The Problem of IS Planning Generating Ideas

1. The Problem of IS PlanningGenerating Ideas Ken PeffersAssociate Professor of MIS UNLV September 2004

2. Presentation Agenda • Motivation and history • Case study • Research agenda

3. Setting the Scene • SIM Interchange 2002—Snowbird Resort Utah • 400 CIOs from around the country • Two issues dominate meeting • Security • Managing the IS portfolio • Where to allocate resources to IT investment in the firm • Y2K and EC had hidden this problem

4. Maintenance Operations Decision-making Strategic Managing the IS Project Portfolio • McFarlan speaker at SIM • Strategic Grid • Managing the portfolio 1980 • CSF (Rockart, 1979) • Top down method to manage IS portfolio • Why CSF? Only executives have strategic view.

5. Strategic Option Bets10 + years Tactical SupplierIntegration Payoff Operations Value Chain Operations Strategic3 years SupportActivities Maintenance ChannelIntegration Cost saving1 year Service The IS Portfolio 20 Yrs Later Knowledge necessary to determine what is important all available in the executive suite?

6. The IS Portfolio 20 Yrs Later • More dimensions for allocating attention/resources • Political & cultural • Project size--$10 million, $100 K, $5 K projects • Infrastructure • Sourcing • Seven dimensions—many cells • How many ways are there to create dissatisfaction?

7. CIOs Concerned, Unsure How • To identify most important new systems • To determine what innovative IS users will pay for • To identify the essential and valuable features for new system

8. Portfolio Planning Project Application Features Requirements Determination Idea Generation Feasibility Decision Making Design Evaluation Planning Framework

9. Toward a solution • Use knowledge distributed around in and outside of the firm. (Execs don’t have all the answers) • Need for method to use this knowledge effectively. (Bottom up methods produce unusable portfolios of ideas.) • Wouldn’t it be nice extend CSF to incorporate knowledge of many around the organization? (But keep focus on what’s important)

10. New method for identifying important innovative applications • Application of practical applied research methods from marketing, called “laddering.” • Critical Success Chains (CSC) • Use knowledge of many • Create meaningful models of what is important for the firm (or customers, etc.) • Understand reasoning

11. Setting: Digia, Inc. • Digia small Helsinki R&D firm, specializing in developing applications for mobile communications industry • Our mandate: identify “killer cocktails” for mobile financial services

12. Critical Success Chains at Digia • Pre-study scoping • Data collection—structured interviewing • Analysis • Content analysis • Clustering • Modeling • Ideation workshop • Post workshop analysis

13. Prestudy at Digia • Participant sample • Industry experts and lead end-users • Experts: most knowledgeable scientists, professionals, and managers • End users: wealthy, educated, technologically sophisticated, mobile, SMS users • Identified 40, contacted 18 experts & 14 lead users • Collected idea from each for stimuli • Converted ideas into four bland application descriptions

14. Data collection: Structured Individual Interviews • Asked participant to rank-order ideas • For higher ranked ideas • “Why would that application be important to you?” • Series of “why is that important to you?” questions • “What about the application made you think it would do that • Transcribed responses as chains

15. Example chain Personal values Performance impacts Expected system feature

16. Analysis • Resulting data • 147 chains, more than 1000 statements • Content analysis • Qualitative clustering to assign similar statements common label (construct) • 114 constructs • Clustering • Cluster chains to minimize construct variance within cluster • Modeling • Transformed clusters into five network models

17. Example CSC Network Model

18. Ideation workshop • Objective: translate 5 CSC models into feasible application projects • Business and R&D people • Chairman, Nokia Key Account Exec., 2 bus. Mgrs, 2 eng. Mgrs • Five hours on one day • Goals: ‘back of envelop ideas’ • No outside help

19. Business model

21. Workshop results • 3 ideas: My Financial Advisor, Transaction Assistant, Mobile Wallet • For one model it was apparent that Digia wouldn’t be a part of the value chain. “Let’s move on.” • For the last two maps, participants decided to treat them as one.

22. Post Workshop Analysis • Prepare workshop results for presentation • Interaction model • Business value model

23. Interaction Model

24. Business Model

26. Results for Digia • According to Digia executives, results of the analysis exceeded their expectations • Rich information about what lead users might value • Modeling with reasoning to help turn preference into applications • Solid information to support development • Plan to develop some of the application ideas

27. CSC benefits to decision making and development • Potentially uses knowledge of many about what applications may be important • Suppliers, customers, employees • Models reasons why applications important • Promotes system ‘buy-in’

28. Agenda—Current Research • Peffers, K. and C. Gengler, “How to Identify High-Payoff Information Systems for the Organization,” Communications of the ACM, 46:1, January 2003. • Peffers, K., C. Gengler, and T. Tuunanen, "Extending Critical Success Factors Methodology to Facilitate Broadly Participative Information Systems Planning," Journal of Management Information Systems, 20:1, 2003, 51-86. • Peffers, K. and Tuunanen, T., “Using Rich Information to Plan Mobile Financial Services Applications with Maximum Positive Impact: A Case Study,” in press, Information & Management.

29. Research in Progress—Data Collection Stage • CSC applied to requirements engineering • Helsingin Sanomat • Develop Multi-channel access to sell advertising • Data collection similar to CSC • Follow up survey to participants • Article ready October 2004 for submission to JMIS

30. Research in Progress—Presence Study • Problem: how do you design the features for new system when the users are: • Outside the organization with little connection to the organization • Widely dispersed and largely unavailable for interactive data collection • Unfamiliar with the innovative technology of the applications • Importance: inadequate requirements engineering a leading cause of system failure • If the system doesn’t meet the functional needs of users they won’t use it • If the system is difficult to use, users will be very dissatisfied and lose effectiveness

31. Presence Study • Setting: Design the features for services in mobile communications that make use of presence and location • Lead user interviews in Hong Kong, Las Vegas, and Helsinki • Use laddering interviews • Participants imagine services that would be valuable to them and how they work work • Build prototype applications

32. Research in Design stage • Requirements engineering. Survey of methods and synthesis—in design stage • Requirements engineering—integrating CSC RE method with UML

33. Other Idea Generation methods • Focus Groups • Good for exploring customer preferences for features • Weak on modeling aggregated ideas • Surveys • Must have ideas in advance • Good for determining importance of ideas

34. Research that’s needed • Idea generation for IS planning • Demonstration projects: “action research”

35. Applicable Research Institute • Practical research for firms • Tackle research in IS and related areas • Solution for the firm • New knowledge about how to plan for and build systems • Several of the largest firms in Nevada will be partners