another major change took place.
Large integrated enterprise software
packages commoditized many busi-ness-process support tools, empowering business and IT managers to
outsource these tools to external vendors/partners for improved productivity and customer responsiveness.
More often than not, the middle part
of the development life cycle—design
and develop—was outsourced to external enterprise software vendors.
CIOs had to become adept at managing large and small projects from
multiple vendors, by focusing on
planning, analysis, implementation,
and integration.
15
As we entered the 21st century, the
focus of IT management shifted to developing newer applications using advanced Web- and social media-based
technologies. The advances made in
Internet and Web-based technologies
in the 2000s led to a plethora of hardware, software, and service companies,
all serving various parts of a firm’s extended value chain and empowering
customers to seek improved services.
As a result, CIOs today must manage
two different life cycles: one looks at
digital innovations to explore newer
technologies, while the other continues to support legacy systems. Multiple
partners are used to assist with both
these life cycles. Today’s CIOs must
be adept at keeping the lights on and
quick pilot testing of new digital innovations. They have to balance the
strategic needs of a changing business
through exploration while maintaining
a reliable backend operational system
using a mix of both established and innovative technology vendors/partners,
or two-speed IT.
2
These changes in IT led to the es-
tablishment of two distinct vendor
groups, in addition to the traditional
IT user within a firm. One group of
vendors continues to advance IT in-
novation with new products and ser-
vices (such as social media, Internet
of Things, and data analytics) in sup-
port of changing business needs, while
the other continues to implement and
maintain commoditized IT products
or services (such as enterprise systems,
data warehouses, Web services, and
standardized hardware plug-ins). The
IT leadership within a firm is expected
to interact with both types of vendors
firm must decide if candidates from
the same industry are more attractive
(because they have similar domain
knowledge) or if IT professionals
from other industries are more attrac-
tive (because they have a wider range
of experience). The data in our study
shows 75% of the IT professionals
who changed organizations in order
to obtain their first CIO position also
changed their industry. This indicates
that firms are looking for profession-
als with diverse IT experience or that
IT may be industry agnostic. In either
case, it appears that IT professionals
are not tied to an industry.
Changing Nature of IT
Information technology is constantly
changing. Advances in the digitization of business processes/services,
the miniaturization of digital products
that store and manipulate data, and
the use of agile development methods
that deliver applications faster to meet
business needs, are just a few examples
of such changes. One by-product in IT
is an increasing specialization of roles
among those who design, develop, and
implement IT.
In-depth interviews by Tanniru15
with more than 80 IT executives in
2012 showed a stark change in the
focus of IT leadership over the past
four decades—from focusing primarily on costs to focusing on strategic
alignment and entrepreneurship. In
the 1970s and early 1980s, a few large
companies produced almost all the IT
products worldwide, with IT leaders
using these products to seek cost reductions in business operations. The
life cycles for these projects tended to
be quite long, and the CIO was responsible for managing all phases of the
projects.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
introduction of PCs and a large number of small product vendors and off-the-shelf software tools empowered
business users to seek control of their
IT resources for decision support. This
led to two parallel approaches. The spiral development approach facilitated
multiple smaller projects, while the
conventional waterfall approach developed and maintained larger projects.
CIOs had to become adept at managing both large and small projects.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s
In the new
environment,
talent can be
recognized
sooner than
in the past, and
there are more
opportunities
to display
leadership as
IT becomes
a strategic tool
for competitiveness
in the marketplace.