For CIOs

Forrester's Best Practices Framework For BT Leadership Maturity

Use Our Self-Assessment To Accelerate Your BT Transformation

by Bobby Cameron, Tim DeGennaro, November 6, 2009

As CIOs help their firms succeed with business technology (BT) — pervasive technology use with increased direct control by the business — they struggle to answer two deceptively simple questions: 1) How are we doing? and 2) what should we do better? These . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Business Alignment And BT Enablement Require Business Capability Maps

At Your Level, You Can't Rely On Any Other Single IT Business Model

by Bobby Cameron, October 30, 2009

CIOs are aggressively tackling their planning and management challenges, deploying tools and building models to address a wide variety of functions like asset management, IT services management, application rationalization, business process efficiencies, . . .

For CIOs

IT Globalization Examples — Drivers, Hurdles, And Opportunities

by Bobby Cameron, August 7, 2009

CIOs are increasingly pursuing globalization in support of their firms' efforts to attack new markets and achieve greater efficiencies. But globalization is both an emerging and complicated change, and there are no signposts to tell firms which way to . . .

For CIOs

Priorities Shift As Business' Grip On Technology Tightens

CIOs Can Drive Better Tech Decisions — Even When Business Is Making Them

by Bobby Cameron, Sharyn Leaver, July 17, 2009

In Q4 2008, Forrester surveyed 1,104 IT decision-makers to find out how they set their budgets and allocated funds to different software types and initiatives. As part of this study, Forrester asked where the ultimate software decision control resides . . .

For CIOs

Innovation And Agility — Driving IT Success In Economic Hard Times

Firms Invest Beyond Tactical Approaches To Accelerate Out Of The Downturn

by Bobby Cameron, June 2, 2009

To understand how IT organizations are addressing the downturn, Forrester interviewed 46 enterprise IT decision-makers from around the globe. We found three scenarios: Those who have yet to cut their budgets and are keeping their options open; those who . . .

For CIOs

Value-Based Communication Boosts Business' Perception Of IT

Best Practice CIOs Take A Personal Leadership Role In Marketing IT's Value

by Bobby Cameron, May 15, 2009

CIOs list IT-business alignment as a perennial challenge. They fail to achieve the business partnership they seek as the gap persists between business execs' expectations of IT and those execs' sense of IT's ability to deliver. But CIOs themselves are . . .

For CIOs

Business Realities Drive IT Globalization

by Bobby Cameron, March 12, 2009

Business leaders target globalization to deliver performance that spans geographic and organizational boundaries. What globalization means for CIOs is not simple — they have to help their firms deliver optimized global performance while meeting local . . .

For CIOs

BT Changes IT's Operating Model

CIOs And Business Execs Balance BT Leadership Along An Operating Model Continuum

by Bobby Cameron, March 6, 2009

The transition from IT to BT continues, evidenced by the absorption of traditional IT roles throughout the business organization and the increasing number of business executives who are taking ownership of technology decisions. Successful BT operating . . .

For CIOs

Lloyd's IT Business Engagement Teams Build Business Trust

by Bobby Cameron, January 14, 2009

When Lloyd's brought a new CIO, Peter Hambling, on board in mid-2006, he faced a challenging IT organization that was not perceived by Lloyd's business as a partner. Hambling addressed this IT-business relationship to rebuild trust in IT's ability to . . .

For CIOs

CIOs Must Succeed As Utilities And Suppliers To Become Business Partners

by Bobby Cameron, November 19, 2008

Many CIOs want their IT organizations to be partners with their business customers. But this IT archetype requires that IT add a focus on business value to IT's capabilities as a solid utility and a trusted supplier. While consistency and transparency . . .

For CIOs

IT Demand Management And The PMO

The PMO Is Both Part Of And A Precursor To IT Demand Management

by Bobby Cameron, October 10, 2008

IT demand management (IT DM) is today's leading-edge practice for managing the relationship between IT and the business. It builds on the capabilities of the project/program/portfolio management office (PMO) that most firms have in place, adding performance, . . .

For CIOs

Improving The Perception Of IT Requires A Focus On Business Trust, Not Just Technology

IT Demand Management Should Face Off Against The Business Organizations

by Bobby Cameron, August 15, 2008

CIOs are improving the way their business clients perceive the IT organization, mostly through actions that improve business' trust of IT — consistent IT processes and transparency of IT's performance. To continue this change, CIOs should charge their . . .

