Lecture 15
Chapter 8
Organizing and Leading the IT
Function
Announcements
• Business Plan due Thursday
– Length estimate ~10 pages
• Final Exam format: vote on Thursday
– Open vs. closed book
2
Leadership: Next Three Weeks
• Organizing and Leading the IT function (today)
• Managing IT outsourcing
• IT portfolio management
3
Organizing and Leading IT
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Introducing new technologies
Maintaining old technologies
Balancing maintenance with innovation
Defining roles
4
Organizational Issues
• Tension between innovation and control
– Depends on firm willingness to take risks
• Is IT supposed to create or reduce risks?
• Tension between IT staff and business users
– Users want short term fulfillment
– IT want standardization, mastery of technology
• Balance is easy to get wrong
• See table 8.1
5
Table 8.1 Dominance
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Four examples in text
• From centralized, IT-driven innovation to
decentralized, user-driven innovation
• User-driven innovation over IT department
protests
• From decentralized, user-driven innovation to
centralized It management
• From decentralized, user-driven Innovation to
unexpected centralized innovation
7
Drivers toward user Dominance
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Pent-up user demand
Need for staff flexibility
Growth in IT services industry
Users’ desire to control own destiny
Fit with organization
8
Drivers toward centralized IT structure
• Staff professionalism
• Standard setting and ensuring system
maintainability
• Envisioning possibilities and determining
feasibility
• Corporate Data Management
• Cost estimation and analysis
9
Coordination and Location of IT policy:
IT Responsibilities
1.
2.
Develop and manage long-term architectural plan
Develop process to establish, maintain and evolve company
standards in
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3.
Telecommunication protocols and platforms
Client devices and client software configurations
Server devices, middleware and database management systems
Programming and configuration languages
Documentation procedures and formats
Data definitions, especially for widely used data elements
Storage redundancy, backup and disaster recovery procedures
Information security policy and incident response procedures
Establish procedures that consider outsourcing options when
new IT projects are proposed
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Ensure outsourced projects meet company standards
10
Coordination and Location of IT policy:
IT Responsibilities
4. Maintain inventory of installed and planned systems
and services
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Evaluate value of these ongoing
5. Identify career paths for IT staff
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Horizontal/vertical
6. Establish internal marketing efforts
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Users understand challenges and costs, updates
7. Incorporate RFP process for new hardware/software
8. Identify and maintain relationships with preferred
vendors
9. Establish education programs for business users
10. Set up process for ongoing review of legacy systems
to determine upgrades, redesigns
11
Coordination and Location of IT Policy:
User Responsibilities
Seek to understand scope of all “IT activities supporting business users
1.
•
2.
Develop realistic estimates of the amount of user personnel investment
required for new projects both during development/deployment and in
ongoing operation and use
Ensure comprehensive user input for all IT projects that support vital
aspects of the unit’s operations.
Ensure nature of staffing interfaces is consistent with a new technology’s
strategic relevance to a business unit.
3.
4.
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5.
6.
Charge-back system, IT pressures, activity based overhead allocation
How strategic project is should correspond to staffing
Periodically audit system reliability standards, communications services
performance and security procedures
Participate in developing and maintaining IT plans that set new technology
priorities, schedule the transfer of IT among groups, and evaluate projects
in light of overall company strategy
12
Coordination and Location of IT Policy:
Management/Policy Responsibilities
1.
Ensure an appropriate balance between It and business
users
Maintain comprehensive corporate IT strategy
Manage inventory of hardware and software systems and
services
2.
3.
•
4.
Corporate relationships with vendors
Establish standards for acquisition, development and IT
systems operation.
Facilitate transfer of technology from one unit to another
5.
•
6.
7.
Look for synergies and overlaps
Actively encourage technical experimentation.
Develop appropriate planning and control system to link IT to
company goals
•
Monitor planning, system appraisal, charge-back, project management
13
IT Leadership and Management of
Budgets
• Budgets are extremely important control
mechanism!
• Budget to IT team directly or through business
units?
• Often a mix of both
• Example: phase-out of technology
14
Questions, Break, Presentations
15
Stages Theory of IT Adoption and
Organizational Learning
• Framework for understanding IT assimilation in
business organizations
• Proposed in 1973 by Richard Nolan, professor
at Harvard
• Modified over time
• Based on idea of an S-shaped learning curve
16
Four stages of organizational learning
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Initiation
Contagion
Control
Integration
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Multiple growth processes
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Applications Portfolio
Resources
Management
User Awareness
18
Three eras in Organizational Learning
• New technologies have led to different eras in
technology adoption
• Data processing era
• Micro era (from late 1970s)
• Network era (from early 1990s)
19
Different key players and leaders in
each era
• IBM leader in data processing era
• Stayed leader into micro era by introducing IBM
personal computer
• Apple Macintosh computer had more
sophisticated operating system, making user
interface easier
• Competition drove innovation
20
Discontinuous technology advances
• Other industries
– Turbojet in airplanes
– Radial tires adopted by Michelin
• Technology
– Shift from mainframe to microcomputers
– Shift to networked infrastructure
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Four areas of impact
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Automating Transaction Processing
Informating Middle of Organization
Imbedding IT in products and services
Internal and external networking
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