A new year, a new role. That seems to be the current state of affairs for many CIOs, with movements afoot in the industry

You’ve gotta feel for the CIO who has to write a business case to convince his or her board to spend money on new technologies with names like Yammer, Mr Tweet, Pluck, Chatter or Jive. After all, whimsy is only so cool to the chequesigners in multi-billion dollar corporations who quickly follow their tacit approval of anything leading edge with that old-school refrain of “show me the money”. Look past the funky names of today’s social networking tools, however, and chances are there will be enough nifty features to justify the investment.

That noise you hear is the scrape of chairs being pushed back, laptops snapping shut and your ICT staff walking out the door. The war for talent is on again — if it ever stopped — and as with all wars, there will be victors, survivors and casualties. Identifying, retaining and developing talent never gets easier. There are only degrees of difficulty. What should you do to attract and groom good people? How can you make your IT organisation one that offers interesting roles and compelling career prospects? How can you avoid becoming collateral damage in the war?

With several multi-million dollar IT projects running concurrently and a headquarters relocation thrown in, 2009 was a busy year for Aristocrat CIO Angelo Grasso. Good project governance and short project timeframes, Grasso says, helped Aristocrat’s IT organisation to act as an enabler and ensure success.