As they struggle with increasing demands on time and resources, John Mahoney, vice president and analyst at Gartner feels that CIOs need more space to change. And for this, they will have to stop focusing on what no longer provides value,' and focus on key priorities to maximize value to business.
Gartner has identified six time-wasting practices' of chief information officers (CIOs).
Stop being the budget-priority police: Ensure that your IT organization minimizes boundary disputes when business units use technology, particularly if business units have control over discretionary spending.
Stop using enterprise architecture as a command and control tool: Rigid standards and policies might make it easier to reduce risk in system changes, but this approach reinforces the traditional view that the IT organization does not understand how the enterprise needs to respond quickly to business or market changes.
Stop communicating through IT metrics and focus on business performance: The focus should be on a manageable number of IT value indicators that are meaningful to business leaders. They should be linked to familiar business measures, such as business goals, business strategies or business processes, and should show the current status and progress to date.
Stop the proliferation of applications, infrastructure and IT governance committees: There is often a common, underlying cause of ill-disciplined enterprise decision making. The critical action to fix these problems is to create and repeatedly exploit a strategic portfolio of applications and infrastructure capabilities, with associated rationalization of IT governance. This means using enterprise architecture and related mechanisms to ensure coherence.
Stop defining services in technical rather than business terms: The key recommendation is to simplify the number of services offered, bundle them into a logical group and describe services so they reflect user-based activities or processes. For example, adding new employees, this might include a suite of services, including PC, telecoms and mobile device support, or Work space design and installation .
Stop wasting time apologizing for past problems: Credibility requires building strong personal relationships. It means being politically smart, integrating IT objectives with enterprise objectives and anticipating business needs to deploy a predictable stream of technology that enables business solutions. Repeated apologies diminish that.
