realm of all the project priorities.

Regards
Kuldeep Tanwar
Steve Romero, IT Governance Ev

I love the simplicity of your list. There will always be a ton of work to do and countless questions for a new CIO, so initially focusing on a small number of telling questions is a manageable and realistic approach. It should go far in preventing any knee-jerk tendency to “boil the ocean” or “solve world hunger.”

I would add the following question to the list, “Can Business and IT Leadership describe the governance framework/model?” Our friends at MIT CISR have identified “leadership ability to describe the governance model” as a key differentiator in an organization’s ability to realize value from their technology investments.

I contend if the organization has sound governance, the resulting reasoned and rational decisions will likely induce some good answers to the other questions you ask.

Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist
http://community.ca.com/blogs/theitgovernanceevangelist/
Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist

I love the simplicity of your list. There will always be a ton of work to do and countless questions for a new CIO, so initially focusing on a small number of telling questions is a manageable and realistic approach. It should go far in preventing any knee-jerk tendency to “boil the ocean” or “solve world hunger.”

I would add the following question to the list, “Can Business and IT Leadership describe the governance framework/model?” Our friends at MIT CISR have identified “leadership ability to describe the governance model” as a key differentiator in an organization’s ability to realize value from their technology investments.

I contend if the organization has sound governance, the resulting reasoned and rational decisions will likely induce some good answers to the other questions you ask.

Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist
http://community.ca.com/blogs/theitgovernanceevangelist/
Chris Curran

Peter & Steve - thanks again for reading and sharing your insights. Kuldeep, welcome to the discussion and thanks.

As with any summary, a lot gets lost in what is not said, implied, etc. I’m not trying to say all can be done in 5 questions, but I too like simplicity.

To your point Peter, a lot depends on the skills and experience of those planning, designing, scoping and reviewing/governing. One could argue that the project planning process should do the pruning work so that the scope is solid going into detailed design and implementation (or that the stories should be locked down, for you agile fans). Organizations who prune after the fact, are cutting value and lowering stakeholder satisfaction. Companies who do this often don’t spend enough time up front truly understanding the problem they are trying to resolve and in turn, end up doing the understanding on the fly which often inflates the work at hand and thus the cuts.

Steve, I look at the 5 questions as each having elements of governance in them, so I didn’t highlight it explicitly, but appreciate you doing so!

-Chris
Chris Curran

Peter & Steve - thanks again for reading and sharing your insights. Kuldeep, welcome to the discussion and thanks.

As with any summary, a lot gets lost in what is not said, implied, etc. I’m not trying to say all can be done in 5 questions, but I too like simplicity.

To your point Peter, a lot depends on the skills and experience of those planning, designing, scoping and reviewing/governing. One could argue that the project planning process should do the pruning work so that the scope is solid going into detailed design and implementation (or that the stories should be locked down, for you agile fans). Organizations who prune after the fact, are cutting value and lowering stakeholder satisfaction. Companies who do this often don’t spend enough time up front truly understanding the problem they are trying to resolve and in turn, end up doing the understanding on the fly which often inflates the work at hand and thus the cuts.

Steve, I look at the 5 questions as each having elements of governance in them, so I didn’t highlight it explicitly, but appreciate you doing so!

