Not Just the CIO's Responsibility

It's not just the CIO that's responsible for the effective use of IT.

A recent survey by Gartner indicated that Chief Information Officers (CIOs) now need to have non-IT business unit management experience if they wish to pursue new CIO opportunities.

In many organisations, particularly governmental, the CIO still does not have direct report to the CEO, and does not therefore sit at the boardroom table.

Part of the reason for this is the lack of non-IT management experience, so that the CIO is still seen as a "techie", rather than a business manager.

It's a a chicken-and-egg situation: the best way of getting general management experience is for the CIO to sit at the boardroom table, and yet the CIO is often prevented from gaining general management experience by being barred from the boardroom table.

It's a fundamental block in the effective use of IT, and aligning IT with Business needs.

An even more fundamental block is the implicit assumption that the effective use of IT is the job of the CIO and the CIO alone.

Even that most excellent of magazines CIO, both the USA and UK versions, appears to have the underlying assumption that everything connected with IT is the job of the CIO.

If this were the case, then the effective use of people would be the job of the HR Director alone.

And the effective use of Money & Finance would be the job of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) alone.

Responsibilities like these, IT, HR, Money & Finance, and other key resources - are the job of every manager.

In fact an implication in IT Governance (see the Weill & Ross book), is that although the CIO is obviously at the forefront, the ultimate responsibility for the effective use of IT rests with the whole senior management team.

Education and experience therefore cuts both ways. If business is to get full value with IT then business managers need education and experience in IT.

That is, while it is true that general management experience will help the CIO, it is equally true that appropriate IT education & experience of senior management - and of every non-IT manager - will enable more effective use of IT, and alignment of IT with Business needs.

The HR function has a vital role to play in all of this, because it doesn't just come down to education and training in Business-with-IT. There is also the issue of changed mental models and business change programmes, so as to get Business and IT in a Partnership Paradigm, rather than the Us v. Them Paradigm that frequently prevails.

P.S.
We're not talking education in point-and-click. By appropriate education we mean MBA-type IT education - of a practical and integrated nature.

And by IT experience we mean nitty-gritty experience like business process mapping, preparation of development testing and use cases, and side-by-side collaboration with IT people.

Easter Greetings in Irish

If you go to the Aran Islands at this time of year, and if you greet an Aran Islander with:
Ta Criost eirithel!

- they will respond with:
Go deimhin, ta se eirithel!

It's the Irish for
Christ is risen!
and He is risen indeed!

The Aran Islands were made famous by John Millington Synge who, after studying Irish and Hebrew at Trinity College, Dublin, spent several summers there perfecting his knowledge of Irish and absorbing the culture.

This led to his masterpiece The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots when it was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, in 1907. It's a quirky comedy about Christy Mahon, a young man whose claim to fame is that he has killed his father by bashing him over the head with a garden spade.

It's the way he tells his story (and who are better story-tellers than the Irish?), that makes the women fall in love with him.

Unfortunately for Christy, his supposedly dead father comes back from the dead, albeit a bit worse for wear, and Christy loses the respect and love of his admirers.

So in a way, Playboy of the Western World has a parallel with Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In this case however, it's an event that is either the biggest myth and con-trick ever perpetrated, or is the miraculous, non-fiction, actual happening which historians at the time reported it to be.

One of these Historians was Luke, a physician, who "carefully investigated everything from the beginning" in order to write his history for a new Christian by the name of Theophilus, who must have been a very important person for Luke to go to all this trouble; a bit like having your own Alpha Course.

Incidentally, the Aran Isands are/were the home of Father Ted, another quirky if not hilarious Irish comedy about Fr. Ted (himself), his zany young side-kick Fr. Dougal, the drunken priest Fr. Jack, and Mrs Doyle, who would NOT take no for an answer ("ah go on!"), in offering you that cup of tea!

May the joy and gladness of Easter be with us all at this time of year.

Caisc shona duit! Happy Easter!

PRINCE2 Cost v. Benefit

Prince2 is a Project Mgt. method used internationally.

But what's the cost v. benefit? It's mandated in UK govt. projects, but this has not prevented some recent, classsic failures.

Which of these statements do you lean toward?

• Prince2 assures the discipline, governance, quality & risk control, alignment with business goals, documentation and guaranteed deliverables needed in an IT project, without which there would be anarchy and failure.
  
  
• Prince2 is a fat, heavy-handed method that goes back to the 1970s, before the world became the fast-changing global village, Internet-enabled place that it is today, and it is a source of competitive disadvantage in preventing IT from meeting customer business needs in the time needed, and getting product & service to market.

The primary advantage of Prince2 is the Business Case, and the business analysis and IT governance that goes with it. It seeks to ensure that the project is rigorously aligned with business aims, and is likely to add value to the business.

The rest of Prince2 is all about the management & control of each stage of the project so as bring about expected deliverables and benefits, as promised in the Business Case.

The issue is that you don't necessarily need Prince2 - and perhaps the bureaucracy that goes with it - to have a good Business Case.

