The Premier Blog For Learning How To Become A Successful CIO
In IT we often get accused of willy-nilly making up new acronyms on the fly. In all honesty, yes we do do this sometimes. However, there is a more subtle word problem that has been creeping around the edges of IT for a long time that nobody’s been brave enough to bring up: we have … Read more
Normally in this blog I try to cover issues that are facing CIOs and everyone who works for them. You know, things like aligning IT with the rest of the business, staffing and retaining the best talent, prioritizing IT projects, that sort of thing. But not today. Instead, I’m going to take a break from … Read more
“Alignment”, “Innovation” – arrgh! Who in the world of IT is not sick of hearing these two words used over and over again? Yes we’d like to be able to help out the rest of the business, but our IT budgets are being slashed left and right. We don’t have either the staff or the … Read more
Awhile ago over at the Wall Street Journal they had a chance to sit down and have a talk with Catherine Brune who is the CIO over at the big insurance company Allstate. Catherine had some interesting things to say about how she is adapting Allstate’s IT operations and strategy to deal with the current … Read more
Achieving alignment between the business side of the house and IT is one of those things that everyone likes to talk about when they are putting together the goals for the upcoming year, and then nothing ever seems to get done about it. A survey that was done by the consulting firm Bain & Co. … Read more
Once upon a time the Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart said that pornography is hard to define, but “I know it when I see it.” In the world of IT it would appear as though alignment with the business side of the house is a lot like pornography in this sense – it’s hard to … Read more
Is it possible that the holy grail of IT, getting our act together with the rest of the business, is no longer what we should be working on? A survey that was done by the consulting firm Bain & Co. sure seems to be saying this. Before anyone goes crazy on me, let’s first make … Read more
Every firm spends loads of money on IT, why do only some (Walmart, FedEx) get a clear advantage from the money that they spend? A team of researchers lead by Dr. Gautam Ray talked with 104 insurance firms in order to get to the bottom of this question. Here’s what they found: the key to … Read more
Where’s the money going? Everyone knows that spending on IT departments and projects has been going through the roof for the last 10 years or so. Umm, does anyone know if the company has been getting any benefit from all of this increased spending? Blame all of this discussion on Nicholas Carr‘s article “IT Doesn’t … Read more