Organizing and Leading the IT Function

1
Lecture 15

• Chapter 8
• Organizing and Leading the IT Function

2
Leadership Next Three Weeks

• Organizing and Leading the IT function (today)
• Managing IT outsourcing
• IT portfolio management

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Organizing and Leading IT

• 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
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

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Drivers toward user Dominance

• Pent-up user demand
• Need for staff flexibility
• Growth in IT services industry
• Users desire to control own destiny
• Fit with organization

7
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

8
Coordination and Location of IT policy IT
Responsibilities

• Develop and manage long-term architectural plan
• Develop process to establish, maintain and evolve
  company standards in
• 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
• Ensure outsourced projects meet company standards

9
Coordination and Location of IT policy IT
Responsibilities

• Maintain inventory of installed and planned
  systems and services
• Evaluate value of these ongoing
• Identify career paths for IT staff
• Horizontal/vertical
• Establish internal marketing efforts
• Users understand challenges and costs, updates
• Incorporate RFP process for new hardware/software
• Identify and maintain relationships with
  preferred vendors
• Establish education programs for business users
• Set up process for ongoing review of legacy
  systems to determine upgrades, redesigns

10
Coordination and Location of IT PolicyUser
Responsibilities

• Seek to understand scope of all IT activities
  supporting business users
• Charge-back system, IT pressures, activity based
  overhead allocation
• Develop realisti 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 units
  operations.
• Ensure nature of staffing interfaces is
  consistent with a new technologys strategic
  relevance to a business unit.
• 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

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Coordination and Location of IT
PolicyManagement/Policy Responsibilities

• Ensure an appropriate balance between It and
  business users
• Maintain comprehensive corporate IT strategy
• Manage inventory of hardware and software systems
  and services
• Corporate relationships with vendors
• Establish standards for acquisition, development
  and IT systems operation.
• Facilitate transfer of technology from one unit
  to another
• 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

12
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

13
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

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Four stages of organizational learning

• Initiation
• Contagion
• Control
• Integration

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Multiple growth processes

• Applications Portfolio
• Resources
• Management
• User Awareness

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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)

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Different key players and leaders in each era

• IBM leader in DP 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

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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

• Automating Transaction Processing
• Informating Middle of Organization
• Imbedding IT in products and services
• Internal and external networking