IT Value Stack

Essential reading, books every CIO should have

Martin Veitch, Editor-in-Chief, CIO UK recently reviewed The IT Value Stack in his article Essential reading, books every CIO should have.

He said "This is a solid work to dip into to remind yourself or others that there may be a third way that lets the board understand IT and IT understand the board."

Other excellent books in his article included:

Groundswell Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (Harvard Business Press)

Crossing the Chasm Marketing & Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers By Geoffrey A. Moore

How to stop the IT brain drain

I recently wrote a piece in Computing magazine about the need for organisations to value their IT staff to stop the IT brain drain. Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey highlighted this as the third most pressing issue for CIOs.

I touched on the issue of the exodus of experienced talent as a result of people reaching retirement age in significant volumes for the first time in the industry. This is a serious problem. Some IT veterans will suggest that it serves the industry right because they perceive the industry as ageist, which broadly speaking it is.

The Y2K challenge involved paying inordinate sums to IT staff that were previously considered as ‘over the hill’. In the same way as freak weather is becoming less unusual, the frequency of Y2K-like imminent disasters will increase in frequency. Again creating a gold rush opportunity for those that are retired either by choice or because their skills were no longer deemed fashionable.

Smart CIOs in my opinion will avoid such costly perturbations in their talent costs and make every effort to reskill and redeploy their experienced staff as one never knows when they will be needed to get the IT department out of a (deep technical) hole.

Here is a link to the piece.

*Photo by spierzchala on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

COA Solutions review of The IT Value Stack

The COA Solutions blog just posted this review of The IT Value Stack.

COA Solutions is the largest supplier of business accounting software, business management and information systems to the UK mid-market service sector.

Many thanks for the review.

Boardroom debate: IT ch-ch-ch-ch-changes to golden years

In my recent FT piece I drew a parallel with influential musician David Bowie. His career has spanned 5 decades, which is about the same duration as the modern IT industry. Unlike Bowie the IT industry has changed very little over that time. Same old problems:

• Lack of IT representation at board level
• User-technologist distrust.

But some new trends are emerging:

• IT is becoming simpler
• Vendors are working with users to bypass the IT function.

So the IT department has a choice, either become irrelevant or change. My suggestion is that the CIO:

• Accepts that IT is becoming commoditised and pushes this down the food chain to the utility vendors
• Accepts that web services is a reality and manages these silo solutions as part of a cohesive enterprise architecture.
• Takes every opportunity to move his role to that of Chief Change Officer rather than just Chief Information Officer.

Read the full article.

I am curious to know what your views are on this. Do you feel the IT industry as we know it has peaked in terms of the value it can offer the business?

Can IT Grow Up?

• How does IT resemble a "well-behaved puppy?"
• Why bother with driver-based budgets?
• Is CFO of the U.S. DoD really "the toughest job in the world?"

I was recently interviewed on Cognos BI Radio where discussed these points and more.

Read the interview.

View/download the podcast (choose episode 12)

View the transcript.

Engaging Brand Podcast - How IT Can Add Value and Engage Business

Anna Farmery of The Engaging Brand has posted my podcast with her, How IT Can Add Value and Engage Business.

In the podcast we discuss:

 
1. How the role of service departments is changing within business
 
2. Why IT should be part of the strategy setting
 
3. The balance between strategic and day to day delivery of IT
 
4. Is social media increasing the knowledge of consumers of IT and is this     a benefit or a drawback for IT departments
 
5. How people need entwine strategy, process and people
 
6. How the skills sets are changing for the IT department
 
7. The importance of technology management
 
8. How to engage IT people to improve the service level
 
9. How IT can help with knowledge management
 
10. What is the difference between an IT department in the corporate world     and the innovative start ups from Silicon Valley
 
11. Could the web kill the IT department in the future