Along with process and organizational changes, the use of benchmarking can prove very beneficial. This includes mixing internal with external benchmarking. Benchmarking can help provide a clear assessment of where things are right now and how they need to improve in the future.

The final part of the triumvirate is people. At an operational level, part of the focus of CIOs and IT leaders needs to be on technical skills to achieve technical consistency. Also important, there needs to be a focus on relationship management skills to begin rebuilding bridges between IT and its business customers.

CIOs extend the IT core from technical services to business value. Once the enterprise has confidence in IT's ability to sustain effective operations that meet business expectations, CIOs' attention shifts from: Can the technology run? to How can we enhance the business value of technology-enabled activities?

In effect, CIOs and IT leaders can shift their attention from inside to outside IT. This means making an increasing proportion of the key decisions through collaboration with their business peers.

Technology decisions too can look beyond infrastructure to business applications. Definition and enforcement of enterprise architecture can now become a priority. Once the basic technical crisis is addressed, architecture standards can be used to help simplify the infrastructure and make sure that complexity doesn't creep back into it in the future. At this point, CIOs and IT leaders are laying the foundation for achieving enhancement agility in the future through rigorous standardization. This is something that takes a lot of time and also can take a lot of political capital to achieve.

Additionally, CIOs and other IT leaders should shift their attention to strengthening governance and maturing the PMO at this stage. Demand management becomes a priority to protect both the value delivered by IT, the delivery organization itself and the hard-won reputation that IT is now back on track.

Personnel skill requirements for IT also evolve as performance moves from effective operations toward increased business contribution, including business process change. At this middle level, the IS organization is in transition and needs to build additional skills and roles beyond those required for technology operations. The IS organization needs increased business skills to improve business processes and deliver better business applications.

Using a strong IT core to drive enterprise leverage. A strong IT core and credible delivery organization enables the CIO and other IT leaders to engage business leadership in creating enterprise leverage through greater information, innovation or agility. CIOs' conversations with their business peers have evolved significantly from the dark days of operational ineffectiveness. The discussion now is about business strategy, innovation, change management and how new opportunities can transform the business for competitive advantage.

In this leadership stage of managing the IT core, CIOs emphasize processes that support enterprise-wide results. This entails implementing and leveraging mature enterprise portfolio management, which includes focusing on an organization's investment portfolio and the return on those investments. The CIO also expands enterprise processes to include innovation processes.

Effectively operating current technologies represents the table stakes for establishing the credibility of IT. Evolving the core of IT beyond this, although necessary, can be a perilous journey. Business expectations of IT set the course; IT performance determines where to start; and the journey never ends.

Andrew Rowsell-Jones is vice president and research director for Gartner's CIO Executive Programs