isp irm midterms part 1

7/28/2019 ISP IRM Midterms Part 1

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Information Systems Planning

Planning Developing a view of the

future that guides decision making today

Strategy Stating the direction you want

to go and how you intend to get there

The result of strategy making is a plan


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Three Types of Planning

Strategic (3-5 years)

Vision . A rch itectu re, bu siness goals

Tactical (1-2 years) Resourc e al locat ion , pro ject select ion

Operational (6 months 1 year)

Project management, meeting t ime,budget targets


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Why is Planning so Difficult?

Business goals and systems plans need

to align

Technologies are rapidly changing

Companies need portfolios rather than

projects

Infrastructure development is difficult to

fund

Responsibility needs to be Joint

Other planning issues


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Traditional Strategy Making vs.Sense-and-Respond Approach


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Traditional Strategy Making

Steps:

1. Business executives created a strategic

business plan that described where the

business wanted to go.2. From that plan, IS executives created an IS

strategic plan to describe how IT would

support that business plan

3. An IT implementation plan was created to

describe exactly how the IS strategic plan

would be implemented


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Business

strategy

Systems

strategy

IT strategy

Step 1: Where is the

business going and

why?

Step 2: What is

required

Step 3: How can it bedelivered

IT Impact

Supports business Direction for IS

Infrastructure and servicesNeeds and priorities


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Assumptions:

1. The future can be predicted.

2. Time is available to progress through this

three-part sequence.

3. IS supports and follows business.

4. Top management knows best, because

they have the broadest view of the firm.

5. The company can be viewed as an army


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Reality today:

1. The future canNOT be predicted.

2. Time is NOT available to for the

sequence.

3. IS does NOT just support the business

anymore

4. Top management may NOT know best

5. The organization is NOT like an Army


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Sense-and-Respond Approach

Let strategies unfold rather than plan

them.

Sensing a new opportunity or possibility

and quickly responding by testing it via an

experiment.

Traditional strategy making is risky because

if top management predictions are wrong, itcould be disastrous


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Case: Microsoft

Bill Gates announced that theyll

focus on the Internet, security and

web-services.Sense-and-respond approach in

creating their Internet strategy.


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Case: Microsoft

Microsoft moved into variety of

technologies: Internet Explorer, web browser

Slate, web-only magazine

Xbox Live, Xbox and the multiplayer broadband gaming

service

.NET platform, web services

Bing.com, search engine

Zune, portable media player

MSNBC, television station


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Case: Microsoft

Microsoft has been sensing and

responding to the moves in several

industries.The strategies have not always come

from the top management.


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Time

Time

Old-era strategy: One big

choice; long commitment

New-era strategy: Many

small choices, short

commitments


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Case: Skandia Futures Center

3G teams: 25+, 35+, 45+, cross functional, chosen

by peers or nominated by company

Mandate was to focus on questions,rather than answers

Five initial teams developed strategic

questions on five subjects: Insuranceindustry in Europe, technology, world

economics, demographics, leadership


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3G teams: arrived at a number of interesting

contexts for the questions such as the

evolution of financial world and IT These contexts were presented to 150

Skandia senior managers, through

scenarios of these five futureenvironments, not through documents


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Knowledge caf: Created by one of the 3G teams and a

few executives

150 senior execs gathered for 1 houraround stand-up tables at different

Skandia sites.

Each table had a coffee and a laptoploaded with groupware software which

were interconnected to form a virtual

community


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Knowledge caf: Execs exchanged ideas

Was videotaped and sent to larger

community (along with the questions andvideo of the play)

Showed the power of collective

intelligence accelerated innovation


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Nurturing the Project Portfolio

Center = garden

Some projects are growing and some are not

Created groups (50+, 40+, 30+, 20+)

Different groups have different relationship with

IT

Learned that 35 to 45 year-olds have the lowest

risk propensityInnovative behavior occurs amongst young

people and seniors


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Guide Strategy Making with a Strategic

Envelope

Rather than devise strategies, they define its

context by setting parameters for theexperiments (the strategic envelope) and then

continually manage that context

May perform management work by defining

territories

i.e. similar to what Microsoft did!

Hold strategic conversations


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Be at the table

Realities:

IS executives have not always been involved in

business strategizing

IS function needs to be strategy oriented, not tactical

and operational

To become strategy-oriented, CIO must :

1. Make their departments credible2. Outsource most operational work to release

remaining staff to help business partners

strategize


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Test the future

To get a running start, IS department need to test

potential futures before the business is ready for them

Mechanisms for tests

provide funding for experiments

work with research organizations

Have an emerging technology group


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Put the infrastructure in Place

Most critical IT decision infrastructure decisions

Recommended that IT experiments include those that

test painful infrastructure issues


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Comparison

Traditional strategy making: one big

choice, long commitment

Sense-and-respond approach: many

small choices, short commitments

isp irm midterms part 1

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