The industry research of the IT sector reveals that as many as 7 out of the 10 new program never really take off. More often than not it is the CIOs who are held responsible for the loss. Being the head of the technical team, the CIO has to share the majority of the blame and many a times they get fired as well. Industry estimates that almost 30% of the CIO’s leave job because they are asked to.
So what is the reason behind CIOs failing and that too when they possessed with such great technical talent. Is there a question on their leadership skills or is it that they focus just on inputs rather than on outcomes. So, here are 8 unspoken reasons that tell you why CIOs fail and what they must know to possibly avoid shortened job carriers.
- Leadership Crisis
This is perhaps the most perennial problem that exists with CIOs. Many CIOs surround themselves with technologies instead of guiding team members and getting the best from each of them. The result is that because of Leadership crisis, tech talents present in the team never gets utilized and it is instead the CIO who becomes a part of working member. Nothing wrong about it, but CIOs are paid to lead programs rather than actually doing them.
- IT Spend Management
Most CIOs fail in IT Spend Management. They believe that outsourcing saves cost and exploring outsourcing options would allow them to address most of their concerns. However, the truth is practically opposite, unless the outsourcing partner is really a capable one, outsourcing outcome are often met with increased project complexity thereby leading to higher costs. Also, keeping an eye on blended rate per hour is the one single thing that a CIO could do to contain overall costs.
- My Way Approach
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Many programs fail after completion just because they were built the way the CIO wanted instead what customer needed. A CIO may be technically correct, however the customer is the ultimate decision maker who understands the business needs. CIO’s who do not involve customer in early app design and prototype testing often end up facing rejection from the customer or major changes.
- Failing to understand business language
CIOs need to do away with the method of calculating “inputs” while estimating a project. The current business scenario demands measuring “outcomes” and building estimation based on them.
A successful CIO would be much more familiar to business language and understanding of finances. For instance, knowledge about ROI would just not be enough, while calculating a project cost. A CIO must know about internal rate of return (IRR) or economic rate of return(ERR) of its programs. This allows them to measure and compare the profitability of investments made.
- Problem solvers are not necessarily good communicators
A CIO may find his/her position justified if he/she is able to quickly deduce a solution to a problem. However, what CIOs can easily forget is the core issue responsible for the occurrence of the problem.
For instance a weak funded project is likely to face cash crunch at several instances during the project life cycle. So instead of making cash provisions at several instances, a CIO, who is a good communicator would ensure that in the first instance, senior management knows that either the project funding has to increase or the project be dropped.
- Security Lapses
Though this one is an unfortunate event, it does bring out a lot of questions and if the answers given are not satisfactory, it takes CIO out as well. Security lapses mean loss of personal and professional data. Unfortunately, in this age where cybercriminals are on the roll, security lapses are bound to happen.
Though there could be other people here to blame, it is the CIO who is answerable ultimately.
- Unrealistic delivery commitments
Unrealistic delivery commitments often become the root cause of customer dissatisfaction and this is a grave mistake that a CIO must avoid. A hurried delivery would anyway invite quality issues and that where a CIO must step in and communicate clearly to the customer. After all a bad product would invite rework and that would involve more time for all the stakeholders.
- Large Project failures
Large project failures are never easy to digest, and when they are lost, they take heads of people, and in this case the CIO normally gets the blame. Larger programs call for fat resources and in turn require huge investments.
Often, such boondoggles consume much of an organization’s resources and are scrapped / dropped due to project management issues. CIO’s team plays a huge role in estimating metrics for such high risk programs. They are responsible to manage and monitor them. However, when programs fail, it’s the CIO who is asked to resign.
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