What good is analyzing trends? Well, first of all you can determine whether you agree with them. Then decide if they will impact you

First a summary of the STRATEGY and MANAGEMENT trends from CIO Insight’s list of Top IT Trends in 2008 in as brief a format as I dare:

Economic slowdown, customer e-service demands, m-commerce opportunities, technology enabled process improvement, change in world markets and resources, changes in CIO’s role and IT management, IT grad/resource shortages, new innovation sources, and focus on data management.

Refer to these previous posts, and/or the CIO Insight list , if you need more details:

STRATEGY Sum Up, detail posts 1 and 2

MANAGEMENT Sum Up, detail posts 1 and 2

Then my summary of the prescriptive, cautionary remarks related to the trends:

Make sure projects fit with strategies first, before ROI and staff analysis,

Don’t underestimate size, complexity, and on-going nature, of customer-facing projects related to E-Service and M-Commerce,

Use a PMO to research business process innovation outside the company, industry and country.

Pay attention to changes in “growing market” living standards and IT maturity when partnering, acquiring, and resource offshoring/outsourcing.

Focus first on centralizing non-IT executive control and awareness of ALL (IT and non-IT) projects, then possibly on expanding the CIO’s role.

Harness current data and systems for innovative decision-making through Master Data Management.

I’ve attempted to deal with these significant trends in a general way resulting in a response to the trends. Hopefully, you see the value of this process in relation to generating company-specific prescriptive measures.

How do you analyze trends? What sources and processes do you use? Did my trend analysis process inspire you to take a look at trends and how they are impacting you? Is this part of your strategy development process? How does trend analysis impact your project priorities?

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Post from: EveryJoe

Trend Analysis Results in Prescriptions and Cautions