Mentoring your team creates an IT department that is better able to compete for talent and business advantage, says the CIO of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development.

Looking good in business is never a matter of fashion.

In the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and tragedies like 9/11, we see the power of the human spirit. In the face of devastation and destruction, people still want to get things done. They want to rebuild. They want to re-energize their communities. They want to be the project managers of their world.

Why SCRUM’s agile development framework is more effective than the traditional “waterfall” approach.

Last year we talked about CIOs - who are both the masters and the victims of doubletalk and who are under enormous pressure to provide more to their users and at the same time, trying to keep spending under control.

The key to a successful Agile migration is having the change driven from within. The change needs to be driven by key players throughout the company. Once this team is created they will be evangelists to the entire company.

My staff could look at any single day of my professional life and decide based on this that they would never want to be a CIO. They see me as the person that must answer all the hard questions when systems and processes don't work. They think my job is hard and complex, and that it appears to be nearly impossible to succeed at.

CIO to CEO: How to transition to tech company honcho.

Recently the SDForum, a Silicon Valley-based technology and business incubator, hosted an all-day Cloud Computing Symposium. If the presenters at the Symposium are to be believed, cloud computing represents an infrastructure revolution, moving infrastructure use from a capital expense to an operational expense and cutting the overall cost by at least 90 percent.

As business priorities change and evolve, so do enterprise expectations of the CIO and IT organization. According to the 2008 Gartner Survey of CIOs, enterprises expect to invest proportionally more in distinctive technology solutions that address unique business needs, and less in commodity technologies. The reason for this shift is simple: Marketplace differentiation requires C-level leaders to be focused, committed and able to drive change across their organization -- with direct, positive impact on the bottom line (or gains for the political agenda of a government agency).

The summer was a wonderful time to reflect on where the ‘IT Service World’ is – and where it is going. I’ve researched and read a significant amount on what the ‘experts’ believe, and unusually, they appear to agree on a number of points: