What are frameworks and policies?
A framework defines the way you can create and use something.
It can consist of industry standard policies, guidelines, good practices, procedures and processes.
Frameworks and policies are important because they provide enterprises with a definition of how they need to conduct business and how to run the enterprise in a more functional way.
Frameworks and policies provide industry standard good practices and a blueprint of ways to work.
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How do they
benefit an
enterprise?
Enterprises become more functional, effective and profitable through the use of frameworks and policies because these provide effective ways to control expenses, streamline repeat processes, implement enterprise infrastructure, develop software, manage assets, etc.
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How do they
benefit
employees?
As an employee, frameworks and policies provide you with a baseline to do your job; they help you to formalisea structure within an enterprise and help you work in a more focused and organisedway.
They are less prone to uncertainty, ensure a better working environment, and help both you and the enterprise succeed.
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The Case
•
Oz Software Solutions –Profile
•Background Information
•The Problems
•Your Role
•Your Tasks
•Assignment Questions
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Oz Software Solutions – Profile
Founded in 1988, the mission of Oz Software Solutions is to provide robust, elegant and cost-effective software systems.
Worldwide, more than 1,000 higher education institutions in 60 countries run on its administrative systems.
Hundreds of other non-profits, community service and health care organisations, and other businesses rely on Campus Management to manage their most mission-critical transactions; dynamic relationships; and the complexities of learning, finance, research and regulation.
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Background –What We Do
•
We are primarily a software development company with focus on higher education administrative systems,non-profit, community service and health care organisations.
•We provide key administrative software solutions and services with a focus on management of mission-critical transactions; dynamic relationships; and the complexities of learning, finance, researchand regulation.
•Our operational offices are located in Australia, the UK, USA, India and Brazil.
What We Do
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Background – Vision/Values
Vision on Education
•We foresaw the converging needs of institutions serving traditional and non-traditional students in a global and increasingly Internet-driven society.
•Our vision is to ensure that clients achieve rapid delivery of highly integrated administrative and academic systems that are easier to maintain over the long term.
•We serve organisationsacross the higher education landscape—ranging from TAFE colleges to public and private institutions, offering non-credit programmes; professional degrees and certifications; and traditional 3-year, post-graduate and post-doctoral programmes.
Vision/Values
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Background – Vision/Values
Values
•Customer Focus. Innovation. Performance. Integrity. Teamwork. These qualities embody our high standards,culture of innovation,strength in diversity andongoing commitment to clients.
•Each quarter,employees recommend and nominate colleagues who best represent these values through the Oz Software STARS Awards Programme, which rewards the winners with substantial cash prizes,inscribed plaquesand companywide recognition.
•We are quite successful externally, but internally we are very dysfunctional.
Vision/Values
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Background – Vision/Values
•
Customer focus—Customers, both external and internal, are at the center of our activities and drive all that we do.
•Innovation—We constantly challenge conventional wisdom to bring about changes that create a new dimension of performance.
•Performance—We strive for excellence in everything we undertake.
•Integrity—We act with a profound sense of integrity and fairness.
•Teamwork—We create a feeling of oneness and team spirit within a work group.
Vision/Values
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Background – Investments
Investing in research and development (R&D) and strategic relationships:
•We are well known for our significant, continuous investment in research and development.
•To advance our products and introduce new solutions, we maintain a focus on the gathering of market requirements and working with clients, advisory boards and industry thought leaders, to determine our product road map and anticipate the complexities and challenges facing the industries we serve.
•We also pursue acquisitions and key partnerships that can provide clients with distinctive operational and technological advantages. Most recently, this has included the acquisition and integration of two top-rated, best-practice solutions: Oz Software Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) suite and Oz Software Fundraising software.
Investments
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Background – Financials
•
Company Type: Private
•Revenue: AUS $26 Million
•Total Assets: AUS $62 million
•Employees: 300 Permanent
•Number of IT personnel: 180-200
•Founded in 1988
Financials
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Background – Org. Structure
The board:
•Greg Williams, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
•Robert Harvey, Board Member and Chair of Audit Committee
•John Nicholls, Board Member and Chair of Finance Committee
•Vivian Ritson, Member
•John McDermot, Member
•Plus eight other board members who also act as the non-executive members of the board
Org. Structure
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Background – Org. Structure
The executive management team:
•Greg Williams, Chairman and CEO
•Nigel Lappin, Chief Information Officer (CIO)
•Vicky Lane, Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
•Andrew Right, Senior VP
•Leonard Nimoi, Senior VP and General Field Operations
•Raj Aryan, Senior VPand Managing Director, RA Corporation Pty. Ltd.
