Question: How can we achieve effective process ownership within our IT organization?

Our Advice: Traditional IT programs focus on functions such as payrolls or journals. More recently, because of the increasing capacity of IT through such applications as E-mail, its integration with business operations, and its transformation from a tool into something that sustains productivity and services, there has been a shift toward cross-cutting, cross-unit processes that transcend functions. These initiatives often deliver complex, versatile, multifeatured products. The IT office may lead these projects, but partnership and cooperation from program offices and others are essential.

Several strategies help achieve effective process ownership:

• Make the CIO part of the executive team. Boards of Directors and CEOs should include CIOs on the executive team, and challenge them to understand the business, identify opportunities for progress through improved information management, lead business-process change and growth, and constantly increase customer satisfaction.
• Ensure that the CIO has the right set of skills. Understanding and managing technology are no longer nearly enough. In the future, CIOs will also need leadership and management skills; understanding of the business' priorities and organizational culture; superb communication abilities; a knack for balancing traditional IT principles with improvisation to achieve results; and personal determination to keep renewing.
• Hire IT professionals with the "right stuff." Professionals need more than technical expertise. They need understanding of business operations and how IT meshes with other institutional capacities; excellent analytical skills; ability to deal with ambiguity and unclear or unarticulated needs; an understanding of process; and an intense customer focus.
• Manage "from the heart." Process ownership is encouraged and supported by a management style that stresses an enterprise perspective, empowerment, team approaches, quality, pride in accomplishment, and rewards in the form of praise and recognition that highlight model behavior.
• Appoint skilled project managers and coordinators. Process-based work requires the active contribution and support of IT specialists, program staff, managers, and others. Designate a project manager who can keep the project on track, consult with all involved parties, negotiate, solve problems, and assume responsibility for getting the work done satisfactorily, on time, and under budget.
• Apply strategic approaches to carrying out IT projects. Stress the "three A's":
  Alignment – How does the project or initiative support and advance enterprise priorities?
  Analysis – What are the real dimensions of the problem, have reengineering and other non-IT solutions been considered, what are the alternatives, why is this one best?
  Advocacy – Build support as the work moves along and "sell" the final product on the grounds that it furthers the enterprise mission, meets consumer needs, and ensures operational effectiveness and efficiency.
• Debrief and study successful models. Strategies for successful process ownership depend in part on the organizational culture, history, and setting. What worked well with process-focused IT projects that succeeded in your organization; what were the drawbacks to those were less successful?

--Bruce Dearstyne