-Chris
Jim Smith

Chris,
The advice in this article has to have been based on a small company model or certainly on a model where the CIO isn’t reporting to the CEO. Your 5 questions are part of the discovery process, but nothing unique to IT. The bigger challenge is determining whether the CIO has been an integral part of the planning process. Assuming the CIO is a peer of the other officers; I begin a parallel questioning of the CEO and officers for their opinion of why they think the previous CIO failed, if indeed that was the case.
Iâ€™m really not trying to be argumentative, but in twenty years of doing this I have yet to find an IT organization that was singularly at fault. If the CIO is not postured correctly, the answers to three of your questions are interesting, but the CIO wonâ€™t be able to do much with the information. It will be a case of trying to push the string up hill. Imagine a very typical cause of scope change, the requirements were incomplete and the later discovered need for change is going to be expensive. When the CIO is below the peer level of the executive sponsor heâ€™s going to be told to shrink scope. What should happen is that the project should go back to the committee for additional funding with the chips falling where they may.
I submit that any experienced CIO will have little trouble figuring out the management problems within IT, the much more difficult challenge is getting the officers to accept a completely open dialogue about whatâ€™s causing IT to be viewed as sub-par.
Every single assignment I have worked on resulted in major changes to the way the business interacts with IT. The five questions are interesting and maybe somewhat helpful, but if the CIO isnâ€™t organizationally positioned to force (with the CEOâ€™s support) operational changes, heâ€™ll just be the next casualty waiting for the date.
- Chris Curran
  
  Thanks Jim - I appreciate perspectives and a good discussion. These questions are based on working with larger firms, all above $3B in revenue. I would argue that three of the five questions are pretty unique to IT - those about projects, service and business cases - as other functions tend to not have the same focus on these things internally. Also, I don’t say or imply that these questions and what is revealed from them indict IT individually. Rather, they help the CIO uncover problems in interaction points across the organization.
  
  As for your comment about “experienced CIOs will have little trouble figuring out the management problems” - I would agree for small/medium sided organizations. Not so in my experience for larger organizations - symptoms yes, root causes, not so easy.
  
  Finally, I hope that a newly hired CIO has thoroughly explored the “why the previous CIO failed” questioning with his boss and peers BEFORE accepting the job. I would.
  
  -Chris
Jim Smith

Chris,
The advice in this article has to have been based on a small company model or certainly on a model where the CIO isn’t reporting to the CEO. Your 5 questions are part of the discovery process, but nothing unique to IT. The bigger challenge is determining whether the CIO has been an integral part of the planning process. Assuming the CIO is a peer of the other officers; I begin a parallel questioning of the CEO and officers for their opinion of why they think the previous CIO failed, if indeed that was the case.
Iâ€™m really not trying to be argumentative, but in twenty years of doing this I have yet to find an IT organization that was singularly at fault. If the CIO is not postured correctly, the answers to three of your questions are interesting, but the CIO wonâ€™t be able to do much with the information. It will be a case of trying to push the string up hill. Imagine a very typical cause of scope change, the requirements were incomplete and the later discovered need for change is going to be expensive. When the CIO is below the peer level of the executive sponsor heâ€™s going to be told to shrink scope. What should happen is that the project should go back to the committee for additional funding with the chips falling where they may.
I submit that any experienced CIO will have little trouble figuring out the management problems within IT, the much more difficult challenge is getting the officers to accept a completely open dialogue about whatâ€™s causing IT to be viewed as sub-par.
Every single assignment I have worked on resulted in major changes to the way the business interacts with IT. The five questions are interesting and maybe somewhat helpful, but if the CIO isnâ€™t organizationally positioned to force (with the CEOâ€™s support) operational changes, heâ€™ll just be the next casualty waiting for the date.
- Chris Curran
  
  Thanks Jim - I appreciate perspectives and a good discussion. These questions are based on working with larger firms, all above $3B in revenue. I would argue that three of the five questions are pretty unique to IT - those about projects, service and business cases - as other functions tend to not have the same focus on these things internally. Also, I don’t say or imply that these questions and what is revealed from them indict IT individually. Rather, they help the CIO uncover problems in interaction points across the organization.
  
  As for your comment about “experienced CIOs will have little trouble figuring out the management problems” - I would agree for small/medium sided organizations. Not so in my experience for larger organizations - symptoms yes, root causes, not so easy.
  
  Finally, I hope that a newly hired CIO has thoroughly explored the “why the previous CIO failed” questioning with his boss and peers BEFORE accepting the job. I would.
  
  -Chris
Megan - CIO Consultant

Perfect example for the newbies in IT’s Strategic planing, specially I liked this point “Are Any of the Top IT Support Issues Recurring?”
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