IT outsourcing contracts merit review given scandal at Indian firm

“Satyam scandal will have ramifications across the industry if Satyam customers flee and take their business to other IT outsourcers”

Rachel Lebeaux of Search CIO writes in her latest reporting that Customers of any IT outsourcer that runs into trouble should consider renegotiating their IT outsourcing contract, and make sure they have the documentation and staffing needed to take their business elsewhere, experts said this week in the wake of the financial scandal at Indian IT services firm Satyam Computer Services Ltd.

She further goes on to say that "even if a crisis is limited to one provider, CIOs with any outsourcing contracts have work to do, to make sure their projects or levels of service are uninterrupted."

News broke last week that Satyam, a 22-year-old global IT services firm based in Hyderabad, India, had been listing assets far in excess of what it actually held, a scandal that has been referred to by some as "India's Enron." The "financial irregularities," disclosed by the firm's founder, were followed by other allegations. The company denies these charges.

Source: SearchCIO

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CEOs second act holding the reigns

“Second Acts: Why CEOs Get Them And CIOs Don't”

Starbucks' CIO Brian Crynes Leaves Amidst Management Shake Up
Replacing Crynes in the CIO role is Chris Bruzzo, who was named acting CIO in addition to vice president and CTO—a new position inside the company. Bruzzo reports to Starbucks' COO Martin Coles. As part of the company's renewed focus on its customers, Bruzzo is responsible for coming up with ways to connect with customers, including loyalty programs, that use technology

Last week's Howard Schultz's returned to the helm of Starbucks as CEO. "Second Acts" is fairly common for CEO's. In 2007 Michael Dell was welcomed back to the c-suite to revitalize Dell's growth. Charles Schwab reinstalled as CEO in July 2004, after having stepped down as CEOP 14 months earlier in May 2003.

Second acts are not common for CIOs or any C-level exec ...

Retired CEOs get called back because of their exposure and accountability to shareholders. It's much less common for other C-level execs whether CIO, CFO or COO, to be brought back because shareholders don't associate them with corporate success.

"If the CEO leaves and the company's stock suffers, the shareholders view that person as the savior who needs to return,"

Other reasons why CIOs are much less likely to entertain second acts than CEOs:

1. CIOs are literally out of touch with the business. A CIO who moves to a new company no longer has his finger on the pulse of his old employer. By contrast, a CEO who steps down from his post often remains on board as the company's chairman and thus maintains his association with the business and its challenges. A CIO who's left the company does not have the same knowledge of the company that the CEO-turned-chairman has and therefore does not have the same ideas and ability to impact the company as the CEO.

2. CIOs are often responsible for their own succession planning, but CEOs are not. Groce says boards of directors often view selecting the next CEO as their responsibility. So if a new CEO doesn't work out, the board may beg the chairman to return to the CEO role. If a departing CIO appoints a successor who fails to measure up, that CIO will be viewed as having failed in his succession planning duties, and thus the management team with which he worked may not be inclined to invite him back to the table, says Groce.

3. Moving back into the CIO role can feel like a demotion. A CIO who moves into a new role with his company may not want to go back to the CIO role, even if the management team pleads with him to do so and considers him to be a knight in shining armor.

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Executive Woman's Guide to Self-Promotion

“Ambitious women sometimes have a hard time getting noticed ...”

Marketing your accomplishments is a requirement for career advancement. Six female CIOs offer advice to up-and-coming women in IT and explain how they learned to network without compromising themselves

To move up in any organization, IT professionals need to engage in a little marketing. Self-promotion isn't the crass skill of acting like a brazen minx, but rather gaining the interest and attention of others and, over time, earning their respect and trust. Reputation is everything for any would-be IT executive, and it's important to get it right.

However, some women must overcome aversions to self-promotion, conflict and voicing their opinion. "This has been difficult for me," admits Denise Stephens, the director of Information Technology and CIO at Washington Savannah River Company. "I must consciously conquer my natural tendency to hold back when interacting in conflict situations." Women can worry—occasionally with reason—that they'll be negatively labeled if they are assertive and speak out. "I keep this in mind but do not let it hold me back," says Stephens, "as I have rarely seen women penalized by these labels if they get the job done."

