A study by The Hackett Group, covered here on the CIO Magazine blogs, describes four qualities of a top performing IT department. As is often the case, such studies validate the case for a Project Workforce Management approach in IT.
The four qualities are (as excerpted from the CIO Magazine post by C.G. Lynch):
1) Investment allocation. The IT department invests less in existing infrastructure and utilities, and instead focuses on innovation and improvement.
2) Project pipeline. Top performers don’t invest in just any project. They are incredibly discerning, which allows them to keep the project list short and deliver projects on time.
3) Delivery performance. When a project gets started, it gets finished in the proposed time period.
4) Application portfolio management. You manage all of your existing systems well and efficiently (so well that they’re just “there,” rather than ever really being a problem or hindrance to the business). This allows you to focus on new, innovative apps that come down the pipeline.
Delivering on #2 and #3 depends on IT’s ability to intelligently prioritize and select their IT projects, and then manage those projects to success, two popular topics on this blog and in Rise of the Project Workforce.
The mentions of “innovation” and “innovative apps” in #1 and #4 make an interesting contrast to Accenture’s recent conclusion that many IT departments tend to lag in innovation–but the top performers will discern which innovations are appropriate and provide real benefits to their organizations. Again, intelligent project prioritization and selection supports this effort.
Despite the many studies like this one, it is alarming how many IT departments and other project-based teams still manage their people and projects using the MESS (meetings, email, and spreadsheets), or use in-house developed or non-integrated point solutions. Even for smaller teams, the emergence of on-demand Project Workforce Management solutions makes this technology accessible to IT departments who seek to be top performers.
