Staying the Course as a CIO

INTRODUCTION xi CHAPTER 1 Dislocated Stakeholders 1 Wooden Poles with Holder 2 Because They're Worth It? 4 The Joys of Middle Management 10 Layers and Spans 11 Middle Managers and the Linkage between IT and the Business 13 The View from the Top of the Tree 16 Bored Boards 18 The Relationship Conundrum 19 The Henry VIII Method 20 The Customer/Supplier Model 20 Teamwork! 23 Could I Have Something Impossible Please? 26 The Dead?]Hero Zone 26 Magicians, Circuses and Keeping Something in the Tank 28 CHAPTER 2 Pathogenic Projects 31 IT Projects are Harder than Climbing Everest 33 Not Everyone Gets to be a Pharaoh 36 Don't Start Anything You Can't Finish 38 Peaches Are not the Only Fruit 39 Ungrouping Group?]Think 40 Mugging by PowerPoint 42 Back to the Himalayas 43 Stalinist Project Management 44 Undo?]able Projects 44 Stalin's Special Question 45 Being Nostradamus 49 My Piece of String is Skewed 51 Things Can Go Badly Wrong, but They Rarely Go Badly Right 52 Inoculating against Skew--Percentile Therapy 54 What Happens in Projects Stays in Projects 56 The Gates of Wrath 58 Looking Up from the Pit 62 CHAPTER 3 Seriously Shaky Software 63 Software Just Doesn't Wo.. 65 Being Immune to Tangerines 70 The Unfortunate Side?]Effect of Moore's Law 72 It Will be Fixed in the Next Release 74 Upgrade or You Will be Banished Naked to a World of Loneliness and Isolation 75 Belchware not Bloatware 77 Patched, Leaking and Lost in a Maze 79 The Wobbly Stack 81 Stabilising Shakiness 84 Safe Software 85 The Safe Software Game 86 Booking a Landing Slot at Heathrow 88 Don't Try to Improve a Da Vinci, Unless You Are a Rembrandt 89 Bespoke Only When You're Bespoken to 92 CHAPTER 4 Obsessive Outsourcing Compulsion 95 Outsourcing an Empire 97 Strains of Outsourcing Compulsion 101 Madness with Metrics 102 Giving the Fox the Keys to the Chicken Coop ... 103 The Nineteenth Hole Contract 105 Dedicated Followers of Fashion 106 Finance is not about Engineering Anything 108 Contract Accounting and Runaway Trains 110 Faster than a Speeding Bullet ... 113 The Capability Argument 113 The Economic Argument 114 Better Out than In? 115 Protecting the Crown Jewels 117 Everyone Needs to Win 121 In Summary 124 CHAPTER 5 Chronic Consultancy Syndrome 125 Consultants--The Hummingbirds of the IT Jungle 126 Survival of the Sharpest 128 Spotting Hummingbirds in the Wild 129 An Expensive Dose of Aviary Assistance 130 Predator or Prey? 131 What Consulting Isn't ...? 132 It Was Their Fault! 133 The Magic of a Name 134 The Consultant's Crutch 135 But What Consulting Perhaps Should Be? 135 Forests, Trees and Spectacles 137 You Are not Alone on Planet Earth 139 Nothing New Under the Sun 141 Hummingbirds Flap Harder than Cash Cows 142 How Hummingbirds Turn into Cuckoos 143 Answer 1--The Cuckoo Consultancy End?]Game Solution 147 Answer 2--The Thin?]Edge?]Wedge?]End?]Game Cash Cow 147 And Finally 148 CHAPTER 6 STRATEGY SCHIZOPHRENIA 151 A Beginner's Guide to World Domination 152 Types of Strategy 154 The Better Tomorrow 154 The Grand Plan 158 Strategy Schizophrenia--Balancing the Unbalanceable 161 Summary 164 CHAPTER 7 BLEEDING BUDGETS 167 A Beginner's Guide to Building a Roulette Table 168 How Much Are You Going to Spend? 168 How Much Goodness? 170 Which Investments? 174 But What about Tomorrow? 177 Putting Today and Tomorrow's Investments Together 180 Putting the Final Touches to the Roulette Table 181 Placing the Chips 182 Our Transformation Journey 184 Other Funding Profile Examples 186 Funding Choice 1--The Support Organisation 186 Funding Choice 2--The "Go for it" Organisation 187 Summary 188 CHAPTER 8 Epilogue--What Might Overcome You? 191 It's Always the Same Culprits, Except When it Isn't 191 Failure and Folklore 194 IT Leadership Morbidity Tables 195 First Tier--Dislocated Stakeholders 195 Second Tier--Money and Strategy 197 Third Tier--Projects and Software 198 Fourth Tier--Outsourcing 199 Fifth Tier--Consultancy 199 The Unknown Unknowns 200 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 INDEX 211