CIO Manifesto

I was thinking lately about CIO challenges in building IT organization which everybody could be proud of and came up with this CIO manifesto. Because it is never about a single individual, “IT manifesto” might be a better name, but the IT transformation starts with CIO, so I am keeping the name. As many other inspirational materials, it just happen to have seven steps.

I would like to hear your thoughts about it, and I will be delighted if you find any of those points useful.

1.    Develop a “serving you” culture.

• Everybody in IT is there to serve.
• We serve other business units, end customers, management, peers, and subordinates.
• We serve marketing and product development as we listen to them, share our perspectives, collaborate in finding the best solutions and deliver the products they love.
• We serve CFO, CEO and the board as we maximize the return on IT investments.
• We serve our clients as we give them the best in-store and online experiences.
• We serve developers as we make their work day enjoyable, minimize the distractions, provide mentoring and career growth, provide them with toolset, process, project management, business analysis and testing support that maximizes productivity and quality.
• We manage up and down with the same level of integrity and commitment.

2.    Create an organization that is more than a sum of its parts. Fight silos, build partnerships.

• It is the total cost of ownership or the total revenue that matters.
• Collaboration between IT departments needs to assure that overall solution is the best.

       § Spending extra $100 on development effort that saves $200 in testing is a good investment.

       § Buying a $100 tool that saves 10 development hours is a good investment.

       § Spending 10 hours to adapt project management approach for the development needs and then saving 100 development hours is a good investment.

• Collaboration between business units needs to assure that overall benefits are maximized.

       § It is about bottom line across organization. If online solution cannibalizes in-store sales it is still a good solution if overall bottom line is up; and a bad solution when it is otherwise.

       § Facility and costs investments in the better office space might have an amazing return in IT productivity.

• Organizational structure, as well as business and IT processes, need to be designed to drive toward desired collaboration.
• True partnership is only possible within a culture where transparency is respected and rewarded; where everybody feels as a part of the big team and feels free to share any well-intentioned ideas or critique.

3.    Define metrics carefully – they drive behavior.

• When defining metrics, or KPIs, or processes, or organizational structure, or compensation structure treat that effort similar to the development project: define requirements, design, implement, test and adjust and only then release.

       § What seems obvious might not be working as intended.

       § Rewarding testers by number of closed defects might result in each minuscule issue being recorded as a stand-alone bug, driving overall productivity down.

       § Overemphasizing short term gains might lead to technical debt and the loss of the competitive advantage.

4.    Recognize that the culture and the strategy that enables business success are not always identical to what enables IT success.

• Different industries developed their ways to obtain a success. It covers culture, processes, compensation, etc. It is tempting to extend the same practices to IT organization, but it is a temptation that is worth resisting.
• The differences between different industries are much more significant than differences between successful IT departments in different industries.
• IT organization is a different animal (word “different” is used 7 times in this section by design). Treat it as such. If you are in retail and your customers love listening to the music you play for them in stores, it does not mean that it is worth playing that music to developers when they are working.

5.    Appreciate the difference that right talent makes. Reword and attract that talent.

• Computer Science is a tricky science. It is a combination of an art and a science.

       § That is why the term “good developer” has much more meaning than, for example, a “good pharmacist”. On can expect that if two people get pharmacist degrees they would have comparable productivity at work. That is not how it works with IT people.

       § Two software engineers with similar years of experience, salary demands, and LinkedIn stories might have 1 to 10 performance ratios. It could be more than that, when person A can solve your problem and person B just can’t.

       § “Plug and play” mentality ends up being very expensive in IT, although true cost is hard to measure (see point on metrics).

• The best fit for the job is driven by combination of experience, attitude and raw talent.
• Defining IT roles and finding best fit for each role is critical for IT success.
• Recognizing the people (regardless of their titles) who make the largest contributions into the success of IT projects helps to create IT brain trust that can find the best solution to any problem organization faces.
• Respecting, rewarding and grooming the right talent will supercharge IT organization and will make attracting right people easier.

6.    Identify and solve the right problems.

• When facing a problem, it is important to understand the root cause behind that problem. That often leads to solving a different problem to reach the desired outcome (that outcome also have to be accurately defined).