Your career is in your power. "Some women hold back because they don't think they can network or communicate on the same level as their male peers or management. Get over it," says Janis O'Bryan, CIO and senior vice president of IT at Hudson Advisors. "If you are good at what you do, and a professional, you can compete for the next level. Don't self-impose a glass ceiling."

Volunteer for Visible Assignments

You want to be appreciated and acknowledged for making a difference. That means you have to do something that has a visible effect—and also gives you the opportunity to shine.

Take charge of something visible, that people need, advises Magalene Powell-Meeks, Deputy CIO at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Put yourself in the position of solving a problem, and solve it for them," she says, "Even if it's a crappy job." Be the leader in that position, even if it's a small one, she says, and apply your unique technology or process to help those people. Become the go-to person in your discipline.

The momentum you build is more important than a fancy title, says Powell-Meeks. By helping your customer (whether that customer is internal to the company or an outside user), you build trust with your customer base—a big key to advancement. "Your reputation and your character are what sell you for the next big job," Powell-Meeks says.

Sometimes that means you have to stretch yourself and take on a role that scares you. It's worth it. Elizabeth Austin, vice president of IT Operations and Infrastructure at Family Dollar, believes her openness to new challenges offered her interesting opportunities to work in a variety of roles with each employer. "Many of the roles have been nontraditional for women. For example, I've worked in construction and manufacturing business applications implementation and support roles. In my current role, I have operations and infrastructure responsibilities for a discount retailer, which have provided many opportunities for learning new technologies and the retail business environment."

Don't wait for opportunities to come to you. If there's no obvious way to gain recognition in your day-to-day work, find someplace where you can contribute. Cindy Hughes, CIO of Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund, has volunteered for corporate presentations, speaking to outside groups about the company or about what is going on in her department.

Stephens says, "Work can be like sports. As people are picking their teams, they want the known players who deliver. Become known as a player who delivers, and your opportunities will grow."

Reach Outside IT

That touches on another success factor shared by these woman CIOs: Don't huddle inside the IT department. As IT staff everywhere know far too well, when IT is working, it's invisible. To be noticed personally, you have to walk outside the data center.

Stephens urges ambitious women to volunteer for assignments that provide opportunities outside the usual working relationships. "This could be working on an enterprisewide initiative or working on something focused in another discipline," she explains. When Stephens was an IT manager, she took the opportunity to develop a section of her corporation's application to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. "Although my assigned section had an information systems theme, working on this enterprise team exposed me to diverse functions and people throughout the corporation," she says.

Doing so helps you do your job effectively—how can it hurt to develop a cross-functional perspective on company goals, strategy and culture?—and also builds your reputation as someone who gets things done. And it sets you apart from typical IT professionals, who merely focus on their specific assignment and technical discipline.

Case in point: Early in Stephens's career, she took the opportunity to work outside her immediate organization, the marketing and sales arm of the company. "Through specific initiatives, I became known within that circle as someone who did whatever was necessary to support the customer and their marketing efforts. The relationships I formed led to more opportunities."

"If your management and peers trust your judgment and you deliver on your promises, you are 80 percent there," says O'Bryan. "The rest is relationships. Make time to get out of your office, use the phone or travel to network with the other people in the company. It is important to build relationships with all levels. Be the person with the answer."

Show Progress

It's one thing to achieve or exceed your goals—but you won't move ahead unless others notice the accomplishment.

Personal ambition aside, it's important to communicate what you and your team have done, especially given IT's tendencies toward invisibility to the rest of the enterprise. Nor is the challenge to find effective communication methods unique to gender, points out O'Bryan. "[At] a financial company, the key was 'speaking the language of the business.' This is the current buzz phrase in our industry, but it worked long before it became popular to say."

