Discussion on:

CIO vs CFO: Five ways to ensure the IT leader role wins out

Smaller, more focused projects are a "real good idea" that avoids many of the risk variables of long term projects.

IT is often their own worst enemy by hiding the true costs of doing business, so projected project costs and burn rates are often a figment of someone's wildest imagination - which leads to a weaker position for the CIO.

I'm curious to know if IT departments reporting to finance are on average bigger, equal or smaller than the Finance department in terms of resources (people and $).

I know of one case where an IT request for badly-needed resources was turned down simply because IT would then have had more staff than Finance.

There are no IT projects, but only business projects even if you include infrastructure upgrades. If we move away from adversarial attitude to collaborative, a lot can be achieved. The CIO and the CFO sitting on the same side of the table can create a lot of value. You could look at the following links.

http://cio-inverted.blogspot.in/2011/07/cost-of-it-versus-value-of-it.html

http://cio-inverted.blogspot.in/2011/01/my-cfo-is-my-best-friend.html

The fact that the huge assumption implicit in your article is not mentioned suggests to me that you are the problem not the solution.

Who says the CFO shouldn't "win"?

From my experience, instead of playing for X bucks a hole, may be they should go for X projects per hole. Just as, if not more, likely to get it right.

If you don't play golf feel free to cut cards or throw dice, or some such.