According to Petter Gottschalk, Information systems (IS) / Information technology (IT) leadership has undergone fundamental changes over the past decade. Despite increased interest in recent years little empirical research on IS leadership has been conducted. Recommendations in the literature on how to succeed as an IT/IS manager typically lack empirical evidence.
Changes in both information technology and competition continue to change the role of the information systems executive. Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC, 1996) has suggested
six new IS leadership roles that are required to execute IS’s future agenda: chief architect, change leader, product developer, technology provocateur, coach and chief operating
strategist. These roles are described in Table 1. Although the CSC consultancy firm produced these roles without using any scientific approach, they seem very well tailored for scientific
investigation into IS leadership roles. People who fill these roles do not necessarily head up new departments or processes, but they exert influence and provide leadership across the organizational structure.
These are the suggested new IS leadership roles:
1. Chief architect. The chief architect designs future possibilities for the business. The primary work of the chief architect is to design and evolve the IT infrastructure so that it will expand the range of future possibilities for the business, not define specific business outcomes. The infrastructure should provide not just today's technical services, such as networking, databases and desktop operating systems, but an increasing range of business-level services, such as workflow, portfolio management, scheduling, and specific business components or objects.
2. Change leader. The change leader orchestrates resources to achieve optimal implementation of the future. The essential role of the change leader is to orchestrate all those resources that will be needed to execute the change program. This includes providing new IT tools, but it also involves putting in place teams of people who can redesign roles, jobs and workflow, who can change beliefs about the company and the work people do, and who understand human nature and can develop incentive systems to coax people into new and different behaviours.
3. Product developer. The product developer helps define the company’s place in the emerging digital economy. For example, a product developer might recognise the potential for performing key business processes (perhaps order fulfilment, purchasing or delivering customer support) over electronic linkages such as the Internet. The product developer must "sell" the idea to a business partner, and together they can set up and evaluate business experiments, which are initially operated out of IS. Whether the new methods are adopted or not, the company will learn from the experiments and so move closer to commercial success in emerging digital markets.
4. Technology provocateur. The technology provocateur embeds IT into the business strategy. The technology provocateur works with senior business executives to bring IT and realities of the IT marketplace to bear on the formation of strategy for the business. The technology provocateur is a senior business executive who understands both the business and IT at a deep enough level to integrate the two perspectives in discussions about the future course of the business. Technology provocateurs have a wealth of experience in IS disciplines, so they understand at a fundamental level the capabilities of IT and how IT impacts the business.
5. Coach. The coach teaches people to acquire the skillsets they will need for the future. Coaches have two basic responsibilities: teaching people how to learn, so that they can become self-sufficient, and providing team leaders with staff able to do the IT-related work of the business. A mechanism that assists both is the centre of excellence - a small group of people with a particular competence or skill, with a coach responsible for their growth and development. Coaches are solid practitioners of the competence that they will be coaching, but need not be the best at it in the company.
6. Chief operating strategist. The chief operating strategist invents the future with senior management. The chief operating strategist is the top IS executive who is focused on the future agenda of the IS organisation. The strategist has parallel responsibilities related to helping the business design the future, and then delivering it. The most important, and least understood, parts of the role have to do with the interpretation of new technologies and the IT marketplace, and the bringing of this understanding into the development of the digital business strategy for the organisation.
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