How to Set Your Priorities

To some extent, backlogs have always been around, because users have always cried for the latest applications. Ten years ago, during the Internet buildout, everyone got what they wanted. Then Y2K put the brakes on many less critical projects. "Perhaps that started some of the backlog," Kudla says. Then came the dotcom bust, 9/11 and bad times for many companies.

Yet application demand remained. There may have been less development going on during the years when companies were focused on survival and keeping costs down. But users "still had their wish lists", says Stephen Rood, CIO of Strategic Technology, an IT consultancy that advises small and midsize companies. Now, those needs are out in the open again, fuelling CIOs' concerns about project backlogs.

How one defines — and how one deals with — any backlog boils down to two factors: the source of the demand and the stage of development the project is in. Holstein identifies two different types of backlogs: a backlog of desire (applications that users are yearning for) and a backlog of commitment (projects that are approved but not started). CIOs need to pay attention to both. If internal customers can't get an IT project on a CIO's radar screen, "they perceive there's a backlog because the IT shop can't do what they want", Holstein says. When projects have been promised but not delivered, he says, "expectations have been set and not fulfilled". It may be that an IT organization hasn't planned properly, or that managers aren't tracking projects well, or that developers are taking time to assess the ins and outs of a project. But sometimes all users know is that they have yet to get what they were promised.

One way to look at the backlog is to consider the whole spectrum of projects that IT is currently working on but has not finished, in addition to the ones ready to go. Worldspan's Powers has a list of 100 projects that have funding and that IT is working on. Outside the top 100 are projects that are on deck. "When you finish [project] three, you bring in [project] 101," she explains. If she doesn't have the right staff with the right skills available for the next project on the list, she may skip to another. "We tend to have a backlog of about one year's worth of work. But because we prioritize every two weeks, some items never make it to the active list," Powers says.

How to Manage the Squeaky Wheel

No matter how good CIOs are at keeping a grip on their backlog, ever-shifting business priorities always threaten to shake up the IT agenda. One of the toughest tasks for CIOs is aligning the jumble of projects vying for resources with the company's strategic needs. In a fast-paced business climate, new projects — especially those that come from Mahogany Row — scream for attention. "They can also come about quite innocently," Holstein says, due to external factors that cause the business climate to shift. "What was a top priority becomes priority number 10."

A major contributor to the application backlog has been compliance-related projects. IT has to complete those projects by set dates, and in many cases, these infrastructure projects require substantial IT resources. Invariably, notes Holstein, implementing compliance projects pushes others farther down the to-do list. At Worldspan, Powers says, compliance-related projects trumped even a project that aimed to improve how the company prioritizes its IT projects.