       § System’s defects could be largely due to the incomplete requirements vs. lack of automated testing.

       § Slow sales could be due to the obsolete CRM system, CRM configuration, product development or sales incentives.

       § Longer than expected development cycle could be because of quality of development resources, miscalculating the project complexity, quality of requirements or requirements turn.

• Sticking to solving a wrong problem could be very expensive and not be the best for the organization’s morale. It is better to stop fast in solving the wrong problem (or solving it in a wrong way), and then switch to solving the right problem as soon as possible.
• Committing to the right level of diligence up front is the best way to make sure that right problem is defined. Understanding the sunk cost and organizational transparency are good tools to change course for the benefit of the organization.

7.    Listen and optimize.

• This must be a DNA of IT (or any successful organization). That should apply to everybody in the organization, but that culture need to be developed and nourished.
• IT optimization includes

       § Software Development Processes

       -      The purpose of the process is not to be cool, not to have specific certifications, not to maximize number of program managers or scrum masters, not to have a one way to solve all the problems, and not to be drastically different from the previous process.

       -      The purpose of the process is to have a predictable and preferably enjoyable way of optimizing delivery of the desired results (productivity, quality, time to market).

       § Business – IT collaboration

       -      Optimization here makes sure that nothing is lost in the translation, collaboration happens between the right people on both business and IT sides, the results of that collaborations are captured in a way that is easy to understand and act upon.

       § Architecture

       -      Best architects understand the rules (patterns) and know when to break them.

       -      Architecture need to be tailored to the business needs and specific organizational constraints more than to the specific technology.

       -      Optimization here is not about adapting every new framework that just came out. The slogans like this, from one old architecture presentation, rarely lead to the successful results: “We are not just at the bleeding edge of the technology. We are one step ahead of it!”

       -      Optimization here is about

       ·               Balance between consistency across enterprise and utilizing the best practices;

       ·               Balance between tactical and strategic needs;

       ·               Minimizing the set of different systems, platforms and tools that serve similar purposes;

       ·               Simplifying system integration;

       ·               Finding right products that fit the need and have the best cost/complexity ratio for the job to be done.

       § Vendor management (commercial off the shelf products (COTS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and consulting services)

       -      Vendor management for COTS or SaaS is easier when

       ·               You do not buy (or phase out) the products you do not (or no longer) need.

       ·               All the licenses are consolidated and there is a centralized way for negotiating the costs.

       -      Consulting services is important component of successful IT as long as following rules are observed:

       ·               IT organization clearly defines the strategy for consulting support: what skills to seek, what problems to solve.

       ·               IT organization maintains full control over requirements, interfaces and validation of deliverables if entire project is outsourced.

       ·               For management consulting (if required) IT organization has the right level of engagement and maintains full control over the evaluation of the recommendations.

       ·               For staff augmentation IT organization maintains control to assure fit (interviews and meetings with the team).

       ·               Consulting services evaluated by value delivered vs. cost and not by an hourly rate. 

       § IT Team Building

       -      Most of the organizations have IT departments that compete for the pool of IT resources in the specific location. Optimization here means that people you need are interested to join your organization, stay in your organization and deliver results that you need.

       -      IT work requires concentration, creativity, thinking and interaction with others. All barriers to that should be minimized. That makes convenient location; comfortable work space that include quiet places to focus, ergonomic chair to sit on, reliable laptop, etc.; easy access to all supplies needed - productivity boosters.

       -      The expectations for each IT position should be well defined and easy to explain. The performance evaluation process needs to be simple, fair and consistent (the collaboration between IT leadership and HR is needed there). That means that when somebody gets promoted or separated from the company, most colleagues would understand why and agree.

       -      The IT culture should encourage the optimization ideas from everybody. Those ideas could be solicited via one-on-one meetings at all levels, via surveys and any other means. Those ideas need to be evaluated and acted upon. That is the best way to assure that supply of good ideas never ends.

Apply all the above and then the quote from “Bringing Out The Best in People” by Aubrey C. Daniels: “…a company is always perfectly designed to produce what it is producing” will be a blessing.