Org. Structure
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Background – Org. Structure
Chairman and CEO + Board
Chief Information Officer
HoDDevelopment
HoDInfrastructure
HoDQuality Assurance
Chief Financial Officer
Senior Vice President
Senior Vice President and General Field Operations
HoDConsulting and Business Development Services
HoDImplementation and Support Services
Senior VP and Managing Director, RA Corporation Pvt. Ltd.
Org. Structure
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Background – Org. Structure
The board of directors:
•Consists of people with multiple expertise
•Run by the chairman, who is also the CEO
•The board, nevertheless, has an oversight committee to the audit committee that oversees all operational and control aspects.
Management:
•Consists of two levels: one more strategic management consisting of the senior managers and C-level suite; and a more operational management consisting of the Heads of Department and all other operational staff under their lead.
Org. Structure
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Background – Org. Structure
Chief Information Officer:
•Overall responsibility of the development of software solutions and design, and also looks at quality assurance in-house
Heads of Department and general field operations:
•Overall responsibility of business development, client support and also consulting services (looks at implementation, training etc.)
Org. Structure
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Background – Marketing
•
Oz Software Solutions spend quite a varied but large proportion of their budget on marketing and business development activities.
•Their work on the corporate social responsibility front places them at the forefront of non-profit clients or potential clients.
•Much of their other marketing comes from work achieved with universities and case studies on the Internet to show what they can do and deliver.
•Free demos are given without much problem, because most solutions have been posted to the cloud/hosting services of Oz Software Solutions itself.
•A diversified approach on apps developed and delivery methods bring them to the edge of high-level value-adding to enterprises.
Marketing
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Background – Industry
•
Software and services delivery company
•The ability to innovate viable products and related services
•Obtaining competitors’product and service ideas and proposals is a huge advantage.
•Being first to provide interesting solutions driven by client needs in all aspects of the industry gives an edge to the competitor.
•A volatile market, because many companies exist in the market from the bigger vendors such as SAP, Oracle, etc.
•The solutions provided need to meet the required industry standards and ensure that high-level administrative procedures and processes are present.
•It is a challenging market to integrate in, because most universities and non-profits have different operational aspects.
Industry
•
Major compliance issues (with former executive management team replaced by new executive management team) focused on transformation and re-invigorating growth)
•
Lack of formalisedIT policies, practices and disciplines
•
Poor IT governance, reporting, and inadequate business intelligence –requires a cultural change
•
For example, the IT department, led by the former CIO Wayne Carey, decided that wireless technology had become reliable and secure enough to begin equipping the sales team with hand-held devices. Since Wayne had an Apple P-phone (a combination of mobile phone and iPad), he decided that this would be the platform on which to build a new order entry system. Wayne brought his idea to the Systems Development HoDRobert Muir, who began developing a business case.
•
Robert spoke with Sarah North (Head of Sales) and Ray Smith (CFO) to get some initial feedback on the current sales system. He also met with several members of the field sales force to determine which technologies would make their sales efforts more efficient. Robert completed the business case and conceptual design. He presented it to Wayne, who forwarded it to Sarah and Ray with a recommendation that they approve it; and they did. 20
The Problems
•
Poor IT customer satisfaction and unmet business needs caused business units to ramp-up their own systems development functions
•
Inadequate and inappropriate IT skills, competencies and leadership
•
Challenge—drive new business processes to transform the business for growth and greater profitability using IT
•
Self-fund (through cost-reduction programmes) IT budget growth for new initiatives and ‘keeping the lights on’
•
Lack of business intelligence (multiple sources of inaccurate business information)
•
Lack of a formal methods for software development. Ad hoc software engineering processes and procedures in place. 21
The Problems (cont)
•
There was also a general sense in the IT department that their internal business customers did not want service levels. The HoDQuality Assurance summarized some conversations that IT had with the business around service levels:
They don’t get it. They say, ‘Just keep the critical things running all the time.’ ‘But which are the critical things? What does “all the time” mean to you?’ ‘Well, you tell me. You’re not going to tell me how to run my business; I’m not going to tell you how to run yours,’ was one of the quotes.
