by Mark P. McDonald | January 19, 2010 | 12 Comments
These years 2010 Gartner CIO Survey captured the priorities and plans of more than 1,500 CIOs. The CIOs reported that they see 2010 as a time of transition across three areas: Economically from recession to recovery and growth Strategically from a focus on cost cutting efficiency to raising enterprise and IT productivity Technology transition from [...]
Category: 2010 budgets CIO Economy Leadership Tags: 2010, 2010 planning, CIO Leadership, IT budgets, IT Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | December 10, 2009 | 3 Comments
This blog has discussed various signs of weak management (see link to the core post). Here is another one related to financial planning and goals. Back when I prepared my first project estimate. I do not remember the exact number but I do remember the precision of the estimate – down to the dollars and [...]
Category: 2010 budgets CFO CIO Personal Observation Signs of weak management Tags: 2010 planning, CFO, Signs of weak management
by Mark P. McDonald | December 2, 2009 | 3 Comments
CIOs are taking stock of their accomplishments in 2009 as they are wrapping up their 2010 planning discussions. Given the focus on cost cutting, many CIOs will be eager to show how they were able to “do more with less.” IT’s success in cutting their budget while maintaining system availability in 2009 is a major [...]
Category: budgets CFO Economy Strategy Tags: 2010 planning, budgets, Business Strategy
by Mark P. McDonald | November 6, 2009 | 12 Comments
Demonstrating the business value of IT is challenging CIO’s, CEO’s, CFO’s and other managers. The problem is not that IT creates no value; it is just how do I measure and communicate that value. Current practices in IT measurement and metrics do not help as they concentrate on reporting how IT spends money (projects on [...]
Category: budgets CFO CIO Strategy Tools Tags: Finance, IT and Business
by Mark P. McDonald | October 5, 2009 | 3 Comments
Overproduction is a source of waste or muda as defined in lean thinking. In manufacturing overproduction is defined as making things before they are needed. Reducing overproduction in lean manufacturing involves concentrating on changes that reduce finished goods and WIP inventories. In IT overproduction waste comes from IT solutions or services that are in excess [...]
Category: budgets CFO CIO Leadership Tags: Business Management, IT management, Operational Leadership, Strategy
by Mark P. McDonald | September 24, 2009 | 3 Comments
Commoditization has been the buzzword threat for IT professionals for years. This reached a fever pitch with Nicholas Carr’s books about IT. If you wanted to scare a CIO all you have to do is raise the threat of IT becoming a commodity. The commodity threat abated some as people rushed to cut their budgets [...]
Category: 2010 budgets CIO Economy Leadership Strategy Tags: 2010 planning, IT budgets, IT Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | September 21, 2009 | 2 Comments
Recessions entail more than just a pullback in economic growth; they include a retrenchment in business innovation and activities. The global recession that began to be formally recognized about a year ago in August 2008, has hit companies hard and their business practices harder – particularly in IT. With global corporate IT budgets declining an [...]
Category: 2010 budgets CIO Economy Leadership Tags:
by Mark P. McDonald | September 17, 2009 | 5 Comments
Lean principles are all the rage. Cutting the fat and reducing waste are leading people to affixing ‘lean’ to everything: lean manufacturing, lean process management and recently lean-IT. Lean principles were originally applied to manufacturing processes and since IT is a process many of these practices apply. Eliminating waste, what lean calls ‘muda’, is the [...]
Category: budgets Leadership Lean Thinking Tags: IT budgets, IT management, Management
by Mark P. McDonald | August 21, 2009 | 1 Comment
In the U.S., the debate is over national healthcare. A central issues is the balance between cost and availability. It’s a balancing act that business executives and the CIO engage in every year when they determine the IT budget. In the national healthcare debate the issue is about having a fixed budget in order to [...]
Category: 2010 budgets CFO CIO Leadership Strategy Tags: Business Leadership, IT and Business, IT budgets, IT Leadership, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | July 15, 2009 | 3 Comments
Project definition is one of the central concepts in IT. Projects form the unit work, the unit of change we deploy and often the unit of value IT creates. Traditionally projects are defined and scoped along technical lines – what fits together for team(s) to work on. This makes sense from IT’s need to control [...]
Category: budgets CIO Leadership Tools Tags: Business Results, CIO Tools, IT management, IT Project
