Towards a Model for Architectural Coordination of Business and IT Perspective

Development of information systems in complex and dynamic organisations has failed in many aspects often due to the inability to manage complexity in interdependent enterprise and information systems changes. This paper presents some essential difficulties from the case project in systems development based on IT products like ERP products. We give an example of critical architectural issues where our understanding must increase to make a powerful management tool in business/enterprise and IT development. A conceptual model of actors and relations to support coordination of architecture from business perspective and IT supplier perspective is outlined.

Strategic Human Resource Allocation for an Internal Labor Market

Every organization needs a staff appropriate for its tasks in order to accomplish its business objectives, both now and in the future. To gain insight into the quality and number of staff needed in the future, human resource forecasting models are being used. This chapter addresses the design of a simulation model for human resources forecasting, which is being developed for the Chief of Naval Personnel, Royal Netherlands Navy. The aim is to provide the Director of Naval Manpower Planning with tools that give insight into the effects of strategic decisions on personnel buildup, and the effects of changes in personnel on reaching the organization’s business objectives.

A Benefits Realization Approach to IT Investments

Information technology is today transforming all aspects of our lives — how we work, shop, play and learn. It is transforming our economic infrastructure — revolutionizing methods of supply, production, distribution, marketing, service, and management. This represents nothing less than a fundamental redesign of the entire supply chains of most industries and indeed a fundamental restructuring of many industries themselves. The potential long-term impact of information technology represents an economic and social transition as fundamental as the shift from rural agriculture to urban industry 200 years ago, during the first Industrial Revolution. Yet today we have a problem — a big problem! Chief information officers (CIOs) are finding themselves increasingly under fire for the perceived lack of value from ever-growing investments in information technology (IT) — investments that in the U.S. now represent close to 50% of companies’ new capital investment and a significant portion of their operating expense. Our investments in technology are not being consistently translated into business value. The link to business results is not clear. It is hard to demonstrate how investments in IT, or in producing information translate into economic value.

A Case Study Evaluation of the Use of the Viable System Model in Information Systems Development

This chapter considers the usefulness of the Viable System Model (VSM) in information systems (IS) projects. The VSM is a rigorous organizational model which was developed from the study of cybernetics and has been given considerable attention by management science research. The chapter presents a case study that focuses upon the sales team of a manufacturing company. This sales team were seeking to develop database support for group working. The VSM was useful in highlighting the organizational limitations upon the IS project and challenged some assumptions about the nature of work in the company. It is proposed that the VSM provides a valuable diagnostic capability that shall assist the company in future IS developments.

Defining Meaningful Measures of IT Productivity with the Balanced Scorecard

The accurate and timely measurement of an organisation’s information technology (IT) productivity is a critical tool to control the strategic and operational aspects of any firm. This chapter describes the validation and integration of productivity measures through the application of the Balanced Scorecard. Developing measures of IT productivity that are not skewed by methodological or data collection anomalies, shifting usage of communication and work-flow channels, negated utility of knowledge management, quality versus quantity trade-offs, and differences in individual skill levels and performance is difficult yet essential. The Balanced Scorecard as a strategic measurement framework is applied to assist in determining the appropriate matching of what we intend to measure and to what we assign numerical values.

Designing and Implementing an IT Evaluation Program

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.1

Actability Evaluation

In this chapter, we discuss an evaluation of a computerized information system in an elderly care unit. The evaluation is based on the concept of actability, which is a combination of theories from Human-Computer Interaction and the Language Action Perspective. The reason for uniting different theories is to obtain a more holistic evaluation model. The findings show that the evaluated system has a low degree of actability, and the users had a positive attitude towards the system. One explanation could be that we, as evaluators, reviewed both structure and content, whereas the users saw only the content of the information system (i.e., its functions) as the most important aspect.

A Review of Research Issues in Evaluation of Information Systems

Information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) have become an organizational necessity in order to support routine data processing operations, initiatives for competitive advantage, business transformation exercises in products, organizational structures, work-roles, and patterns of relationships between organizations. IS are critical components of business, taking part in increasingly complex organizational changes, redefining whole markets and industries, as well as the strategies of the firms that compete within them (e.g., increasing focus on the use of the Internet). As information becomes embedded in organizations, in their products and services and in their relationships with partners and customers, IS cannot be separated from human intellect, culture, philosophy and social organizational structures. The cost of IT has plummeted dramatically since the 1960s, while its potentials have increased, generating enormous investment and increasing the pace of IT adoption by organizations. According to the Gartner Group, in 1998 the average IS budget was 4.17% of the organizational revenue. This trend is expected to continue, as most organizations have passed ‘unharmed’ the Millennium landmark and attempt to conquer the arena of eBusiness (KPMG Consulting, 2000).

Conceptual Model for MIS Flexibility Evaluation

Most leading companies worldwide are striving to achieve agile management. Agility is a company’s ability to cope promptly with internal and external changes, an ability indispensable for a company seeking to obtain a competitive edge. Since this ability consists in a company’s quick recognition of changes, quick decision on measures to respond to these changes and quick implementation of the measures adopted, then, it is indispensable for the company to make adequate use of IT (information technology). As we know, an MIS (management information system) brings utility only though its use process, so an MIS should be easily acceptable to the organization concerned, as witness the fact that currently recommended for MIS effectiveness evaluation are the following five criteria: “High levels of system use,” “User satisfaction with the system,” “Favorable attitudes about MIS functions,” “Achievement of objectives,” “Financial payoff” (Laudon & Laudon, 1994).

A Framework to Evaluate the Informatization Level

As information and communication technologies have rapidly developed in the 1990s, enormous changes have taken place everywhere. At work environment, these have been newer tools for increasing organizational productivity, and these are transforming organizations to the degree that Taylorism once did (Davenport, 1998). These trends have spread over various fields of society, and have over countries caused economical and cultural innovation and reformation. These phenomena can be summarized as informatization. Informatization is defined as “converting the main goods and energy of a social economy to information through the revolution of high data communication technology and utilizing information produced by gathering, processing and distributing data within the vast fields of the society” (National Computerization Agency [NCA], 1997).