So Prince2 is a double-edged sword; required rigour on the one hand, and bestial bureaucracy on the other.

For example, there is a great deal of documentation, formal approvals, inspections and co-ordination needed in a Prince2 project. Is all of this really needed? Will the documentation actually serve any real purpose?

Arguably, this all adds time to the project. And yet, IT customers may be needing the deliverables - or at least the core component of them - sooner than later; much sooner, owing to business environment and/or competitive pressures.

A second issue is the old chestnut of paralysis by analysis which, arguably, a Prince2 culture fosters. When you have to allow for your business and systems analysis being subjected to severe scrutiny, with no errors allowed, you tend to make sure that it's iron-clad.

Whereas, supposing IT were working in a closer, more iterative, less formal, ego-less mode with its customers, what would happen then?

A third issue is that Prince2 virtually assumes no change, whereas this is one thing you can depend on: change. Consequently, one of the major problems in systems development and its project management is Requirements Creep. After all, it's often impossible for IT customers to know up front what's really needed.

A fourth issue is that Prince2 arguably dis-empowers IT people, and controls rather than trusts. What would happen if IT people became much more in the business picture, really and truly part of it, and were empowered with the (1) business knowledge, (2) tools, (3) business guidelines, and (4) trust as to what's needed and when, albeit with frequent interaction between customers and IT?

In other words, would it be possible to have our cake and eat it?

Might we adhere to Prince2 as a model,
and use its principles as guidelines,
while avoiding the bureaucracy?

Making Mobile Working Work

Mobile working
is accelerating.

It's a priority item on the agendas of many CIOs, and is an example of advances in ICT being used for competitive advantage - or just catching up.

Achieving competitive advantage with mobile working, and the information & communication technologies behind it, depends on:

• Being an early adopter on the New Technology Adoption Curve.
• Doing it right.
  

And doing it right depends on taking a systemic approach. In other words, it's not just a technology project, and not just a business project. It's a technology & business & people project. It has a big sociological content.

So, first of all, why is mobile working accelerating?

1. It's being greatly enabled by the advances in telecommunication and human-computer interface (HCI) technologies.
2. It enables a more cost-effective organisation.
3. It facilitates quicker & easier networking.
4. Given the need for business organisations to be increasingly agile, flexible and responsive, it enables better use of the three paramount resources of the Information Age: People, Time and Information.
   
5. It means that people on the go in this Global Village can stay in touch and keep the pot boiling.
   
6. It makes it possible for people to have a better quality of life in being able to work at home and telecommute - thus avoiding the need to drive/train/bus commute into the business centre every day. We can live a rural life if we want to (see photo).
7. Green Thinking and the cost of fuel. We're trying to reduce global warming and minimise carbon emissions and pollution from electrical & electronic devices, and car/plane/train use. Besides, the prices are going up and up at the pumps!
   

So it's evident that mobile working represents a sea-change; a tectonic movement; a paradigm shift in the use of ICT & HCI, in the way people work and live, in business & organisation models that we've been used to, in cost structures, in the ways that customer service & value might be delivered, and even in society itself.

What can be done, therefore, in approaching mobile working in a way that is not techno-centric, but rather takes a broader, systemic approach? How can we do it right?

The first thing to do would be to:

• Flag mobile working as the bigger issue that it is
• Establish a senior-level Mobile Work Group
  of business and IT executives

- to address the opportunities and challenges in mobile working.

The group should (a) seek the big picture, (b) brainstorm, (c) evaluate, and (d) govern & guide. The goal would be to put the organisation on the right footing, in harnessing mobile working and its enabling technologies, so that it works for the business, its people, and its customers.

Here are some ideas for the Group:

• Look at the impact of mobile working on work practices, and evaluate where we are now.
• Consider how present work practices, routines and processes might be guided for added value, better payback and people satisfaction through mobile working technology.
  
• Take a big-picture look at all the technologies impacting mobile working, including video-conferencing, WiMax, 3G and Bluetooth, and the ones coming down the road, such as flexible screens, the Windows Mobile 7 operating system and high speed uplink packet access, with the objective of standardising the mobile infrastructure and avoid infrastructure anarchy.
  
• Evaluate the technologies for innovative ways in which mobile working might be used to deliver better service and value to customers.
• Ditto for cost savings and time savings.
• Identify those areas where selective outsourcing might be considered, so as to delegate infrastructure management to specialists in these areas.
  
• Make explicit the business goals & objectives that need to drive mobile working.
• Get IT people out into the field and/or operating at the coal-face, to get first-hand experience of mobile working by internal customers, collaborating to make it more effective.
• Look at how mobile working might be used in optimising quality of life for people as, for example, with flexible working, shared jobs and home-working.
  
• Assess the risk aspects with mobile working such as malware & viruses, identity theft, data loss, regulatory compliance and social networking.
  
• Consider the Green Issues and impact.
  

No doubt the Mobile Work Group could come up with other if not better ideas as to how the mobile working should be approached in a systemic manner. The above gives us a start.