Op-Ed: For CIOs, Size Shouldn’t Matter; Planning Does

In my 30 years in the Defense information technology business, I’ve supported enterprise needs for organizations of all sizes at all levels. When I started in the business, we never used the terms IT and CIO, but there was always somebody in charge, and that job has always been one of the most challenging.

With more reliance on information technology in every facet of the workplace, chief information officers -- wherever they are aligned in the organization -- are assuming greater responsibility than ever before. Add to that the challenge of keeping up with the ever-changing IT industry and it’s easy to see why the shelf-life of a CIO is never long enough.

What makes the CIO job so challenging? There are many factors, but the three that jump out are:

1. The abundance and the quality of technology available to everyone leaves many people with the mistaken impression they have the expertise to do the CIO’s job (everyone’s a critic).
2. The CIO rarely controls all the resources required to do the job.
3. Technology changes more often than the requirements.

Do these challenges differ based upon the size of the enterprise? Not really. No matter what the size or core business of the enterprise, a fundamental challenge involves translating the organization’s needs into achievable objectives. Too many programs founder on poorly articulated goals and a realistic technical plan to achieve them.   

There’s no better example than the recent Air Force enterprise resource planning program failure, the Expeditionary Combat Support System. The program was supposed to save taxpayers money by consolidating several hundred legacy logistics systems and streamlining the way the service purchased and managed equipment. Through separate contracts for products and services, ECCS kicked off in 2006, but six years and more $1 billion dollars later, with little to show for the investment, officials terminated the program.

Was the program’s cancellation avoidable? Absolutely. At the technical level, ECSS wasn’t aiming to do anything that hadn’t been done before. But at the enterprise level, ECSS aimed to do something that had never been done before. By giving 750,000 users a common logistics picture, ECSS was supposed to improve aircraft availability across the service and reduce equipment and supply chain management costs.

Most observers close to the program would agree that the Air Force was slow to give CEO-level support and authority to execute the program. Service leaders also were also slow to initiate a governance process that was flexible enough not to hinder progress. The program failed to achieve early and meaningful progress at a pace required to ensure advocacy.

There were other challenges as well. The separate contracts for products and services were poorly structured to share the program risk and incentivize the right behavior, and program managers continually revised requirements in the name of defense unique needs. 

What are the lessons here? First, the CIO will rarely own all the resources to do the job at hand, so it’s critical that he or she obtain and sustain buy-in from the highest level of the organization. The right support from the right people takes most of the resource and organizational issues off the table. 

Second, because any IT initiative is going to run into unforeseen issues and changes, there needs to be a process to immediately address problems as they crop up, before they accrue additional costs and jeopardize the program’s schedule and performance.

Finally, with any initiative, it’s important to garner the confidence of both the customer and organizational leadership early, so advocacy keeps the program on track.  The principle remains: Never bite off more than you can chew.

Jon Dittmer is vice president and general manager for the defense sector at ARRAY.