by Mark P. McDonald | February 25, 2013 | Submit a Comment
Strategy connects with structure and structure influences strategy. The relationship between the two drives organizations to re-align, re-distribute and re-organize, all except for IT. According to the 2013 Gartner CIO Survey, only 30% of CIOs believe that changing business priorities and strategies requires changing the IT organization. In other words, 70% of CIOs believe that [...]
Category: 2013 IT Governance Small IT Strategy Tags: IT Leadership, IT organization, IT strategy
by Mark P. McDonald | November 2, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Earlier this week the Gartner Symposium series stopped in Sao Paulo Brasil and joined more than 1,000 CIOs and IT professionals to discuss business and technology issues. Like earlier symposia, the focus was on how technology creates value in the enterprise. This is what I learned from the discussions, questions and interactions at this year’s [...]
Category: 2013 Amplifying the Enterprise IT Governance Management Strategic planning Tags: 2013 Planning, CIO Leadership, Strategy and Planning, symposium, Technology Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | October 31, 2012 | 3 Comments
Business and IT alignment is a perennial issues facing executives. It is one of reasons for misunderstandings, inefficiencies and frankly recriminations between technologists and business professionals. Improving Business and IT Alignment is a constant part of CIO strategic priorities as shown by the CIO survey results. Follow the link to participate in the 2013 CIO [...]
Category: IT Governance Management Strategic planning Tags: alignment, CIO Leadership, governance, IT management, Management, symposium
by Mark P. McDonald | October 29, 2012 | 6 Comments
A recent set of studies published by McKinsey Quarterly provides further evidence that the bigger they are the harder they fall. Given that the McKinsey Quarterly’s audience is predominantly business executives rather than IT professionals, it’s important that CIOs are aware of the findings and have a reasonable response. Large projects not only fail more [...]
Category: 2013 Amplifying the Enterprise Distortion IT Governance Small IT Tags: 2013 Planning, Change leadership, IT Leadership, Small IT, symposium, transformation
by Mark P. McDonald | July 13, 2012 | 5 Comments
Please enjoy this prior post on the nature of the IT organization. IT trends and transformations over the past decade have been driven by a common theme: reducing cost. CIO-led initiatives for outsourcing, consolidation, shared services, applying lean manufacturing principles, have all revolved around the need to take costs out of IT. All of this [...]
Category: IT Governance Small IT Tags: IT organization
by Mark P. McDonald | July 11, 2012 | Submit a Comment
If John Stuart can take a hiatus, why can’t I. Please enjoy this prior post on the best metric for IT. The issue of demonstrating the business value of IT is at the top of mind for both CIO’s and other executives as they look to allocate cash and other resources across the enterprise. The [...]
Category: budgets IT Governance Leadership Tags: IT organization, IT Value, Metrics, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | March 22, 2012 | 10 Comments
Shadow IT is IT activity that occurs outside of IT. Shadow IT is growing in many organizations driven by consumerized technology, mobility, the availability of cloud solutions and quite frankly relatively slow cycle times within captive IT organizations. How do you control or eliminate shadow IT is a frequent question raised by CIOs and IT [...]
Category: 2012 Amplifying the Enterprise IT Governance Management Tags: 2012 planning, CIO Leadership, CIO strategy, control, IT organization, Technology Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | March 19, 2012 | 4 Comments
There is a renewed discussion of the CIO reporting relationships. It is a discussion that is sure to generate debate as who you report to is important both personally and professionally. The perceived increase in CIOs reporting to CFO’s is a topic that goes through this cycle much like call of Paul Revere in the [...]
Category: CFO CIO IT Governance Leadership Tags: CFO, CIO, CIO Leadership Forum, CIO-Forum-NA, IT organization, Leadership, reporting relationships
by Mark P. McDonald | February 20, 2012 | 2 Comments
Building executive and business presence in your company is a concern of CIOs and IT professionals because it is important and hard to do. This post is one in an occasional series about relationship building at the executive level. The question for today is – If I want to build a relationship with top management [...]
Category: Change on the cheap IT Governance Leadership Tags: Leadership, Management
by Mark P. McDonald | February 6, 2012 | 1 Comment
Every business book you read says that you need to have ‘executive sponsorship’ for any major initiative. Fail to involve the executives and you are likely to fail. That advice has become so prevalent that it is almost worthless. Getting executive sponsorship is not what matters; it’s the quality of the sponsorship that makes all [...]
Category: 2012 Change on the cheap IT Governance Leadership Management Personal Observation Signs of weak management Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, Leadership, Management, Personal Observation, Signs of weak management
