With all budgets under scrutiny, In-house IT operations can expect to come under greater scrutiny and pressure.  In November’s Baseline Magazine, Michael Vizard argues that the only way for an internal IT organization can avoid being usurped by an external IT Service company is run itself like a business.  Vizard says, “The challenge facing most internal IT organizations is that they never really learned to operate as  businesses.  Instead, they are usually viewed as an opaque cost center that most business executives dont understand:  These execs don’t know how much money is invested in what technologies or how many people are needed to deliver what level of service.”

I agree wholeheartedly.  The solution is for IT organizations to think in terms of the value they deliver through the products and services that their customers (the business execs) consume.  This is why it is vital for IT organizations to measure their operations, provide value visualization for their customers and make improvements based on the decisions and priorities that their customers establish from the value visualization ( VVF ).

For Vizard’s full article go to:

IT Needs to run like a Business

In his article in Information Week entitled, “Decision Time”, Doug Henschen writes,

“Companies can’t report their way to great results–though you wouldn’t know it from their accumulation of underused reports and dashboards. Companies that get this critical point are moving away from IT-centric business intelligence programs and toward results-focused performance management.”

It is precisely this movement that led DCG to develop it’s Value Visualization Framework ( VVF ).  The key idea of the VVF is that all organizations are constantly operating, measuring and improving with greater or lesser energy and success.  Successful prioritization of the application of their energy to achieve more success depends on regular visualization of the state of the organization (or sub-organization) in such a way that managers at all levels can make prioritization decisions.

To read Dougs full article go to,

Decision Time

In Phil LaPlante’s article in the IEEE’s “IT Professional” magazine (Nov/Dec 2008), he reviews his IT predictions for 2008 (some good, some bad) and is brave enough to give us another set for 2009.  Of the 2009 predictions, it’s hard to argue that we are facing a tough couple of years for IT staff budgets.  Phil suggests that the response will be increased automation and outsourcing and that may be true but both require investment and I cannot help but think that IT departments will simply be asked to do more with less.  It certainly seems that this will mean working smarter with more application of metrics and targeted searches for improvements.  Again, the unwillingness to take on investments will probably mean targeted improvements in poor performing areas that are compliant with best practices rather than the major CMMI or ITIL initiatives that we have seen in the past.

Interestingly, Phil predicts less money spent on business intelligence initiatives.  He does not expect to see activity decreasing in this area but rather expects to see more use of open-source solutions (of which, he claims, there are at least 263 instances on SourceForge).

To access SourceForge, visit:

SourceForge.net

If you want to access the article, go to:

IT Professional General Index