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I've been spending some time with Wikipedia and am now watching the following articles. Am mulling over possible contributions. There are many gaps and opportunities to add some value here...
Information Technology Infrastructure Library
Information technology governance
-ctb
The looming mass retirement of baby boomers has many HR professionals increasingly concerned. IBM has started devoting considerable attention to this, e.g. http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/bcs/a1009193?cntxt=a1005263.
This may be a marketing opportunity for various configuration management products, which could position themselves as enablers for IT succession planning. The knowledge of experienced staff needs to be captured somehow... we did a lot of this during Y2K, but didn't put it in structured formats, nor back it with maintenance processes.
-Charlie
It's easy to put a value on physical computers. It's much harder to put a value on an enterprise's applications, but these are more significant by far. Two interesting developments I noted while perusing some literature on the plane:
The Economist magazine (2/18/2006, p55 - online access paid) has a very focused discussion on the under-valuation of software as an enterprise asset in OECD countries, particularly the United Kingdom: "The new [OECD] numbers reflect a huge exercise to make sure software investment is counted correctly. The big change has been to "own-account" (developed and produced in-house) rather than purchased software. The revisions show [for the United Kingdom statistics] own-account software of £13 billion in 2003, compared with the previous figure of £2.5 billion. Estimates had been failing in particular to capture in-house software in financial and business services."
$17 billion dollars or so delta, yeah, that's real money...
I spoke in a previous post about the Norton/McFarlan article in 10/2005 Harvard Business Review; another section of that article reads: "One rule of thumb in determining intangible assets [i.e. applications] is to first measure the hardware inventory - including all mainframes, servers, and PCs - and then multiply that by ten. This renders a rough notion of what the software inventory will be (including off-the-shelf and proprietary software)."
If applications are real capital showing up on real balance sheets, can more effective management be far behind?
-ctb
PS. And if applications are valued, can data be far behind? DAMA folk take note...
The Harvard Business Review published a most interesting article in October 2005; a response to it led me to track down the original. By Richard Nolan and F. Warren McFarlan, it's entitled "Information Technology and the Board of Directors." (Paid access required.)
Interesting passage, quite in sync with what this blog has been saying for 2.5 years:
"A board needs to understand the overall architecture of its company's IT applications portfolio ... Physical IT assets ... are relatively easy to inventory; intangible assets are not. Despite the fact that intangible assets have largely been ignored by the accounting field, most companies are increasingly reliant on them. Companies have huge investments in applications software, ranging from customer and HR databases to integrated supply chains. The board must ensure that management knows what information resources are out there, what condition they are in, and what role they play in generating revenue... the IT organization [must sort] the wheat from the chaff by determining the number and location of aging and legacy programs, and then decide which should be upgraded or maintained."
Maybe if a couple of Harvard professors say it ...
However, another thing they say is more problematic: "To date, there have been no standards for IT governance." As with issues raised last week, I have to again disagree: we do have ITIL and COBIT, which at least deserved a mention. The ISACA president Everett C. Johnson feels the same way, as his rebuttal to Norton and McFarlan was published in the February 2006 Harvard Business Review: "Norton and McFarlan should have mentioned that there is a widely accepted international framework for IT governance...COBIT."
Norton and McFarlan did not disagree.
-Charlie
Mark Jeffrey (a DiamondCluster collaborator in academia) has organized what looks to be a most interesting offering at the Kellog School of Management (Northwestern University): Driving Strategic Results Through IT Portfolio Management.
No credit offered (I asked) - unfortunate; we need stuff like this hooked into a CEU structure of some kind for the IT industry.
-ctb
This article by DiamondCluster CTO Chris Curran on Systematic Technology Management, with a proposed four-level maturity model for what I would call ERP for IT, is top notch. What he calls the TMO I call the "IT enablement" capability. He also correctly identifies the current project-centric flaw in too much portfolio management practice, as I have discussed here and Robert Handler covers in his book. He calls for supply chain thinking and experience as well.
Great work Chris! We're definitely seeing a convergence and acceleration of thought in this space. Exciting!
-Charlie
Anti-virus software maker acquires niche CMDB dependency inference tool....?
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/02/08/75165_HNsymantecacquires_1.html
I am just so puzzled by this - I guess I missed that Symantec is moving more into enterprise management - but boy, they are late to the party - unless they have a ton of cash...
Thoughts, please!
-Charlie
Looking over the books I've read recently - I can recommend all of the titles below personally as the core of a library on IT governance:
ASL Foundation (2005). Application Services Library. 2005. http://www.aslfoundation.org/
IT Governance Institute. 2006. Control Objectives for IT, version 4.0.
IT Governance Institute (2003). Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Edition. Rolling Meadows, IL, IT Governance Institute.
One of the major sections in my book is the development of a unified process framework. The reader might well ask: with such breadth and depth available in COBIT, CMMI, and ITIL, why spend any time developing a new framework? As Jeff Kaplan notes in his excellent Strategic IT Portfolio Management,
The last thing the IT industry needs is another proprietary framework. The best thing that could happen would be if all the disparate IT associations (ITIL, SEI, COBIT, etc.), as well as academics who study and teach IT management, were to consolidate their frameworks into one definitive, comprehensive, public-domain reference model that would align industry terminology and create a single blueprint for IT managers.
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