The Enterprise Application Market, 2000

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615-352 Managing the IT Function

• Teaching team, 2004
• Full-time staff
• Peter Seddon p.seddon_at_unimelb.edu.au
• Lucy Firth lfirth_at_unimelb.edu.au

• Markers (postgrad students)
• YuNi Ham yunh_at_studentmail.dis.unimelb.edu.au
• Dylan Shuttleworth djshut_at_studentmail.dis.unimelb
  .edu.au
• Krisha Venkitachalam kvenk_at_studentmail.dis.unimel
  b.edu.au

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Lecture Plan

• What is Managing the IT Function?
• Why study this subject (MITF)?
• This subject
• Assessment
• How the case classes will be run
• Topic 1 Introduction to MITF, Lucy
• (Refs. Chan MISQE 2002,
• Luftman and McLean, MISQE 2004)

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1. What is Managing the IT Function, about?

• Each year the world spends more than US2,000
  billion on ICT (Carr 2004, p.4)
• In some firms, control is centralized, in others
  it is not.
• Some firms outsource some or all IT, others do
  not.
• Some firms spend 10 of revenue on IT, others
  less than 1.
• Standish CHAOS (1999) 23,000 IT projects 26
  were successful, 46 were challenged, and 28
  failed.
• Corporate America spends more than 275 billion
  each year on approximately 200,000 application
  software projects. Many of these will fail, but
  not for lack of money or technology most will
  fail for lack of skilled project management.
  (Standish 1999)

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The question we seek to answer in this subject is

• Are some ways of managing the IT function better
  than others?

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Top Ten IT Management Concerns - by Importance,
2003, 301 respondents

• IT and business alignment
• IT strategic planning
• Security and privacy
• Attracting, developing, and retaining IT
  professionals
• Measuring the value of IT investments
• Measuring the performance of the IT organization
• Creating an information architecture
• Complexity reduction
• Speed and agility
• IT governance

Luftman and McLean (2004) Table 6
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Application Technology Developments - by
Importance, 2003, 301 respondents

• Business intelligence
• Infrastructure developments
• Enterprise application integration (EAI)
• Web services
• Knowledge management
• E-Business strategies
• Customer portals
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Employee portals
• Mobile and wireless applications
• Supply chain management (SCM)

All except the first have appeared since 1994.
Luftman and McLean (2004) Table 8
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What is Business intelligence?

• Business intelligence combines
  technologiessuch as customer relationship
  management (CRM), data warehousing and mining,
  and knowledge management to help organizations
  leverage their information to make better and
  faster business decisions.
• (focusses on the information part of IS)

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IT Infrastructure (Weill and Broadbent, 1998)
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P8 In large, complex organizations variants of
the Federal IT model are more effective
Hodgkinson, S.L. "The Role of the Corporate IT
Function in the Federal IT Organization," chapter
12 in M.J. Earl, ed. Information Management The
Organisational Dimension, Oxford University
Press, 1996, pp 247-270.
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P12 Time-boxed projects are more successful
Dolphins NOT Whales (p.49)
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P14 The in-house group should consist of a team
of relatively few high-performing individuals
with distinctive capabilities (p. 52 )
BUSINESS and I.T. VISION
Note Project Management is assumed to be an
organization-wide capability.
Business Systems Thinking
Relationship Building
Leadership
Architecture Planning
DESIGN of I.T. ARCHITECTURE
Making Technology Work
DELIVERY of I.T. SERVICES
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Nicholas Carr Does IT Matter? Harvard Bus.
School Press, 2004

• IT is just a commodity.
• It is no longer a source of competitive
  advantage.
• Hogwash says Steve Ballmer, Microsoft.

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Nicholas Carr Does IT Matter? Harvard Bus.
School Press, 2004

• Spend less. Studies show that the companies with
  the biggest IT investments rarely post the best
  financial results.
• Follow, don't lead. Moore's Law guarantees that
  the longer you wait to make an IT purchase, the
  more you'll get for your money.
• Focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities. Even
  a brief disruption in the availability of the
  technology can be devastating.

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The Key Argument in this Subject IT Management
Matters
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Moderates Claimed Effect of Management on
Organizations Benefits from IT
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2. Why study this subject?

• For many people in this room, knowledge of IT
  will be our prime source of income for the rest
  of our lives!
• As the years go by, the management of the
  function in which we work will become
  increasingly important to us.
• This subject will help you understand the
  problems your boss is trying to solve, which may
  become your problems in 10-20 years.
• It could also help you decide if a career in IS
  is your cup of tea.

