Hi, I would like to encourage you to read the publication 'Top 10 IT
Issues in 2015 at EDUCAUSE'. http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/1/top-10-it-issues-2015-inflection-point (backup link)
I decided to talk about these issues because I believe that with little
effort these issues can concern not only the higher education. As you can see
10 top IT issues in the report was grouped into three main themes of changes:
1. Inflection point - The trends that have motivated early adopters are cascading into the mainstream and requiring fundamental changes in strategy.
For sure organizations must achieve ongoing ability to respond to changing technologies and solutions and to making changes. I think that you will agree that all institutions today must improve solutions using new technology to better achieve their goals.
"These changes are transforming both IT infrastructure, which is generally transparent to end users, and IT services and solutions, which are very much on the minds of end users and in the strategies of leaders. IT organizations are struggling to manage both the pace and the volume of change on all levels. And anyone who has experienced a new system rollout knows how important good change management is to the success of an initiative. Collectively, IT leaders and professionals may feel deluged by the volume, variety, and pace of change. In response to that deluge, many IT leaders are adopting a strategic approach to change through the use of frameworks for such activities as service management, vendor management, risk management, IT architecture, information security management, project management, process management, and capability maturity management.”
But as we can read frameworks may seem restrictive and bureaucratic and higher education can have problem to adopt them. On the other hand frameworks can provide stability in times of change by creating replicable and scalable environments that can adapt gracefully to new and changing circumstances.
2. From technical to business - IT leaders and professionals are shifting focus from technical to business problems, with increasing interdependencies.
The second domain is about how to apply technology to business needs, and how to improve outcomes. To solve strategic institutional problems, the IT and management need to collaborate and co-create. This can be a challenge because each group has a different view of the problem, possesses different relevant expertise, and plays a different role in the solutions.
"This second theme is also related to the need to reach across the white space in the institution's organizational chart so that the IT department better understands the needs of the institution and so that institutional leaders better understand the exciting potential of information technology and the time, resources, and executive commitment required to achieve that potential. The success and perhaps even the survival of higher education are more dependent than ever on technology."
3. The New Normal - BYOD, digitization, and associated technologies and opportunities are changing the nature of user support and appropriate security policies.
"In the midst of so much change, challenge, and opportunity, IT organizations continue running core services and supporting end users. IT staff still go into fire-fighting mode more often than they would wish. But even normal operations are subject to the forces of change."
1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
Article published today because I can have a problem in moderating this thread 19-20 XII (during the weekend). So if it is possible I would be very grateful for your opinions until 18 XII (Friday).
Regards Przemek
1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDelete> The list from the `link` is very general. Let's say this is year 2011 or 2014, and we have the same list. Would you argue with that ? So what would happen for 2016? Nothing different I guess.
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
> I would put my two cents on corporate politics and investor relations. I can't argue on other questions though. Thankfully, my company is free from all the multiple layers mess.
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
> Maybe they should teach institutional leaders how to use instant messaging applications <: Jokes aside, they might use the common finance language. i.e. 'how much (X) this company may benefit from this `gibber jabber` IT (Y) investment'
So maybe nowdays we can say this is some kind of IT principals? But do you agree with me that some of this issues was not so crucial as today? I mean for example "Developing mobile, cloud, and digital security policies that work for most of the institutional community". I think when organization is small one person can do a lot of things. But in big companies I can't imagine work without specialization, multiple layers and good communication between them.
Delete> But in big companies I can't imagine work without specialization, multiple layers and good communication between them.
DeleteSure.
1) These top 10 it issues are, I would say, timeless. Since the emerging of IT, they were, are and definitely will be applicable. They will be as much valid in a year time as they are today.
ReplyDelete2) Definitely yes. Usually strategy is driven by business, and IT is perceived as its enabler. Hence no real transformation of the business can happen without cooperation and mutual agreement between business and IT. There are many examples of strategies failing due to belief that new 'toys' provided by IT will transform business without the necessity for business to adapt respectively.
3) It should be the other way round. The question suggests IT leaders being responsible for strategy implementation, and as I wrote above, it's usually the other way round. However speaking about communication, the point is to use the language understood by business/institutional leaders. The IT jargon will not be helpful here for sure. So IT leaders are expected to made certain effort to clearly explain 'what is going to happen' in a business language.
Your point of view is quite close to my. I think they will be still current in 2016. I'm not sure that IT staff should make vision and strategy of organization. For sure IT leaders are expected to made certain effort to clearly explain 'what is going to happen'.
DeleteBut in my opinion for better results its good when IT leaders know and understand decision made by institutional leaders.
1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDeleteWell I see progress, but there are still many problems that would propagate in 2016 or in 2017. Many problems are escalated to IT field but there are inherited from other business fields like for example case from point 1.
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
I believe he is. Is there any other way? He’s responsibility to maintain healthy network gives him privilege to rise a voice in the field to many communication aspects in company. In other hand there are many parts in enterprise strategy that are not crucial to CIO who probably knows what problems are not belongs to him.
