CIOs Worry About Speed And Agility

Is our tech team too slow? Are we holding the company back? Those are the latest additions to the worry list keeping CIOs up at night.

The top three IT management concerns for CIOs are the alignment of IT and business at their companies; attracting, developing, and retaining IT talent; and security and privacy issues, according to an annual survey by the Society for Information Management, which polled 139 CIOs.

This year, a new issue joins the top 10: speed and agility. "IT has been known for taking a long time to define, build, and deliver," says June Drewry, global CIO of Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, "but that's not an acceptable approach."

Chubb is looking at Web services, service-oriented architecture, and reusable software components to improve speed and agility. The approach could at times cut IT out by making it possible to change business rules without coding. "We're enabling the business to do more on its own," she says.

Others must have similar plans. Web services for the first time is one of the top six applications or technology developments CIOs cite in the survey.

Falling off this year's list of top 10 IT management concerns is business process reengineering.