The 2017 CIO Roadmap to Project Success_Final

The 2017 CIO Roadmap to Project Success

Over the past several years, CIOs in the U.S. and across the globe have become integral to the digital transformation process — with more CIOs now believing they are trusted allies and partners of the CEO [1]. But with greater prominence and influence, comes greater responsibility — and accountability — for persons in this important role.

Until recently, the metrics by which CIOs have been held accountable for projects were relatively lax. However, as organizations shift to more digitally mature entities — CIOs and their teams face increasing pressure for digital initiatives to deliver both meaningful and measurable results. The impact on the CIO role: Greater onus for project success — and that extends well beyond delivering tech projects on time and on budget [2]. Today, CIOs are much more tied to accountability for user adoption or productivity metrics, which are key hallmarks of successful digital innovation programs.

This shift in accountability for CIOs is already a part of the culture of some companies. For example, Westpac Banking Corporation, an Australian bank and financial services provider, holds both its CIO and CMO to similar standards for project success. Westpac, which “is delivering one of the best ranked mobile banking experiences in the world,” according to recent Forrester research report, can attribute this success in part to the CIO’s accountability for user adoption [2].

With this increased level of accountability, it’s important to develop tactics to help ensure you, as CIO, stay ahead of the game.

Based on our experience at ChaiOne, working with dozens of clients on their digital innovation initiatives, we’ve learned a thing or two about implementing and executing successful projects. For CIOs specifically, we’ve determined some of the most important aspects of their jobs in today’s enterprise environment involve rethinking technology and architecture, while also leveraging strategic partnerships and defined product development approaches.

In this eBook, we’ll give you a few of our most valuable recommendations from both a technical and a nontechnical perspective to help ensure the success of your projects.

THE 2017 CIO ROADMAP TO PROJECT SUCCESS · 2

[email protected] · 888.316.0357

Rethinking Technology Management and Architecture

As enterprises become more digitally mature, digital ecosystem adoption will increasingly drive the innovation programs for which CIOs are held accountable. This shift to digital ecosystems will require CIOs to rethink their approach to technology management and architecture in order to prevent their companies from being digitally disrupted.

ChaiOne defines a digital ecosystem as a series of digital products tied together via a platform, which solves a multitude of problems for a diverse customer base with a common goal of making the business competitive.

Today, CIOs face a number of challenges when overseeing the creation of their companies’ digital ecosystem. From a technical perspective, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring application program interface (API) design and management best practices are followed.

Research shows APIs, which serve as the foundation for digital ecosystems and enable greater enterprise-wide agility, increase sales, net income and market capitalization [3, 4, 5]. Savvy CIOs know the business impact of APIs and are rapidly adopting them as part of their digital innovation strategy.



Why Ecosystems Are Valuable to EnterpriseThe adoption of a digital ecosystem is key to improving customer experiences and stickiness and also streamlining business processes for internal stakeholders enterprise-wide. The digital ecosystem achieves these goals largely by breaking down traditional business silos — delivering users both valuable and relevant content from connected things, people and devices.

ECOSYSYTEM IMAGE

DASHBOARDiPad App

ibeacon

FirewallSecurity

ibeacon

ibeacon

Geofence

VENDOR APPiPhone

WorkRequest

API Best Practices for Digital Ecosystem Projects

At the enterprise level, while the vast majority of CIOs understand the role of APIs as architecture and as regulators, and their impact on the success of a digital ecosystem, CIOs don’t always know the most appropriate API best practices to enforce.

Below are three of the most important API best practices CIOs should work to incorporate into their tech team’s development programs.

Create proper, well-formed API endpoints

For APIs to be consistent, each must have proper, well-formed endpoints. API consistency is important to developers because it makes APIs easy and intuitive to use. Without API consistency, it becomes very challenging for developers to create interconnected components of a digital ecosystem, which can have a serious impact on project timelines and, in some cases, the ultimate success of the project. In large enterprises especially, APIs created using inconsistent guidelines can result in serious challenges for tech teams to integrate the digital products or ecosystems of one department with another — impacting interoperability and platform stability.

At ChaiOne, to mitigate API consistency issues, we use Micosoft REST API guidelines to help us write consistent API call URLS. We also use the JSON API spec to help us be consistent with how data is sent once it is called. Both Microsoft REST API guidelines and the JSON API spec are industry standard and are easily accessible online for further review.



https://github.com/Microsoft/api-guidelines/blob/master/Guidelines.md#1-abstract

http://jsonapi.org/

Generate good API documentation

Documentation is important because it gives developers all the information they need to easily create an API. It also further enforces API consistency.

