DECEMBER 2019

A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By Broadcom

To Drive Great Business Results With Software, Close The CEO-CIO Gap

Executive Summary

Delivering high-quality software — and delivering it quickly — is crucial to digital business success. Yet CEOs and CIOs (and software leaders) are not aligned on software goals, metrics, and strategies, preventing their organizations from realizing the full business benefits from their software development efforts.

In July 2019, Broadcom commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how well CEOs, CIOs, and software leaders collaborate to foster the software capability their firms need to compete. Forrester conducted an online survey of 316 senior business executives (including CEOs) and senior technical leaders (including CIOs and software leaders) at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees to explore this topic. We found that these three stakeholder groups have different priorities, expectations about modern development, and trust in one another.

Key Findings

  • Software leaders are 17 times more likely than CEOs to say lack of executive support is a major hurdle to software delivery.

  • More than half of firms do not track customer experience metrics for their custom software development efforts.


  • Business and technical leaders disagree about essentials, like how well software is tied to business outcomes, the importance of fast software delivery, and their biggest hurdles.

    Eighty-five percent of software leaders say lack of executive support is a major hurdle to software delivery; they are 17 times more likely to identify this issue than CEOs. Meanwhile, software leaders overestimate compared to CEOs and CIOs how well their efforts are aligned to business value.

  • Businesses want the benefits of Agile, but don’t support it.

    Despite proclaiming the importance of Agile software development, most leaders prefer to use traditional waterfall methods of delivering software. Part of the problem: CEOs believe their organizations are more Agile than their CIOs and software leaders report they are.

  • Firms prioritize customer experience (CX) but struggle to quantify the impact of software development on CX.

    Customer software development is critical for customer-facing operations, yet most firms do not have customer experience metrics in place for their custom software development efforts.

Misaligned Leadership Prevents The Software Delivery Digital Era Demands

CEOs, CIOs, and software leaders disagree about the basics, like how well software is tied to business outcomes, the importance of speedy software development, and the biggest challenges facing their organizations’ software delivery efforts. In surveying 316 respondents from large enterprise companies, we found that:

Software Delivery Demands
  • Gaps between software priorities and effectiveness occur in areas that require measurement and transparency to solve.

    For businesses to understand how to improve their software delivery efforts with speed and customer experience in mind, they must align on measurement to inform data-driven decisions. Eighty-six percent of respondents say aligning software delivery with business goals is critical or important, and 80% say measuring the value of software development efforts to the business is critical or important (see Figure 1); the rub is that less than half of respondents are tracking key metrics (see Figure 2).

Figure 1

Base: 316 CEOs/senior business executives, CIOs or equivalent, and software leaders at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Broadcom, August 2019

  • Business and technical leaders disagree on how well software delivery is aligned with business goals.

    While 71% of software leaders believe their companies align software delivery with business goals either very well or extremely well, only 64% of CEOs and 56% of CIOs agree. CEOs are also twice as likely as software leaders to say that aligning software delivery with business goals is critical, suggesting that software leaders are not tuned in to companywide strategy (see Figure 3).

  • Business and technical leaders are misaligned on the need for speed.

    CEOs see delivering software faster to meet business schedules as 2.3 times more important than software leaders (see Figure 3). This difference suggests that CEOs are not communicating the importance of faster time-to-value as key to strategy, while software leaders believe their delivery speed is sufficient.

  • Leaders play the blame game when it comes to software enablement success.

    Business and technical leaders massively disagree on the barriers preventing software delivery success: 85% of software leaders claim they lack executive support, but only 5% of CEOs agree (see Figure 3). At the same time, CEOs are most likely to blame organizational silos for challenges in software delivery. With everyone pointing fingers, addressing underlying challenges becomes impossible.

Figure 2

See how your company compares

Which metrics does your organization track to determine effectiveness of software projects?

(Select all that apply.)

DID YOU KNOW?

Less than 50% of firms are tracking key metrics.

Base: 316 CEOs/senior business executives, CIOs or equivalent, and software leaders at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Broadcom, August 2019



Transforming Customer Experience Is Top Of Mind, But Difficult To Quantify

Firms are laser focused on customer experience: Respondents rank it as their top business priority over the next 12 months (see Figure 7). With custom software development being far more important for customer-facing operations than for other aspects of the business, custom development is on the critical path of customer success. In practice, businesses struggle to identify how each function impacts customer experience and to put tactical metrics in place that assess and identify areas for improvement. We found that:

  • Firms want to own and customize software for customer-facing activities.

