Posts Tagged ‘project’

New Name For CIOs: Strategic Execution Officer

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
CIOs Need To Learn To Manage Wild IT Projects<p>(c) - 2007</p>

CIOs Need To Learn To Manage Wild IT Projects(c) - 2007

In order to complete in a global economy that is moving faster every day, more and more firms are committing to implementing those really BIG process digitization projects. More often than not the CIO will find himself / herself in charge of not only the implementation of the new software application, but also the overall success of the project. How do you go about doing that?

What Goes Wrong With Big IT Projects

We all know the statistics – most big IT projects are not successful. However, the key question is why? It turns out that all too often the issue is not with the new process automation technology that is being implemented, but rather with the management challenge that comes along with a project like this.

The reason that managing a large transformational IT project is so hard is because the CIO also needs to be finding ways to drive the new business process changes that will be required once the new systems have been installed. It turns out that nobody likes change!

What Doesn’t Work?

It seems as though IT departments have been trying since the beginning of time to find a way to tackle this two-headed IT project beast. One approach has been to give responsibility for the success of the project to an executive governance committee. It turns out that this type of committee does an excellent job of defining the strategy for implementing the changes that will be needed, but does a lousy job of executing it.

Another approach has been to create an IT task force to implement this type of change. They generally do a good job of getting the new application up and running, but they lack the wide-ranging authority to cause other parts of the company to change how they are doing their jobs.

What Does An IT Strategic Execution Officer Do?

If the CIO is willing to step up and tackle leading both sides of a major IT process automation project, just what do they have to do? There are three fundamental tasks that they will need to deal with:

  • The implementation of the process automation application(s).
  • Making sure that the new technology gets adopted by the rest of the company.
  • Making sure that the new processes that the project has implemented start to get used by everyone.

Ultimately, the CIO will be filling the management / leadership gap that exists between coming up with the process automation plan and actually changing the company to use the project once its been implemented.

Final Thoughts

No CIO wants to take on more work – there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done as it is. However, ensuring that big IT projects get implemented correctly and that the company transforms its processes in order to use the new tool is the key to the company’s long term success.

This is a clear example of where a CIO gets to practice for his / her next job: becoming CEO. Nobody else will be as well positioned to implement cross-company changes. CIOs who can pull this off will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The basic job of a CIO is to ensure that a company’s IT infrastructure operates smoothly and allows the company to conduct business. On Monday, August 3, 2009, PayPal’s CIO failed at this most basic of jobs…

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Posted in product managment | 4 Comments »

Getting & Keeping IT Top Management’s Attention

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
Getting Senior Management To Stay Involved In A Project Can Be Hard To Do

Getting Senior Management To Stay Involved In A Project Can Be Hard To Do

In my humble opinion, one of the key contributors to why so many IT projects fail is because of simple neglect. I guess the best analogy is if you were starting to drive down a highway road. When you started driving, you’d keep your hands on the steering wheel and make sure that the car was going in the correct direction and that it stayed on the road. However, if later on you took both of your hands off of the wheel, then the car would start to drift and would eventually plunge off of the road.

IT projects seem to follow this same path: when they are kicked off, everyone, including senior IT management, seems to have their hands on the steering wheel. However, as the days, weeks, months go on it sure seems like nobody is holding on to the wheel any more and the project tends to start to drift. All too often, more people are then thrown at the project or, worse yet, the schedule is reduced which causes the project to speed up. This just makes the eventual crash all that more spectacular.

So none of this discussion is news to us IT folks – we’ve seen it over and over again. What we need to find is a way to stop this from happening. Jesper Simonsen is a European professor who has spent some time studying this problem. He’s come up with some suggestions as to how we can go about fixing it.

Simonsen believes that the key to getting senior IT management involved in a project is to use participatory design so that they feel that they have contributed to the solution. The specific technique that he believes can be used to make this happen is called “problem mapping“.

Too many IT staffers solve problems by sitting in their cubes and dreaming up new ways to deal with old problems. Participatory design requires IT staffers to deal with a problem directly. They share their views on the problem and then they offer their suggestions as to how IT can be used to solve the problem.

In order to engage senior IT management, they need to be involved in this development of an answer to why IT needs to be involved in solving the problem. This is where problem mapping comes in.

Problem mapping is designed to allow the argument regarding if and how IT should be used to solve a problem to be evaluated. It provides a means by which the argument can be visualized and helps in seeing the structure of the argument.

When you use problem mapping, you create a table that has four columns with the following headers:

  • Problem / Need
  • Causes
  • Consequences
  • Solutions

The real power of using a problem map is that it will force all involved to talk about what they see as being the real problem. The link between what they are proposing as a solution and the original problem is very clearly shown.

The key point to make here is that by making the whole problem solving process so visible, you will actively engage the top management in the process. They will be given an opportunity to sit back and challenge, make changes to, and review the solution that is being created before their very eyes.

Once you’ve achieved this level of participation at the start of a project, the senior IT management will remain involved during the entire project because they will better understand what is being done and they will feel as though they have contributed to the solution.

Do you have problems keeping your senior management involved in projects after they get started? What have you tried to improve their involvement? Was it successful? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in business alignment | 1 Comment »

Can’t We All Just Get Along (In IT)?

