Transcript Business-IT Alignment

BUSINESS-IT ALIGNMENT:
LESSONS FROM THE FIELD
Ahsan Rahi, PMP
[email protected] | http://AhsanRahi.com/
South Texas College
Information Technology Forum, December 4th, 2009
© All Contents Copyright 2009 by Ahsan Rahi, except where attributed.
My Background
 Academic background in Electrical Engineering
& Computer Science
 Nineteen years experience primarily in Oil & Gas
industry (employee & consultant)
 Work experience focused on enterprise software
development, project & operations management
 large technology & process initiatives
 Outsourcing of company’s software development
 Project Management cultural change
 Global Initiative to improve Service Quality
A Long, Long, Time Ago,
In a Company Not So Far
Away…
The Management Review
Today’s Talk
 What does it take to deliver successful IT
projects?
 We’ll talk about what are considered “soft skills”
but often have a larger impact on outcome than
the technical skills
 Why?
 Evolution of IT within the organization
 Pendulum shift from centralized->decentralized
 Shift in reporting / commoditization
 BUT THE MAIN REASON is that we continue to
fail….
Hurricane Rita
Each iteration provides new information and takes us closer to the end
vision. Uncertainty remains, and the shape of the cone is proportional.
Why can’t we do the same in IT?
Thanks to Todd Little, Landmark Graphics Corp.
Case Study for Today’s Talk
 The Avance Project: Collaboration & project management system
for project & program management of Oil & Gas projects

Increase information sharing across projects
 Enable program tracking & management
 Complementary to remote operations support center
 Target Userbase: Very large skills & geographic diversity
 New technology (not a sustaining or maintenance project)
 Context

IPM business unit of Largest Oil & Gas service company
 Current state: no program level information, manual project status, PM
Support group helped projects fill out standardized templates.
 Hopefully shed some light on deployment considerations for
Collaboration projects – the new wave!
Vision of the Avance Pilot
Scope of
Avance
Initiative
Project Collaboration Culture
Consistent Practices
(Processes & Standards)
Avance (Collaboration)
Avance
(Project Management)
Information lifespan
EPMS
Time
Brief – No lasting information creation.
Utility Timespan: Hours To Days
Storming – Usually leads to Information of longer-term Utility.
Utility Timespan: Days To Months
Operational (Project) – Information required for current ongoing operations/projects.
Utility Timespan: Months to Years
Reference – Historical and occasionally-accessed information.
Utility Timespan: Years+
What is Alignment
 The degree to which the IT group
understands the priorities of the business and
expends its resources, pursues projects, and
provides information consistent with them
 Primary challenge in delivering new
technology to businesses today, but don’t
take my word for it…
Project Outcomes
Succesful
2006
1996
Challenged
Failed
0
10
20
30
40
50
Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim Johnson, CIO.com, ‘How to Spot a Failing Project’
60
Features & Functionality
Delivered
Always or Often Used:
20%
Always
7%
Often
13%
Rarely used
19%
Sometimes
16%
Never used
45%
Never or Rarely Used:
64%
Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim Johnson
IT Hope vs. Reality
Bain Annual Management Survey (n=359)
Factors influencing failure
 PROJECT UNDERSTANDING
 Misalignment in the context of the project
 Wrong definition of success (IT-centric KPI’s)
 BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
 IT PM insulated from company dynamics
 Impact of proper change management is ignored
 PEOPLE
 Domain knowledge vs. IT Expertise
 Increasing velocity of user expectations
Project Understanding:
Complexity

Context-Adaptive PM Assessment:
Techniques typically needed to manage
the uncertainty of a project (risks as well as
opportunities) are distinct and often quite
different from the strategies to manage its
complexity

Complexity of a project is a function of its
organizational, logistical, and engineering
structures and attributes are chosen to
capture the critical structural factors in the
above categories.

Uncertainty of a project on the other hand
refers to the risks – known and unknown –
associated with the project.
Context-Adaptive Project Management: A Scoring Model for Assessing Project Complexity and Uncertainty
Outcome of Single-Project
Assessment
Technical
Project Team
Pre-sales
Technical Team
Pre-sales
Business Team
Application to Portfolio
Management
Project Understanding: Metrics
 Metrics to measure
success are often IToriented e.g.
 Number of users
 Number of hits per day
 Number of support calls;
ART
 ROI: Amount of
personnel time saved vs.
manual processes
 Business metric:
 Rig NPT saved (file)
 Q: Are there any good
IT measures for a
collaboration project?
Environment: IT Insulated
from External Dynamics
 Collaboration type projects often require largescale participation in order to be useful to the
target community.
 Therefore can’t follow the traditional IT
deployment model of pilot -> analyze -> full
deployment
 Limited resources/funding & - most often –
mgmt reluctance to deploy without piloting
means we have to find a way to segment the
target population
 Use techniques such as Technology Adoption
Lifecycle to segment target population…
Analyze via Influence Diagram
Segment Your Users
 Technology Adoption
Lifecycle
 Focus on one group at a
time – chasm b/w EA & EM!
Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore
Merged Approach: Your Roadmap
ENVIRONMENT: Change
Management
People will alter their mind-sets only if they see the
point of the change and agree with it enough to give it a
try
2. The surrounding structures - reward and recognition
systems, etc. - must be aligned with the desired new
behavior
3. Employees must have the training and tools to do what
is asked of them
4. Finally, employees must see people they respect
modeling the new behaviors actively and consistently
1.
Psychology of Change Management, McKinsey
PEOPLE
 IT, like other
Petr/Dev
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Pure IT Dev
disciplines, evaluates
employees based on
development in IT
technical skills –
 However IT is more like
a basic science (math,
etc) - of limited use
without context
Conclusion
 IT is process-based; Business is outcome-
based
 Clearly established IT Steering Committee’s
managing to business outcomes
 Necessity for IT folks to specialize in
particular domains