The TotalCIO blog highlighted some of the results of the recent Society for Information Management survey of top CIOs. IT and business alignment, the Number 1 issue for four of the past 5 years, reclaimed the top spot after dropping to Number 2 last year. The IT talent issues that dominated year ago — attracting IT professionals and retaining IT professionals, both ranked Number 1 last year– slipped: retaining IT pros fell to the 8 spot, attracting talent to No. 4. IT strategic planning, 8th a year ago, is now up in the 3 spot this year, suggesting that hard times call for better planning.
The survey of 291 companies — 350 company executives — was done in June. In the TotalCIO blog post Linda Tucci wrote that, “it would be natural to conclude that economic realities have intruded on the profession.” However they quoted SIM’s Jerry Luftman, author of the survey, who cautioned against reading too much into the changes, noting that in the broad survey “there is no sense the sky is falling.”
It is nice to know that [at the time of this survey...] there is not panic at the CIO level and great to see a stronger concern with IT and business alignment and strategic planning. Of course, given some of the current grim news on financial shakeups and mismanagment, a little panic may intrude on the CIO's prospects, depending on their affiliation. However, this straw poll shows that many are thinking long term, and this should further open the door for better understanding the alignment of business rules with their validation in existing and planned software.
Thanks to Linda for giving us a preview of the result that will be fully released in November at the annual Society for Information Management meeting.
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