Gordon Barnett

Principal analyst Gordon Barnett reviews the key questions CIOs should ask when designing an IT operating model structure that supports automation and customer obsession.

Ask any CEO or business executive about their biggest challenges, and you will see people/talent management rising to the top of the list. This is no different for CIOs, as there is a shortage of tech talent. This has led to a whole series of employee experience and engagement research to help executives attract, retain, […]

Many firms have used Forrester’s principles of customer obsession to guide their business and IT transformation journey, striving to be customer-led, insights-driven, fast, and connected. But in their pursuit, most firms fall short when it comes to organizational change. Rather than undertake a full organizational design exercise, firms are adopting tactical change, creating agile delivery […]

A firm’s people play essential roles in all stages of IT transformation. For companies at the beginner level of maturity, employees must come together to connect the organization. Once the organization is united, it must adopt customer-centric principles to become adaptable and reach intermediate maturity. To reach an advanced maturity level, the organization must again […]

CIOs must adopt an adaptive operating model — being agile will not be enough to succeed in the future. The IT organization’s capabilities, structures, governance, and leadership must support the firm’s capacity to reconfigure underlying business concepts, including dramatically rethinking its core mission, its primary value proposition, its core competencies, the markets or industries in […]

Today’s enterprise architecture (EA) practices are relevant because they enable a firm’s customer-led and digital transformations. As more traditional EA use cases become commoditized, vendors that provide strong use cases that are vital to transformations will emerge as the leaders. These transformation-enabling use cases include strategic performance management, technology asset performance, operational insights, and people […]

Forrester defines enterprise architecture management suites (EAMSes) as: A foundation for capturing, managing, and reporting on a firm’s strategic and operational assets, defining the relationships between those assets, and assessing the effectiveness and efficiencies of those assets with the purpose of providing insights that may influence or guide the strategic direction of the firm. Our […]

Leading design-minded firms understand that design is the link between creativity and innovation. However, the road to becoming a design-minded firm is not easy. The biggest barrier to success is a lack of ownership of design management. If the business executives are reluctant to own design, then CIOs are best placed to lead and refocus […]

The demand for exceptional digital and customer experiences is exposing the constraints of existing technology organization practices. The people, processes, governance structures, and technology of the technology organization must change to drive and enable business success. CIOs need help, and enterprise architects (EAs) are best placed to influence and guide these digital transformations (see my […]

In their quest to become digital insurers, insurance carriers have a revolutionary opportunity to improve their businesses with new and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It is certainly a balancing act to find that perfect peanut butter-and-jelly combination of operational efficiency and customer engagement, however I believe many insurance carriers to be up to the […]

As enterprise architecture (EA) practices mature and the demand for EA services grows, interest in enterprise architecture management suites (EAMS) continues to also grow. A lot has happened to the EAMS market since the September 2015 Forrester EAMS Wave, from divestures by certain major players (e.g., IBM) to takeovers (Planview of Troux, Erwin of Casewise). […]

The other day, I had one of those eureka-like moments. As I lay in the bath, my thoughts shifted back and forth between the past and the present, recognizing how advances (or the lack of advances) in technology have affected our lives. When thinking about the past, I remember the days of my communication engineering […]

Over the last few months I have met or spoken to a significant number of Forrester clients who are undertaking a business architecture initiative. As you can imagine, these initiatives have various sponsors and are at various levels of maturity. Some business architecture (BA) initiatives are being driven by chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology […]

It is that dreaded time of year again where we have to report via the performance management system (PMS) on our individual performance and the value we bring to the organization. I say dreaded, because we all know that in reality the goals and objectives were set some time ago in the past, maybe a […]