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This article explores the RACI responsibility matrix. By properly using, enforcing, and implementing RACI across business and IT, project leaders and CIOs can better execute and manage the performance and outcomes of tasks and projects across the enterprise.

As organizations continue to turn to IT to define and improve the value of IT to the mission, the Innovation Value Institute's IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) should be considered. This model examines far more than IT's technical readiness by evaluating and measuring IT's ability to support the business as well as determine how well IT runs as a business. The IT-CMF considers differences in industry type and mission, thereby avoiding the \"one size fits all\" or \"perfect is best\" syndrome of other capability models. Well funded, well organized, and supported by top players in the IT industry, the IT-CMF shows all signs of being the industry standard for IT readiness and maturity measurement and improvement.

This list of the \"2011 top 10 biztech trends\" will provide guidance to business and technology executives to help them develop a high-level, long-term approach for exploiting opportunities to help the business grow.

It's the time of year when everyone starts releasing their \"top 10\" lists. Most of these lists are very technology or tool centric and can be more visionary than practical. Few organizations face all of the items on such lists, and many items don't remain relevant for more than a couple of years-then they're either subsumed into the larger IT portfolio or they disappear into the annals of IT history as \"technology that never was.\" Very few lists address the softer skills and issues facing CIOs, who are tasked with solving broader enterprise challenges and building persistent IT organizations. These items should include skills that span beyond IT and improve both the execution and integration of IT across the entire enterprise constituent pool (including IT staff, business partners, customers, and external stakeholders). Here, I present two separate lists for your consideration-one on tech trends and the other on strategic capabilities. I've ordered them based on my perception of the \"average\" enterprise, and Iinclude items that should apply to most organizations.

Every CIO dreads that painful fall ritual of building a budget for the coming year. During this process, we're confronted with a laundry list of user needs- or wants, to be more precise-and a set of constraints imposed by the CFO and CEO. Once we add in base-load tasks (to keep the lights on), tactical upgrades, messy but strategic IT changes, and our own goals for IT team development, we're left with a massive list, sometimes referred to as \"the unachievable many.\" As the budget process moves forward, we typically find ourselves in the crossfire between these competing forces. Eventually, the organization collaborates, fights, or dictates its way to a \"plan\" for the coming year. Dwight Eisenhower once said, \"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.\" I experienced this firsthand while serving in the military, quickly learning that nearly every plan degrades as real events unfold. However, the process of planning (gathering correct information,having clear goals, understand ing the risk, and outlining an approach that's more like a path than a tightrope) was key to being able to successfully adapt as the situation evolved. So, as we move into budget planning season, I thought it might be useful to discuss the core concepts of a healthy budget planning process.

Recently, there has been a fair amount of press about the increasing drive for specialization in technology hiring. This push to compartmentalize capabilities can be attributed to leaner staffing without a comparable decrease in the number of \"urgent\" projects. Furthermore, organizations have been doing this for so long now that it's becoming standard practice. Where are the positions for \"generalists\" who can perform multiple functions? Are the \"utility players\" in organizations being hired into management and then driven down into tactical projects? There's an inherent risk to the business if IT turns into a \"tool shop\" for the enterprise. Yet there's little indication that CIOs are concerned about or even aware of this situation.

Five years from now, some mid-size businesses might be functioning without any company-owned IT hardware. Although this might initially be true for only a small subset of industries and firms, others will find themselves some where on the continuum between \"only company assets\" and \"no company assets,\" with the trend heading toward fewer corporate devices. As a CIO, the author asks what will the IT teams should start doing now to prepare.

When most business or IT executives hear the term \"Lean,\" they immediately think of shop-floor centric initiatives limited to manufacturing. However, a deeper look at Lean principles reveals opportunities for organizations to optimize their operations, including IT. At its most basic form, Lean focuses on processes in an organization that add value for which a customer will pay. It advocates removing all extraneous processes that don't directly contribute to that value stream. The author recently met with Larry Miller, author of Lean Culture: A Leadership Guide (LM Miller Publishing, 2011), to discuss not only how IT can support Lean efforts but also how the Lean philosophy can help CIOs optimize IT operations. Although executives and business leaders are Miller's target audience, IT analysts, relation ship managers, business liaisons, change-management teams, and other IT players will quickly spot how the described approach fits in with IT practices. Given that today's CIOs have evolved from simple service providers into partners in business-strategy definition and execution, these processes should be useful with or without a formal Lean initiative.

CIOs of the future have to do more than react to change: they need to become more efficient at connecting themselves to the source of change and managing it for tangible business improvement. This article outlines seven steps CIOs can follow potentially drive their careers to a strategic role. The initial four steps outline a process to better locate and manage change in their organization. If done well, an additional three steps provide a path for CIOs to pursue (and promote themselves) toward a new \"strategic business planning\" role that will benefit their current organization and their own long-term career plans.

Organizations who have typically attempted to effect strategic change through initiatives aimed at people, processes, or technology are discovering that more meaningful and lasting change is achieved through focus on culture, organization, and governance. IT, as the \"enabler,\" has a unique view across and through the enterprise and can provide the best input to executive leadership on opportunities for change.