Part IV: Governing with BTM


"Unless we change our direction, we are likely to wind up where we are headed."

Ancient Chinese proverb

After months of construction, you finally receive the call you've been waiting for: It's Robert, and he informs you that your dream house is almost finished. "Sometime next week," he says, "we should be all set."

Obviously, you're excited: You've been dreaming about living in a home like this one since you moved into your first dingy apartment. At the same time, you're surprised to notice that you don't feel even a pang of nervousness . Even though your dream house represents a major investment for which you've been literally saving for your whole life, you're not worried. From their first sparks of inspiration through the day-to-day grind of construction, Robert and Janet have used the architectural blueprint for the project to keep you appraised of their progress, to communicate design decisions, and to help you visualize the final product. You're thrilled with the blueprint, and so you know there won't be any unpleasant surprises .

This is, of course, a selfish view. Building a house is a major job, and you aren't the only person who has benefited from Janet and Robert's expert approach. Besides the physical structure itself, there are many other ingredients that need to come together to make what is essentially a pile of boards and glass into your dream home.

Just as important as the dimension of each room and the location of the windows , is the neighborhood in which your house will be located and the quaint town that surrounds that. Many of the most desirable towns and cities are extremely careful about maintaining the character and charm that distinguishes them, and your future hometown is no different. New construction has to adhere to strict building codes that regulate everything from your home's height to its setback from the road and the style in which it is built.

All of this falls under the auspices of the local zoning board, which is responsible for approving or rejecting individual requests for new construction in order to maintain the integrity of the town as a whole. The only way for this board to make a determination about whether new construction is up to code is by examining the architectural blueprints. These blueprints capture the design of the house in a format that is accessible and complete; without them the board would have no way to evaluate whether the new construction would compliment or clash with their carefully maintained atmosphere.

Another ingredient that's sure to factor into your satisfaction with the project is its cost. In an ideal world, money would be no object in this project. But for you ”as for most of us ” sticking to a budget is a must. No one is more important in this effort than your contractor, Robert, who gave you an estimate of what he expected your house to cost up-front, and now needs to make sure to come in on time and under budget.

Like the zoning board's decision, Robert's estimated budget was based directly on the architectural blueprints, which allowed him to calculate the materials he would need and how long it would take to assemble them. Without a blueprint to work from, Robert would have had to pull an estimate for your dream house out of thin air, and then would be left looking like a fool (or worse , a con man) when it came in way under or way over budget.

At the same time, Robert uses the blueprints to help minimize the aggregate cost of all of the houses he's currently building. He does this by improving how he allocates expensive specialists among jobs, and by purchasing materials in bulk and then splitting them up between projects. The blueprints help him to identify which projects will need who and when, and also what materials each has in common.

For both Robert (the contractor) and the town zoning board, the blueprints produced during the design of your dream house are a must. And their corporate-world equivalents are a must as well for Robert (the CIO) and another board ”the IT investment committee ”which is responsible for managing the IT portfolio, a collection of projects and assets, the integrity and focus of which should be maintained on a case-by-case basis just like in our example. It's also in Robert's (the CIO) best interest to be able to accurately estimate and minimize the cost of getting projects done. In the architecture world, these are known as zoning and cost controls; in BTM, they're called strategic direction and tactical control.

In This Part

In Part IV: Governing with BTM , will show how BTM helps to govern IT by setting strategic direction and maintaining tactical control. The mechanism for managing strategic direction is the IT portfolio. Enterprise models that are developed during BTM provide the basis for analyzing this portfolio and making crucial investment decisions. The enterprise models also help to manage quality by enforcing standards, and costs by reducing maverick purchases and eliminating redundancies and waste. Collectively, these help maintain tactical control.



The Alignment Effect. How to Get Real Business Value Out of Technology
The Alignment Effect: How to Get Real Business Value Out of Technology
ISBN: 0130449393
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 83
Authors: Faisal Hoque

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