Mark McDonald

It’s the logical midpoint of 2011 – at least from a business cycle.  It’s a good time to check the progress on the resolutions and plans.  While plans and priorities can change, the 2011 CIO Resolutions originally posted at the start of the year provide a basis for judging your success so far.

A note, these resolutions are based on my own opinion and do not reflect the official position of Gartner, which often publishes its own resolutions.

1. I will invest more in my top performers and people on the verge of being top performers.

Do you have?

• A list of the top performers and those on the verge that is agreed upon between you and your direct reports?
• Does each of these performers have a plan for building their skills and has each executed at least one third of that plan?

You are falling behind if you have:

• Delegated this task to human resources and standard career development processes.  These people are special and require your active attention.
• Kept top performers and those on the verge too busy to take a significant part of their execution, project and skill building opportunities?
• Assume that having them work on important projects is the same as formally building their skills.

2. I will incorporate at least two business metrics into my performance reporting and share that report across all of IT.

Do you have?

• An expanded metrics report that incorporates changes in business performance in addition to your standard IT operational metrics?
• Have you calculated the value created through scale efficiencies in your infrastructure?

You are falling behind if you have:

• Continue to report its value based on how you manage cost, schedule, budget and scope.
• Have not met with your boss and CFO to discuss how to begin reporting IT’s contribution to raising business performance.

3. I will meet with my organization’s product and service development leaders and participate on a new development project.

Have you?

• Held at least three meetings with your product and service development teams?
• Is there at least one new product development project in process and scheduled for completion before October 2011?

You are falling behind if you have:

• Not established an ongoing relationship with product and service development.
• Have a project portfolio were there are few or no projects directly connected to launching new products or services.

4.  I will concentrate resources on implementing the top three projects supporting my organizations growth plans.

Have you?

• Implemented governance reform to get a clear demand signal and clear priorities for your projects.
• Applied those priorities to resource allocations to reduce the cycle time required to implement the organization’s top priorities.

You are falling behind if you have:

• Implemented projects according to their original or resource availability sequence regardless of when the business needs the solution functionality.
• Retained multiple governing bodies (e.g.: Steering committee’s) with overlapping or duplicate decision-making scope.

5. I will curtail investments in technologies that cannot be readily deployed to in a virtualized/cloud environment.

Have you?

• Identified the elements of your applications and infrastructure that cannot be economically virtualized and isolated them in
• Incorporated virtualization and cloud criteria into application, hardware and software evaluation criteria.

You are falling behind if you have:

• Continued to invest in non-virtualized infrastructure components beyond normal maintenance and replacement.
• Do not have an infrastructure transition plan that calls for greater than 50% of your transactions running via cloud technology by 2015.

6. I will identify the most important project to the organization’s success and look for ways to complete it as soon as possible.

Have you?

• Established which project is the most important and have that recognized across the senior leadership team.
• Secured business sponsorship to delay other projects in order to focus resources on doing the ‘first thing faster’.

You are falling behind if you have:

• Continued to treat all projects equal or assign relative importance based on the project’s size, expenses, or duration.
• Maintain a staffing strategy that relies on ‘multi-tasking’ critical resources in the belief that this makes them more productive.

7. I will make my job expectations visible to all if IT so they know how I and by extension all of us are being judged.

Have you?

• Published your personal goals and objectives as the CIO to the entire IT organization?
• Connected and continuously communicated the top three priorities for the IT organization in every meeting so people can naturally align their decisions and actions with what is important.

You are falling behind if you have:

• Do not have faith in the IT organization to deliver on your personal objectives.
• Your job expectations are not clear enough to communicate to your people.

8.  I will complete virtulizing and consolidating IT in order and reallocate savings and people into business contributing role and projects.

Have you?

• Virtualized and consolidated data centers or are well along on your plans to complete consolidation by September 2011?
• Kept the money saved from consolidation and redeployed it to develop new solutions or further reduce IT’s operating cost structure.

You are falling behind if you have:

• Postponed virtualization and consolidation because business does not want to give up control of their data center assets.
• Cannot demonstrate the additional business value associated with projects that would be funded through consolidation savings.

9.  I will consolidate at least four redundant applications to reduce cost and complexity.

Have you?

• Consolidated at least two redundant applications?
• Identified and budgets for consolidation of the others?

You are falling behind if you have:

• Avoided consolidation, as you cannot get an accurate list of your applications.
• Avoided breaching the subject with your business peers, particularly if the applications scheduled for consolidation are infrequently used.

10.  I will not act out if fear, nor will I fail to act out of uncertainty.

Have you?

• Augmented your opinion, expert judgment and debate with clear facts and operational data.
• Sought peer experience, examples and lessons learned regarding the major decisions you have faced and will face for the remainder of 2011.

You are falling behind if you have:

• Continued to make decisions based here say evidence, the most recent failure, or based only on what the budget will afford.
• You avoid developing positions and plans because you are waiting for others to address the issues before you take action.

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Category: 2011 budgets IT Governance Leadership Management Re-imagine IT Strategic planning     Tags: 2011 Planning, Business Strategy, CIO strategy, RE-imagine IT, Strategy and Planning

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