IT Organization

Two Organization Questions Facing the CIO

April 20, 2010

co-authored with Rob Boudrow A few days ago, we had a great chat with Marc Cecere, Forrester’s CIO and IT organization expert on the trends and changes we are seeing in IT organizations. The great thing about talking with analysts is that it forces you to summarize your thinking. In gathering our thoughts, we think two types of questions are currently driving re-evaluation of IT org structure: How can we improve our business operations using ...

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Innovation for the Rest of Us (presentation)

March 9, 2010

I had the privilege today of sharing some ideas on innovation at the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference. The two points of my talk were: Companies should spend more time solving problems and less time coming up with brand new ideas. There are plenty of good ideas already brewing in the minds of employees, customers, vendors and universities – it’s a matter of tapping into them. There are (at least) 4 things you have ...

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Does the CIO Control IT Spending?

January 29, 2010

At Diamond, we are in the early stages of analyzing survey data from our 2010 Diamond Digital IQ study, a multi-industry study of the strategic use of IT. The respondents are equally distributed between business and IT leaders. For more details on what to expect, have a look at the DDIQ results from the last two years and a summary published by CIO Insight. To whet your appetites, I wanted to share one of the ...

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Run IT Like a Business, Not As a Business

January 25, 2010

A recent InfoWorld article by Bob Lewis questions the IT organization concept of “running IT as a business.” Paraphrasing, he poses several problems with it: No one inside your company is your customer IT’s costs are always higher than external options Building software that “meets customer requirements” is short-sighted and reactive Software product focus limits enterprise wide thinking and shared investment It creates more organizational and relationship barriers and is seen as a vendor not ...

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IT Czar – A New IT Leadership Role?

January 14, 2010

With the NFL playoffs in full swing*, most of the league’s teams are on the sidelines thinking about how to get better for next year. Most of the introspection involves evaluating coaches and players. One new front office hire that is particularly interesting is Cleveland’s recruiting of Mike Holmgren as its new president. He is known as the architect of very successful Green Bay Packers teams (75-37 record) and the cultivator of a high quality ...

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One Million Dollars or One Year

December 2, 2009

As we’re nearing the end of the 2010 planning cycle, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on how we plan projects and whether our processes are as effective as they could be. At one point or another, everyone working in IT has asked themselves, “Why is everything so complicated?” Priorities change, projects grow in scope, budgets shrink. All the while, we’re forced to explain to senior management what it is we actually ...

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Thinking Globally – Where Should a CIO Begin?

October 23, 2009

A few weeks ago, I participated in a workshop with a global financial services CIO and a few of his leadership team to discuss what the coming 3-5 years would mean for the IT function and its role in the business. The most important driver of this kind of conversation has to be where the business is headed. To serve as a proxy for this, we spent a good deal of time talking about questions ...

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