INF5890 IT and Management Introduction 21 st January 2016 Xenia Vassilakopoulou – IFI Espen Skorve – IFI xvasil@ifi.uio.no espesko@ifi.uio.no
About the course • Practicalities – Course overview (format, important dates etc.) – About the project • Course content
Thursday 12:15 – 14:00 in Prolog Friday 10:15 – 12:00 in Prolog Course Overview Lectures Reading Seminars Project Deliverables 21.01 Introduction - 28.01 IT Governance 04.02 II Governance 11.02 IT Governance in Public Discuss: Readings 18.02 IT Sourcing As per Project Work 25.02 Project Management I reading list 03.03 Project Management II 4.03 (deliverable no. 1) Present: 10.03 Complexity in Project Group Project Management Deliverables (matching 17.03 Enterprise Architecture 01.04 (deliverable no. 2) literature to 31.03 Service-Oriented lectures to be Architectures found in website next week) 07.04 Architectures in large projects: e-resept 14.04 Open source – open community 28.04 Critical Perspectives 21.04 (deliverable, no. 3) 12.05 Wrap-up Home Exam between May 16-27
Projects • Mandatory participation • Have to be completed to take exam - not graded • Each project group has 4-5 participants • Project groups find cases • Staged approach for deliverables – Two group deliverables – One individual deliverable • Groups need to be formed and cases selected by Feb 12 th • More in seminar tomorrow (10:15 – 12:00 in Prolog)
Projects’ Overall Description • Study the “as - is” situation related to IT management/governance in one selected organization – Map – Analyse (using concepts and frameworks taught in the course) – Recommend – Compare and contrast across cases • At least two interviews (during a month’s time) and secondary sources (organization’s documentation or from public sources) • Deliverables – To be presented and discussed in seminars • Detailed guidelines for project work to be found in the web page
What is the course about? • Course content The course offers an overview over central managerial challenges related to development, implementation and management of IT solutions in current organizations. • Learning outcome Through the course you will gain knowledge on these topics: – IT Governance – approaches, models and frameworks – Vendor relations, contracts and purchases - sourcing – Project Management – Enterprise Architectures – Management of complex systems and infrastructures
INF5890 in a nutshell IT Governance INF5890 Strategic level (giving overall direction) IT Management Operational level (ongoing management) IT Development & Maintenance
Reading Material • Book: – not textbook, written for a professional audience, less structured - more narrative – easy to read, include a lot of practical examples • Papers and manuscripts: – written for a scientific audience, presuppose some background knowledge of the topics, to read after the relevant lectures – contain useful references • Lecture presentations will be available in the web page after each lecture
Simple models of complex phenomena “ all models are wrong, but some are useful ” (George Box, 1978) • A model with all the complexity of the original does not help us understand the original. • The whole purpose of a model is to eliminate details that are not essential to the problem at hand. • So, purposeful simplifications! What to foreground and what to send to background…
Model types • SenseMaking vs Predictive vs Normative models – SenseMaking Models help us: – Focus attention - filter incoming information – Short-out which further information to collect – Communicate
A Matrixed Approach to IT Governance A matrix that juxtaposes five IT decision domains against different decision taking modes Decision on what Decision by whom P. Weill and J. Ross, “IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results” (Boston: Harvard Bus iness School Press, 2004).
Beyond the book… • Some technological trends not covered by Weill and Ross: – Cloud computing, virtualization – Loose application integration (e.g. web services) – Process tools (advanced BPM, BPEL) – Platforms/ecologies – Open source sw/commons-based peer production • -> Complexity as explicit theme
Cloud Computing “ Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on – demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction ” U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST)
Cloud Delivery Models • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – Virtual server instances that can deploy and run software e.g. Amazon Web Services provide resizable computing capacity. • Platform as a Service (PaaS) – Virtual development environment e.g. Microsoft Azure provides a wide selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases and devices. • Software as a Service (SaaS) – Run applications e.g. SAP on-demand ERP system
Web Services • Web Services allow loose coupling among applications. • Tight coupling is appropriate when a well- defined relationship exists between applications. • Loose coupling is appropriate for exposing business logic when the partner system is not necessarily specified. • Polycentric decision making for applications is facilitated by loose coupling • Governing architecture and infrastructures becomes more important
Advanced Process Tools Before BPM After BPM • • Work tasks that span systems. Processes A new layer to connect work tasks and systems. documented in documents and regulations. Processes modeled in the new layer. • • Process deployment on the basis of events Formal models for process deployment and monitored locally. monitoring. • • Information exchanges by bricolage and with Global management of human to human, human room for local autonomy. to machine, machine to machine interactions.
New layers to be governed Governance arrangements are related to key decisions within organisations on standardisation and integration. Whenever issues of integration and standardization arise BPM and SOA are becoming important.
Platforms • Platforms beyond organizations – how Apple balanced control (over platform) with openness for third party development) • … and within organizations – enterprise systems as platforms: vendor + third party + in house components. E.g. Microsoft Sharepoint for HelseNorge (evolution, customization, migrations between versions…)
Open Source Software – Commons-based Peer Production Important governance decisions related to IT principles. New way of sourcing. New way of conceptualizing projects.
IT development, implementation & management in current organizations is complex • Great number of components (technological and organisational) • Great heterogeneity among components • Great number of connections (formal and informal, managed and unmanaged) • Great heterogeneity of connections (tight/loose) • Great speed of change
Complexity Science(s) • Explains e.g.: – Zoological phenomena (bird flocks, ant ommunities etc) – Biosphere, eco systems – Body: brain, immune system – Social phenomenon (behaviour)
• One definition: – “complexity is dependent on the number of different types of components, the number of types of links, and the speed of change of the system” • Scott L. Schneberger og Ephraim R. McLean (2003): The Complexity Cross – Implications for Practice. Communications of the ACM, vol. 66, no. 9, s. 216-225. • Complex Adaptive Systems theory: – How complex systems develop through participants ’ ”adaptive” behaviour (i.e learning) – Managment philosophy (enable self organisation and learning) • Axelrod and Cohen (2001): “Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier”
(”The Cynefin framework”)
Further readings … Managerial vs. technology-centered accounts: Ciborra and associates (2000): “From Control to Drift. The dynamics of corporate information infrastructures” Hanseth and Ciborra (eds) (2007): “Risk, Complexity and ICT ”
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