Governance & Planning

Without a proven framework that reflects the true value of each system in their portfolio IT managers and business unit managers run the risk of incorrectly prioritising new ICT investments and inappropriately identifying the risks associated with these investments. To gain a clearer picture of the value and risk associated with each new ICT investment IT managers should map their ...

Usage patterns will be different in every organisation, but the number and size of messages will continue to increase. It is important to watch for shifts in the technology that will help an organisation absorb more data with greater ease. Most of all, it is critical to understand how changes in the business, the technical capabilities of users or their correspondents, marketing pl...

When IT industry futurists speculate on the next wave of technology, they often ignore two important elements in the equation, ie ‘what problem will the solution address’ and ‘will the buyers’ pay for it’? Until the futurist has answered these questions, their predictions lack integrity.

In 2004 many new IT initiatives (especially e-business and business intelligence initiatives) are likely to expose organisations to new technologies and business processes. These new technologies and business processes will require organisations to embark on new experience curves. Organisations that assume their existing track record will be sufficient to take on these new experience curve...

As a CIO, or an IT Manager, a key part of your job will be helping business leaders recognise opportunities where IT could improve the way they do business. If you haven’t made an effort to build a personal relationship with your peers BEFORE you try to give them business advice you will almost certainly fail. Put simply, if they don’t like you they won’t trust you and they ...

There is no time like the present to get Executive buy-in to invest in a Records and Document Management (RDM) framework and technical solution. Pending legislation in USA (Sarbanes-Oxley and Bio-Terrorism) and CLERP9 in Australia, a synopsis of which appears in Note 1 below, is likely to put RDM on the radar screen of many CIOs and IT managers.

Many organisations have two business strategies – an actual strategy and an espoused strategy. For IT managers this creates a major problem because these actual and espoused strategies can be very different. If the IT managers align IT systems and processes to the organisations espoused business strategy they will almost certainly make inappropriate IT investments in terms of the actual busi...

Just as one size car does not suit everyone, so one organisational design and IT management structure will not meet the needs of all firms or agencies. As there is no perfect approach for developing an IT management structure, managers must research available options, assess their suitability and ‘road test’ them before implementing them.

Restructure roles and responsibilities of staff only when there are compelling reasons and apply the guiding principles, as set out below, when designing the new structure.

More than half of all IT projects do not deliver the expected benefits. This is a metric that CEOs do not want to hear in these days of executive dissatisfaction with IT investment performance, and it is the CIO that is called to explain.