Here are some axioms that were perceived as rules by the IT managers who broke them, along with their advice on when it makes sense to do so.

•Rule: Launching a project requires a business case with a clear return on investment.

•When you can break it: When the project will deliver intuitive benefits.

During the Price Waterhouse merger with Coopers & Lybrand in the late '90s, Lutchen made standardization a priority so that the newly merged firms' 150,000 employees in 150 countries could work together more seamlessly. He recalls that developing a complete business case for standardization was impossible because future benefits couldn't be defined. "There were things we couldn't see at the time," he says.

But he knew that standardization would pay off, and time proved him right. "The minute computer viruses came out, all we had to do was make one change on a server and push that change out to everybody. We didn't have to touch every PC," says Lutchen. He had understood intuitively that one problem, like a computer virus, can create 150,000 problems, but standardization can shrink that back down to one. "But you aren't going to get into detailed [ROI] calculations around that," he says.

•Rule: Don't offer bonuses to your project team if your company's human resources policy prohibits it.

When you can break it: When it's a seller's market for IT skills and retaining the best people is particularly tough.

A well-deserved bonus can keep skilled team members from walking out the door. "Rules like that can be carried to an extreme because you don't want [IT] to be different from the rest of the organization," says Lutchen. "But IT is different. HR people don't always understand the makeup of the IT marketplace."

•Rule: When you have to trim the IT budget, cut back on IT training.

•When you can break it: When you need to hold on to key members of your team, which is virtually always the case.

This is a rule that smart CIOs break regularly. "When you've got tight budgets and you're trying to cut, professional development tends to be one of the first things to go," says Brian Young, vice president of IT at Creighton University in Omaha. He prefers to find other ways to trim. For example, he says, "we have a refresh for servers every three years, [but] we've had one extend out four or five years so the resources would be there to invest in training."

•Rule: Don't invest in new technology until the early wrinkles have been ironed out.

•When you can break it: When you need cutting-edge technologies to compete in your industry and the harm of not investing outweighs the risks of investing.

Ogilvy's VPN gave the firm an edge in a competitive market by significantly reducing the time it took to distribute advertising material to the firm's offices around the world, Aguiar says.

•Rule: Sign only short-term IT contracts because the fate of technologies and vendors can change quickly.

•When you can break it: When you have a reliable partner that provides core services and its contract includes price reductions and other adjustments over time. If you've found a good service provider, you don't need the headache of renegotiating every year, as long as you write the contracts to be flexible, says Young. "For example," he says, "the language in a multiyear contract for bandwidth should say that every six months you can review it to see if you can get more bandwidth for the same price or the same bandwidth for a cheaper price."