And that provides a major advantage to women (and men) trying to move ahead personally. While it may be—or at least feel—rude to toot one's own horn, publicizing the accomplishments of your department supports your team and helps the business learn what you're doing for the enterprise. One not-so-subtle result is that the Powers That Be notice who's leading such successful teams and give its manager (that would be you) more opportunities. Think of it this way: You gain visibility by giving it to others.

Powell-Meeks has made specific efforts in this regard and has created her own "branding." She regularly distributes products to communicate to her customers, such as an annual report to key stakeholders to show what the IT department accomplished—with tangible milestones, not just pie-in-the-sky stuff—and to summarize and remind people about the benefits IT can provide. "IT can be underground," she says, "like a utility or telephone."

The reports may need to be distributed more often, depending on your job. O'Bryan's department provides quarterly IT financial reports for the CFOs of each office worldwide, as well as quarterly peer comparison spending reports, an annual IT report and quarterly newsletters to promote the benefit of IT to the business.

These summaries promote the work, Powell-Meeks says. "Not me as a person, but the team." Yet savvy women know this is also a self-promotion and leadership opportunity. Says O'Bryan, "I have an opening statement in both [publications] that includes my picture. As our company grows, not everyone may know who I am—and I think it is important that they do."

"Nothing speaks louder than results, so you want to show that you can make a difference very early on and create the media to make sure many people are aware of this," says Mojgan LeFebvre, CIO of bioMerieux. "Communication is key and it should never come across as bragging." However, good communication goes a long way in establishing your brand. "Don't be shy about communicating widely on results you have achieved and accomplishments," says LeFebvre. Communicate as eloquently and as widely as possible on the achieved results, she urges, and continue to do this on a consistent and iterative basis.

Relationship building works downward as well as upward. While it's important to connect with people who can directly influence your career (a.k.a. promoting you) and who can help you—in marketer's terms, "build your brand"—some women have gained the most by taking care of the people who work for them.

Hughes was once was a midlevel manager who had recently been appointed to head up a unit that was troubled and underperforming—and one that no one really wanted. She got to know each of the 32 people in the section. "I acquired a sense of their technical skill levels—as I'm sure their prior managers had done, as well. But I also got to know them as individuals," she says. Within three days, Hughes knew each team member by name, and throughout that project's tenure, spoke with them daily (if briefly). "There were lots of interesting stories in the group, and I tried to hear as many of them as possible. I guess it had a pretty positive impact, because the group's productivity increased measurably, and senior level management noticed! My work with this particular group provided me a springboard into upper management promotions."
Be Assertive—But Not Pushy

Some women, anxious to get credit for their work, tilt too far in the wrong direction. They can become so aggressive that people tune them out. In doing so, points out Powell-Meeks, they forget that "we" is more powerful than "I."

One woman of Powell-Meeks's acquaintance, for example, is a very talented person who wants to get ahead and probably is CIO material. The woman is very smart technically, but, Powell-Meeks says, "She's always promoting herself, and she puts down her management for not recognizing her: 'Everybody else values me and my management doesn't.'" The result, unfortunately, is that everyone just wants the woman to go away. "She's complaining about her own team, so she won't get promoted there," says Powell-Meeks, but bad-mouthing her management ensures that nobody else wants her, either. "She is an 'I' person, not a 'we' person—and three other people execute what she plans and organizes," Powell-Meeks adds

So, how do you strike a balance between assertiveness and a perception that's far less savory? It depends on where you work, cautions Powell-Meeks. "Learn the corporate culture. Let that guide how you express yourself."

Still, be yourself. Some women, says Powell-Meeks, need to be told, "'Don't minimize your role....' They have a lot to say after the meeting is over." Don't be afraid to express your opinion when it matters. Hughes adds, "I speak up in meetings, offering my ideas and opinions. I guess the secret there is to be straightforward and direct. A long time ago, I used to think it was important to 'follow the company line,' no matter what. I learned over time, however, that it's better—and I get attention—if I just relax and be who I am and say what I think."

Know your strengths, and use them to your advantage. "Through understanding my own strengths, weaknesses, and as important preferences, I have been able to optimize them in seeking opportunities," says Austin. "For example, I prefer roles combining management, customer-service focus, ongoing learning and problem-solving."

