Stories about: Rock

Investment decisions in enterprise software, especially for core business applications and infrastructure, create dependencies on products and vendors that last for decades. To maximise return on these investments, CIOs must look at least 10 years ahead. Using a scenario-based planning approach, Forrester has three visions of how software will look - each illustrated by a poker analogy.

Wikis are useful business tools. With planning and some staff time, you can make your own online collection of useful articles, tailored to your organization's needs, to communicate about business processes, manage collective know-how and more

Author Jim Collins explains why he sees CIOs as quiet leaders, and what challenges they face in their drive to be the best

John Halamka has two CIO titles, a family, passionate rock-climbing and wine-making interests and a major-league blog habit. We discuss his celebrity turn in a BlackBerry ad, his tips for e-mail triage, how he sleeps three hours a night and why he now understands Britney Spears.

Teams are pervasive in the world of it, and they come in many different flavours. Short-lived, single-purpose teams are often assembled to get one task completed. Project-oriented teams construct multifaceted solutions addressing complex but finite problems, and product development teams tend to be diverse in composition but stable over time. Within many organizations, a great deal of energy goes into building high-output IT teams that are sustainable in the long term

When people question old assumptions and change old habits they create openings for whole new businesses to be born. Unexpected things are happening right now that could cause us to question assumptions and change some old habits.

You threw what you thought was a pebble into a pond and created ripples that have your conference rooms awash with disagreements, debates and dissension. The new strategy seemed simple enough: Transition to a common system across all operating units in order to enhance supply chain performance

CIOs juggle tighter and tighter budgets, longer and longer to-do lists and rapid-fire technology updates that can shift the entire IT landscape overnight. They have to manage the expectations of tech savvy employees who want at work what they cobble together for themselves on the cheap at home; they have to find and retain IT staff and manage their Gen X/Y expectations while engaging intimately with the business; and they have to support 24x7 service demands

To call Clyde Thomas a high performer would be an understatement. As CIO and executive vice president of global operations and technology for eFunds, a $US600 million financial services company, Thomas logs nearly 70 hours a week on the job. He oversees five data centres in the US and two abroad, managing 450 people who serve 6000 users overall. He is responsible for the company's software engineering, call and data centres, and security. He is also building new enterprise projects in China and Eastern Europe

The harsh lessons of poor functional leadership are as infinitely forgettable as Groundhog Day was for Bill Murray in his movie of the same name

There are three types of people who wish Web 2.0 would go away. They are the old-schoolers, the contrarians for-the-sake-of-being contrarians, and the moral egotists. If you have any to add, please send me an e-mail or comment below.