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3. This Subject
Cases are loosely coupled to the lectures
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615-352 Subject Website
Webraft.ITS.unimelb.edu.au/615352/pub
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Subject Materials

• Subject Notes are available in bookroom
• All students must have access to the Subject
  Notes to complete the subject
• Contains subject outline, details of assessment
  projects, questions for cases, readings (e.g.,
  Ch. 2 from Willcocks et al.), five cases.
• Lecture .ppt slides (and first 28 pages of the
  Subject Notes) available on Webraft
• No textbook, but an online journal, Management
  Information Systems Quarterly Executive (MISQE)
  will be available soon from the library. In the
  meantime, I will place copies of the .pdf files
  in the protected folder on Webraft.

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Purchase 6 cases from Harvard

• The cost of each case is US3.70.
• You will need a credit card to pay for your
  cases. You can buy them one at a time.
• The website where you register, then pay, for
  your cases, is as follows
• http//www.hbsp.com/relay.jhtml?namecpcc31603
• The downloaded course materials are encrypted
  using software from SealedMedia.
• To read and print the case you need to download a
  plug-in for your web browser from
• http//download.sealedmedia.com/unsealer/index.as
  p

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4. Assessment
The exam must be passed to pass the subject.
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Essay How important is global IT sourcing
likely to become for large Australian
organizations? 20 marks

• Suggested structure
• 1. What is IT outsourcing?
• 2. Why do organizations outsource some or all of
  their IT service provision?
• 3. Is there any evidence that IT outsourcing is
  an effective way to manage IT service provision?
• 4. Is there any evidence that IT outsourcing from
  economies with much lower wages is an effective
  way to manage IT service provision?
• 5. Are some services more appropriate than others
  for global sourcing?
• 6. What major issues need to be managed when
  global sourcing is used for IT service provision
  in large organizations in Australia today?

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5. How the Case Classes will be run

• Each case-study discussion begins with a
  15-minute small-group meeting.
• After a brief break, this is followed by a 1 hour
  15 minutes large-group discussion.
• For example, in the 1100am - 100pm class, the
  activities will be structured as follows
• Small group discussion 1105 1120 am
• Large group discussion 1130 1245 am

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One-page answers to questions each week

• Questions are in Part E of the Notes.
• There is a total of 10 submissions (one per
  week).
• All submissions are to be
• in 12-point, Times Roman font, single-spaced,
  minimum 2 cm margins
• of no more than a single page, with a header at
  the top of the page as shown below
• ready by the start of the class
• signed, declaring that the work you submit is
  substantially your own work.

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Rules for award of 2 marks each week

• You must attend a class to be eligible to hand in
  any assessment for that class.
• Students who do not attend, or who do not stay
  for the large-group discussion, are not eligible
  to have their work assessed.
• Late submissions are not acceptable unless
  accompanied by official proof of reason for
  non-attendance at that class, e.g., a doctors
  certificate for the date of the class.
• If, for some reason, you are unable to attend a
  class, you will need to request approval from the
  facilitator to attend another class, but you will
  not be eligible for participation marks in that
  class.
• Each submission will be graded out of two marks
  using the grading scale below.
• Only the best 8 of these assignments will count
  towards your final mark, so you can afford to
  miss up to two classes without penalty.

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Contribution to class discussion

• Contribution in class, for me, normally consists
  of one or a combination of the following
• 1. A significant chunk of analysis.
• 2. A suggestion that a certain area of the case
  needs to be explored.
• 3. A structuring of logic taking some of the
  points raised earlier and bringing them to a
  logical conclusion.
• 4. An alternative not previously identified.
• 5. A suggested plan of action or implementation.
• 6. An identification of key assumptions.
• 7. Significant figure work or quantitative
  analysis.
• A meaningful summary.
• I just wont let anybody deliver a one-liner
  and then subside back in their seat. So I want
  them to talk in paragraphs and to lay out a
  piece.
• Mauffette Leenders, 1981

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Summary of this lecture so far

• Explained the goal for this subject and why it is
  worth studying.
• Have outlined the topics, materials, and
  assessment.
• Case classes start this week with the Tale of Two
  Airlines case. The questions you need to answer
  are on p.16 of the Notes. No marks this week.
• Over now to Dr Lucy Firth!