John Soats columns in Information Week has always been amusant and provocative, but the March 10th 2008 edition – Big Transition, Big Role, Big Thinker just hit the spot – it was sort of like the Barack Obama speech on Race in US politics – intelligent, nuanced and covering all the key points with
In this case, John was advancing the point that CIOs should take on the much more risky, but also more appropriate role of Strategic Enterprise Officer – extending the CIO role into BPM – Business Process Mnagement. Now John had at his side the work of Jeanne Ross, Principla Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research.
The basic idea is this – that IT systems impact many different areas in a business – and that one has to not only manage the IT System but also the underlying Business Processes that are affected by these system. This is the number one idea behind theopenSourcery.com as covered in our front page(go past the tabs and read the Philosophy statement).
Wow – and what is encouraging is that as Jeanne notes “This is new, something we didnt see before … we are really seeing a transition.
John, thanks a lot for this thought provoking FYI for CIOs.