Poor documentation or no documentation can lead to a nightmarish experience for developers — and also slow down the development process. As a result, undocumented or poorly documented APIs are rarely used.

At a minimum, API documentation should include all the endpoints, inputs information, headers information and response examples. Great documentation, however, goes a little further — giving developers usage examples. Usage examples are what help developers easily understand and create APIs.

Ensure proper version management

Over time, most APIs will change. That’s why it’s important to have proper API version management. Without proper API version management, a new API version could be used that breaks for users still connected via the previous version. The goal of any digital product or ecosystem is to ensure a good user experience, and broken APIs hardly contribute to that. With a good API version management system in place, you can ensure your developers stay abreast of any new API versions and make the appropriate accommodations for all users of the APIs.

As CIO, ensuring these API best practices are upheld will go a long way when it comes to overseeing the successful development of your companies’ digital ecosystem.



Impact of APIs on IndustryIn the oil and gas and utilities industries, in particular, digital ecosystems built on top of stable cloud computing platforms will be increasingly important to connect stakeholders with valuable streaming data from SCADA systems and the industrial internet of things (IIoT).

Taking a Non-Technology-Driven Approach

It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s important to ensure your project isn’t purely driven by technology.

While technology is the answer to the problem or business challenge, CIOs need to modify their problem-solving approach to consider the needs of the user first. By taking a close look at the actual needs of the user, you can better select the technology solution or technology stack for the business challenge resulting in a successful implementation of the project.

So, how can you take a more user-first approach instead of a technology-driven approach? The answer: user experience (UX) research

While you’re likely familiar with the term UX and how it relates to the design of a digital product, user experience research is a separate discipline.

ChaiOne defines user experience research as the collection or gathering of information about a user and a user’s environmental context through a defined set of processes and methodologies to create a list of requirements for a digital solution.

Assume Nothing About the Problem You Want to Solve

One of the biggest mistakes a company can make in the digital innovation process is to rely solely on the perceptions and assumptions of executives and managers about how to solve a business challenge with technology.

To make strategic business decisions and avoid costly errors, CIOs need to rely on data gathered from the front lines, the field, or the factory floor to develop a digital innovation strategy.



https://chaione.com/user-experience-research/

Traditionally, business analysts have been utilized to provide insights into a companies’ processes or systems, providing a list of requirements to execute a digital solution. However, to keep pace in today’s dynamic digital enterprise environment, CIOs need requirements backed by very specific user data — something business analysis doesn’t account for.

With UX research — requirements are formed around the user’s needs, not the business process. The way it works is UX researchers focus on examining a person’s interactions in the context of their work or environment through contextual inquiries. In doing so, the researcher leverages principles of psychology and human factors training to gather insightful data that helps define requirements for impactful digital solutions that ultimately solve the business challenge.

When developing a digital solution at the enterprise-level, gathering deep intelligence on your customers or workforce in the context of their work or environment is key — because it typically reveals hidden areas for improvements that may go unnoticed using other intelligence gathering methods. Even the most minute details uncovered by UX research can have a serious impact on the final requirements of a solution and, ultimately, its success or failure.

By leveraging UX research to define requirements for a project, the result is a digital solution that meets the precise needs of the customer or workforce. The overall benefit? A far lesser chance a company will need to scrap their digital solution or redesign it due to low user adoption or nominal changes to business



Real World Relevance of Contextual InquiriesConsider a mobile solution for a lease operator in the oil and gas industry to more efficiently organize his workflow, get ahead of equipment maintenance to reduce downtime, etc. When he gets to the lease site, does it make sense for him to use a tablet or smart phone? Is the user getting the most relevant information he needs from the database to do his job effectively? What aspect of the user’s current process hinders his efficiency most, and what is the best technology solution to fix the problem? These are the kinds of questions that are answered with contextual inquiries. This important intelligence can then be used to shape the business requirements for the design of an app or a complete digital ecosystem — resulting in a more effective final product.

For digital innovation programs, “shared metrics drive everyone in the same direction” — thereby strengthening the connection of the CIO and his team to a project in terms of its overall success. So instead of feeling like work is being done in a silo, the CIO and his team become aligned with the key performance indicators (KPIs) of other stakeholders who are also accountable for a successful outcome.

