By Esther Shein
Any IT leader worth his or her salt is going to be constantly thinking about whether they are staying relevant to the business. Operating according to the status quo doesn’t cut it any longer -- not with constantly nagging trends like instant access to cloud computing resources and user-friendly mobile apps designed for addressing business needs.
We hear so much about the need for CIOs to drive innovation and deliver real business value. In order to do this, though, CIOs need to be aware of some of the issues preventing effective application development, which, naturally, impacts business value, innovation and ultimately, IT's relevance to the business.
One of the most obvious is IT projects that run over budget. Instead of throwing additional resources at the project, which simply Band-Aids a problem, CIOs must ensure that they invest in appropriate technology and processes that drive efficient and accurate requirements at the outset.
When a significant business change occurs, such as a merger/acquisition or new requirement for regulatory compliance, it will impact business systems software. When building a rapidly responsive IT team, it behooves the CIO to revamp and update the requirements process with technologies like social collaboration, which can be used throughout the entire application development process.
Project visibility into the software development lifecycle seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes falls off the further down you go into the organizational hierarchy. CIOs must make sure to invest in technologies that provide clear visibility throughout so that any inefficiencies brought on by weak requirements can be spotted early.