Monday, January 6, 2020

Three IT Management Requirement to Lift Up Digital Maturity

 Improving IT organizational maturity from a reactive support function to a proactive change agent requires being able to lead courageously, with the ability to visualize, engage, communicate, and take a common-sense approach. 

Organizations rely more and more on information technology nowadays; the IT department has more and more to offer, also has a lot of obstacles to overcome. It is important to run a business-driven digital IT organization with interdisciplinary management disciplines and practices. Running digital IT is both art and science, a progressive journey and a cautionary tale. Here are three IT management requirements to lift up digital maturity.





IT management requires the ability to think through and solve problems effectively: IT is no longer that isolated function to “keep the lights on,” it is important for IT to interact with the business in their processes and pain areas and bring out customer-tailored and technology-driven solutions to truly eliminate real problems, not just fix symptoms. In fact, problem-solving is the paramount requirement in IT management. IT needs to proactively solve the problems with setting priority right. Proposing new technologies would be the final touch. IT-enabled business solutions should contribute to the achievement of business objectives and benefits.

In practice, sometimes, instead of solving problems, IT specialists perhaps add unnecessary complexity to the already tangled processes or create new problems. Ideally, IT leaders and managers need to be specialized generalists who can leverage Systems Thinking to understand the scope of the complex problems, provide insight into emergent properties, gain an accurate understanding of the overall situation, if necessary, break down large problems into deliverable chunks for delivering value to the business at regular intervals.

Thus, looking broadly and understanding problems deeply enable IT leaders to provide mindful and pragmatic advice and invaluable recommendations to the business on how to leverage IT in problem-solving. It’s also critical for having high-proficient IT staff with both business acumen and technical expertise, apply scientific logic with the structural approach and engineering discipline to solve business problems systematically and deepening IT influence continually.

IT management requires the ability to manage a scarce and expensive resource for the business: IT doesn't exist to do everything it is asked. Nor does it exist to implement without business justification. It is there to manage a scarce and expensive resource for the business.IT investment is costly and IT resources are limited. Thus, resource allocation is critical to IT management prioritization and performance optimization.

The resource allocation scenario needs to be transparent. Resource allocation scenario helps IT take advantage of resources effectively, optimize cost, manage a well-managed IT application portfolio to “run, grow, and transform” organization steadily. How resource allocation is determined should be understood by all important parties. To address the resource competition issue, the business benefit must often be articulated in user-specific currency. The purpose of IT management is to optimize IT resources and catalyze business growth, enable the business moving forward smoothly.

IT management requires much more time, energy, passion, courage, experimentation, retreat, and reflection to get clear and focused on the IT-driven innovation agenda: To reinvent IT for getting digital ready, the CIO role has never been just about managing the status quo. They need to be able to recognize the struggles of the company by understanding the business beyond IT, take responsibility to understand the business's strategic goals and innovation demand today and into the future, manage the limited budget and resource, for “doing more with Innovation.”

Modern CIOs with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new technology and an abundance of information can create fresh new opportunities. fortify an IT-driven digital innovation agenda which covers innovation management, knowledge, technology transfer, entrepreneurship, people-centricity, and it is closely related to multidisciplinary management disciplines, to ensure their organization is ready for change, space and time are made to scope, plan, and execute, but not through ad-hoc activities.

IT management is not just the business of IT, but the business of the entire company. It is important to leverage IT in a multitude of digital management disciplines, involve not only putting different pieces together but also blending them in such a way that the emergent whole is somehow more than the sum of its parts. Improving IT organizational maturity from a reactive support function to a proactive change agent requires being able to lead courageously, with the ability to visualize, engage, communicate, and take a common-sense approach. It is possibly more of an art than a science.



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