Given the current world of IT evolving and expanding all around the company, adopting and adapting innovations is not optional. The CIO’s most important role in business effectiveness is in managing this IT change to sustain the value of internal information.

1. The Shock of the New
CIOs and IT Value in 2014
An archestra notebook.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra

2. If not the CIO, then Who?
CIO Responsibilities
The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 created the Chief Information Officer position and assigns to the CIO
these responsibilities:
1. Provide advice and assistance to senior managers on IT acquisition and management;
2. Develop, maintain, and facilitate implementation of a sound and integrated IT architecture*;
3. Promote effective and efficient design and operation of all major IRM processes for the agency,
including improvements to work processes.
* IT architecture - an integrated framework for evolving or maintaining existing IT and acquiring new
IT to achieve the agency's strategic goals and IRM goals.
– balancedscorecard.org

3. It’s good to be the king… of what?
Internal:
Strategic
Captive
Proprietary
Most conventional definitions of the CIO role have been easily agreed, but for the future they constantly remain in debate.
Additionally, the label “CIO” is now regularly threatened with being a misnomer. Information is still, by consensus, the lifeblood of the
business, but the CIO is neither the primary owner nor primary source of the information assets – much less a legislative controller.
As there is an internal “circulatory system” of the information, it still makes sense that processes, knowledge, and vital functional
components are all in the domain of a “chief officer” as the lead manager. However, because of innovations in the field, more and
more external systems beyond the enterprise boundary are in use internally. And because of new technologies, the emphasis has
actually shifted from what makes systems internal to what makes information internal.
Defining, enabling, and protecting “internal” is the most likely principle underlying the purpose of the CIO and the continuing
pathway to that role being strategic. The strategic value comes from successfully “creating” and sustaining the collection of the key
resource called internal information.
IT automation is essential to the CIO for realizing that plan, but the risk to the plan comes from the very same thing. Automation’s
ability to decentralize control means that a CIO must prioritize information surveillance and information policy above concerns for IT
facilities maintenance. Meanwhile, the definition of “internal” must evolve with the business, continually expressing how the “right”
information is having the “right” impact at the designated times. Performing that updating and clarification depends on having a
consultative relationship with other roles.
Therefore, an additional new threat to the CIO, stated somewhat dramatically, is an increasing tendency of independent Lines of
Business to autonomously play the CTO role. Aided by IT automation, the decentralization of the CTO role – which either complicates
or compromises the consultative relationship – is likely to be the single biggest threat to the CIO.
The CIO must explicitly project the terms and results of the distinctive value of the CIO role. This means insisting that the view of the
CIO’s “effectiveness” is based on the right criteria for a CIO as distinguished from things that belong to other roles. Given the current
world of IT evolving and expanding all around the company, the CIO’s most important role in business effectiveness is in managing IT
change to sustain the value of internal information.

4. Demythologizing Strategy
DECOMPOSING “STRATEGY”
• A decision selecting opportunity from all options
• A logic for the business importance of a related objective
• A plan prescribing the objective, position and impact of an enabling capability
“USING” STRATEGY
• Creating
• Assessing
• Adopting
• Executing
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
The “STRATEGY TABLE”
• Propose
• Analyze
• Authorize
• Assign
CxOs “at the Table”

5. Why Officers? Turn Goals into Reality
PERFORMANCE
EXECUTION
Office Of _the CxO_
Impact
Accountability
Know What Happens
Operations:
When
How
Which
Function
Responsibility
Make It Happen
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
Executive:
What
Why
Where

6. This particular comparison of issues and affinities is one way to explain what value is conventionally expected of
certain business roles. It is not a set of exclusive or comprehensive job descriptions for any of the roles.
Competitive Opportunity
Future External
Ability to Execute
CMO: chief Marketing officer
heads up strategic
accountability for how
customer prospecting will
affect business outcomes
CTO: chief Technology officer
heads up strategic
accountability for how IT
solutions should affect external
business outcomes
strategy
Current Internal
PRODUCTS
CFO: chief Finance officer
heads up strategic
accountability for how
financial conditions are
affecting internal business
outcomes
architecture
Systems and Support
HR: chief HR officer heads
up strategic accountability
for how skills should affect
external business outcomes
PROCESSES
COO: chief Operations officer
heads up strategic
accountability for how the
organizational structure and
behavior are affecting internal
business outcomes
resources
CIO: chief Information
officer heads up strategic
accountability for how IT
infrastructures are affecting
internal business outcomes
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra

7. New Technology:
the Who Cares Test
LOB: Necessary (critical to business objective)
CTO: Viable (reasonably likely to succeed)
CIO: Feasible (currently possible and practical)
LOB
Performance
Effectiveness
utilize
Implementation
Business roadmap
IT Portfolio
Operation
CTO
Architecture
Deployment
R&D
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
CIO
Field Innovation