Don't limit yourself. "I've missed some opportunities in the past when I hesitated to reach beyond my comfort zone or waited for others to provide them for me," says Austin. "You have to believe in yourself, define what your goals are, then develop the relationships and opportunities for realizing them."

Source: CIO Executive Council

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CIOs plan to add IT staff in the Q108

“IT staffing is expected to remain solid heading into 2008”

In the latest polling from staffing firm Robert Half Technology (RHT), 13% of CIOs said they plan to add IT staff in the first quarter of 2008, while 3% intend to cut staff. The 10% net hiring increase trailed expectations from last quarter, when 12 % of CIOs planned to increase staff. Business growth was cited as the chief reason for adding staff (27%), followed by customer and end-user support (20%) and managing systems upgrades (19%).
The overwhelming majority -- 82% -- intend to maintain the status quo, with no plans to hire in the next three months.

Skills in demand

74% of CIOs say Windows administration is the most sought-after skill.
70% of CIOs and vendors are looking for staff members with networking skills.
59% of CIOs need Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server expertise.
54% of CIOs need staff members with firewall administration skills

Source: CIO.com

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Seven Roles of Highly Effective CIOs

“Society for Information Management's Advanced Practices Council has identified seven key roles highly effective CIOs perform. How many do you do”

CIO of 2010 will be more strategic than ever, focusing on leadership, collaboration and high-level process improvement, according to the C-level executives interviewed by SIM. As part of its sweeping new report, "Grooming the 2010 CIO," the Society for Information Management has identified seven key roles successful CIOs assume in the enterprise today. Here are SIM's seven attributes of the highly effective CIO




Source: CIO Insight

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The New CIO Leader

“Definitive work that sets the standards in the industry ”

Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis: The CIO Leader outlines the path the CIO must take to become that leader - and to deliver on the promise of IT to yield real, measurable, and bankable results. Its a really interesting read, another great book from Gartner setting the agenda that takes you through the demand and supply side of the CIO what to expect when facing challenges and growth, it the must have book for CIO and CEOs.

Extract from the introduction The Crossroads

“Two paths diverged in a wood… and I took the one less traveled.” —Robert Frost

Chief information officers today stand at a crossroads. The role of each CIO is inevitably changing, because of two perspectives on information technology (IT). On the one hand, there is the lingering disaffection with IT from the Internet bust, the technology capital spending overhang, the popular press’s assertion that IT is now irrelevant in discussions of competitive advantage, and the hysteria about IT jobs moving overseas. On the other hand, IT is gaining renewed interest for several reasons.

The global economy seems to be finally escaping the doldrums, and business executives are desperate for innovation. Additionally, the regulatory environment has put far more emphasis on the timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of corporate information. Finally, technology is playing a foundational, if not a central, role in virtually every product and service

Standing still is not an option—every CIO will follow one of two paths based on these perspectives. The path influenced by the view that IT is irrelevant to competitive advantage leads to a role that might be called chief technology mechanic, a role ultimately no more prestigious than that of factory floor manager. The other path, influenced by the view that IT is at the heart of every significant business process and is crucial to innovation and enterprise success, leads to a role we call the new CIO leader. The new CIO leader bears all the prestige, respect, and responsibility of other senior executive positions (in fact the position will be a not infrequent steppingstone to COO and CEO positions).

CIO Leaders - Top 10 Priorities

1. Laying the Foundation: Leadership

Leadership and management are different but complementary. Management is about execution. Leadership is about change, specifically influencing others to change. Leading through influence is critical for New CIO Leaders. They must lead their business colleagues by influencing their view of IT but without a formal base of authority or power. CIOs can't TELL their business colleagues what to do, but they can influence the decisions they make.

2. Understand the Fundamentals of Your Environment

CIO leadership falls into two categories — demand side and supply side leadership. The demand side is where you lead your business colleagues, helping to determine why, where and how IT will be used to meet business goals. The first aspect of demand side leadership is developing an intimate knowledge of the fundamentals of your environment — how your business operates, its past, current and expected future performance, its goals and strategies, its industry and competitors, etc. Without understanding your environment you can't lead effectively.

