CIOs know they live in a place best described as Crazy World. It's a world where expectations are off the charts, requirements are vague, commitments are tenuous, priorities shift and responsibility is given with marginal authority. What do most CIOs do? They jump into the chasm and hope the rope holds.

CIO clients of the Center for Project Management (CPM), a consultancy firm, often ask the question: Of the successful CIOs you know, what's their formula for success? Is it possible to write an equation for success? Can success be broken down into a set of components that when practiced together, will result in the success of any given endeavor? Our quest for the answer included interviews with a number of "out-of-the-box" professionals -- airline pilots, an air traffic controller, chief of surgery, fire chief, magician and renowned chef.

Our in-depth discussions resulted in six imperatives common to their success: process, skills, tools, techniques, accountability and discipline. A deeper analysis of the six imperatives revealed that the first four are related to tactics (method, approach and procedure) and the remaining two to individual behavior (attitude, conduct and performance).

Success: Synonyms for success are achievement, prestige, respect, fame and prosperity. In the case of CIOs, success is defined as ensuring that IT projects are aligned with agency needs, scuttling half-baked and harebrained ideas, formulating a well balanced and robust project portfolio, accomplishing cross-boundary collaboration, ensuring effective project sponsorship, and completing a project on time and within budget and to the client's satisfaction.

Unfortunately the CPM's research data from a series of surveys of 237 federal, state and local government CIOs and IT managers shows that only 40 percent of IT organizations fall into the success category, with the remaining hovering between the challenged and failure states.

Video: Gopal kapur speaks at the California Public Sector CIO Academy in February 2009.

1. Process: It's a particular method of doing something that generally involves a number of steps or operations that result in a predictable outcome. The implication is that the actions have been tried and tested and have consistently resulted in a desired, successful outcome. Examples are financial due diligence before acquiring a business, the doctor's pre-op patient examination, the pilot's preflight check and the chef's proven recipe. Having access to a well defined process significantly improves the odds that a project will be completed successfully. Therefore, it's important that your project managers have access to a well defined portfolio- and project-management process that is followed diligently.

Yet the CPM's research reveals:

• Fifty percent of the surveyed organizations lack a well defined portfolio and project management process.
• Of the organizations that have a process in place, the rating for their teams utilizing the process was 2.6 on a scale of 1 (not followed) to 5 (routinely followed).
• Seventy-eight percent don't have a process to identify and kill troubled projects in a timely manner.

2. Skill: A succinct definition of skill is proficiency, facility or dexterity that's acquired or developed through training or experience. Obviously, to be successful in any endeavor, one must develop certain skills: