Anticlue

Move Fast to Gain Control

Your top priority must be stop your staff from exacerbating the problems, especially the operational ones that cause friction every day. For this, you need stability.

1. Stop all nonessential changes to systems. An essential change is one that is mandated by law or without which operational systems will not run.

2. Stop staff from accepting any requests for application changes until you have clarified the lines of authority. You can work out the lines of authority once you've got control.

These steps will send a clear signal to all stakeholders that things have to — and will — change. Many of your staff will not like the changes because they disrupt established relationships. IS people don't like to say no. But you should be able to persuade them that working for a well-regarded IS department will be worth it. If you need to reinforce the need for change, make it clear that you'd like their active support but it is not essential. They must comply.

These changes will free up some staff to work on your real problems.

3. Create a rapid response team to work full-time on improving operational service levels. Create two teams if you can find the people.

This will give you rapid, visible improvements in performance. By delivering benefits like higher availability, you will increase your credibility.

Use the Time to Prepare for the Future

Immediate improvements buy you time in which you can address the more fundamental problems. Given the list of problems in the example, these clearly lie in the relationships between IS and business leaders.

4. Start an immediate review of development projects. If prioritization is weak, the development portfolio will not be aligned with business requirements. Demand that project managers offer realistic analyses of the benefits, risks and effort involved in completing each project. Pay special attention to the state of the business case and the existence of executive sponsors. Abandon projects that are in trouble, have no business sponsor or have no business benefits. Strengthen the teams on the projects that remain, bringing in outside resources if necessary.

5. Cut back on "maintenance." Many maintenance changes provide few business benefits and 70 percent of your development budget is far too much to spend on them. To avoid wasting effort on low-value work, you should insist that project sponsors should approve all maintenance requests. You can allow the sponsor to delegate this to one person, but no more. Meet all sponsors and explain that you will treat their endorsement as evidence that the benefits exceed the costs — but that you may still reject requests, despite their endorsement, if the budget will not accommodate it. Explain both points to the CEO and CFO.

6. Look for quick wins. Since much of what you have to do will look negative, it is useful to find things that make you look positive. In meetings with IS project managers and project sponsors, ask if they have urgent needs for applications that will recoup the cost of implementing them quickly.

7. Reset relationships with business leaders. IS should be a corporate function, supporting business operations and initiatives. The existence of "pet projects" shows that board-level executives have got used to treating IS as a personal servant, if not a very effective one. This needs to change. IS should carry out projects selected by the management team, in accordance with agreed criteria. It should be given sufficient resources for those projects. Business leaders need to take responsibility for defining the requirements and delivering the benefits. Since this is politically difficult, you should probably bring in a consultant to explain the principles of good IT governance to the Board.