Business Architecture and Transformation Flashcards
What is currently included in these flashcards?
(I’ll keep updating it)
- Lectures 1-6
-
Articles
- Main points of 1. Beyond strategic information systems: towards an IS capability (Peppard & Ward, 2004)
- Experiences in Strategic Information Systems Planning
- A methodology for business process redesign
- IT project management: Infamous failures, classic mistakes, and best practices.
- IT project managers’ construction of successful project management practice
- The hidden traps in decision making.
What is not included?
Any calculation/drawing BPMN stuff
Stages of development of planning systems
- Basic financial planning
- Forecast-based planning
- Externally oriented planning
- Strategic management
Definition of business strategy (Gluck, 1980)
A set of objectives and integrated set of actions aimed at securing a sustainable competitive advantage
Key questions for digital strategies [KPMG framework]

Four main application types of strategic systems:
- Share information via technology-based systems with customers and/or suppliers and change the natures of the relationship
- Produce more effective integration of the use of information in the organization’s value-adding processes
- Deliver new or enhanced products/services
- Augmented people’s cognitive processes in generating knowledge and insight from information.
Classification of the Strategic uses of IT: four types of strategic systems
- Share information via technology-based systems with customers/consumers and/or suppliers and change the nature of the relationship;
- Produce more effective integration of the use of informatio in the organization’s value-adding processes;
- Enable the organization to develop, produce, market and deliver new or enhanced products or services based on information;
-
Augment people’s cognitive processes in generating knowledge and
insight from information; they provide executives, management and
professionals with information to support the development, implementation and evaluation of strategies.
Consequences of having no IT strategy:
- IT investments are made that do not support business objectives
- Loss of control of IT, leading to individuals often striving to achieve incompatible objectives through IT.
- Systems are not integrated. This can also lead to duplication of effort and no coherent information.
- No means of setting priorities for IT project, leading to problems in resource allocations.
- Poor management information; it is either not available, or inconsistent, inaccurate or too slow.
- Technology strategy is incoherent and constrains options: inadequate infrastructure investments made.
- Problems caused by IT investments can become a sources of conflict between parts of the organization.
- Localized justification of investments can produce benefits that are actually counterproductive in the overall business context.
- Applications, on average, have a shorter than expected business life and require replacing more frequently than should be necessary, causing unnecessary business disruption.
Define strategy formulation
Process identifying alignment, innovation and, competitive impact options. What an organization wants to do How an organization can do it (but not when)
Strategy Maturity Model (Earl 1993)

List enablers and inhibitors of strategic alignment

Characteristics of Digital Disruption

A three-era model of evolving IT applications in organizations
Prime objectives in different IS/IT eras:
- data processing to improve operational efficiency by automating information-based processes;
- management information systems to increase management effectiveness by satisfying their information requirements for decision making;
- strategic information systems to improve competitiveness by changing the nature or conduct of business (i.e. IS/IT investments can be a source of competitive advantage).
Evolution:
• First, IT was used for automating, transaction costs (upper left corner on slide)
• Then management (middle of the table), satisfying information needs
• Now strategic information systems à affect the business strategy
o Example: Uber (platform)

The information systems management environment. Summary of different views of strategic information systems, their context and focus.

Success Factors in Strategic Information Systems
- External, not internal, focus: looking at customers, competitors, suppliers, even other industries and what is happening in the outside world – both business and social.
- Adding value, not cost reduction: ‘doing it better, not cheaper’ seems to be the maxim.
- Sharing the benefits: within the organization, with suppliers, customers, consumers and even competitors (on occasion!).
- Understanding customers and what they do with the product or service: how they obtain value from it, and the problems they may encounter in gaining that value.
- Business-driven innovation, not technology-driven: the pressures of the marketplace drove developments in most cases.
- Incremental development, not the total application vision turned into reality.
- Information driven development: using the information gained from the systems to develop the business.
- Monetizing information: we have always known that information has, or should have, a value, although it is difficult to place an exact price on it usually.
The application portfolio: understanding and classifying IT investments (McFarlan 1984)

Portfolio Matrix for IT Strategy Formulation
- You can have more traditional strategies (e.g. traditional company that wants to improve processes and uses IT to do this).
- Backbone strategy: strategy is central, but the company relies really heavily on the strategy
- Opportunistic strategy: you have different areas in a company where departments are working on the same stuff, opportunistic strategy wants to show you can have short-term gain in improving the system. It’s not really central and not really the core of the business (e.g. Volkswagen that is trying to improve customer satisfaction through marketing/engineering)
- Complex strategy: lots of activities going on

The relationship between business, IS, and IT strategies (Earl 1987)

The strategic alignment model (SAM) (Henderson and
Venkatraman 1993). Four domains of strategic choice:

The Strategic Alignment Maturity Model

IS capabilities: External view - dynamic responses to environment
The duality of ICT (communication technology) refers to the fact that it redefines the business environment, but it’s also influenced by the business environment.What you do in the duality of ICT part, influences your competitors. These competitors may also influence your strategy. Markets technology is at a fast pace.

IS capabilities: Internal view - dynamic responses to environment
What you do in the duality of ICT part, influences your competitors. These competitors may also influence your strategy. Markets technology is at a fast pace. Dynamic capabilities means that a company has to build up capabilities that help adjust to fast-changing environment. It’s more a cultural thing that you have to adapt very fast and have a proper mindset. This refers to the internal view.

Define project management
A temporary endeavour (fixed start and end) undertaken to create a unique product or service
Define project charter
A project charter is a central document that defines the fundamental information about a project and is used to authorize it.
Define tangible benefits
Items that can be measured in dollars and with certainty.
For example, reduced personnel expenses.























