Monday, January 26th, 2009
IT Departments Need To Work With Colleagues In Other Firms To Understand Technology

IT Departments Need To Work With Colleagues In Other Firms To Understand Technology

So there you are, manning the laptop, doing your utmost best to guide your IT department and, of course, your company on to greater glories. Do you really need to network with your colleagues at other firms? For that matter, do they really have anything to teach you?

Peter Whatnell over at Sunoco has some thoughts on this subject. Whatnell is a bright guy: he’ s been in charge of Sunoco’s IT operations since 2001 (remember the dot.com crash?) and he is now the president of the Society for Information Management. Ben Worthen over at the Wall Street Journal recently had a chance to sit down with Peter and have a chat about the importance of remembering to look outside the company for ideas.

Whatnell makes the good point that the colleagues that you network with don’t even have to be in the same industry as yourself. As an example, if you talk with someone who is working in IT for the construction industry and they start to mention how they are starting to use mobile devices to quickly distribute design changes, then you may have found an idea that you can use in your neck of the woods.

One of the big questions that we all deal with is “am I giving away competitive information if I talk shop with a colleague from another firm?” Whatnell makes the point that by now we should all be able to realize that what makes our firms competitive is not the underlying technology that we use. Talking about technology is not going to reveal any big company secrets.

What makes our firms competitive is how we go about using these pieces of technology in order to solve the problems that our firm is facing. This means that even if you and your competitor have access to the same technology, you’ll end up putting it together much differently.

Whatnell believes that the true source of a competitive advantage is knowing exactly how you can use IT to help make your business more successful. One interesting way to do this is to ask key executives how the firm makes money. If they don’t know, then this is an area that IT can help simplify.

In these tough times, it’s interesting to hear what Whatnell has to say about what his biggest challenge is. Sunoco is an oil company – it’s a commodity business that’s competing in a mature market. In order for Sunoco to be successful, the firm is going to have to find a way to become THE low cost provider.

What this means for IT is that we need to find ways to help the business side of the house cut expenses, reduce cycle times, and improve their overall agility. The goal should be to avoid having IT being told to just “cut your budget to help our bottom line.”

In the end, Whatnell says that an IT department needs to have earned its credibility within the company in order to be able to be able to contribute to helping the company reduce costs. The key here is that you need to have already earned this credibility.

Do you routinely meet and talk with colleagues that work outside of your firm? Do some of these colleagues work in different industries? Does your IT department have the ability to work with the rest of the business to trim costs? Do you feel that your IT department has the credibility that it will need to have these discussions with the rest of the business? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in it strategy | 3 Comments »

3 Secrets That Oil Companies Use To Run A Great IT Department

Thursday, January 15th, 2009
Peter Whatnell, CIO of Sunoco, Has Some Interesting Thoughts On How To Run A Successful IT Department

Peter Whatnell, CIO of Sunoco, Has Some Interesting Thoughts On How To Run A Successful IT Department

If you had to guess as to what the secret of running a great IT department is, what would you say? Peter Whatnell over at Sunoco has some thoughts on this subject. Peter breaks it down to three key items: knowing how your company makes money, choosing to not run against the company’s culture, and remembering to never fall in love with technology. How hard can that be?

Whatnell is a bright guy: he’ s been in charge of Sunoco’s IT operations since 2001 (remember the dot.com crash?) and he is now the president of the Society for Information Management. Ben Worthen over at the Wall Street Journal recently had a chance to sit down with Peter and have a chat about the role that an IT department plays in a company’s success.

Whatnell pointed out that the arrival of a global recession has caused all IT departments to take any plans that they had created prior to the end of August and basically throw them away. The big hit is going to be especially felt in new projects.

The difference between current events and the dot.com crash that happened back in 2001 is that that crash really only impacted the IT community. This time around, it’s really a global meltdown and it’s impacting the whole business.

IT is facing a significant challenge in that there is now a lot of easy-to-use IT technology that is available to consumers. Examples include the iPhone (of course!) and free on-line email accounts with virtually unlimited storage. What this means is that corporate users are now expecting to see similar products available to them while they are at work.

IT departments have some valid security and support issues for not diving headlong into offering such services internally. However, they do need to seriously consider how to offer their customers such services.

Whatnell stresses that we need to make sure that we don’t “…waste a good crisis.” What he means by this is that 2009 is going to be tough and it’s going to force every IT department to investigate nontraditional ways of delivering IT services.

Whatnell is somewhat famous for saying that he’d consider moving to a cheaper alternative, such as Google’s email system, if he could get 90% of the functionality for 10% of the cost. One of the reasons that he’s taken this stance is because he realizes that most users only scratch the surface of the functionality of the applications that they have available to them. Give the power users access to the fancy, expensive version of the apps and give everyone else the basic version.

Whatnell has some very specific thoughts when it comes to evaluating potential IT projects. He says that he evaluates projects based on what they do to support the company’s strategy, what the business case is, and finally, what the business risk is.

He points out that the more change that an IT project would cause to how business is conducted, the bigger the risk is. This does not mean that you don’t do the IT project, but that you need to be very careful and make sure that you give your full attention to all of the change management activities that would be required.

What do you think about what Peter has to say? Do you think that his view from inside an oil company is relevant to the rest of the IT industry? Which of his suggestions do you think is the most important? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in it strategy | 10 Comments »