Conclusion: It is unwise to initiate a requirements workshop with the view that participants will co-operate, work in harmony and not engage in organisational politics. In reality, the sponsor and the facilitator must assume organisational politics will play an important role and participants will use every opportunity to sell their ideas to their peers and as a last resort negotiate a win / win solution. Sponsors and facilitators of requirements workshop ignore organisational politics at their peril!
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- Alan Hansell
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- Brian Bowman
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- Kevin McIsaac
Conclusion: When executive decision makers review business cases and observe a ‘J' curve investment pattern, it generates immediate doubts regarding the project's value. On the other hand, ‘S' curves, which represent competitive advantage or increasing profit, generate enthusiastic responses. Unfortunately, too many IT infrastructure business cases are presented with ‘J' curve profiles due to high initial investment costs. In many cases projects with high initial costs and delayed profits can be legitimately restructured to reflect a better commercial outcome with forethought and strategy. Not every project can be transformed, but two methods of cost structuring and ROI analysis have demonstrated successful results.
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- Sara Sause
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- Brian Bowman
Conclusion: BPM solutions essentially separate the business logic and activity flow from transaction management. The latest generation of software applications operate through two key components, which are:
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- Sara Sause
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- Kevin McIsaac
Conclusion: Immediately after the project Kick Off meetings, project managers find it tempting to hit the ground running and tackle tasks identified straight away to communicate a sense of urgency. However, without a comprehensive statement of requirements and having got consensus to them from stakeholders, the probability of design or programming rework is high.
Set out below is a process for capturing requirements and getting consensus to them from business managers. I have used the process successfully many times. It precedes, and must not be confused with, the JAD (Joint Application Design) activity.
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- Alan Hansell
Conclusion: Organisations should not use old style systems development methodologies when implementing off-the-shelf packages. Package implementations need to tailor business processes to meet the operational characteristics of the selected package. Old style systems development methodologies assume a green field approach where the objective is to tailor the system to meet exact business requirements.
Heavily tailoring an off-the-shelf package will significantly increase ownership costs (by up to 10 times), while reducing the organisation’s ability to adopt future offerings that have been designed to work with the standard package.
Implementing a new package creates an opportunity to improve the way the organisation operates. Trying to fit a new package into old ways of working is an expensive exercise that invariably fails to take advantage of new business opportunities.
Business professionals must be involved in redesigning / changing business processes. As obvious as this sounds it is not hard to find example after example where it isn’t done.
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- Peter Grant
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- Irene Pimentel
Conclusion: In business and government, the subject of risk continues to be a hot topic. It’s covered regularly by the commerce and technology-oriented sections of the media and is increasingly being discussed and actioned at Board and executive levels. Because of the corporate appetite for risk methodologies and tools, a burgeoning IT industry has developed providing risk management software.
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- Rob Mackinnon
Conclusion: In management, the role of character has been understood for some time and is frequently covered in the business literature. It is also at the core of profile testing which is used to learn how adept people are for certain jobs in an organisation.
For most managers how and why they make certain choices, or decide to follow particular plans are based on demands and outside influences. Yet starting new initiatives, even embarking on a project that is genuinely strategic may be rooted in a manager’s motivations.
To successfully implement projects and set the feasible priorities over the next year; a clearer view of how and why you manage your job can be an effective way to do it better.
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- zzGuy Cranswick
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- Kevin McIsaac
Conclusion: The CIO Perspective, December 2004 entitled, 'IT Issues in Company Acquisitions' highlighted the CIO's involvement in two due diligence processes and having to provide an opinion on the state of the business solutions included in the assets being offered for sale.
In the article, two examples were quoted of small but profitable organisations which were being offered for sale and had immature IT service delivery systems and governance processes. In both cases the organisations used IT to provide business support or delivery systems. He was of the opinion the systems and process immaturity did not adversely impact the business performance of both organisations.
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- Alan Hansell
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- Irene Pimentel
Conclusion: Effective IT strategic planning is more relevant than ever in 2005 as IT budgets continue to be straitened and IT units remain under pressure to prove their corporate worth. Whilst there are many approaches to developing an IT Strategic Plan, a zero-based approach is more likely to resonate with business stakeholders and provide successful outcomes than other approaches.