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
I think this is the most interesting question! Many companies differs from each other and require different communication strategies. In my opinion unified approach are reserved only for big players. This question inspires me to think more about this problem so I try to develop answer in near future.
Hi Peter, your point of view on this issue is very interesting. Until now I believed that define the basic principles of good communication should be quite easy. But for sure many companies may require different communication strategies. In the other hand all depends on what level of detail we want to talk about.
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI think that creating a top 10 lists is pointless. Every company has its own specific, problems different from other. Many of the problems listed are very common not only in IT, but also in other types of companies. It's quite obvious that hiring qualified staff is crucial, same as developing business model that supports research and innovation and not only income.
In most companies IT is not a core business and stakeholders/sponsors rarely realize why do they have to pay so much for technology. It's often hard to prove that investing in new software is worthwhile. CIO has to communicate with organization using common, business language, clearly describe benefits of investing in software, security, etc.
Mikołaj I think I understand what you mean but I cannot agree with you. I agree that companies differs from each other and in most companies IT is not a core business but in my opinion good leaders must to know how IT is important for their business. Probably Piotr has right that unified approach are reserved only for big players. I'm sure that these players every day thinking about IT, Enterprise Architecture and communication.
DeleteThis article was a little strange and difficult for me. I don’t like speaking about something without background. I tried to find early TOP 10 IT ISSUES in 2014, 2013 etc. but it was impossible. Generally I don’t know much about the trends in such statistics and this is difficult for me to express my opinion about it. But I’ll try.
ReplyDeleteI am a teacher. Also. Generally I consider that education in schools, from primary to university is a waste of time. In my opinion schools are obviously necessary but not only as nursery but mainly as places where we gain knowledge. Unfortunately in most cases school may be called only a nursery. We teach our children unnecessary things and we teach them how to start to despise school because it is boring. Schools (at each level), especially private are “companies” for making money only. Nobody cares about their educational level. Owners and teachers only care about the fame and the number of students. For me “TOP 10 IT ISSUES in 2015” is only an empty report. Generally in Polish education nothing happens as far as the things described in the article are concerned.
Instead of looking at this article without education aspects I consider that the cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is very important. For modern companies this is crucial to implement the organizational strategy. I think currently it is impossible to achieve success without new technology. Almost every business strategic decision should be accepted by Chief Information Officer. I think all smart institutional leaders should know that without IT solutions it is impossible to work. I consider IT leaders must fight to achieve high position in company because their work is very important.
It's interesting and very bold stance that every business strategic decision should be accepted by CIO. I agree with you. In many companies IT leaders must work hard to achieve respect and be able to make decisions with institutional leaders about organization.
DeleteHi Przemek,
ReplyDelete1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
In my opinion this issues is very general, but it will be still current in 2016,In other hand companies have a diffrent issues and we can't generaly it . For example such of company have security issues but other company have other issues.
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
In my opinion cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy because
IT leaders must be know plans for company for create software or implementations some things. The best option is when institutional leaders have a IT experience. In my company we have a meeting with IT chief and institutional chief and their cooperate
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
In my opinion institutional leaders must be have a IT experience or IT Leaders must be have a ledaers experience, because some leaders think : "for IT it is simply , we will do it for 1 week, but for example for IT it is hard and IT must work with overtime to do some things before deadline
Hi Iwo, in many companies technical directors are leaders with very good IT experience. It's true. These people can be very helpful to better understand between business and IT world.
DeleteAd 1.
ReplyDeleteThe first point at top 10 IT Issues Links it is quite strange because most of nowadays corporations (in banking and insurance area) are renting people from agency to work for them. So it's in your own business to learn something new and get more and more practical skills. Yes I know that companies that I mentioned above also are hiring people by themselves.
Last point it also interesting because I am working for big insurance company that tried to be agile. This project last for about a year and last week It director told us that company is going to move away from agile methodology because business don't want to work this way :D.
Ad 2.
I totally agree with s14772. IT department without business can't do anything creative and I may think that it can't even exist. Business have to tell us what he needs and than we can deliver new solution for them.
Ad 3.
About IT jargon I must say that many people from business department understands what we are saying. And I am not talking about programming language specific stuff but I am saying about every day work language. Sometimes they are also eager to learn new stuff so after couple of projects with IT they really know what we are talking about and then we must be very careful what we are saying.
Working in Agile can be very handy if we can change the scope when we develop product. Because many companies can't do that they still prefer traditional approach.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDeleteThat article is a little bit old. Please have a look at the following “Top 10 Higher Ed IT Issues Prediction for 2016”:
1. Information security
2. Optimizing educational technology
3. Student success technologies
4. IT workforce
5. Institutional data management
6. IT funding models
7. Business intelligence and analytics
8. Enterprise application integrations
9. IT organizational development
10. E-learning and online education
Please notice that the major change is in security but as you can see the most important issue stays the same: changing IT from a technology department to a services department.
The good example is number one – security. We have to stop talking that “that passwords shouldn’t be used,” and start to think “of passwords as a level in security protection that have to clearly identify when an attack happens via system behavior”.
