Overcoming CIO Management and Cost-Control Challenges in 2020

Key areas of impact
Two key areas we see impacting CIOs in 2020 continue to be the soaring costs of a tight labor market, and the escalating complexity of maintaining legacy systems that impede revenue-generating program delivery. While industry benchmarks once again call for a 3%-4% increase in annual salaries, the reality is people continue to jump ship for much larger salary increases. This puts pressure on retaining the most talented employees–those who have the largest impact on the most important initiatives. Coupling this with the time and cost of keeping the lights on for legacy architecture, we continue to see LOBs go outside IT to get revenue-generating projects done. This creates a negative flywheel as projects shift out of IT, as well as budget. Unfortunately, most of these projects rely on the same costly legacy infrastructure, putting even more pressure on CIOs.

Showcasing innovation while managing teams and building skills
It’s not all doom and gloom, but rather, a great opportunity for CIOs to drive change. Start by taking a step back and asking, “What should our Modern Digital Architecture look like?” Without doubt, you should pursue cloud and mobility first, with agile development, and a CI/CD toolchain already in place. However, when it comes to people, process and technology, business-as-usual thinking will limit the benefits you’ll be able to realize.

Further, CIOs should ask themselves which best-of-breed design and integration patterns are ideal for their organization. Do you have a quilt-work of microservices and API Gateways? And when deciding when to build cloud-native services, explore whether ESBs and MBaaS make sense or determine if you have over-deployed an architecture that has one of everything. Would an event-driven architecture—with Kafka—take Architecture down a different road? Finally, explore who the best partners are to help build the systems and instill the necessary skills to move quickly—all while offering sustainability at the right cost. CIOs who are thorough in their pursuit of these answers realize the highest returns and build environments that encourage career growth versus job hopping.

Training agile DevOps teams
Training agile DevOps teams to take-on complex tasks starts with having a strong strategy partner in place, then deploying hybrid Scrum teams composed of practitioners. The best way to learn is from someone who has done it before and will do it with your team. Experienced practitioners not only help develop your strategy, but have a vested interest in delivering immediate value. Teaching alongside our client teams facilitates knowledge transfer and fosters a strong culture that can grow organically. This a more valuable approach than hiring coaches, resorting to black-box outsourcing, or relying on staff augmentation partners to fill capacity.

If your organization has any additional questions around best practices for overcoming CIO Management and Cost-Control Challenges, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to help you get started.