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- Rob Mackinnon
Conclusion: Contact update services attract users with the promise of instantly updating their contact details with almost no effort. Often free or at very low cost, their value proposition is they offer the potential to reduce every day contact management effort. These services effectively distribute the labour of updating contact details from the user to their contacts. The concept is attractive and the service easy to use.
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- Sara Sause
Conclusion: Too often project managers embark on programs of work without sufficient analysis on whether the organisation has the capability or capacity to implement the initiatives. When initiatives inevitably run late most internal observers cite poor project management as the cause of the problem.
Some programs cannot be implemented on time no matter how well they are project managed. These programs go wrong at the planning stage when people fail to identify the work that needs to be done before the proposed project can actually begin.
To avoid inevitable project management failures strategic planners must firstly determine what can actually be achieved in year 1, year 2 and year 3 of the ICT strategic plan. When implementation constraints are known planners can develop a base program of work that is achievable. Once this is done planners should then fine tune the priority of each initiative based on its contribution to business value.
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- Peter Grant
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- Brian Bowman
Conclusion: The arrival of weblogs over the last two years has opened new opportunities for communication and is a well known marketing device aimed at audiences outside an organisation. The principles of a blog: direct contact and debate are applied at online message-boards where company executives answer questions and take advice on new software from users.
An intranet blog used however, as another form of internal public relations, with comments posted by executives aimed at employees, may only serve to uncover the assertive self-promoters within an organisation.
Within an organisation blogs may be used to disseminate information to groups of staff and replace group emails. A blog to share expertise among staff may be more productive and useful because the volume and flow of information in companies is large and an electronic noticeboard in a blog offers a medium to manage the information.
In considering blogs for staff to use it must be clear what medium the blog will replace, to some extent email, and consequently, what rules will govern its use. Select a small group to trial its introduction and from that experience use the feedback to expand the use of a blog to other relevant groups.
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- zzGuy Cranswick
Conclusion: Delivering real business improvement in Workforce Automation & Management practices has proven elusive for many organisations. Two principal factors seem to have been at play. Firstly, a piecemeal approach seems to have been taken with a focus on rostering rather than on the entire process chain (see diagram). Secondly, the organisational change management effort seems to have been underestimated. With so few opportunities available to businesses to deliver bottom line savings from application software initiatives, it is now timely to revisit this area. Further, increasing safety-awareness in sectors such as mining, construction and transportation, have highlighted the need to achieve success with WAM initiatives, in some cases driven by the need to comply with fatigue management standards for rostered staff.
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- Rob Mackinnon
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- Kevin McIsaac
Conclusion: For many years organisations and agencies engaged a single IT provider when they lacked the wherewithal to integrate the services and used the engagement to manage the organisation’s risks. As organisations acquired the skills to integrate systems services and manage the risks, many opted to selectively source expecting to reduce their costs and get the right solution. A new management debate ensued.
In some ways the debate parallels that situation which occurs in organisations with operationally critical equipment and where management is unsure whether to enter into a maintenance agreement with one supplier or opt for a per call service arrangement with multiple suppliers.
While the maintenance versus per call service debate focuses on risk versus cost, the analogy unfortunately trivialises the efforts needed to integrate complex business solutions or implement multiple systems components of an end to end IT operation service with ambitious performance objectives.
Implementing complex solutions typically involves integrating offerings from multiple software and hardware vendors, directing the activities of specialist technical staff and coordinating multiple project management activities. The aim usually is to meet a scheduled completion date or deliver a system response time consistent with the project’s objectives.
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- Alan Hansell
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- Brian Bowman
Conclusion: The speed and ease of use that broadband delivers is still a rare commodity amongst the majority of Australian businesses, especially the SME. A constant refrain is that broadband must be pushed into the bulk of Australian organisations and for sound commercial reasons. It’s not clear that many businesses are interested; however, to ensure that broadband is a common standard. In the B2B marketplace organisations do not seem to be adversely affected by suppliers that do not have comparable communications infrastructure.
Even if there is a real problem of efficiency between business, changing conditions in the market is not easy. Pushing attitudes to change rapidly when the cost is borne by someone else won’t happen. The telecomm landscape is settled and the power of Telstra, directly and indirectly through its infrastructure affects, pricing to other suppliers of broadband.
Individual organisations could only use their voice through lobbying. So far, the loudest voices in the broadband debate have been from self-interested parties and they haven’t been able to state absolutely clearly why and how broadband will improve productivity. Their appeal to redress Australia’s relatively low standing on the international broadband league table relies on simple chauvinism.
