Increase efficiency through best practice project execution, resource optimization and comprehensive project management. IT Management and Governance systems have entered the mainstream, joining ERP, CRM, HR and e-mail as part of the standard enterprise applications landscape. Learn more today.
Why Now
IT Management and Governance 102
A Niku White Paperby David Hurwitz
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Emergence of a New Standard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Five Changes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
IT-MG Enters the Standard Landscape. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Executive Summary
IT Management and Governance systems have entered the mainstream, joiningERP, CRM, HR and e-mail as part of the standard enterprise applicationslandscape. This development is primarily due to the convergence of fivechanges in the IT universe.
1 The systems that IT provides to the enterprise are now used by customersand suppliers, not just employees, raising the bar for IT's management andgovernance processes.
2 Enterprise applications are now central to virtually every business initiative,leading to an unprecedented need for alignment between IT and line ofbusiness executives.
3 Cost reduction opportunities are now numerous and compelling within IT.Outsourcing and consolidation are the highest profile of these.
4 The Return on IT must now be demonstrated, as expected of any mature andcritical business function.
5 Today's expensive and mandatory requirements for compliance andtransparency fall disproportionately on IT.
Modern IT Management and Governance systems have been developed toaddress these challenges. This has led to a change in behavior for leading CIOs:their first order of business is now to make certain that their own organizationis systemically supported prior to systemically improving their customers'organizations.
1
The Emergence of a New Standard
IT Management and Governance systems have entered the mainstream, withleading Global 2000 enterprises in a wide variety of industries implementingthem. This leads to two questions:. What has IT used to manage and govern itself up to this point?. Why change now?
The answer to the first question is that manual methods of management andgovernance, augmented with project scheduling aides and other point tools,got the job done until very recently. Even though IT has been in the business ofproviding business systems to the rest of the enterprise for almost fifty yearsnow, there was little reason to deploy a management and governance systemfor IT's own use.
The answer to the Why Now question is that business conditions have changed.Technology has not been the impediment. Even though the leading IT-MGsystems of 2004 are architected as web service-based applications, a constructwith tremendous cost savings, scalability and security benefits, an IT-MG systemcould reasonably have been developed with OracleForms in 1994 or even onVAX/VMS in 1984.
IT-MG systems didn't exist in the 80's or 90's because the pressing need,addressing not just one but several business pain points, had not yet emerged.
2
The Five Changes
IT-MG systems have recently become essential for large enterprises becausefive significant changes in the role and practice of IT have converged since thedawn of the 21st Century.
1 Customers and suppliers are now users of business systems, dramaticallyraising the level of expectation for system benefits, roll out and usability.These extended enterprise and e-commerce systems are now common.Customers place orders and get service using IT provided systems, andsuppliers place bids and receive orders using other IT provided systems.While systems like this are now taken for granted, it wasn't long ago that on-line reservation systems and banking ATMs, to name two, were met with amazement.In contrast, business systems as recently as the 1990s were used almostexclusively by employees. Back then a packaged application vendor couldget away with requiring non-German speakers to enter J as a shortcut forYes ("Ja" in German). At the same time, organizations were less far-flung, andin house developers could simply ride the elevator to get feedback frombusiness users, after which new enhancements would be created anddeployed in a marginally controlled process. However, poor usabi... [download for more]