Unfortunately, the reality at most companies is the KPIs are not closely aligned. The graph below excerpted from the Forrester report “Define New Metrics for Digital Business Success,” illustrates how key stakeholders perceive their roles for project metrics:

Aligning KPIs with Other Internal Stakeholders

For CIOs focused on improving customer experiences, aligning their key performance indicators (KPIs) to those of other internal stakeholders, such as the CMO, will be increasingly important to achieving great customer experiences. Conversely, CIOs focused on streamlining operations in industrial settings benefit greatly from aligning their KPIs to work more in tandem with key internal stakeholders, such as COOs.

As CIO — your increasingly influential role — puts you in a position of helping to better align KPIs for your organization where all key stakeholders responsible for a project have shared metrics to achieve a common goal of delivering a successful project. By aligning your own KPIs to work in tandem with these stakeholders — you greatly increase the chances of project success.

Using a Proven Product Development Strategy

One of the biggest time wasters for CIOs is trying to formulate a proven product development strategy from scratch. However, by partnering with a firm that already has a product development strategy in place, you can greatly accelerate your digital innovation program and chances of project success.



FORRESTER GRAPHFORRESTER GRAPH

The ChaiOne Product Development Strategy

At ChaiOne, we use an agile product development strategy to deliver digital products, platforms or ecosystems that respond to the constantly changing market conditions or business dynamics of our clients.

The process for our strategy, as illustrated by the infographic below, promotes iterative design — moving a digital solution back through the process funnel — until it meets certain usability standards.

By following this strategy model, we’re able to achieve a strong initial design for our clients that can be easily iterated on for continuous improvement throughout the project lifecycle.

Measuring Project Success

When it comes to knowing if a project is going to be a success, the best way to do this is to put it to numbers.

That’s why, at ChaiOne, we use system usability scale (SUS) scores throughout various stages of our product development process, to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency and usefulness of the solution based on the user’s perception.

While the industry average for a SUS score is 68, at ChaiOne, we aim little higher — shooting for a final SUS score of 80 or better for our client’s digital solutions. The higher the SUS score, the better the chances are users will adopt it — resulting in a successful project.



5D PROCESS

DISCOVER DEFINE DEPLOYDESIGN DEVELOP

• Project Charter• Discovery Report (personas, preliminary insights)

• Indicative Wireframes• Business Requirements Document• Technical Requirements

• Prototypes Wireframes• Visual Composition• Usability Testing Report

• Functional Software• API Documentation

• UAT Plan• User Guide• Admin Guide• Roll Out Plan (training and mentoring)• Post

• Continued User Testing• Refactor Wireframes• Integrate Backload• Build Releases

Leveraging Cross-Disciplinary Experience

Another important tip to help ensure the success of your project is to leverage the knowledge of senior team members across the product development cycle. For advanced digital innovation programs, this will typically include a multidisciplinary team consisting of a project manager, researcher, designer and developer.

At ChaiOne, we assign a multidisciplinary team to every project. This measure, in combination with our proven product development strategy, has resulted in the successful implementation of numerous digital innovation programs for Fortune 500 companies in the oil and gas and utilities industries.

Ultimately, with CIO accountability increasing, there are several things you, can do to remain at the top of your game at the enterprise level. By following some of the recommendations we’ve given in this eBook, you can make the necessary changes in your organization to ensure a successful project from start to finish.

Want to learn more tips about how to succeed with your digital innovations program?

Read our whitepaper, Improve ROI with User Experience Research.

Have specific questions about your project for any of our Digital Strategists? Call us at 888-316-0357 for a free 20-minute conversation.



The Impact of a Multidisciplinary TeamWith a multidisciplinary team in place — each discipline has a voice throughout the product’s development cycle. So instead of handing off a project from one discipline to the next in stages, team leadership from all disciplines actively participate in each stage of the project from beginning to end. Not only does this help increase efficiencies both upstream and downstream of the project, it also creates a sense of joint ownership and spurs collaboration among the different disciplines. The result? A greater impact from each discipline on the overall project resulting in a more successful, high-quality product.

http://info.chaione.com/roi-ux-white-paper/

References

1.Gartner, Inc. (2015). Building the Digital Platform: Insights from the 2016 Gartner CIO Agenda Report.

2.Forrester Research (2016). Define New Metrics for Digital Business Success. Performance Management: The CIO Digital Business Transformation Playbook

3.Benzell, S., LaGarda, G., Van Alstyne, M. (2016). The Role of APIs in Firm Performance. Boston University Questrom School of Business Research Paper

No. 2843326 4.Forrester Research (2016). Begin Your Journey to Digital Mastery. 5.Forrester Research (2013). Establish Your API Design Strategy. APIs are a Key

Embodiment of Your Digital Business.



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The 2017 CIO Roadmap to Project Success_Final