3. Create Your Vision

Leadership is about influencing change. To influence change you must have a vision for what change is necessary, what the future looks like. Your vision as CIO has to be grounded in an intimate knowledge of the persistent business needs of your organization. Only then will your vision for achieving business goals be useful and compelling to your business colleague

4. Shape and inform expectations for an IT enabled enterprise

There will always be more IT work to be done than resources allow. Therefore it is critically important to work with your business colleagues to develop appropriate expectations for the use of IT in your organization. To do so, you must achieve consensus on business needs, strategies, and endeavors and the guiding principles or IT maxims that will inform the inevitable trade-offs. Your business colleagues need to be intimately involved in this process so that they know, understand and approve of the guiding framework for decision making on the use of IT in your organization.

5. Create clear and appropriate IT governance

IT Governance is the secret weapon of successful New CIO Leaders. Good governance enables you to effectively weave together business and IT strategies and to consistently build credibility and trust. To do so, your governance styles and mechanisms must be matched to your environment and the expectations of your business colleagues. Your business colleagues must understand how specific decisions are made so that they trust the process and ultimately can be confident in the outcomes.

6. Weave Business and IT strategies together

An IT Strategy contains the key decisions about specific technology implementations over a defined period of time in areas like infrastructure, applications, and architecture. New CIO Leaders take a portfolio approach with their IT strategy, actively managing the strategy to assure balance and the achievement of business goals.

7. Busines a New IS Organisation

CIO leadership falls into two categories -- demand side and supply side leadership. New CIO Leaders not only lead on the demand side, with their business colleagues, but also on the supply side, leading the IS organization to meet the organization's goals and expectations. To meet these business-focused expectations, New CIO Leaders need an appropriately organized and focused IS organization. The New CIO Leader's IS organization must be leaner and more focused on business results by appropriately using strategic sourcing of IT services, by adopting process based working, and by using all the financial resources available to it.

8. Develop a High-Performing IS Team

For New CIO Leaders to succeed they need not only a new IS organization but a team that is appropriately skilled and committed to achieving business results. Just like you, your IS team needs new and different competencies to succeed. These new competencies are much more focused on strategic thinking and relationship building than on technical skills.

9. Manage Enterprise and IT Risk

New CIO Leaders are needed because IT is embedded in every critical business process in today's organizations. However, there is also significant risk associated with this state of affairs IT risks affect the whole enterprise. New CIO Leaders must proactively step up to manage the new enterprise risks related to IT and new regulatory environments.

10. Communicate Your Performance

Leadership depends on credibility and credibility is built on results. New CIO Leaders ensure that results are widely known and understood by communicating IS performance at every opportunity. They develop "dashboards" that allow business colleagues to see and understand the value received from IT in business terms.

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CIO as Chief Process Officer

Michael Hammer quotes "CIOs don't typically lead corporate transformation, but they're well positioned to help guide business process and improvement changes, says Michael Hammer, original champion of the business reengineering movement. Hammer labels the CIO the enterprise's chief process officer"

“CIO as Chief Process Officer, Not Strategic Leader”

Bestseller Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (HarperCollins, 1993). Companies could radically improve their performance if they rethought and rebuilt their processes, spurred the transformation of businesses around the world. A former computer science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hammer heads Hammer and Co., a management consultancy that specializes in business process.

Hammer sees the chief information officer well positioned in the enterprise to be a catalyst for corporate transformation. While he argues that process management improvements must be led by senior, business-line executives, he says CIOs can play a pivotal role as chief process officers.

A chief process officer, Hammer says, is an organization's chief of staff for process work, the center of its expertise and the keeper of its skills and methodology. Michael Hammer's interview with CIO contributing editor John McCormick, expands his idea and insights into how CIOs can be effective chief process officers. Edited version of their conversation continues here

CIO INSIGHT: We've been studying process management and process improvement for years, but it seems many companies flounder when trying to figuring out how to improve their processes. Why is that?

