2. The Role of the Modern CIO

Times have changed, as has technology and its central relevance to the modern enterprise. So, it seems appropriate to pause to look at how those changes have impacted the role of CIO. To be successful, it’s critical that everyone in the organization understands what the modern CIO has become, and how effective an agile CIO can be within this new context.

In times past, the CIO was often responsible for choosing the computer and software systems available within the organization, and tasked with the responsibility of managing IT assets and service delivery. While some of this remains true, the role has broadened in the modern context.

Some of these changes are driven by trends in enterprise technology, but others are being driven by changes in workforce culture, commoditization of personal technology, new project and product management paradigms, and the rise of information security as a distinct role within the organization. Before we can talk about how these changes have affected the role of the CIO, we should look at a few key examples to give us context.

Workforce Culture

Shifts in company culture are ongoing and evolving. Today’s workplace is dramatically different that it was when many of today’s senior CIOs entered the workforce.

In many companies, hierarchies have flattened, and in today’s marketplace respect is more often a function of a meritocracy rather than one’s position in the organizational chart. Some companies have done away with offices in favor of open-office plans, and “Mahogany Row” is more of a concept than an actual location now.

In some companies, “office casual” has replaced suits and ties even at the board level. Even sales people rarely dress formally, unless they’re visiting a client with a very traditional culture. Especially in places like Silicon Valley and technology startups, comfort and casualwear are the order of the day.

And when was the last time you called your boss, or even the CEO of the company, by anything other than first name? There are doubtless still companies where C-level executives are addressed as Mr. or Ms., but they’re a vanishing breed. And even in those companies, the rest of the organization continues to become (at least in theory) more egalitarian and much less formal.

Incentives and leadership have changed, too. Companies lost a great deal of top-down power when workplace culture shifted from long-term employment rewarded by raises, canalized career paths, and funded retirements to an at-will, free-agency model. While this has created benefits for both companies and employees, today’s competitive companies know that they need modernize their incentive structure and leadership style to attract the best of today’s modern workforce.

Companies can’t hold onto experienced Gen X people or upwardly mobile Millennials through promises of a gold watch and a retirement party the way they could in my father’s day. Instead, new workplace norms like telecommuting, work-life balance, and employee empowerment are the tools that agile CIOs can leverage to attract (and keep!) the best and brightest.

Your personal experience may be different from this view of the modern workforce. There are always exceptions to any generalization. However, it’s important to acknowledge these shifts in the workforce and workplace attitudes to understand the agile CIO’s role in the modern era.

Personal Technology

Time was that all technology within a company needed to be blessed by senior management. Did you need a database? The CIO would negotiate for one. Did you want a new tool for software development? The VP of Engineering would ask for funding to buy commercial licenses.

Today, the monoculture of the past has been replaced by the complex intersection of:

• enterprise systems with employee-owned hardware like cell phones and WiFi-enabled devices; and
• mashups of corporate-owned IT systems and user-installed software and external web applications.

This can present a support or security challenge for a traditional CIO. Rather than hand-selecting every piece of hardware and software for the organization, today’s modern CIO focuses more on curation, integration strategies, and enabling self-service delivery to ensure corporate interests are served while simultaneously preventing the IT organization itself from becoming a bottleneck.

This culture shift isn’t only about technology, though. It’s also part of the workforce culture shift discussed previously. Today’s employees are often expected to be highly available, whether at home or at work, and so striking the correct balance between embracing personal technology and maintaining adequate governance is as much art as science, but the agile CIO collaborates to ensure the right balance is found for each organization.

Delivery Paradigms

In days gone by, software and service delivery had a slower cadence, with a great deal of up-front design and specification for projects that could span years. Today, a CIO would be hard-pressed to defend delivery of a strategic resource that exceeded 18 months. In fact, many agile IT shops currently target 30 days or less for a functional deliverable, and a growing percentage are embracing paradigms such as Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment to reduce lead time to almost nothing.

These changes don’t come without cost. The table stakes for this paradigm shift is an investment in automation, culture change, and continuous process improvement. However, the agile CIO has more visibility into every level of the IT organization and its ongoing initiatives than ever before, and is better able to pivot strategically to meet changing business needs or disruptive technologies.

Information Security

The scope and importance of information security has grown dramatically in the past several decades. Thanks in part to private sector regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), security compliance has become an integral part of IT infrastructure and service delivery.

Some companies have managed this growing need through the creation of Chief Security Officer (CSO) or Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) as distinct roles within organizations, while others have expanded the role of CIO to encompass the additional responsibilities. However, even with a dedicated CSO or CISO, responsibility for implementing the organization’s security policies within enterprise systems rests firmly with the CIO.

Whether security and audit roles report into the CIO or not, the modern CIO must carefully balance the requirements of IT service delivery with security compliance. This adds complexity to the CIO’s role, but modern agile practices can reduce that complexity to manageable levels once again.

Redefining the CIO Role for Today’s Workplace

As the pace of technology continues to increase, and the complexity and ubiquity of IT continues to grow, the modern workplace demands a redefinition of the CIO role. The modern context also requires a paradigm shift in the way that today’s CIO provides strategic leadership within the organization. Based on experience within a large cross-section of industries, the emerging trend towards agility at the executive level seems clear.

This new paradigm requires the application of agile principles to strategic planning and thought leadership at the C-level, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the pivotal role of CIO. By adopting iterative strategic plans, emergent design of enterprise-scale IT workflows, and empowerment of business units through self-service technology, the agile CIO can align enterprise service delivery in ways that were difficult to imagine even ten years ago.

So how does one adapt to this new workplace reality and become an agile CIO? Subsequent sections of this book will unpack the concepts of the agile paradigm shift in greater detail, and lay out a roadmap for becoming the agile CIO your company (and your career) need you to be.