Gartner believes that 2007 will see mounting demand for business growth and agility, rapid development of consumer technology and increasing availability of new infrastructure tools, as the evolution of the IT organisation continues to pick up pace.

Gartner analysts John Mahoney and Mark Raskino have put together an ambitious list of 'new year resolutions' for CIOs, in addition to the main projects CIOs are expected to deliver in a timely way.

The advice includes creating an IT leadership generation succession plan, tracking and improving the environmental performance of IT, and identifying, enabling and providing incentives for true innovators.

As the baby boomer generation starts to retire en masse, IT departments will lose wisdom and leadership, according to Gartner.

But this presents an opportunity to clear out some 'dead wood', for example people who were over-promoted in the early days of IT and still foster out-dated attitudes which stifle progressive thought.

"Don't assume that the next generation of IT leadership should look the same as the last," said Raskino.

"Identify your best generation X people born in the 60s and 70s, then start giving them challenging projects and operational responsibilities to complete their experience.

"Bear in mind that future IT management will need skill traits more common among women, people with experience from multiple disciplines, business skills and proven change management success."

Gartner's advice on what CIOs should do more of in 2007 includes helping HR become strategic, improving frontline business experience, and re-establishing the visibility of total enterprise spend on technology.

Areas seeing rapid change include social networks, collaboration, remote working, collective intelligence and Web 2.0, along with the range of socio-technical phenomena allowing people to interact, create value and contribute in new ways.

This will transform the nature of business organisation, labour supply, rights and responsibilities, Gartner said.