Measuring Innovation Performance

Innovation measurement should go beyond ... the count of research projects at each stage-gate and the NPV of the portfolio ... to culture metrics that sense the breadth and depth of the spirit of innovation. ...

... "Quantitative metrics in this area may be more activity-oriented, i.e., how many people are participating in innovation efforts and what percent of employees have been trained in creative or strategic thinking disciplines ... " ...

Via Blogging Innovation: Innovation Metrics Strategy

Structural IT Business Alignment

Executive Engagement in Business Technology Projects

Healthcare CEO supports a mission-aligned IT investment with active engagement that ensures implementation and drives adoption. ...

... "Raymer has taken a much more active role than most CEOs might when it comes to an IT project. She developed a detailed chart with scores of lines of responsibilities for employees throughout the organization, including herself. " ...

Via Triad Area Business Journal: IT investment

Org Controls

Decentralized and flat organization model distributes controls into the customer-focused workforce. Hierarchy and team roles are minimized while responsibility and accountability to the customer are emphasized. ...

... "Control rests with the front lines, where it adds the most value. It works. Still, customers visiting FAVI are often astounded at what they perceive to be a total lack of control. " ...

Via Idea Hub at American Express OPEN Forum: Design a Flat Organization

Governing Structure Enables Project Success Factors

Survey yields insights into the project management oversight practices of mid-market firms. While software and process helps, a functioning governance structure enables the investment conversations and portfolio transparency, which set the foundation for project success. ...

... "the existence of a governance structure determined how successful an organization would be in terms of IT project efficiency, customer satisfaction and project completion. " ...

Via Search CIO: IT project governance

Eat Own Dog Food

Microsoft's CIO shares insights on navigating the short-term while staying focused on the long-term strategy. And, he gets to taste and then feed the internal organization their own dog food. ...

... "Microsoft’s IT organization has long had a role within the company of being what we call the first and best customers of Microsoft products. So it was a well-established routine for taking in various waves of technologies that get introduced ... " ...

Via CIO Insight: Microsoft CIO Tony Scott

Change Projects

IBM study validates the challenges associated with change projects and identifies actions that differentiate the leaders. ...

... "Rather than simply throwing money at the problem they invested in building awareness of project complexity, spending more on building change skills and developing their long term tools, methods and capabilities. " ...

Via IBM: Organizational Change Projects

Organizing for Innovation

Here's an organizational model and mindset for innovation, which has produced results over the years. ...

... "Unbounded thinking is encouraged, failure is not punished, and thinking big is the norm, but at the same time there's an emphasis on producing a result. Program managers are selected for their technical excellence, their entrepreneurial spirit ... " ...

Via Baseline: DARPA Continue

The Networked Organization

Future models of design, manufacturing, and distribution are considered and mapped, such as the concept of a networked organization that leverages outside-in perspectives. ...

... "Seeking an outside-in perspective on internal challenges may require long-held processes to be rethought, from the design cycle to R&D budgets to intellectual property strategies. Once open to the idea of a networked organization, it's relatively easy to identify and engage with external networks of exceptional people through community R&D platforms such as Instructables, InnoCentive, and NineSigma. " ...

Via Institute for the Future: Future of Making is Mapped (PDF)

Innovation Culture of Unstructured Structure

Ideas on champion-ing sustainable innovation, include creating a burning platform to catalyze and help your people embrace the new culture. ...

... "Unfortunately, when the addiction to systems and structures rules the day, an organization's quest for a culture of innovation all too often degenerates into nothing much more than a cult of innovation. " ...

Via Idea Champions: INSIDE JOB

CIO Role Shifts Reporting Relationships

To keep IT relevant and better connected to the overall business strategy, shouldn't the CIO report to the CEO? The data supports a different trend. As CIOs have aligned more investments with the business, has their influence dimished? Or, is reporting relationship irrelevant in the grand scheme of things? No doubt about it ... the sand keeps shifting ...

... "The increasing prominence of the CFO in IT management signals a change in the way companies view technology strategy and deployment. " ...

