IT Initiatives Strong Despite Weak Economy

MBA (7/3/2008 ) Palaparty, Vijay
Global economic pressures, competition and compliance continue to call for IT management, adaptability and rigor, according to IDC, Framingham, Mass.
“There are a number of disruptive trends driving IT governance adoption,” said Melinda Ballou, program director at IDC. “IT governance is a strategic bridge between operations, IT and business objectives. Demand for IT to enable business functions continues to evolve faster than management systems and processes.”

Other drivers of IT governance include sourcing and offshoring, calling for strong teaming and effective human and financial capital along with IT asset prioritization, Ballou said in a recent webcast, Leveraging IT Governance in a Difficult Economy: Setting Strategy. She said the evolving paradigm shift toward Service-Oriented Architecture will also push technology and business collaboration, along with related service quality and governance.

“Emerging security issues and virtualization will also push for IT governance adoption,” Ballou said. “Ad hoc approaches are increasingly unsustainable. All of these trends are pushing organizations toward consistent adoption of IT portfolio management.”

Ballous defined portfolio management as a categorization model. “Portfolio management is a conduit for business and IT to organize investments, evaluate and prioritize, decide when and how to make changes and understand what can and cannot be changed,” she said. “It’s a hedge for what happens in the economy.”

Ballou added that portfolio management elevates discussions between IT and line-of-business leaders. “It means you take business and IT activities and prioritize them within the financial and human resources you have available.”

The two goals of effective IT and business alignment are innovation and compliance, Ballou said. She said that organizations need to both create new business value through IT innovation and business opportunity while also reducing exposure through IT and business risk management.

“These have to be done in tandem,” Ballous said. “It’s very important to the IT governance structure in pushing value.”

Ballou recommended that organizations consolidate demand management across the IT project and asset portfolios. She said consolidation could better enable business outlook for IT and operations while also reducing costs. “Gain strategic leverage through proactive, coordinated planning,” she said. She added that organizational maturity and readiness plays an important role, along with key areas—“pain points”—in adopting IT project and portfolio management.

“IT governance benefits include improved decision-making,” Ballou said. “It provides an enterprise-wide view of demand on IT, facilitates joint IT and business opportunity planning and prioritization and gives clear accountability for decision-making and outcome.”

IT governance also quantifies business value from IT and operational investments and gives visibility into IT priorities and status along with visibility into impact of change, enabling greater business agility, Ballou said.

“IT governance also shifts IT resources from tactical to strategic,” Ballou said. “It takes IT resources from silos to enterprise-wide IT planning, prioritizes IT resources for higher-value projects and enables long-range platform and architecture planning and execution.”