Seeds of Success

Aligned Strategy points to an article on how to hire a CIO.

The article includes the following action items to address during the CIO hiring process:

• A high level IT strategy tied and aligned with the business plan (this is a starting point for the new CIO who will expand, refine and institute the full IT strategic plan). At this level the plan should take less than a month to develop.
• Interviewing key executive management to be sure their expectations for IT are represented in the business and IT strategy.
• Prioritization of top high level goals for IT into a concise list.
• Mapping of the CIO skills needed to the desired IT goals.

In my opinion, the seeds of project failure are often rooted deep in an organization’s culture. In other words, every organization has a "willingness tolerance" to accept (or reject) the poor judgement and bad decision-making that lead to failure. Establishing the proper expectations right from the start is a great way to succeed later.

Any organization that takes the above list seriously (and no, lip service doesn’t count) will have fewer troubled projects.