What Should the Business Expect from IT?

1. What Should the BusinessExpect from IT? Chapter 1 MISY 300

2. Failed IT Projects • Business expectations unrealistically high • Ignorance of what can be achieved in a given time at a given quality and budget • IT Providers deliverables unrealistically low • Ignorance of what can be achieved by combining set of business needs with well-established IT industry best practices.

3. How to Establish Realistic but Aggressive Business Expectations • Information for Decisions (how fast can they run? how fast can they run?) • Value for Money (no need for a Ferrari if a pair of sneakers will do the job) • Risk Management (is there 1 or 2 bears? Have those sneakers ready!) • Process (Don’t trip over untied laces) • Responsiveness (Does the situation demand that I run? Do I have time to put on my sneakers before the bears reach me?) • Innovation (What if I am the slower runner next time even with my sneakers on?)

4. World-Business-IT relationship • Traditional view: business is the interface to the “real world” of customers, stakeholders, employees, other businesses, the government • IT Providers do not need to have a good understanding of the dynamics of the businesses’ interaction with the “real world” • Business will buffer, translate, interpret for IT • New View: IT involved in every interaction between the business and the “real world” • Each and every transaction, no matter how small, involves IT IT and IT providers are inseparable parts of the operations of most businesses

5. Information for Decisions • “If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it” • Business needs clear, concise, relevant, and timely information from IT Providers • IT Providers better at generating data than generating information • Strategic vs. Tactical • SLA • Metrics need to be built into an automated collection, storage, processing, and delivery IS for dashboards and reports • Drill down

6. Goal-Question-Metric • Develop a set of corporate, division and project business goals and associated measurement goals for productivity and quality • Generate questions (based on models) that define those goals as completely as possible in a quantifiable way • Specify the measures needed to be collected to answer those questions and track process and product conformance to the goals • Develop mechanisms for data collection • Collect, validate and analyze the data in real time to provide feedback to projects for corrective action • Analyze the data in a post mortem fashion to assess conformance to the goals and to make recommendations for future improvements

7. Applying the GQM template to express the goal of a software engineering study The purpose of this study is to characterize the effect of pair programming on programmer effort and program quality from the point of view of software managers in the context of a small web-development company.

8. Value for Money • IT: Investment or Expense? • Does it provide a competitive advantage? • Is it a strategic differentiator? • Covered in Chapter 2

9. Risk Management • IT providers need to enumerate and quantify all possible risks • Real gap between difficulties for others and those for us • Risks need mitigation strategies with costs • Business need to evaluate strategies re: consequences and expense • Use of external auditors to address two risks: • An IT ops failure can seriously disrupt/destroy an org’s ability to operate and its reputations with its customers • One of the most likely causes of an IT ops failure is the introduction of new software • Monitoring of key metrics • Management of people risk (covered in chapter 15)

10. Innovation • Def: introduction of something new that improves measured performance in desirable ways • Finding new ways to deliver value for money • IT Providers are encouraged to contribute through leadership, business creativity, process innovation coupled with sound business cases • “return” needs to be include broader value

11. Process • Defined processes ensure repeatability and provide a springboard for continuous improvement • No Surprises • Use of models or frameworks: • COBIT: framework for governance and control of IT Providers • ITIL: focus on best practices for the IT operations • CMMI: focus on best practices for systems and software development • Six Sigma • ISO standards • Best practices of PMI • Covered in chapter 6

12. Responsiveness • Expect responsiveness from three key stakeholders • Business customers • Business users • Business managers • Different from IT customers, users and managers • Best type of responsiveness: invisibility

13. Business – IT Partnership • Mutual support and mutual understanding of expectations in both directions • Good CIO needs to contribute to all the same critical success factors that drive the business executives • Business leadership must be openhanded with information, evenhanded in risk management, fair-minded in resolving conflicting priorities, and tough-minded in evaluating value for money and return on investment