I attended the MIT CIO Symposium yesterday. Overall, it was an excellent event. The speakers and moderators were strong. There were several hundred CIOs, IT consultants, vendors and IT managers there. Here's what I learned:
- Alan Trefler, the CEO of Pegasystems, advised CIOs to focus on process automation (not surprising since Pegasystems sell process automation software). He told CIOs to promise 50% improvement and deliver 80%. He also admonished CIOs to get out of a technology only role and move toward adding business value. Given KMA's experience with workflow automation, I can see how his advice can be valuable to IT managers. There can be some quick wins and real business benefit from automating business processes. These cost savings applications are relatively easier to sell in the current downturn.
- Both Trefler and Joseph Alsop, the former CEO of Progress Software, discussed the folly of getting users to sign off on requirements. Getting sign-off makes IT managers feel better. They have some proof that there systems do what the user asked for. The problem comes when what the user asked for is not what they need. This, unfortunately, is a common problem that both internal IT organizations and IT consultants like KMA face. We try to mitigate the problem by learning as much as possible about business needs before we build. We also try to build our applications rapidly. For many applications, we get much better feedback from users after they interact with the application.
- Alsop reinforced his point by paraphrasing the last verse of a take-off on the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas." I found it on the web:
The system was finished, the tests were concluded,
the client's last changes were even included.
And the user exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt,
"IT'S JUST WHAT I ASKED FOR, BUT NOT WHAT I WANT."
- Three academics were asked what the next big thing was for IT. Tom Malone said it was collective intelligence and mentioned how technology technologies like Google and Wikipedia can change the way we work. Jeanne Ross said it was digitized platforms. Companies that develop a unified platform to store and share information can gain a competitive advantage. Erik Brynjolfsson discussed how organizations that experiment, measure and scale the results will best exploit the power of IT. All three ideas were very interesting and worth exploring in more depth.
- Andy McAfee led a panel on Enterprise 2.0. Unfortunately, many of the participants didn't have much to add to the discussion. The attendees, however, had a great discussion on Twitter about the panel and the panelists. This really brought the power of Twitter home to me. It reinforced how Twitter is a great tool for capturing customer feedback.
Overall the conference was excellent. The topics were timely and the content was good. I wish there were a few more CIOs as speakers and a few less vendors.
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