Description
Book SynopsisSTAYING THE COURSE AS A CIO: HOW TO OVERCOME THE TRIALS AND CHALLENGES OF IT LEADERSHIP
The shelf-life of a Chief Information Officer can be shockingly short. Few survive in post for more than a few years. More often each falls prey to insurmountable problems and their careers come to a sharp and ignominious end. In this book, a global CIO with over thirty years of experience in major corporations examines the main reasons why this happens. Readers will understand which types of issue can cause problems for an IT Leader and more importantly, they will learn strategies of how these problems can be minimized or even avoided.
IT is often seen a technical backwater, but it is a discipline which has the capability to add massive value to an organisation whether it is in the private or the public sector provided of course it has the right leadership doing the right things.
Aspiring IT Leaders will need to deal with acommon set of recurring trials and challenge
Trade Review
“If you are a CIO or thinking about taking on the position, this book should be on your list of essential reading….it is an excellent book” (BCS, February 2015)
“The distillation of 30 years of experience from a CIO who knows a thing or two about an extended shelf life” (i-cio.com, February 2015)
“Michell gives useful advice on how to work through the toughest projects and solve some of the most pressing issues CIOs deal with today” (World Economic Forum, May 2015)
“For IT professionals looking to fully integrate their function into the enterprise, 'Staying the Course as a CIO' is a valuable source of practical advice, all based on real experience.” (Good Reads, June 2015)
Table of ContentsIntroduction xi
Chapter 1 Dislocated Stakeholders 1
Wooden Poles with Holder 2
Because They’re Worth It? 4
The Joys of Middle Management 10
Layers and Spans 11
Middle Managers and the Linkage between IT and the Business 13
The View from the Top of the Tree 16
Bored Boards 18
The Relationship Conundrum 19
The Henry VIII Method 20
The Customer/Supplier Model 20
Teamwork! 23
Could I Have Something Impossible Please? 26
The Dead‐Hero Zone 26
Magicians, Circuses and Keeping Something in the Tank 28
Chapter 2 Pathogenic Projects 31
IT Projects are Harder than Climbing Everest 33
Not Everyone Gets to be a Pharaoh 36
Don’t Start Anything You Can’t Finish 38
Peaches Are not the Only Fruit 39
Ungrouping Group‐Think 40
Mugging by PowerPoint 42
Back to the Himalayas 43
Stalinist Project Management 44
Undo‐able Projects 44
Stalin’s Special Question 45
Being Nostradamus 49
My Piece of String is Skewed 51
Things Can Go Badly Wrong, but They Rarely Go Badly Right 52
Inoculating against Skew—Percentile Therapy 54
What Happens in Projects Stays in Projects 56
The Gates of Wrath 58
Looking Up from the Pit 62
Chapter 3 Seriously Shaky Software 63
Software Just Doesn’t Wo.. 65
Being Immune to Tangerines 70
The Unfortunate Side‐Effect of Moore’s Law 72
It Will be Fixed in the Next Release 74
Upgrade or You Will be Banished Naked to a World of Loneliness and Isolation 75
Belchware not Bloatware 77
Patched, Leaking and Lost in a Maze 79
The Wobbly Stack 81
Stabilising Shakiness 84
Safe Software 85
The Safe Software Game 86
Booking a Landing Slot at Heathrow 88
Don’t Try to Improve a Da Vinci, Unless You Are a Rembrandt 89
Bespoke Only When You’re Bespoken to 92
Chapter 4 Obsessive Outsourcing Compulsion 95
Outsourcing an Empire 97
Strains of Outsourcing Compulsion 101
Madness with Metrics 102
Giving the Fox the Keys to the Chicken Coop … 103
The Nineteenth Hole Contract 105
Dedicated Followers of Fashion 106
Finance is not about Engineering Anything 108
Contract Accounting and Runaway Trains 110
Faster than a Speeding Bullet … 113
The Capability Argument 113
The Economic Argument 114
Better Out than In? 115
Protecting the Crown Jewels 117
Everyone Needs to Win 121
In Summary 124
Chapter 5 Chronic Consultancy Syndrome 125
Consultants—The Hummingbirds of the IT Jungle 126
Survival of the Sharpest 128
Spotting Hummingbirds in the Wild 129
An Expensive Dose of Aviary Assistance 130
Predator or Prey? 131
What Consulting Isn’t …? 132
It Was Their Fault! 133
The Magic of a Name 134
The Consultant’s Crutch 135
But What Consulting Perhaps Should Be? 135
Forests, Trees and Spectacles 137
You Are not Alone on Planet Earth 139
Nothing New Under the Sun 141
Hummingbirds Flap Harder than Cash Cows 142
How Hummingbirds Turn into Cuckoos 143
Answer 1—The Cuckoo Consultancy End‐Game Solution 147
Answer 2—The Thin‐Edge‐Wedge‐End‐Game Cash Cow 147
And Finally 148
Chapter 6 Strategy Schizophrenia 151
A Beginner’s Guide to World Domination 152
Types of Strategy 154
The Better Tomorrow 154
The Grand Plan 158
Strategy Schizophrenia—Balancing the Unbalanceable 161
Summary 164
Chapter 7 Bleeding Budgets 167
A Beginner’s Guide to Building a Roulette Table 168
How Much Are You Going to Spend? 168
How Much Goodness? 170
Which Investments? 174
But What about Tomorrow? 177
Putting Today and Tomorrow’s Investments Together 180
Putting the Final Touches to the Roulette Table 181
Placing the Chips 182
Our Transformation Journey 184
Other Funding Profile Examples 186
Funding Choice 1—The Support Organisation 186
Funding Choice 2—The “Go for it” Organisation 187
Summary 188
Chapter 8 Epilogue—What Might Overcome You? 191
It’s Always the Same Culprits, Except When it Isn’t 191
Failure and Folklore 194
IT Leadership Morbidity Tables 195
First Tier—Dislocated Stakeholders 195
Second Tier—Money and Strategy 197
Third Tier—Projects and Software 198
Fourth Tier—Outsourcing 199
Fifth Tier—Consultancy 199
The Unknown Unknowns 200
Acknowledgements 203
Bibliography 207
Index 211
