This season, our research challenges you to push your understanding of the I&O role outside of the traditional responsibilities. We examined opportunities for cross-team collaboration, adopting knowledge from distinctive sources, and areas that require a fresh outlook.

 

Good I&O practices don’t just mean back-room productivity – your employees need to be satisfied with what you do in order to be deemed successful. However, if you’re not meeting their basic needs for effectiveness, ease, and pleasant interaction, chances are they’ll turn to self-service rather than to you. Elinor Klavens offers up five strategies in her “Five Key Initiatives To Wow Your Workforce With Your Service Desk” report that will help you craft a service desk that is both effective for your employees and fosters your good reputation.

 

Have you ever thought of expanding your DevOps practices to include your security team? If not, you’re long overdue for doing so. DevOps can only improve and deliver so much without getting input from security professionals. If you want to include effective and necessary security practices and fend off known problems, you won’t be able to do it alone. Enter Rugged DevOps. Amy DeMartine describes what rugged DevOps is and what the main principles are so that I&O pros can work cohesively with security professionals to achieve faster releases with stronger application security in her report, “The Seven Habits Of Rugged DevOps.”

 

If you want to align, engage, and deliver operational excellence in the age of the customer, then it’s essential to collaborate with application development and delivery teams. As the economy changes, globalization occurs, and customer focus increases, so too must your sourcing strategy to stay effective. Your business is demanding agility and a fast time-to-market cycle, which can be achieved effectively through collaboration. Wolfgang Benkel’s “Sourcing Behavior Secures Operational Excellence In The Age Of The Customer” brief describes new sourcing methods that will become the norm in the age of the customer and that will bring you much success.

 

As customers become increasingly mobile, your application performance management technology must adapt to stay relevant. By collaborating with enterprise architects, you can bridge the gap to include mobility aspects. Your performance assessment is not complete unless it also monitors and manages the mobile customer’s perception of performance. In Milan Hanson’s “Explaining Application Performance Management, Mobile And Otherwise” report, he introduces a new reference model for mobile application performance management.

 

The current I&O organization is siloed, but in order to better align with the BT agenda, it is slowly transforming to a plan-procure-manage model. This new model requires innovation, flexibility, and cooperation not currently present in the organization. As this shift occurs, you’ll need to look for the right talent to make your organization thrive. JP Garbani details in his “I&O Must Acquire And Retain New Talent To Stay Relevant” report how to do just that, by explaining why I&O pros should look for new talent, what skills to look for, and how to retain the talent they find.

 

You may be finding it difficult to navigate the landscape of cloud as more and more technology suppliers develop solutions, each with its own strategic approach. But the need to change your technology strategy to enable improved customer interaction is yet to be addressed – your business models support engaged customers, but is your cloud strategy following suit? Recruit your fellow CIO-based colleagues to put your heads together to navigate the ever-growing landscape of cloud offerings. Bill Martorelli’s “Understanding The Cloud Services Provider Landscape” report helps you navigate the makeup of the market, the business model differences between the tiers of players, and how best to select their strategic partners and negotiate with providers for the greatest benefits.