As digitalization transforms all industries and the world’s companies that operate in them, CIOs have to reorganize their IT teams around a new type of operating model. But there are three questions that CIOs should ask themselves before making staff moves.
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How important is co-location? “Continuous” work on developing corporate software, either via Agile or DevOps methodologies, is an important part of this new operating model.
While co-location for these teams is important, consistency of who works with whom is more important.CEB analysis shows that while co-location was used almost equally by both the best and worst performing agile teams in a survey sample, 44% of the top-performing teams had consistency in their composition. Whereas 27% of bottom-performing teams exhibited the same level of consistency.
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How do we create workplace flexibility? While a CIO’s ability to start a work-from-home policy may be curbed by the firm’s overarching policy, it’s worth knowing that flexible work opportunities are becoming more and more important to employees.
Employees increasingly value flexibility in how and where they work, according to CEB data, and flexible work is particularly likely to engage female employees and keep them in their job. An HR team in CEB’s networks saw a 6% increase in their engagement, and an 11% increase in promotion of women after the implementation of a flexible work policy.
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How will “machines as partners” change work? Over half (57%) of business leaders say their firms now use machine learning to automate work previously done by employees. This trend will only grow but the problems it throws up will not be fully addressed until a company’s board of directors addresses this issue.
A recent HBR article chronicled a board’s uncertainty about using machines as partners. Boards of directors are unsure how to proceed, not because they are afraid of automation, but because partnering with machines means they might be allowing a computer to dictate something as important and complex as a sales strategy.
Boards that decide to make use of this kind of artificial intelligence must make it clear to everyone in the company how they are supposed to direct machines, when they should delegate work to them, and when they are supposed to defer to them.