McKinsey.com reported about a survey of “120 senior tech leaders and 30 senior business executives over the past 18 months” that provided insight to “…innovate at scale and outperform competitors in the digital age, companies need to be tech forward. That means embedding tech into their business strategy and operating model. For most organizations, that requires a digital-ready IT function—one that is fast, adaptable, focused on the end user, and able to deliver business value.” The December 1, 2021 article entitled “What CIOs need from their CEOs and boards to make IT digital ready” included these comments:
As any CIO or tech leader can tell you, however, transforming IT and modernizing a business’s technology estate is a significant challenge.
Making matters worse, many CEOs and board members still cast a jaundiced eye on large tech projects, which have traditionally run over budget and delivered below expectations. Unfortunately, this mindset undermines the support CIOs need to successfully drive their tech transformations.
Few executives would debate the importance of modernizing IT as part of a successful digital transformation.
The problem, however, is that CEOs and boards often view IT as a cost center and waver in their support for both the size of investment and the duration of work needed to modernize it.
To change this mindset, IT leaders need to help CEOs and board members understand how tech inhibits or drives value.
Some CIOs have found it useful to price the cost of technical debt and compare it with how much fundamental business value an investment in cloud might drive.
More than 75 percent of the $1 trillion of value at stake in the cloud, for example, is in accelerated product development and growth from new and enhanced use cases.
I highly recommend taking the time to read the entire article.