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Develop a Capability Roadmap for Your Company

April 20th, 2012 by rschwarz No comments »

“Developing Capability Roadmaps” is based on a Web Forum presented by Strategy and Planning Executive Mark Guidi. The roadmapping process identifies critical customer needs and the capabilities, technologies, and skills that will meet those needs. It also helps a planning team set a strategic approach in a future oriented competitive context. This identifies gaps in meeting customers’ needs and helps define plans to fill the gaps. In this report, you will read about how roadmaps connect and balance the drivers of customer needs (”customer pull”) and technology innovation (”technology push”). It looks at different approaches, traps to avoid, lessons learned, and roadmap integration. Also included in the report is a case study taking you through the roadmap process.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the section talking about lessons learned during the roadmapping process:

“A roadmap is not a roadmap in the sense that it is singular. The key to having a good roadmap is having one source of data. No matter how you look at it, you need to have a single source of truth for the data on which the map is being constructed. It should cover policy, process, and systems as well as have multiple views for multiple audiences (Fig. 5). For example, at Cisco they had an architecture view that showed the key dependencies. Boxes were literally checked off as they progress along the roadmap. You could actually see the progress that was being made as they moved across time on the roadmap. If the CIO wanted to know where things stood on the architectural roadmap, Mark’s team could show him this perspective and get his view on it.

On a related note, have different ways of looking at the metrics. Cisco tracked them by each of the major initiatives. Then, in total, they looked at revenue and productivity. Those were the two value drivers in terms of where they were realizing the benefits. It was either top-line revenue or productivity enhancements. So they looked at each initiative and attempted to track where they were in terms of revenue and what was expected. Then, on the backend, a process was implemented to track that over the two years to ensure they actually hit the targets…”

IMF members can download the full report on Developing Capability Roadmaps here.

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Posted in IMF Updates, Strategy

Tags: Capability Roadmap Cisco IMF Reports IMF Web Forums Mark Guidi Roadmap Process

Achieve Your IT Governance Goals

April 13th, 2012 by rschwarz No comments »

“IT Governance: Supply & Demand” is a report based on a Web Forum presented by Allen Greathouse, Director of Corporate IS Governance, Architecture, and Policy at Harris Corporation. It looks at the keys to success in achieving your governance goals, such as understanding your environment and strong PMO discipline. Potential pitfalls are examined, like poor resource management and strategic alignment. Readers will learn about the difference between “doing things right” (Supply) versus “doing the right thing” (Demand). Find out how those two elements play a pivotal role in your organization’s IT Governance.

This report excerpt describes a couple of the different keys to achieving your organization’s governance goals:

“The first key is having that close alignment with business strategy and understanding the role of IT in its achievement. Obviously every company is different but you need to have some type of organization where you get executive alignment. Harris Corporation achieves that by having division IT leads essentially sit in the business. Without their existence someone in IT would be assigned and responsible for a business entity in an executive relationship. They are very close to the day-to-day activities and responsible for the IT component of that business unit or segment. Those leads help tie in those business objectives with the IT objectives. That gives you someone in the business that understands what is taking place. As a result, when trying to sell an IT project or gain executive sponsorship to meet business objectives, you do not have to worry about coming in cold to those business entities.

A keen understanding of the decision making process in your company is essential. In some companies there is one person that makes the decisions in certain areas. For instance, when Steve Jobs was at Apple, when dealing with a design component he was personally involved in that process. You really have to understand before you can document how governance works. Who makes the decisions? The Harris model for governance probably fits best into what is called a federated or federal model. Scorecards and metrics are a critical part of the supply side for governance, or “doing things right.” These will enable you to conduct industry comparisons. Executives want to know where the money is being spent and how that compares to your particular industry…”

IMF members can download the full report on IT Governance: Supply & Demand here.

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Posted in IT Executive Management, IT Workforce, Member Identified Trends, Strategy

Tags: Allen Greathouse Harris Corporation IMF Reports IMF Web Forums IT Governance

Tops-Down Corporate Social Media

April 6th, 2012 by rschwarz No comments »

Social media has emerged as a dominant force in people’s lives over the past several years. Individuals are using the platform to connect with others and share information on a daily basis. Whether you’re a Facebook Friend or Twitter Follower, you are part of this revolution. However, as quickly as social media has grown on the personal side, it is still relatively new in the corporate sector. Many organizations have begun focusing attention on the bleeding over of social tools into their enterprises. They are looking to use internal social networking as a way to promote their brands and connect with their customers. Some organizations have even piloted internal social tools in an effort to promote enterprise-wide collaboration. Social media is driving business transparency and engagement, creating both new challenges and opportunities. As with any other initiative you try to push through the company, it is important to gain support from the executive leadership. In the case of social media, Senior Executives like CEOs, CIOs, etc. shouldn’t be afraid to set the example for their employees. They need to be leading the social media charge and pushing this movement tops-down. A new study even found that social media-active CEOs are more trustworthy. These quotes from Information Week’s article on “Why CIOs Must Be More Social” are pretty telling:

“If CIOs are charged with building a social business, shouldn’t they have a social presence?” Fidelman asked, suggesting that “CIOs who don’t get social might not be CIOs next year.” Yet even in conservative industries like finance, there are CIOs like Royal Bank of Scotland’s Ian Alderton (#4 on the list) who are social standouts, Fidelman said.” -Mark Fidelman, Chief Social Strategist at Harmon.ie

Fidelman recently compiled a list of the Top 25 Most Social CIOs. Here is the Top 10:

1. SAP, Oliver Bussmann

2. Google, Benjamin Fried

3. Pemex, Abraham Galan

4. Royal Bank of Scotland, Ian Alderton

5. Microsoft, Anthony Scott

6. Supervalu, Wayne Shurts

7. Kimberly-Clark, Ramon Baez

8. Jacobs Engineering Group, Cora Carmody

9. Tesco, Mike McNamara

10. Omnicom Group, Kenneth Corriveau

For our members who are interested in corporate social media, we encourage you to check out a couple of upcoming IMF events: