The Roles I Play

As 2014 begins, I marvel at the evolution of the CIO role from 1997 to 2014. Gone are the days when my role was to serve as technical expert, configuring web servers, optimizing data bases, or simplifying code. Gone are the days when product decisio nmaking depended on software architecture expertise to ensure scalability, reliability and security. Gone are the early wins of the "bold moves" like replacing Lotus Notes with Exchange, Novell with NT, Sybase with Microsoft SQL, and client/server with web applications.

Here are a few examples of the roles I play today from the past few weeks:

1. Rethinking a challenging project by ensuring all stakeholders understand the key roles/responsibilities assigned during project formation i.e.

Defining the business champion
Defining the executive sponsor
Defining the role of IT
Defining the role of the project manager
Defining the support model
Defining the responsibility for creating, managing, and maintaining interfaces
Assigning responsibility for workflow/process definition
Assigning responsibility for vendor relationship management
Writing the governance committee charter
Defining the communication plan for internal and external customers
Defining unit testing and integrated testing responsbilities
Defining the training/education plan