Lecture 2: IT Governance 1/2 Flashcards
What are the 3 symptom categories of traditional IT under-management?
Management
Projects
Systems
Management Symptom
Management
- IT strategies non-existent
- Top management has unclear objectives
- energy spent on debates on organization and responsibilities
Projects Symptom
Projects
- reactive adaptation
- pet projects with unchallenged promises
- gaps in the application landscape
Systems Symptom
Systems
- data and applications are inconsistent and incompatible
4 key topics of IT governance
- Establishment of objectives: rights and responsibilities
- Decision making
- Compliance
- Culture
Why is there cost reduction through standards?
Because instead of having many variants of the same system you want to have one version.
3 objectives of IT governance
- will formation/decision making
- implementation incentives
- controlling/ monitoring
How to resolve inherent goal conflicts?
- incentivizing corporate objectives
- transparency etc
Which 3 committees in IT governance meet most frequently?
Architecture/Infrastructure/Outsourcing Boards (every 6 weeks)
Project Steering Board (6 weeks)
Program Office (regular)
Which 3 committees in IT governance meet least frequently?
Managing Board (annual)
Investment Committee (on demand)
Portfolio Prioritization (2 per year)
Why were internal IT service providers often low-performing until way into the 90s?
- Low state-of-the-art
- Poor leadership
- Low performance incentives
Advantages and cons of divisionalized large corporations
- continuous responsibility
- reduced interfaces
- more transparent allocation of profit and loss
con:
- separation of capacity and know-how
Which types of IT organizations are there?
Central, decentral, federal
What are the characteristics, pros & cons of the central IT org. ?
characteristic: IT as a cross-section to all business units
pros: standards, economies of scale
cons: inflexible, not business oriented
What are the characteristics, pros & cons of the decentral IT org. ?
characteristics: each business unit has its own IT
pros: individual responsibilities, controllability
cons: application jungle
What are the characteristics, pros & cons of the federal l IT org. ?
characteristics: decentral, but with an org. anchored governance
pros: best of both worlds
cons: difficult balance, high demand for management capacities
What is the risk of too high decentralization of IT? Like IT in each of the parts (Marketing, Sales etc.) of each division.
High cross-functional integration requirements, lower IT competence of functional managers
Is there a silver bullet for organization structuring?
No. You have to take into account history, available people, etc.
Which type of IT organization was there first, what was the development?
- Central as a staff department
- Central with corporate CIO
- Federal (most modern)
How to make critical processes more effective?
- change in meaning (IT as enabler)
- trend towards divisionalized structure
How to make critical processes more efficient?
- economies of scale
Can demand or supply be outsourced?
Supply. e.g. Application Operation and Support; Infrastructure Management can be outsourced
Do early mistakes cost more? And why do they happen?
Yes. Most often because of wrong requirement specification and project management
What does Business IT bridge?
Business IT as a service management that bridges demand and supply
5 objectives of Project Portfolio Management
- Management
- Dependencies
- Value Optimization
- Resource Optimization
- Progress Monitoring
4 Phases of the portfolio management process
- Idea generation
- Project proposal evaluation
- Scenario development
- Portfolio approval
Where can project ideas come from?
Business or IT, Top or bottom up
What to do with a project that is already in the definition phase?
Include in current portfolio analysis
What to do with a project that is more frequently mentioned (6-8 months)
Speed up decision making
What to do with projects that are occasionally mentioned? (8-36months)
Initiation of an explicit discourse
Why re-cut project scopes?
–> To eliminate redundancies
What if two projects have little overlap concerning profitability or consistency?
does not matter
What if two projects have overlap with significant impact on profitability or consistency?
Create two separate services with dependencies.
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