•
While the business might have been satisfied with the lack of defined service levels, many in IT were not. The HoDDevelopment tied the business lack of interest in service levels to a certain shirking of responsibility:
And the business wants to say that IT is failing to control costs and failing to deliver services, but they won’t take responsibility. When we go over and we talk about defining service levels and services, they say ‘that’s too much effort. Just keep your project costs down.’ They don’t want to deal with the distributed costs and yet they don’t want to fund anything to keep IT healthy. And they don’t want to be held accountable.
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The Problems (cont)
Position: CIO
Tenure: You have been on this job for only three months and are still trying to understand the organisationand its place in the environment.
Your Manager: CEO
Your team: You have three HoDswho report to you.
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Your Role – you are the newly appointed CIO
Experience:
•10 years experience as an IT manager (four as a CIO)
•Eight years experience in the software development industry
Education:
•Undergraduate degree in IT
•Several professional courses in a variety of IT, management and business-related areas
Other:
•Good understanding of governance of enterprise IT and some experience in risk
•Good overview of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) model from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and a recent introduction to COBIT 2019
•Passed CGEIT exam recently
•
New executive management team hired a new CIO who brought in a new senior leadership team in IT.
•
New CIO reports to CEO and is part of the senior executive management team.
•
Business processes are fragmented.
•
The new CIO and reconstituted business/IT executive steering group are to develop a strategy and priorities focused on business growth, creating a performance-based culture that rewards achievement of goals, accountability and innovation, and building strong customer partnerships.
•
Further, as part of the CIO’s KPI (key performance indicator), you have been asked to develop an IT strategic plan, to be approved by the executive management team.
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IT is to be re-organisedinto the following functional areas: IT strategy and governance (including PM, PR/marketing and personnel development), application development, IT operations & infrastructure, and enterprise architecture.
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The ‘new broom’ and organisational approach
•
Work towards the development of a blueprint for an IT governance framework and process. This should help the company move towards a two-year realistic strategic plan.
•
With new IT management team in place for only a few months, many initiatives are in process but key results are not clearly visible or measurable yet. (They are definitely going in the right direction, but it’s still too early to see a change.)
•
To develop an IT transformation plan, and an IT strategy (based on the previous slide).
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Transform means change. What has to change, who has to change, what can you do as the CIO to introduce change? How will you manage change? Forthcoming readings and exercises on ‘managing change’ (week 8) will tie this all together. Down load the CobiT2019 manual Implementationfor ideas.
•
‘IT strategy’ is being discussed in lectures in week 6. Hint: what strategy template might you use; & who will be driving strategy in this case?
•
At this stage, identify the problems and stakeholder needs, and use CobiT2019 tables to identify processes (weeks 2 & 3) that address these issues. Focus on the tasks on the next slide.
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The New Leadership Tasks: your task
1.
Identify the key problems and the subsequent IT processes that need to be reviewed, and improved.
2.
Identify the application level risk areas at the system and data levels. (Hint: this relates to s/w devt. What risk scenarios can you identify?)
3.
Identify a management-oriented framework for continuous and proactive control.
4.
Identify the need for guidelines and improvements that apply to service levels. Identify factors and processes to minimiserisk and to add value in this scenario of s/w development.
5.
Tailor your chosen processes using the CobiTdesign companion tool-kit; discuss and justify targets you would recommend to improve key processes
6.
Define an approach for achieving alignment between IT and business, and specify how you would measure performance.
7.
Identify potential critical success factors, pain points, trigger points, and enablers to make this happen.
8.
Provide a synopsis to the CEO regarding implications for the successful implementation of your strategy. (Hint: focus on your analysis findings, and the implications of your recommendations. Consider where to include this in your report).
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Your Overall Tasks: (refer to the marking criteria for specifics)
1.
From the problems identified, what do you find are key issues in this enterprise and why?
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Hint: The problems cannot be easily be resolved without key analysis and willingness for change. Many problems are related to process, lack of guidelines, and S/W development not following key standards.
2.
Software development is never easy, but companies have been able to counter those problems. They have been able to find solutions to the problems and make software development a real, profitable business on its own. Your challenge is to propose a working strategy that would eventually bring value to IT and grow profitability for the organisation.
•
Hint: Identify the key areas and processes that you think would be applicable for the problems identified.
3.
Develop an approach based on frameworks and guidelines that can help put the organisationback on track. (You are not limited by what can be done, but you need to bare in mind businesses do not usually have unlimited budgets.)
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Hint: Look at COBIT 2019 to proceed. (There is no right or wrong approach, but everything that is carried out within an enterprise depends on what needs to be done, urgency & risk, and of course, budget. Consider these 3 variables when discussing your improvement approach.)
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Considerations
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