Enterprises are forced to change at an ever increasing rate to the point where there is no longer a steady state. The ability of an organization to maintain successful operation whilst continuously evolving requires a deep understanding of how it functions at all levels. This requires someone in the organization’s management structure to be responsible for leveraging business functions and the tools and techniques available to effectively manage business change. This is in effect an engineering role with scope greater than any of the regular C-suite team. The CIO is likely best qualified to play this role as they usually have an engineering background and already have cross functional scope. As much of IT is commoditized and outsourced, it is time for the CIO to move into the more critical role of Chief Enterprise Engineer - responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the organization are aligned and capable of carrying it forward by delivering required results on a path to its strategic objectives. This paper looks to describe the reasons why this role is required, its responsibilities, required skillset and tools necessary for success based upon 20 years of practical operational experience as head of IT for the Canadian division of a major multinational CPG company.

Learning Objectives:

• What has changed and why we need to think differently about managing change?
• Why the current organization is not suited to continuous change?
• Why someone needs to connect EA, BA, BPM, Rules, IT, PMO, etc. all the time?
• What the responsibilities of the proposed Chief Enterprise Engineer’s role are?
• Why this new role make financial sense?