Via CIO Insight: Meet Your New Boss

Organize for Virtualization Success

A virtualized environment offers the ability to achieve significant scalability. Benchmarks and heuristics can help you assess the future state model for your organization post-implementation. ...

... "Management team: 15 percent of IT groups are creating a dedicated team, often called the virtual computing team, that brings together experts from various IT disciplines to manage the overall virtualization effort ... " ...

Via CIO: Benchmarks

PMO Organize for Transformation

The program management office is seen as an organizational model for transformation. In this situation, four operating teams are under the leadership of the PMO - delivery, process, visibility, and communications. This office will provide oversight of the various project teams deployed to achieve the transformation. ...

... "Higher Education Ministry has set up the programme management office (PMO) in line with its recent launch of the National Higher Education Strategic Plan ... " ...

Via The Malaysia Star: Transformation

Finding the Central-Local-Equilibrium for IT Services

Insights on DHL's model for balancing central services with local business needs. The role of local IT in a shared services organization model is discussed. ...

... "A key element of this is that each country has a demand manager who sets out the required level of service and type of applications that are needed and then works closely with the local IT manager to ensure that they are delivered. " ...

Via SiliconRepublic: DHL Ireland

Chaos and Order: The Ingredients for Project Success

In my upcoming book, Managing the Gray Areas, there's a chapter on the need for both structure and flexibility----order and disorder. I've been exchanging some emails on the subject with Garry Booker of Project Frontier, who I'm happy to say is our newest PMThink blogger.

As it happens, Garry has been on the same path lately, and has been writing on the idea of managing outcomes (which require order) and actions (which by nature are chaotic) with the goal of achieving a chaordic organization.

A chaord (a term coined by leadership guru and former Visa CEO Dee Hock, made up from the words "chaos" and "order") refers to a state where systems and life "thrive on the edge of chaos with just enough order to give them pattern, but not so much to slow their adaptation and learning." In a chaordic organization, neither hierarchy or anarchy rule.

This is food for thought for project managers, PMO leaders, and executives.

More to come. Meanwhile, here are some links to definitions, and more about Dee Hock.

http://www.chaordic.org/definitions.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Hock

HR and IT Collaborate For Successful Change Management

HR and IT have areas of synergy that contribute to successful projects. The workforce and key talent have a special role in embracing organizational change. ...

... "If successful, the plan will produce a community of people who understand the reasons behind the change, the impact on their roles, and their role in the success of the transition. " ...

Via SMBedge: HR and IT Collaborative Success

IT Org Model Seeks to Integrate Distributed Teams

Government reorganizes IT leadership in order to increase performance on key projects and initiatives. ...

... "The idea is for the governor's respected Chief Information Officer Michael Locatis to forge better collaboration and expertise-sharing among information technology teams now scattered across 20 agencies ... " ...

Via GovExec: Reorganizing for IT Project Success

Chargeback IT Strategy Takes Standardization

Here's successful use of IT chargeback model, which leverages standards and shared service organization models. ...

... "Kaushik's hard work does come with great returns. He says Ivanhoe was selected by consulting firm Deloitte Touche as one of the top 5 per cent companies in the world with the best IT strategy. With a standardised IT infrastructure, the company is able to achieve a network with full redundancy at a communication cost that has gone down by 50 percent. " ...

Via MISWeb: Successful IT Chargeback Strategy

Project Management Costs

Getting started with your PMO ... training is key to jump-starting the organization. ...

... "For an IT project, approximately 5 percent to 15 percent of the budget should be dedicated to PM functions required to carry it out. " ...

Low Cost

Innovation Obstacles: Resistance, Time

Pulse-point survey on innovation shows cultural resistance and lack of time as barriers to innovation. Langdon Morris is author of Permanent Innovation, which is the process of innovating continuously, by developing an organizational culture that embraces innovation as a core value. ...

... "Both topics are chronic problems in organizations today, and both are significant red flags that indicate unhealthy situations. If your organization is characterized by resistance to change or you don't feel you have enough time for innovation then it may be time for a serious assessment of your organization's culture, and perhaps some remedial work to shift more of your focus toward something other than short term concerns." ...

Via Innovation Labs: Results of the Permanent Innovation Survey (PDF) ...