Stories about: Sigma

Not many people-including business analysts themselves-are able to agree upon a standard job description, typical skill sets, proper training methods or a well-defined career path for the business analyst position.

In many ways, managing a developer is just like managing any other employee. Developers want managers who'll help them solve business and technical problems, who'll protect them from unnecessary office politics and who will help them meet their personal career goals. But programmers are...different. Like musicians, these creative folks can alternate between big-picture thinking and persnickety detail in a heartbeat. They can be sidetracked by silly toys, and convinced to work overtime by the promise of pizza and a T-shirt. Trying to understand and motivate these people can drive managers-particularly nontechnical managers-to distraction.

Jim Krause is retiring from the CME Group on June 30. Krause, who currently serves as managing director and CIO, has worked for the derivatives exchange for 23 years. He has been involved with every major technology initiative that the exchange has undertaken since 1985, including the design, development and implementation of the CME Globex electronic trading platform, the Clearing 21 clearing system, and the integration of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME.)

The development of innovative products and services - or for the sake of brevity, let us just call it new product development - is an imperative for enterprises of every stripe in response to rising stakeholder expectations and growing market competition. Unsurprising then that when asked about such things in the latest Gartner survey of CIOs, supporting and driving new product development was one of the predominant IT issues for 2008 and beyond

All of a sudden "green" is the "in" color. In 2007 the IT industry embraced the green data center concept. What followed was an avalanche of PR from vendor after vendor claiming that they were greener than their competitors.

New product development is an imperative for enterprises of every stripe, and because it is of critical importance, it provides an opportunity for CIOs to show that they are business leaders and for IT departments to show that they are well aligned with enterprise goals.

Bill Would Double Cap on H-1B Visas

Gartner continues to receive enquiries from frustrated IT leaders and their business bosses seeking to up the performance of their IT organizations. Yet recent research reveals that CIOs are surprisingly sceptical about the strength of their own core operations. Of the 1440 CIOs that responded to the annual Gartner CIO Survey in 2007, only 9 percent strongly believe that their IS organization's service levels are meeting business expectations

after 50 years or so of doing IT projects, we're no better at defining business needs - indeed, probably worse

CIOs from FedEx, Campbell's Soup, Carlson and other top companies share the advice that helped them get ahead

Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.