A shameless plug for an event that will share all you need to know about IT portfolio analysis!

Wouldn’t it be great to count on years of experience in a domain that is said to be new and that might change the future of IT management? The integrated IT portfolio is such a domain since it marks the necessary end of information silos in IT – as Gartner just recognized in their newly released Magic Quadrant. alfabet’s planningIT eXchange event (November 14-15, Berlin, Germany) is your access to the experience of world-class companies and leading experts who have established and automated their processes around the integrated IT portfolio of alfabet’s planningIT.

Benefit from the insight that is shared live on stage by C-Level executives from our customers like Daimler, UBS, Volkswagen Financial Services, Continental and Evonik. Five tracks comprising twelve sessions will provide you with real-world expertise on the value of an integrated IT portfolio for strategy alignment, IT planning, enterprise architecture governance as well as for IT finance and IT risk management. And there is even more to it: in the breaks you will have the chance to discuss and share your experiences with about 300 peers from around the world while enjoying good food and a great location.

The best bit? It is all for FREE – since the value is priceless anyways. That said, seats are limited and there are only a couple of weeks to go.

Click here to find out about the detailed agenda, the location and who the speakers are.

Register now – we are looking forward to welcoming you in Berlin.

November 14-15, 2011 will see the start of alfabet’s planningIT exchange event in Berlin, Germany. Now in its 7^th year, the event has grown into an industry-leading forum for global brands to meet and discuss key trends in the realm of Business IT Management.

This year is no different. The 300+ attendees will be treated to 20+ presentations from leading companies such as VW, Bank of America, Daimler and UBS. Key themes on this year’s agenda are:

• IT Governance, Risk and Compliance
• IT Finance
• IT Portfolio Analysis/Project Management
• IT:Business Alignment

Love this blog post by my colleague, Christian Weichelt. Interesting take on the alfabet collaboration model in gathering application data.

Here is a very nice article showing how alfabet’s planningIT is helping the Australian National University.

Interesting insight from Markus Linsin on his experiences with attempted business to IT alignment. 

alfabet recently commissioned a survey with independent research firm Nucleus Research, on data quality amongst enterprise organizations. It was interesting – and somewhat surprising – to see the results that came from it. Without diving too deeply into the results and the possible solutions (which you can get access to here: http://bit.ly/mSHoNV), it uncovered that few companies have a complete and accurate view of their IT landscape. In fact, the data that is being used to make important IT-related decisions is on average over 14 months old, and as a result is only 55% accurate!

I was truly surprised by this result. Imagine. The data you are using to make important decisions about investment, compliance, risk etc is potentially misleading – or worse still totally incorrect – almost HALF of the time. I was so surprised by the result that I actually created a poll on LinkedIn asking about the age of enterprise data. While the sample size was very small (only 5 responses) it seemed to validate the Nucleus findings…

To put this in context, and using a scenario that is very top of mind for me at the moment (with an impending move from continually 50-70 degree San Francisco, CA to the less predictable climate of Boston, MA) its like looking at the static picture of Boston below (looks nice and warm doesn’t it!) and deciding what to wear on a given day. Based on the winters in Boston, looking at a picture that is not current could leave you with a nasty case of hyperthermia. Likewise, your business could be left in pretty bad shape through inaccurate data on IT applications, their interdependencies and integrations, and underlying components. All of which can burden an enterprise with unnecessary costs, a drain on productivity, and increased risk of non-compliance.
 

This leads me to believe that enterprises need to do more to understand the current state of their IT landscape. While models or pretty pictures can provide nice indicators for organizations, Nucleus is showing that they are merely a “best guess” and inadequate for the demands of the modern enterprise.  For organizations to be truly successful in aligning IT with the needs of the business, they must first understand where they REALLY are.

Hollywood teaches us that there’s a solution for almost any desperate and threatening situation: call a super hero. With their super powers, they will save the day!

Looking at today’s realities in IT, the situation is frightening enough for enterprises to start calling for a super hero. They face an increasing complexity of their IT landscape, and an accelerated change due to internal and external disruptions like mergers & acquisitions, regulations, internationalization or even the change of business models. And as usual, costs need to be cut! The expectations for the super hero are high and the name that enterprises are calling on seems to be clear: it’s the CIO. 

CIOs are being asked to solve these challenging equations (CIO kryptonite, if you like!):

First: Making more effective decisions, but in less time.

Second: The business asks for more capabilities to support their processes, but with a smaller budget.

Third: More regulations to comply with, but the risk to infringe them needs to be reduced.

The question is therefore: what kind of super powers would help to solve these equations with regards to the existing IT landscape and its strategic evolution?

First of all: The x-ray vision to see everything. This would provide the ability to always know what is going on and to fully understand what is there – and what is not.

Even better: The might to forecast the future. This would allow anticipation of what is going to be and act accordingly.

And then: Supernatural strength to reshape structures. This would enable the proactive evolution of the environment to future needs.

And here’s what I think: what we’ve just described is not a set of super powers, but instead they are the core skill-set of the modern CIO. Therefore, to be successful, I believe the CIO needs to focus on three key areas:

First: Data quality. With data they can trust it is much easier to make good and effective decisions – and having all the information at hand makes the decision making much faster. I read a report from Nucleus Research recently that suggested organizations are making decisions based on data that is on average 14 months old and only 55% accurate. Obviously that needs to change for a CIO to be successful!

Second: Set priorities. By understanding the impact of the budget they are going to spend makes it easier to set the right priorities and thus do more of the right stuff with less.

Third: Define processes. In the end it is about the processes of IT management and how they align with the regulations that have to be followed. Gaining transparent insight into the processes helps to align them with regulations and reduces the risk of non-compliance.

In conclusion, what the modern CIO really needs is better insight into the true state of the IT landscape based on accurate data, better planning for a desired future state, and the enhanced transformation capabilities that support the needs of the business. With these attributes the CIO can certainly appear to have super powers, even if they were not a pre-requisite at the time of application…

cweichelt:

I still remember when I was young and played around with those rubik’s cubes (for those of you who are digital natives, here’s what this 3D touch app is about). I was always happy if I managed to get at least one side of it right. Of course this usually screwed up the other sides, but…