By Brian Kilcourse

For the past few years, the number-one priority of the CIO has been to streamline operations and reduce costs. This has been the religion—one practiced zealously—since the bubble burst and we were left to wrangle with a bloated IT budget and unproductive IT assets.

We’ve all been so focused on getting by, that we’ve forgotten the true brilliance of technology—its ability to help us get ahead.

This year, the winds of change are a’blowing. Keeping the lights on and the electricity bill low has been bumped from its “priority number one” position by a new, more demanding, charter: Drive business growth. It’s time for CIOs to put IT’s role into perspective and realize that in all the rush to “align” we may have forgotten a more important goal—to contribute! If we choose to ignore this goal, or deny its growing urgency, we run the risk of undermining the great progress that IT leaders have made toward becoming business leaders. We also may become our own worst enemies by making it easy for IT to be marginalized as a cost center or commodity.

Software, and more specifically software development, is arguably the single most strategic component of IT. The conception, development and delivery of new applications, services and systems can be a powerful competitive edge. It creates market leaders, drives growth and expands the limits of what is possible for businesses and their customers.

Yet, as strategic as software is to business today, the process by which it’s created, delivered and managed is still in the dark ages. Software development is virtually the only business function that is allowed to operate with little structure or predictability. It’s as if we’ve accepted that development is an art not to be confined by process for out of chaos emerges genius. Unfortunately, all too often what actually emerges from development chaos is failure and missed opportunity. Industry statistics show that two-thirds of software projects are either abandoned, finished late, delivered over-budget or they fall short of business expectations. Why is it that we can guarantee a service level agreement of 99.9 percent availability, but we accept the fact that we fail more than we succeed when it comes to developing applications?

Only by taking control of development will IT organizations be capable of delivering the innovation that will continue to keep companies competitive and growing. The time has come for IT leaders to deal with the fact that one of the most vital areas of IT has been treated as an unruly, unpredictable, undisciplined child (albeit one we consider “gifted”). The time has come for IT’s “wild child”—application development—to grow up.