The CIO Playbook: Strategies and Best Practices for IT Leaders to Deliver Value

Conclusion

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

—Vince Lombardi

Touchdown Passes

We all have certain strategies that we develop over the course of our careers and apply when the applicable situation presents itself. In football, the term touchdown pass is the most prestigious statistic among quarterbacks. So in the spirit of the name of this book, I decided to dedicate the Conclusion to sharing my touchdown passes, which are essentially strategies that have earned me points throughout my career. As a leader, you need a team, and just as in football, you need someone to pass to in order to score points. The passes described here are not in any particular order, and some have already been mentioned earlier in this book, but they are worth reiterating because of how often I tend to use them. I hope you find them as useful in your current role and throughout your career as I have.

Use Governance to Avoid Chaos

In Chapter 3, I described how to build a governance framework to ensure the linkage of business and IT plans; to define, maintain, and validate the IT value proposition; and to partner with enterprise operations. Governance is one of my touchdown passes because without it you basically have chaos: whoever screams the loudest will get your attention. Without governance, important initiatives will be derailed by the constant changes in priorities. ...