MICHAEL HAMMER: Many organizations have made a lot of progress. It's also important to distinguish between process improvement and process management. Without getting too technical, process improvement is not as hard to do because it doesn't involve much organizational change. Process management, on the other hand, involves a lot of organizational change, and that's fundamentally what makes it hard to do.

The issue with process management is that it requires new managerial responsibilities in the organization. Someone has to take responsibility for processes that cross organizational boundaries. The title we often use for this role is process owner. And the challenge is that the process owner takes authority away from functional managers.

That doesn't happen so much with process improvement because functional managers can make their own local improvements. But process management really entails a transfer of authority from functional managers to process owners, and that's a very difficult shift.

Because it involves so much fundamental change, this only can happen if it's driven from the top of the enterprise. This is not something that happens bottom up. And the problem is that in a lot of organizations the senior leadership is distracted by other things, unfamiliar with these ideas, and so is unready to do anything about them, or not focused on operational issues because they're accustomed to business being easy over the last several years.

In a variety of ways—not just because of the credit problem [collapse of the subprime mortgage industry]—it's a much tougher time in business. And I think this is directing more and more people to pay attention to operations generally and their cross-functional processes specifically.

CIO As a Catalyst Not a Leader CIOs usually have a pretty good view of the corporation and understand how processes work. Are CIOs better able to effect these types of business management changes compared with other executives?

HAMMER: In general—there are exceptions to everything—the CIO is not in a position to drive and lead this effort. It can only be done by a senior, business-line executive.

But the CIO is extremely well positioned to be what I call a catalyst, where the CIO—because IT sits outside the various functions—really has a bird's-eye perspective on the process issues in the enterprise.

In fact, a lot of these process issues often show up in systems terms. And the CIO can really be the catalyst to alert senior executive management to the problems with processes and to the opportunities that process management presents.

Once an organization gets going with processes, the CIO often becomes what I call the chief process officer. The chief process officer is not the boss of the process owners. The chief process officer is sort of the organization's chief of staff for process work, the center of expertise, the keeper of skills and methodology. And we see more and more organizations where the CIO takes on this additional role of chief process officer.

If you're the chief process officer—the change agent within the company that's bringing about these process management improvements—where do you start?

HAMMER: The first thing to do is to assess your readiness as an organization to proceed. Do you have the leadership? Do you have the right culture in the organization? And if not, you have to start working on those gaps.

What you need to do is identify your processes. If you don't know what they are, you're nowhere.

You also need to do a major assessment of those processes in terms of some key issues: What's the status of the design of that process? Do you have one? Is it a good one or not? What about the metrics? Do you have end-to-end metrics or not? Do you have a process owner or not? Do the people who work in the process understand it? Does your infrastructure, which includes your IT systems, support the process?

Based on that audit, you've identified what issues you need to work on. And so you say, "OK, I'm pretty good in process owner, not good in process metrics. Let me work on process metrics."

Process and Enterprise Maturity Model This audit is embedded in something you call the Process and Enterprise Maturity Model, a tool that helps companies plan and manage business transformations. Please explain PEMM ...

HAMMER: There are two parts to it. One is the maturity of your enterprise. The other is the maturity of individual processes.

The first thing you do is set up the maturity of your enterprise. There are four things you look at there. Do you have knowledgeable, committed leadership at the executive level? Do you have a corporate culture that supports process? Do you have institutionalized expertise in the organization? Do you have a governance mechanism for managing process projects?

You use the model to identify any gaps and weaknesses. If you have them, you need to address them, because you won't get anywhere on your process without that.

That'll lead you, for instance, to say, "Gee, I need to strengthen my leadership." Then you, the CIO, would deal with your executive team, educating them, communicating with them, getting them to understand the problems that poor-performing processes lead to and so on.

Once you've made progress in understanding where you are enterprisewide, you can begin to use the process part of it—namely, looking at individual processes and asking yourself: Do we have owners for them? Do we have designs? Do we have metrics and so on? That gives you a plan for how you go about filling those gaps.

