Governance & Planning

Increasingly, organisations are looking beyond classical agile methodologies, towards lean techniques pioneered in industrial production. The transposition of lean techniques into the context of corporate IT is a challenge that requires a high level of process maturity and organisational discipline. The desired benefits only materialise if the lean approach is applied to processes that can be put under statistical control, and if the approach feeds into a domain engineering process that addresses the root causes of operational inefficiencies.

The goals of enterprise architecture include prioritisation and strategic alignment of investments, savings through reduction in unnecessary duplication, and improved agility through reduced complexity. When these goals are achieved the positive impacts can be enormous. These goals are achieved when the enterprise architecture function has input to investment decision making and the way that solutions chosen and implemented. Astute CEOs will involve enterprise architects in assessment of business cases, procurement decisions and project reviews. The UK Government reported a direct saving of AU$6.3 billion from project reviews that cost less than $100 million. Many of these were ICT-based projects, which are known to be higher risk than other project types and are placed under greater scrutiny. Astute CIOs have a clearly defined strategy and process for review of projects under their purview.

Faced with the tough question, ‘How can the organisation reduce its IT costs without compromising client services?’ astute CIOs highlight the impact of the potential reductions by business unit and assist line managers to argue the case for retaining the status quo, to the Executive. Conversely CIOs who notice the firm’s market share is dropping due to clumsy online ordering systems or excessive customer complaints about online IT services must take the initiative and, with line management, propose an immediate course of action to the Executive to fix the situation, even if it means increasing IT spending. Waiting for line management to act is not an option.

As discussed in this month’s research note “Microsoft Licensing + Virtualisation = Licensing Confusion” Microsoft’s Licensing model is based on a physical machine model that is increasingly out of touch with the IT industry. In the past, when computers did not have the processing power of today’s hardware and operating systems, and software was bound to the phy...

Without governance, investment in enterprise architecture is usually wasted. Organisations that have implemented effective architecture boards typically realise benefits that include cost savings, better-controlled and structured systems, and better alignment to strategic architectures. CIOs should draw on the lessons learned from organisations that have implemented effective architecture governance through an architecture board.

IBRS has observed that many organisations struggle with mobility, implementing fragmented mobility solutions that service narrow areas of the business. This leads to higher complexity and costs, and lower levels of user satisfaction. Instead, organisations should take time to build a holistic mobility strategy, driven and grounded by use-cases, and shaped by a concise set of use case categories.

The attention in which organisations are engaging with social media inevitably leads to a sharper focus on the reputational and legal ramifications of using social media. Organisations have to consider how their staff use social media, the materials published, the statements made on an organisation’s behalf, and possible consequences of the material. Reviewing and resetting guidelines for employee use of all social media, in particular career sites, is fundamental to how an organisation, its brand name and products are distributed and perceived through social media. New guidelines will set a fairer use policy between employee and organisation, reduce the uncertainties and reduce unforeseen risks.

Location, or geospatial information, is a central but significantly under-utilised element of the volume of data created and leveraged by organisations. Location information is simply presented and leveraged as text, e.g. an address. But location information is not just about where an asset or activity is located, but rather, where it is located in relation to other assets or activity. That relationship is best presented visually.

Emerging Technologies (such as those relating to Tablets, to Cloud, to Social Media, to Big Data) threaten to complicate and disrupt the work of enterprise architecture. As enterprise architects struggle to understand, simplify and bring governance to heterogeneous technology environments, new and emerging technologies get in the way. Emerging technologies cannot be ignored. They promise tantalising new benefits and bring a vision of hope to CIOs struggling with increasing costs and stagnant budgets. Enterprise architects must understand what is possible with new technology and matching that to the specific needs of an organisation whilst reducing technology sprawl.

Productivity is going to be a real and growing concern for organisations. A widely held view is productivity can be raised through social technologies because these technologies necessarily enhance levels of collaboration. If only it was that simple. Social technologies can offer better means of performing some processes but improving productivity is not achievable nor a direct result of using social technologies. Productivity is too complex a financial and business issue to be solved by a single IT deployment. Organisations ought to apply social technologies after due diligence and examining their requirements very well.