Businesses want IT employees to spend more time creating new capabilities--in areas such as collaboration, mobility, security, and product development--and less on the care and maintenance of data center servers. Global Crossing CIO Wagner calls the new stuff "strategic software development"; Hewlett-Packard CIO Randy Mott refers to it as innovation. So how do you measure it?

It can start simply with a time sheet. Global Crossing implemented a system that keeps track of how IT employees spend their time by the hour. Doing so helps IT execs understand what people are doing on a project-by-project basis. "You have to actively manage that," Wagner says. "It doesn't just happen."