In global organizations, IT leaders not only need to be good communicators, they need to be good storytellers. Communicating effectively becomes ever harder as globalization forces IT to work with more, and more diverse, stakeholders. It’s no wonder that CIOs are increasingly employing corporate communications teams to influence stakeholders and manage change.

But in a world where employees face (and worse, ignore) a deluge of internal communications, traditional communication strategies fail to create the desired impact. This is evidenced by a recent poll conducted by our sister program, the Communications Executive Council, in which “information overload” scored as the second largest barrier to effective messaging. Read More »

Listen to "prosumers" for insight into emerging end-user needs

Not all end users conform to policy, there are always some who want to do things differently. They are often the ones at the forefront of consumerization, and the ones who complain loudest and most frequently about the capabilities and support they get from IT. The conventional approach is to treat these users as distractions or risks, but looked at differently, they can offer a unique source of intelligence into emerging needs.

Their insight is particularly valuable as understanding user needs is getting harder. This is especially true for information-centric capabilities such as mobile apps, analytics, and collaboration tools. For these capabilities, the needs of each user are different and fast changing. To make things worse, the average user struggles to articulate what he or she needs. But as usage of information-centric capabilities is often discretionary, if the functionality or interface is hard to use or doesn’t meet the user’s needs, they will find alternatives. Read More »

The performance of Challengers stands out.

Several of our recent posts have described the need for challenger skills in IT. The Challenger profile was first developed by CEB’s Sales Executive Council and has proven to be very effective at helping IT-business liaisons and service managers interact with business partners. As more IT staff engage with colleagues elsewhere in the business, the challenger skills set is moving beyond its original remit. Other IT roles where challenger skills are important are project and program managers, enterprise architects, vendor managers, and strategists. Unfortunately, several misconceptions about Challengers prevail. Read More »

What questions should mobile app developers ask first?

Seventy four percent of IT teams are seeing an increase in the number mobile apps in their project portfolios as employees make ever greater use of mobile devices. Yet many are building mobile apps that are at best a pale imitation of existing enterprise apps, and at worse, so overloaded with functionality as to be unusable. These failures stem from a common mistake – trying to build mobile versions of an existing enterprise application.

A better alternative is to design mobile apps for the environment they will be used in. To do this, development teams need a different way to generate ideas and identify opportunities that meet true mobile worker needs. Read More »

Adapting to the Future of Work will need some new tools.

The nature of work in large organizations is changing. Beyond increased mobility and access to information, teams are starting to share work differently, manage their time differently, and do altogether different types of work. Teams that are successful in the emerging work environment will depend on technology to collaborate and communicate, but many CIOs worry that IT isn’t fully prepared to support these changes.

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Four principles to getting service definitions right.

There are a lot of ways in which the move to end-to-end IT services can be a turbulent experience for organizations. One of the most common failure points in this transition is often one of the very first steps; getting service definitions right.  Luckily, there are companies who can provide some examples of effective service definitions.

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Differences in opinion about BA activities

This is a guest post from John Hillery. John is a Research Director with the Applications Executive Council (AEC). As part of its 2012 research, AEC is looking at the changing nature of many of the roles traditionally found in the Applications function.

Across the first quarter of this year, the Applications Executive Council facilitated a virtual learning group for business analysts. As part of the effort, business analysts (BAs) and their supervisors were asked to complete a skills diagnostic, based on our new competency model. The results from that diagnostic indicate that many BAs spend considerable time on the wrong activities.

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