CIO careers cut short due to poor coding

CIOs would have longer careers if they focused more on coding.

That's the opinion of Vincent Delarouche, chairman and CEO of software measurement and analysis firm CAST.

"Most CIOs only care that the graphical user interface is sexy and that functionally [the software] must work. But what's inside the box? They don't care. And if you don't care, do you expect your staff to care?"

Delarouche argues that most CIOs are not interested in coding. As long as systems function in the specified manner, they are happy.

He concedes that software can work without necessarily being well coded but he sees good coding as adding to the security and reliability of a company's software.

"Good code should be secure, easy to maintain, reliable and efficient," he said.

He adds that the quality of the software on which a business operates impacts the bottom line.

"There is a correlation between the agility of your business software and your business performance," he said.

Delarouche identified three factors that are needed to fix the problem and deliver better software: the industry needs to define acceptable coding standards, these standards need to be enforced and CIOs need to be educated in the perils of poor coding.

This is having an impact on the length of a CIO's career.

"The average tenure of a CIO is well under two years. If a CIO goes in front of the CEO for the second time to say that a key piece of business software is late or inadequate, he'll be fired," said Delarouche.

Analyst firm Gartner's 2011 CIO Survey doesn't quite go as far as Delarouche, stating that the average CIO tenure in the UK is under five years.