Related material, May 2009

From Smart Insights: Q&A with Peter Ghavami

Author Peter Ghavami acknowledges that IT is complex and multifaceted, yet he offers some "fundamental management principles" in his book to get CIOs started on their process optimization and productivity goals. They are:

1. Deliver exceptional value: Identify customers' value drivers and  focus on going beyond their expectations.
2. Eliminate waste: Identify sources of waste and pare down non-value adding tasks.
3. Reduce complexity: Manage risk by simplifying and reducing interdependencies.
4. Design for quality: Develop processes for every IT task and establish  a high expectation for quality. Then, perform design reviews to ensure that quality is attained.
5. Compress time: Apply Lean and Agile methods to deliver IT solutions faster by reducing cycle time.
6. Build IT factories: Practice continual innovation. Create consistent processes and component-based development to deliver solutions at regular intervals.
7. Continually test and measure: Develop a culture of testing, gathering facts and measuring data about processes, applications and services.
8. Continuously manage risk: Prepare a risk-response plan in advance of problems so you can identify and mitigate them more quickly.
9. Value people: Respect your team. Keep staff accountable and trust them with decision making.
10. Encourage ongoing learning: Implement IT projects with the intention of creating new knowledge and applying it to other projects. Learn from your customers about their business and respond to their needs.
11. Decide for the long haul: Maintain a long-term horizon for major IT  decisions and defer some of those to the latest time possible until more facts are  available.
12. Build intelligent organizations: Provide real-time, collaborative and relevant information to employees in a transparent way. Strive to make decisions that optimize the entire organization and work flows — not just IT.