Marcin I agree that security it's important thing. If we talk about prediction 'Business intelligence and analytics' and 'Enterprise application integrations' are issues which will also be very important in 2016.
DeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your article recommendation. I must admit this isn't really a familiar topic for me however I will try to answer your questions based on intuition.
As some of our colleagues already mentioned this list is too generic and pretty much immutable for every recent year. I suspect that a few details might change although I wouldn't expect a totally different outcome.
Nowadays IT is strongly tied to every organization and I can't imagine one without it. Cooperation is crucial between leaders (or even generic employees) of any kind in order to achieve strategic goals. The level of importance of each of them depends on the organization and whether sales/profits are strictly tied to the use of IT technologies.
I guess the easiest way to achieve best communication between those two types is if they merge (IT leader becomes institutional leader). Realistically speaking though, the first step is to find a common language.
It’s seams that is right. This list is very general so it’s hard to say what is going to happen in the future. I think that organization strategy it’s not bad idea. It may bring many benefits. At this moment I can’t say anything more.
ReplyDelete1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDeleteMost of them will be for sure. As always the hardest part is :
Hiring and retaining qualified staff, and updating the knowledge and skills of existing technology staff.
In my honest opinion a lot of companies forgot about it. Keeping qualified staff is so important, it's hard i admit, but without experienced staff it's hard to fight competitors, keep clients and so on.
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
Let's think about CIO. How many companies actually have them? Then let's think about company strategies, way of thinking and so on. It's crucial to cooperate, but most of the time it's hard to achieve. Either because of business or because of IT leaders. In my opinion most of the IT leaders can't cooperate with business in a proper way.
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
The best way is to use ubiquitous language to talk. This can easily help you communicate in a clear way. Especially for IT Leaders it's important to understand business.
Matthew I agree that many companies are badly managed if we talking about hiring and retaining qualified staff, and updating the knowledge and skills of existing technology staff. There are no irreplaceable people but there are people that are difficult to replace.
DeleteI have to agree with most of the previous comments. Is such rapidly changing area it's pointless to list a number of "top issues". At least, we should take into account varying profiles of some IT companies.
ReplyDeleteCooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is maybe not crucial, but still very important (especially in fields associated with security and technologies which are expensive but could be useful). At the moment I have no good idea how to answer the last question. Lets say that finding common language is the best soultion
1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDeleteIt is very general list. I think it differs in different companies. Some of the point for sure will remain valid in 2016. I don't have broad knowledge in such broad statistics so I don't want to guess which one exactly.
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
I agree that such cooperation is very important for the company. Actually I think that IT does not exist without the rest of the organization, but the business part of the company also strongly need an IT support, so communication between these two is a crucial thing.
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
I am not sure what can be the solution. Maybe just openness from both side.
1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDeleteSure, it is nothing new and it will be event current next decades until people won't change the way they think. The problems comes mostly for human's head, not the particular technology.
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
Organization should be like an army, where usually works the command headquarters with representation of all of the forces. With valid and complete sources of information you can start thinking about management, actions and targets. Without that you're deaf or blind, so most likely you'll make a mistake.
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
Just hold to the truth and start communicating. If somebody in business acts against core rules of the craft, you can always refuse the action - its nothing wrong.
Albert you made very interesting comparison. Your communication way is very close to Emili which said about openness from both side. I think this is the key of good communication.
Delete1. What do you think about top 10 IT issues? In your opinion they will be still current in 2016?
ReplyDeleteMost of them probably yes. This issues are nothing new and as I said, for most of them we still didn't find any suitable solution
2. Do you agree that cooperation between IT leaders and institutional leaders is crucial to implement organizational strategy? How does your organization work? Is Chief Information Officer involved in taking strategic decisions?
I think that proper cooperation and synergy inside the company is one of the most important things. Of course we're not talking about small companies but about medium and bigger where we have a clear structure.
3. What in your opinion IT leaders can do to communicate more effectively with institutional leaders?
They can and should use their influence on the society. Let us be honest, their actions often have a very big impact on our every day life. They should direct it on a proper goal
In my opinion some of these issues will still be current in 2016 particularly due to the fact that some of the issues are embed in a long run like the first one: Hiring and Retaining Qualified Staff, and Updating the Knowledge and Skills of Existing Technology Staff. It seems that maintenance of the technology in a company is much more important than it was years ago. The people who are creators are the best developers of the programs. They easily maintain and identify any further obstacles.
ReplyDeleteIT projects play one of the most important roles in the development of companies. IT projects may differ from the other projects and dictate any budget plans. IT employees as well as the substantive employees need to understand their objectives. It is a common practice to focus in such projects on the problems separately not seeking a common resolution.
The question number 3 is a tough question for me because there exists no golden mean suitable for every project. The problems may stem from the misunderstoods between both sides in the fields of departments' responsibilities and approach to any issue or a problem. Maybe a communicating of the needs and approaches may be a good start.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI agree with that. The communication plan it's another thing which can be useful. Especially in everyday communication.
Delete