Aligning Organizational Performance to IT Development and Integration

Abstract

AbstractWe are currently observing that formerly ”large” information systems development and integration projects are becoming ”smaller and smaller”. This trend is somewhat related to key performance indictors and other business targets that are today set for top and middle management of traditional customers for such projects. Today an average business line manager of a medium size company is very much concerned about meeting personal scorecard goals that are in many cases measured by different industry specific performance indicators and in some cases purely financial ratios. Translation of typical indicators into IT development and integration project goals and objectives really makes the difference. There are very few incentives for a line manager to be involved with an IT integrator into a multiyear project involving thousands of man days and huge financial resources, thus bearing related risks. In turn there is a growing need for component based solutions that could be developed and rolled out in short lifecycles with limited resource requirements.We are facing a similar trend in the public sector working with e-government projects. Here, as a rule, we are working for top level government or municipality officials that expect to demonstrate to the general public tangible project results every budget period or at least before the next election campaign starts. These expectations from business customers as well as government sector customers are challenging IT industry players to come up with project structures and management approaches that deliver much shorter planning-to-rollout cycles and ability to integrate components of different business solutions.