    Firms are also more likely to develop software for customer-facing activities in-house rather than to use third-party solutions, with 50% developed either entirely or mostly in-house and 50% with at least some in-house development (see Figure 8).

  • Software leaders and CEOs/CIOs diverge on the importance of customer experience.

    CEOs are 20% more likely than software leaders to rank improving customer experience as a top priority. Fifty-eight percent of CEOs and 61% of CIOs ranked improving customer experience as a top priority, compared to only 48% of software leaders (see Figure 7). This finding suggests that the C-suite is not effectively identifying or communicating down to their organization how IT is linked to top-line strategy.

  • Firms are focused on customer experience metrics, but an operational gap still exists.

    Despite ranking “improving customer experience” as the top priority, fewer than half of respondents are tracking related metrics. This gap suggests that they are flying blind without a feedback loop of customer input (see Figure 9).

Figure 7

Base: 316 CEOs/senior business executives, CIOs or equivalent, and software leaders at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Broadcom, August 2019

Figure 8

See how your company compares

How does your organization develop software for customer-facing activities?

(Select one.)

DID YOU KNOW?

Half of firms build software for customer-facing activities entirely or mostly in-house.

Base: 316 CEOs/senior business executives, CIOs or equivalent, and software leaders at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Broadcom, August 2019

Figure 9

Base: 316 CEOs/senior business executives, CIOs or equivalent, and software leaders at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Broadcom, August 2019


Key Recommendations

Forrester’s in-depth survey of 316 senior business and technical leaders about in-house software development starkly outlines the gaps in goals, expectations, and metrics between CEOs, CIOs, and software leaders. These gaps will compromise IT’s ability to satisfy business leaders’ demands for more software more quickly to drive their operations. Constantly evolving software is the lifeblood of a digital business’s operations. To fill the gaps, CEOs, CIOs, and software leaders should:

  • Security
    Adopt practices that align business and software strategies.

    Top of this list should be a continual assessment of the value that custom software provides to the business strategy. Our finding that CEOs, CIOs, and software leaders are misaligned on software’s importance to customer success is a symptom of a larger disagreement. What is more important than customer success? Documents, meetings, research, and other practices will foster agreement on software’s value, business goals, schedules, cost, quality expectations, people and organizations, and metrics.

  • Security
    Make realistic investments in Agile software practices.

    “Agile” describes the key team practices and development processes required to deliver quality software quickly. Our survey raises a red flag: CEOs don’t understand the results of investments in Agile, and they should — or risk funding a fig leaf for ineffective custom software organizations. Part of the responsibility rests with CIOs and their ability to communicate the results achieved by Agile investments. CIOs must also convey the difficult reality that Agile is a long-term journey with moments of high uncertainty and/or failure.

  • expansion of workstation usage
    Implement the metrics that matter — business measures.

    Without metrics CEOs can use to measure the return on software investments, business-technology alignment is impossible. The traditional measures of software success — reduced operations costs — are still sometimes relevant and readily calculated. Even more relevant for most software efforts are business measures that are far more difficult to calculate. These metrics include time-to-market with new products and/or offers, market-share gains, and customer satisfaction, in addition to growth and profitability. Don’t overthink these metrics; design one or two simple metrics that are good enough and then refine them with experience.

We hope you enjoyed this study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Broadcom. For additional insights to help you achieve growth and ensure an optimal customer experience, please visit the Broadcom website today.

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Appendix A: Methodology

In this study, Forrester conducted a survey of 316 CEOs and senior business executives, CIOs or equivalent, and software leaders at global enterprises with more than 5,000 employees to evaluate how effectively the CEOs, CIOs, and software leaders collaborate to drive business results. Respondents were offered a small incentive as a thank you for time spent on the survey. The study began in July 2019 and was completed in August 2019.


Appendix B: Demographics



Appendix C: Supplemental Material


“CEOs: Foster The Software Teams And Talents Your Firm Needs,” Forrester Research, Inc., February 21, 2019.

“CIOs At Firms With Great CX Are Different,” Forrester Research, Inc., March 8, 2018.

“Dare To Disrupt with Technology-Driven Innovation,” Forrester Research, Inc., July 19, 2019.



Appendix D: Endnotes

1 Source: “Agile And DevOps Adoption Drives Digital Business Success,” Forrester Research, Inc., October 23, 2018.

2 Source: “The State Of Agile 2017: Agile At Scale,” Forrester Research, Inc., December 14, 2017.