“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three “P”s in Running Digital IT ~ Future of CIO

Sunday, April 3, 2016

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three “P”s in Running Digital IT

11:39 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

IT has to become a true business partner in the company via leveraging these three “P”s.

Information is like lifeblood, and technology is like a backbone for any digital organization nowadays. However, most IT organizations have a reputation as a cost center and a controller. To reimagine IT potential, reinvent IT management and maximize IT value, it’s important to set guiding principles for practicing the multitude of IT management, manage a healthy IT project/program portfolio, also make a continuous journey of improving IT performance via developing a set of best/next practices for harnessing IT efficiency, effectiveness, and maturity.

The guiding PRINCIPLEs should cover the customer, people, and quality from a holistic business perspective: A well-defined set of IT management principles would guide decision making, bridge IT-business gaps, do more with innovation, measure right things before measuring it right. Principles allow many people to individually make their own decisions to run in the same direction to meet the same objectives in a rapid manner. Not everyone will follow, but they should if possible. As principles provide a guideline for harmonizing decision-making and navigate IT in the right direction and speed up the organization to the well-planned destination. Though it’s not easy for a set of principles defined that can be applied holistically. Their content sometimes contains natural conflict, without a method of prioritizing and implementing them consistently, they become a source of contention. Hence, business/IT leaders have to articulate which principle is applicable to which situation. Principles are guidelines, not rigid rules, there needs to be a pragmatic way of applying whatever principles to the problem in a consistent manner, with the goal to achieve strategic goals and guide daily business activities effectively.

Portfolio, Program, and Project Management: One of the significant IT management responsibilities is to manage a healthy project portfolio to implement business strategy, every IT project is a business initiative as well. Collections of programs and projects that are designed to help the organization achieve its targeted performance are the means through which a vision is translated into practices. They are the vehicle to achieve business strategic goals. IT has been unable to demonstrate the value of application portfolio management historically. Project management takes a lot of work, it’s important to develop “dealing with complexity” mechanisms for managing enterprise projects. While some organizations may be excellent in the execution of project management, they do not have a mature portfolio management process in place, which causes issues with the strategic alignment of programs and portfolio. In order to make the portfolio executable, an organization needs to make sure enough resources are available to deliver projects and programs, also manage the interdependencies of the project accordingly. And portfolio rationalization is an activity more critical than ever because economic cycles are getting shorter, and decision cycles are getting short. In order to make the portfolio executable, an organization needs to make sure that enough resources are available to deliver the projects and programs, and a well-managed project portfolio will keep the business run, grow and transformation steadily.

The best practices to improve IT PERFORMANCE and make effective measurement: IT is a key enabler to build almost all differentiated digital business capabilities nowadays. However, it’s not easy because it requires changing the culture and getting the buy-in of IT resource/ Though the situation varies, there are a couple of key steps can be shared in improving IT performance across vertical sectors. It’s also important to measure IT success in meeting the business purpose and vision. Your measures should cover all areas that contribute to value creation including service quality, employee engagement, customer satisfaction and financial outcomes. There represent well as a balanced scorecard. A meaningful scorecard needs to originate from all involved, with appropriate visual design allows users to examine and perceive a large amount of information very quickly and use them to see the big picture or identify any items that deserve attention and further analysis.

IT has to become a true business partner in the company via leveraging these three “P”s. Setting IT management PRINCIPLES to guide decision making and bridge IT-business gaps. Managing IT PROJECT/PROGRAM/PORTFOLIO effectively to achieve business value, and improve IT PERFORMANCE to maximize ROI and reach a higher level of digital maturity.

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