The great CIO shuffle

In recent months, a number of high profile CIOs have vacated their positions, and vacancies have been filled by new CIOs. Some of the big names include Danny Naidoo, Sello Mmakau, Thabang Legae and Sean Fisher. The calibre of the CIOs doing the shuffle raised some eyebrows, as it seemed that perhaps economic factors were curtailing delivery and there was general dissatisfaction in the IT executive ranks.

When CIOs put in a structure to delegate operational responsibility, research has shown that this frees up one day a month of the CIO's time.

George Ambler, Gartner Africa

However, it seems the movement in the industry is actually within normal parameters and the reason that it appeared noteworthy was that some of the movers were big names from big companies.

"From our data, we know that the average tenure for a CIO is four years, so there's always a big percentage moving at any time," says George Ambler, an executive partner at Gartner Africa. "It's difficult to say whether the current moves are indicative of a larger trend."

He says despite the tough economic issues facing the South African business sector, he doesn't anticipate any kind of a spike in CIO movement when Gartner publishes its data later this year. "That four-year trend has been pretty stable. Even in 2009, with the huge economic crisis, it remained constant."

However, of the CIOs on the move, some were being pulled from operational roles into a more strategic focus on business growth, while others were being brought in to 'keep the lights on', to free the CIO to focus on development. This small sample group of a couple of months' worth of CIO movements bears testimony to a broader trend that Gartner has been highlighting globally - that of bimodal IT.

"We're seeing a lot of that - bimodal or two-speed IT, with one person on the run side and another focusing on more innovative stuff," says Ambler. "It's a global trend, and it takes different shapes and forms - a CIO might put in another person, like a CTO (chief technology offi cer), to do the maintenance, while the CIO focuses on change and innovation."

He says there's a direct correlation between how CIOs spend their time and their success in the role. "Freeing up time from operational commitments to dedicate it to building and driving relationships with their business counterparts results in success. When CIOs put in a structure to delegate operational responsibility, research has shown that this frees up one day a month of the CIO's time. It doesn't sound like a lot, but taking one day a month over the course of the year to build relationships results in a significant shift in emphasis."

Ambler says it's necessary to have these two modes of operation because the pressure of getting product to market in compressed cycle times is passed on to the CIO, who has to get involved early in the development cycle. CIOs were introducing agile methodologies, hoping that it would allow them to deliver faster, but they found that it wasn't possible to adopt an agile culture in existing operational environments.

"So the reason for the split is cultural rather than anything else," he says. "The culture of keeping the lights on is very risk-averse and procedure-oriented, so it's naturally slow to respond. However, if you want to be fast to the marketplace, you need an agile culture that is less concerned about stability than about rapidly developing and releasing new functionality all the time."

He says that this trend has only been picking up in the last two years, but that Gartner is seeing it happen more and more in the marketplace. So, while the current state of CIO shuffling doesn't seem to reflect any trouble in the profession, the way that new appointments are being handled in this few-month microcosm is definitely indicative of a larger trend towards bimodal IT.

This article was first published in Brainstorm magazine. Click here to read the complete article at the Brainstorm website.