This Week with CIOs: Are We Measuring What Really Matters?

Much of what IT reports on is how tech operations are running and the status of key programs and projects. Important to be sure, but a far cry from what moves the needle with business stakeholders. 

However what business leaders need is a clear line of sight from the significant investments made in IT to the operating results they are driving. Not general statements of “enabling” the business to do something better but actual hard, concrete data on what has moved as a result of the tech being put to use, i.e,  the business contribution.

Being undervalued is worse than being ignored

Vince Fattore, CIO of RoadSafe Traffic Systems, put it plainly. If initiatives aren’t tied to measurable business value, they get undervalued. Not ignored, but undervalued. That’s the line between being seen as reliable and being seen as essential.

Uptime gets acknowledged, impact gets funded

We’ve all experienced it. Early stage project approvals emphasize the “business case” and the big picture payback hopes. But as our people dig into their day-to-day work, (and despite their very best intentions), the reporting conversation drifts back to the typical technical and project delivery metrics. Over time, it becomes the central point of reporting focus. And then when funding time comes around, and our feet are really held to the fire, the technical metrics fall flat with the CFO and the business users. And we ask ourselves, what’s happening here? We have been reporting on our progress and technical achievements for months and everyone was happy with our results. Now that it’s funding time, we are missing the mark? What’s going on? The answer is pretty simple: technical metrics of progression are useful for the journey but only impact survives the scrutiny of funding. 

It’s more than a communications issue. 

This has been framed as a communication issue for years. It isn’t. There is no doubt that IT pros (and pretty much all technical leaders) need to improve their ability to think and communicate in terms of business impact. But the challenge here is way more than just a communications issue.

You can’t look back on a project after some time and weave a story of business impact. (Well, I suppose you can and some do, but it’s a tough row to hoe). Determination of business impact happens at the very outset of the project. It requires careful collaborative thinking with business partners to determine the target business impact. And it requires even more work to baseline the business metrics this technology project is seeking to move. 

In short, IT and business leaders need a view into the “target achievements” of projects against which they can measure their “key accomplishments” when it’s all over. (Pretty similar to the tried and true method of budget and actual comparisons routinely performed in financial management.) 

Here’s the question: We all know how important this issue is. We all see how much is written about it. So why is it that so little time and money is spent building this capability for today’s up and coming IT leaders? 

Now that’s a question worth answering. Would love to hear what you think.