For CIOs

The Emerging Technology Trends That CIOs Should Care About

by Bobby Cameron, August 13, 2008

Today's technology trends may appear like only incremental changes compared with historic changes like ERP and the Internet, but Forrester believes that we are in the initial phases of a major technology innovation and growth wave called "IT everywhere." . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Nurture IT's Relationship With Your CFO

by Bobby Cameron, August 4, 2008

CIOs have been trying to pull away from their CFOs — trying to get beyond their historical relationship that was focused on cost. But increasingly, CIOs and CFOs need to work together, addressing enterprisewide issues like process optimization and risk . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Reporting Relationship Defines Your Job Only At The Margin

by Bobby Cameron, July 16, 2008

Forrester's 2007 IT governance survey yielded a broad set of data on how the CIO's reporting relationship does — or doesn't — impact the way IT works and is perceived. We surveyed 503 senior IT decision-makers about how IT runs, how it is structured, . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Don't Wait To Innovate

CIOs Limit IT's Innovation, Stymied By Misconceptions And Too Much Caution

by Bobby Cameron, May 1, 2008

Innovation may sit at the top of CIOs' agendas, but too many of you are waiting before you address innovation — waiting to get your IT organization's house in order, waiting to hear from the business about what to do, or waiting to be formally assigned . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Don't Constrain Innovation

CIOs Miss Opportunities By Failing To Understand Innovation

by Bobby Cameron, April 25, 2008

Confusion about what innovation is and how to handle it all too frequently stymies the CIO's best efforts at helping drive business innovation. To clarify this confusion, CIOs should treat innovation as part of a continuum of opportunities ranging from . . .

For CIOs

CIOS: Make Innovation Part Of The Enterprise Portfolio

by Bobby Cameron, April 25, 2008

What starts out as an innovative concept, if successful, becomes a budgeted project like any other. CIOs can help ensure the future success and sustainability of their firm's innovation by driving the effort to track and communicate progress in the context . . .

For CIOs

IT Can Help Accelerate Business Innovation

Making Product, Business Model, And Process Change Sustainable

by Bobby Cameron, February 21, 2008

Innovation has reached the level of near-meaningless cliché, with execs wishing they were engaged in more of it — even though these execs are unclear about what they want. For their part, CIOs want to create a greater role for IT in business innovation, . . .

For CIOs

New IT-Business Partnership Enables BT Success

Centralized IT Control Fails As BT Moves Beyond IT's Direct Control

by Bobby Cameron, February 21, 2008

With the emergence of business technology (BT), technology is moving outside of IT's direct control. Why? BT users are striving to use technology for their specific purposes at a pace faster than IT's project-based design-build-maintain approach will . . .

For CIOs

Case Study: CIOs Can Learn From Kimberly-Clark's Innovation Design Studio

by Bobby Cameron, December 12, 2007

Innovative initiatives cascade from corporate strategies down to action. Example? Kimberly-Clark Corporation (K-C) advanced its enterprisewide strategy "to become an indispensable partner to \[its\] customers" with a virtual reality system that helps . . .

For CIOs

Next Up: The 21st Century CIO

Business Change Agent And Innovator — Or Gone

by Bobby Cameron, December 6, 2007

The pace of technology change — and therefore business expectations and IT culture — is accelerating, fueled by three things: IT's brief but turbulent history, a crush of external forces that reset IT spending and user attitudes, and the strength and . . .

For CIOs

Capability Maps Anchor Business Complexity

Business Capabilities Linked To A Bill Of IT Set Up Effective Dev, Ops, And Planning

by Bobby Cameron, November 16, 2007

IT leaders have been challenged to harness the complexity of business as it affects planning, architecture, and IT operations. This complexity is only increasing, driven by mergers and acquisitions, globalization, and decentralized business organizations. . . .

For CIOs

Beyond Alignment: BT Synchronization Examples

Business Technology Executives Intertwine Roles With Their Firms' Missions

by Bobby Cameron, October 25, 2007

As technology continues to become ever more embedded in business, business-oriented technology management executives seek multiple ways to synchronize the work of their organization with what the firm needs and expects. This business technology (BT) synchronization . . .

For CIOs

Marketing IT In 2007: Desire, Uncertainty, And New Tools

Perspectives From Forrester Client Roundtables

by Bobby Cameron, August 29, 2007

IT executives are well aware of the requirement to market IT, although they are not always certain whose job it is, how much to do, or which channels to use — based on perspectives offered by executives at Forrester IT Forum roundtable discussions. These . . .