How and what exactly do you measure? That's always one of the toughest things for corporations to figure out. As you pointed out in previous works, a lot of companies do that poorly.

HAMMER: Yes. Metrics are a big problem because most metrics are functional, historical and financial. Those aren't the kind of metrics we need. We need real-time, or at least current, metrics, we need end-to-end process metrics, and we need metrics that measure much more than financial performance, but things like speed, customer satisfaction, quality and the like.

I wrote an article for the Spring 2007 [MIT] Sloan Management Review called "The Seven Deadly Sins of Performance Measurement and How to Avoid Them." It provides some guidance on how to develop metrics.

Basically you need to identify your key strategic business goals and which of your processes impact those goals.

So, for example, being first to market with new products is a strategic goal; the processes that impact that are things like product development. Speed or product development becomes the key metric you have to focus on to achieve your strategic objective. That's a real crude summary of what that article suggests.

Good and Bad of Metrics The Sloan Management Review article says many of the metrics we use are worthless ...

HAMMER: Organizations, to be blunt, really screw this up a lot.

It's mind-boggling how bad most organizations are with metrics. It's just shocking. You would think this is something they would have fixed a long time ago, but it's a persistent problem.

It seems that corporations consistently fall back into the seven deadly sins you define: vanity, or measuring just what you're good at; provincialism, or measuring just your department's part in a process instead of the entire process; narcissism, or measuring corporate goals instead of customer satisfaction; laziness, or not taking the time to figure out what should really be measured; pettiness, or measuring just small pieces of a process; inanity, or not considering the drain your measurement will have on the organization; and frivolity, or not taking measurements seriously.

HAMMER: They continue to make these same mistakes because those mistakes are a consequence of a lack of executive attention to the issue, complacency, not focusing end to end.

I know some organizations that have done a terrific job, but a lot still have a long way to go.

There's a number of business process management software tools on the market. Do they help, and if so, how much or how little?

HAMMER: My attitude about the business process management software is that it won't hurt, but it's not going to do you all that much good.

The critical elements in success with process are executive leadership, creativity to come up with new ideas, the management of change and the management of complex implementation. None of these have much to do with software tools. Yes, BPM software can help you model your processes, can help you in some cases simulate them, and in some case will allow you to create real-time support systems for your processes. It can't hurt. But it's not the difference between success and failure, not at this stage, at least.

Other software tools help organizations get a handle on their processes: knowledge management tools, business intelligence tools. Don't they all have a place?

HAMMER: Yes, but again, they are components that can support you in a process management effort.

My attitude is the same about them. They can't hurt unless you put too much attention on them and if you delude yourself into thinking they make the difference between success and failure.

Process First, Technology Second How important is making sure people are ready to adapt to the change? Obviously, that plays a huge role in any process ...

HAMMER: It does. The problem is, a lot of organizations don't want to bother with it. They think it's easy. They think it's not important.

What it really requires is sort of empathizing with people in the organization and what they're experiencing, communicating with them much more than you think you need to, listening to their concerns, giving them support during a transition, showing them you're absolutely committed, readjusting the reward system to encourage them. And, it's very doable. It just requires serious commitment.

Giving them the tools so they can do their jobs better.

HAMMER: Precisely. Training, education and tools.

If you talk to a group of CIOs who want to be catalysts for business process management, business process improvement, what are the two or three things you would tell them to do?

HAMMER: No. 1, educate yourselves about it. Make sure you really understand it, not just know a few catchwords.

Secondly, start working on getting the senior executive team comfortable with the concept, which often includes taking them on a visit to other companies that are doing well with it.

And, certainly, start pilot projects right away, because you need pilot projects to demonstrate to the organization that this stuff really works.

I'm reminded of an article you wrote about a retailer that wanted to find out how many people who went into its store bought something. They just hired a bunch of kids to count the people who went in and then count the ones who came out with something.

HAMMER: Right. They were measuring the percentage of customers who actually bought something.

