Term Paper on "Management of it Planning"

Term Paper 4 pages (1075 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

CIO's Strategy for Strategic it Planning

The reason that so many CIOs fail in aligning their strategic it plans to business objectives is that the entire process of creating, editing, and finally seeking feedback and execution of the this plan require an entirely different set of skills the CIO doesn't typically use. For many CIOs, their strongest skills are deductive logic, abstraction and the ability to create complex process workflows in their minds on the fly, then presenting them as solutions to both their boss, the CEO, and to customers. CIOs rise to this level of management not necessarily for their coordination, communication or integrative interpersonal skills in seeking cooperation.

As a result of this and the fact that it has only until recently been on its own from an organizational standpoint, and the conditions that any CIO must grapple with to get a strategic it plan aligned with business objectives becomes clear. When the characteristics and attributes of CIOs that do excel at the strategic it planning are studied a unique set of skills emerge. First, these CIOs have the a higher than average level of Emotional Intelligence (EI), have the ability to instill transformational leadership into teams and drive ownership of plans into organizational units, and finally, gain the cooperation of other departments in cross functional teams as a result of these two qualities. In organizations which have a decentralized approach to it, the need for extensive cross-functional teams is also critical for getting key parts of the strategic it plan completed.

CIOs' Emotional Intelligence and Cross-functional Team Performance

The ro

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le of cross-functional teams is primarily to intensely focus resources, processes, and people for the completion and project schedule for a strategic it plan. The logic of cross-functional teams is that the varied members of the team, each from a different functional area or in larger organizations, specific disciplines including engineering, marketing, manufacturing, operations, and service can be more effective in accomplishing the many synchronized and often complex tasks in developing a strategic it plan that supports their specific business goals and objectives. While the logic of having a concerted team of department or discipline experts is the foundation of cross-functional team effectiveness, there is in reality no obligation, no requirement, for the team members to go beyond the minimum level of performance necessary to get the tasks done they are assigned as part of the team. As a result of this paradox of team membership and performance, many cross-functional teams deliver mediocre results and often have multiple generations of members when a CIO scores low on Emotional Intelligence (EI), in addition to not using transformational leadership techniques. The issue is one of infusing ownership into the team members through the combination of EI and transformational leadership techniques. Cross-functional team leaders who attain a best practices level of performance are those that through the consistent use of EI and transformational leadership create environments in teams that foster, reward and perpetuate task and project ownership over time. This translates into strategic it plans that have a higher than average potential of aligning with and contributing to line-of-business objectives.

Transformational leadership is a critical link in infusing ownership into teams, the greater the level of… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Management of it Planning" Assignment:

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Case Assignment

This module is about the problems of creating information technology plans that work within the scope of the organization's strategic objectives. It is also about all the reasons why this is a very difficult thing to do, particularly when the process gets down to specifics. Like all organizational decision-making, information technology planning is often a complex muddle of conflicting goals, interests, unclear reasons and payoffs, and poor communication. This indictment is presented without apology, because it is in fact typical. This is not to say that there are not exceptions, and occasionally planning is actually done well. But almost everything in the organization mitigates against this, and we generally fight at best a rearguard action against all the forces that work routinely in favor of chaos.

By way of introduction to the process, consider Doug Frese's discussion paper on IT Enterprise Architecture and Pat Barton's on Enterprise Resource Planning: Factors Affecting Success and Failure. both talk about the process of creating IT enterprise systems from a relatively positive and more or less rational perspective, and both make perfect sense. But Stephanie Gurlen's discussion paper on Scope Creep is perhaps more to the point; the phenomenon that she describes and categorizes with that memorable and almost onomatopoetic phrase is a more or less constant fact of organizational life.

Structural, professional, and personal forces all work in combination to make the IT service/planning interface problematical. Organizational politics alone would make the job difficult; add in communication difficulties, differing frames of professional reference, and just plain personality conflicts and you have a recipe for a serious misalignment. The person at the center of all this swirling chaos tends to be the chief information officer (CIO) of the organization. There's no doubt that superior management can make a big difference in achieving or not achieving planning alignment, or at least in making clear when and why alignment is less than perfect. Much of what the CIO does is to explain to both sides why the other is as it is. Here are two articles describing how CIOs play this key middle-ground role:

ALLAN HOLMES. The Four (Not Three, Not Five) Principles of Managing Expectations. CIO Magazine. http://www.cio.com/archive/110105/expectations.html

MARK GOULSTON. How to Avoid Bumping Heads. CIO Magazine http://www.cio.com/archive/110105/career.html

When you've had a chance to read through these articles, and look through the background material for additional information regarding this phenomenon and other parts of the IT planning process, and consult any other resources that seem helpful to you on this matter, please compose a 5-7 page paper on the topic:

"Most effective CIO's strategy for strategic IT planning"

*****

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