Survey: Your IT leaders are an antsy bunch

CIOs and technology managers are less strategic than they were a year ago, pondering job jumps and still struggle to deliver projects on time and under budget. Yet these folks want to be more intertwined with their respective businesses.

A Harvey Nash/KMPG survey of 258 respondents paints a twisted picture for CIOs and IT leaders. Simply put, they are an antsy crowd that has one eye on the exit. They crave to become more "strategic" to the business, but 31 percent of them can't deliver a project on time. Almost half of them miss their budget targets.

Of the survey respondents (release, full survey), 41 percent were either CIO/CTOs, 29 percent were senior IT managers, 10 percent were other C-level titles (CEO, CFO, etc.) and 20 percent were predominantly mid-level IT managers. The average IT budget among respondents was $44 million with the median of $10 million.

Outsourcing is still popular with 80 percent of respondents saying they are satisfied. These folks also plan to increase their outsourcing spending.

Among the crosscurrents:

• Sixty-eight percent of respondents said the strategic role they play in the company has increased in the last year, down from 80 percent the year before. Meanwhile, CIOs are less likely to report to the CEO this year.
• Seventy-three percent said that they were "well enough integrated" with the business, up from 59 percent a year ago.
• Twenty-eight percent of respondents are job hunting and 54 percent are entertaining the idea of jumping ship.
• Churn is a factor. Among those surveyed, 77 percent said they expect to be with their current employer in five years. In two years, 40 percent expect to be with a new employer.
• Fifty-four percent have worked with their current employers for five years or less.
• Companies are throwing money at IT leaders to keep them--the number of people getting retention bonuses is up 375 percent in the last two years. Not surprisingly, 80 percent of them are happy with their compensation, up from 75 percent a year ago.
• Most important skills include:

• 80 percent of respondents said that outsourcing met or exceeded their expectations, but were split on whether offshore outsourcing can fill a skills gap.

• Twenty-nine percent of respondents made more than $200,000 a year with 27 percent pulling in $151,000 to $200,000.
• Project management still stinks. Among those surveyed, 69 percent said that IT projects were on time and 51 percent were under budget. Half of respondents said projects have failed. Here's why projects unravel: