Modelling Business Strategy

We have had a number of conversations with business people and consultants about the merits of modelling approaches for driving strategic alignment in organisations. 

Whilst there are many techniques for defining strategy and flowing it down through the organisation (e.g. Balanced Scorecard), the processes for managing the relationships between these organisational goals and initiatives are typically quite "loose".

Modelling these relationships in Troux Metaverse facilitates a mechanism for maintaining the ongoing integrity of such processes, as well as being able to use the tool to actively manage transformation initiatives and IT spend.

I have written a short document on this which can be downloaded here.

Guy

Improving IT's reputation and alignment

(prompted by IT's bad reputation and IT projects not focus on delivering business value)

The 1st of these points out that many IT organisations are seen as part of the problem instead of part of the solution (and some expertts on management strategy suggest "When you want to run a quick experiment, I tell people don't go through the IT division because they are just going to tell you 'no,' and it's going to take forever to get it done."). It notes

• some IT managers come across like the stereotypical bureaucrats, shuffling paper (and paper is a big part of the problem) [see problems with paper]
  
• that the inconvenient truth for some is that they must change their ways of managing if they want to be leaders. CIOs must create an environment where the empowered worker can thrive and educate their colleagues on how technologies are disrupting the way companies operate. [see CIO's challenge]
  

The second suggest half of companies measure the success of IT projects based on whether they deliver to budget, rather than the business value achieved by projects (i.e. rather than how projects can deliver measurable value and be mapped on key business goals). The use by CIOs of spreadsheets to plan projects is seen to to give them a lack of visibility and control, and makes it difficult to link aspects of the work. They should focus on tools that give them a view of how projects align with their business, their technologies and to each other.