8. Realization of the Plan
New technology that passes
evaluations for both viability and
feasibility can wind up in the IT
Portfolio for business-level
management.
The CIO, having the highest
awareness of feasibility, is then
in the central position to serve as
a business broker for IT
implementations while serving
as a business agent for IT
architecture – from both sides
establishing IT fitness to business
purpose. The key factors are the
quality of requirements analysis,
and the control of change.
Broker
Agent

9. A semantics of business value
Aligning execution and performance is not just a matter of determining “cause and effect”
Business Needs continue to change ahead of the current intentions and means. The complexity of
the enterprise comes largely from continually renovating to keep the company fit to its purpose.
Needs are normally translated into defined demand.
This definition includes accountability of what is requested and what is provided for. These aspects will be
constrained by strategy, including its objectives, policies, and allowances established by management.
Fitness to purpose is a response translated into defined supply.
This definition includes accountability of what is produced and what is employed. These aspects will be
constrained by competency, including its agreements, and availability established by management.
In the big picture, demand issues concern planning while supply issues concern realization.
The relationship of planned to realized, not cause and effect, is the reason why accountability and
responsibility is coordinated within the “Office Of X ”.

10. Internal Dynamics: the alignments of strategy and competency
In the abstract, strategy and
competency aim, respectively,
for optimal states of planning
and realization. But neither is
fixed. Rather, each is a continual
“best effort” in progress.
Produced
DEMAND
When the company’s intrinsic
demand (strategy) and supply
(competency) intersect, the
resulting configuration of the
enterprise, including both
internal and external actors,
addresses four general
requirements. Each general
requirement is an area in which
distinctive value is generated.
SUPPLY
Employed
Requested
DEVELOPING
SOURCING
Provided
RESOURCING
SUPPORTING
Four general types of requests represent the areas of business value generation in IT.

11. Value Chaining
There is an implicit assumption that
a business process can be designed
to integrate the four areas of value.
SUPPLY
Produced
Develop: order and specify
Source: contract and build
Resource: obtain and deliver
Support: implement and run
DEMAND
Such an integration tends to look
like a “lifecycle” (fulfilling initial
requirements), or more statically
like a hierarchy of dependency
(each higher layer needs the one
below it as a preconditioning
capability). Either way, the question
arises of who controls the process
and/or the hierarchy layers.
Employed
Requested
DEVELOPING
SOURCING
Provided
RESOURCING
SUPPORTING
Four primary areas of value may be pursued, independently (each with its own processes),
and/or co-operatively (with a common higher-level process).

12. The requirement for Management
An enduring fact of the “enterprise”
is that it is a community of entities.
The distributions and compilations
of work and responsibility change
over time and across entities.
Operations:
When
How
Which
Request
Employ
contract
order
specify
deliver
Provide
obtain
build
run
implement
Each primary area of value establishes a difference of a certain significance. The difference is
identified by the terms in the area that identify its key executive and operational concerns.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
Executive:
What
Why
Where
Produce
DEMAND
Yet the basic logical separations of
value never change: asking for the
right thing does not cause it to be
made; having it made does not
cause it to show up; having it show
up does not cause it to be used.
Instead, each progression must be
possible, intended, and driven.
SUPPLY

13. Snapshot of example related programs
This view highlights a landscape
of four major internal value
programs having increasingly
explicit influences on each
other.
From the locations in the matrix
of demand and supply, each
program has a different basic
impact, while each also exists in
the context of the other three.
Produced
DEMAND
Each program is in progress to
bolster the business’s desired
impact of internal outcomes on
its external outcomes. A
program’s impacts also include
both current and future ones.
SUPPLY
Employed
Requested
Innovation
KM /
Professional Services
Provided
Organizational Change
IT Services / XaaS
Each program needs accountability for performance, and needs responsibility for execution. For a
given CxO, the question is whether a given program’s proper scope goes beyond that CxO or not.
Additionally, a given program may be constrained by some other program.

14. The CIO Effect – Incorporate New Technology
New technology modifies infrastructure, with replacements, modifications
or extensions. But the reason for the modifications must be represented by
a business case. The importance of the business case is in its relevance to
current and impending demand.
The semantics of Demand emphasize asking for the right thing, and
committing to the investment in acquisition
Develop: order and specify
Resource: obtain and deliver
To address the downstream (future) readiness and value of internal
information, the CIO should engage CTOs and CMOs to have them present
requirements and options. Those data become part of the formulation of
the IT Strategy that will need to be supported by programs and decisions
focused on meeting Demand and the accountability of demand.
The CIO derives the IT Change Management Plan from the IT Strategy and is
the chief change manager.
The IT Change Management Plan is demand-oriented (structured as a
development that must be resourced) but it also publishes the sourcing
adjustments to the accountable and responsible parties. In this effort, the
COO is the natural partner of the CIO, clarifying the operational state of the
business for review by other CxOs.
Requirements vetted by CMOs, and technology
validation by CTOs, allows CIOs and COOs to manage
internal IT evolution in a rational, continual way.