There is a temptation among people in the IT world to look for technological solutions before they're needed.

Look, I used to be a professor of computer science at MIT, so it's not as though I'm afraid of computers. But I know people who will use a computer to do something as long as it's not too much more awkward than doing it manually. So somehow using a computer is a virtue in itself.

A good rule of thumb—it's not always doable—is try to implement new processes without technology, and afterward bring in technology to boost them rather than make them dependent on technology out of the box.

Isn't that almost the reverse of what companies do today?

HAMMER: Yes, but the companies that take the approach I just described are often very successful with it because it gets clarity about their processes. Otherwise, you end up with what I call paving the cow path; you're overlaying new technology on a bad process.

Which companies are the best at process management? You've mentioned some, such as Air Products and Chemicals, in your work. Could you name a couple more?

HAMMER: There are quite a lot. Naming 20 would be easy. Naming just two or three is hard. A few, off the top of my head: Shell; PepsiCo, especially in Latin America; and Tetra Pak, a company based in Europe that makes packaging equipment.

What characteristics make them successful?

HAMMER: Overwhelmingly No. 1 is executive commitment. Second is "thoroughgoing"—in other words, they did it by the book and they addressed everything that needed to be addressed. They didn't leave stuff out. Those probably are the two most important things

Empathezing with People How important is making sure people are ready to adapt to the change? Obviously, that plays a huge role in any process ...

HAMMER: It does. The problem is, a lot of organizations don't want to bother with it. They think it's easy. They think it's not important.

What it really requires is sort of empathizing with people in the organization and what they're experiencing, communicating with them much more than you think you need to, listening to their concerns, giving them support during a transition, showing them you're absolutely committed, readjusting the reward system to encourage them. And, it's very doable. It just requires serious commitment.

Giving them the tools so they can do their jobs better.

HAMMER: Precisely. Training, education and tools.

If you talk to a group of CIOs who want to be catalysts for business process management, business process improvement, what are the two or three things you would tell them to do?

HAMMER: No. 1, educate yourselves about it. Make sure you really understand it, not just know a few catchwords.

Secondly, start working on getting the senior executive team comfortable with the concept, which often includes taking them on a visit to other companies that are doing well with it.

And, certainly, start pilot projects right away, because you need pilot projects to demonstrate to the organization that this stuff really works.

Source: CIO Insight October 3, 2007

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Gartner Trends 2007 and Beyond

Gartner's predictions, for 2007 and beyond, reports that Blogging will peak in 2007 and by 2008 nearly half the world's data centres will lack the power and cooling capacity to maintain high-density equipment. Outsourcing - 10 largest IT outsourcers will see their market share slip to 40% by 2009, from today's 43.5%, a revenue shift of some $5.4 billion.
According to Stamford, Conn.-based consulting firm, other trends to watch for include:

• By 2009, (CRS) corporate social responsibility will surpass compliance on your CEO's priority list.
• Average total cost of owning PCs will plummet 50% by 2010.
• By 2010, 60% of the global "cellular population" will be "trackable" by the so-called follow-me Internet.
• During the next 4 years, companies and organiSations will flush $100 billion down the toilet on networking technologies and services that are wrong for their businesses.
• Vista marks the last major release of Microsoft Windows.

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Change: The Only Constant

CIO Insight . January 2007 Research - Future of IT, outlines the top business, managerial and technology priorities for 2007. Customer Service levels drooped in 2006.

Strategic applications and technologies that can help boost service and revenues, such as business intelligence, will be especially important this year.

The report goes onto say there will be fewer graduates in IT, but the real revolution will happen as SOA (service oriented-architecture) and Web-services architectures bring new options. Here are the highlights of the research report:

1. Customer Service Surges as a Top Priority for 2007
2. Business Intelligence Tops the Strategic Technology List
3. CIOs Are Optimistic About Growth
4. The Business Environment in 2012
5. The IT Organisation in 2012
6. Security and Risk in 2012
7. Technologies in 2012

You may need to register on CIO Insight, link to full research

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