IT management teams must place modernising strategic planning at the core of their 2008 objectives and immediately apply this capability to IT modernisation efforts, according to Gartner. By year-end 2010, more than one-third of all application projects will be driven by the need to deal with technology or skills obsolescence.

"Our research with thousands of clients across multiple geographic locations and industries shows that most CIOs are struggling to cope with a set of portfolios in which an overwhelming percentage of the artifacts need to be retired and replaced within a comparatively short period of time — between 2008 and 2015,” said Dale Vecchio, research vice president at Gartner.

"The scale of obsolescence in the set of portfolios is a major problem in its own right, but it is compounded by the lack of integrated planning capability within many IT management teams,” said Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “IT modernisation cannot be addressed as a short-term panic-response project because it is large and complex, and it requires the wholehearted commitment of all the IT management team and many of the business clients as well.”

There are three major contributing factors to why IT modernisation is needed now: lack of agility of IT systems and services in responding to business requests for change; ncreasing integration among portfolios; increased obsolescence of deployed assets; and skills crisis

What CIOs Can Do

Gartner recommends that CIOs identify the key asset portfolios across the IT domain, and assign management responsibility across the IT management team for each asset portfolio. The staff should be certain that the CIO will hold them individually responsible for participation in the activity. CIOs must also identify the best individual available to take responsibility for comprehensive IT planning across all portfolios, and make this individual a direct report.

CIOs should also organise a planning session where all the asset owners can explain the maturity and modernisation issues inside their own portfolios to all the other asset owners. This will expose opportunities for synergy in all the interactions between each of the portfolio strategies.