The widespread low broadband usage in business is not a concern, despite its coverage, and it’s nearly impossible to know what the economic benefit would be if broadband was in every organisation in the country. Where companies and organisations do have broadband efficiency problems with their business partners they might work together to resolve them.
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- zzGuy Cranswick
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- Nobody
Conclusion: Customer relationship management, business rules, and portals are typical examples of expensive technical solutions that require strong business leadership to deliver their promises of return on investment. Many IT executives have become aware of such solutions and seen their potential well ahead of their operational counterparts. However, many of these innovations have failed to achieve traction in the first instance as a result of poor socialisation prior to project initiation. Often, organisations shelve these projects for several years after initial failure and kick-starting them again is difficult.
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- Sara Sause
Conclusion: Recently I was at a Christmas party with several 30 year IT Veterans. As usual a few war stories were shared. This paper contains two of the more bizarre stories. Unfortunately neither of these stories would exist if a formal peer review process had been in place in the organisations concerned.
IT departments should have some form of peer review for all initiatives and this should include operations, systems development, purchasing, communications, etc. Failure to implement a peer review process may result in your actions being recounted in war stories some time in the future.
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- Peter Grant
Conclusion: Cross-agency initiatives are high-risk endeavours that can deliver significant community and financial benefits. They are extremely challenging because they require a coordinated approach across Agencies as well as high levels of business and technical capability.
Failure to establish high Capability Maturity Level (CMM) processes and to acquire / develop key skills is a major reason why managers involved in many cross-agency initiatives encounter problems.
Before work on an initiative begins program directors should review the capability of each participating Agency in the areas of: project management; risk management; financial management; strategic planning; and, benefits management. If the capability of participating Agencies is not up to the level required, then a capability development program must be undertaken before major work can begin.
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- Peter Grant
Conclusion: Reference checks are rarely a key differentiating factor in an evaluation, but they can prevent unpleasant surprises. Use reference checks when evaluating new or unfamiliar technology. A good reference check can be helpful in substantiating claims of viability, validating specific functions or capabilities, and reducing risks of unknown or unforeseen problems related to a technology or architectural design. Poorly executed reference checks fail protect the organisation from sub-standard service and support, poor quality control, and chronic understaffing.
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- Sara Sause
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- Kevin McIsaac
Conclusion: Increasing competition and the need to engage skilled people on demand will drive the need to form virtual teams. Those engaged must not only be appropriately skilled, but confident and adaptable people who can work successfully in isolation.
To succeed managers of virtual teams must treat every member of the team as an equal, respect their opinion and let them know they are trusted. Conversely, command and control style of management will de-motivate the right people and fail.
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- Alan Hansell
Conclusion: A common complaint from IT specialists is that "the business" doesn't understand what they can deliver to an organisation nor fully comprehend what their capabilities are. A direct result of an organisation's internal dysfunction in this regard is that projects and teams fail to deliver timely and effective work.
According to IT Skills Hub, a not for profit organisation set up by the Commonwealth Government and the Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications (IT&T) industry to deal with education and training in the IT sector:
"IT managers can't translate a project into a business outcome. So team members don't know what's expected of them or the project. IT managers […] need to be your best managers since all projects rely on people working together to deliver a product/solution. They also need to be great communicators who can manage the relationship with the customer and the teams."1
The ways and means of solving the problem, both in work practices and overall management between departments are possible using the basics of communication and cooperation. Managers must take the responsibility of identifying the problems and then establishing a process to cure it.
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- zzGuy Cranswick
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- Irene Pimentel
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- Kevin McIsaac
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- Nobody
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- Brian Bowman
Conclusion: Before IT managers can start to measure targets against a balanced scorecard or any other mechanism it is important to agree with business executives what the targets will be measured and what each target actually means.
IT managers can use a combination of frameworks such as Balanced Score Card and CobiT to set and communicate targets to their staff and the wider organisation.
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- Peter Grant
Conclusion: Unless organisations develop and implement comprehensive Email Management Guidelines and insist on total compliance, the hidden cost of processing emails will continue to escalate.
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- Alan Hansell
Conclusion: The predicted business software consolidation marches forward. Eighteen months after initial advances, the U.S. Department of Justice(DOJ) approval has finally paved the way for Oracle to complete its hostile takeover of Peoplesoft.
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- Sara Sause