Antecedents of IS strategic alignment: A nomological network"

A meta-theory for understanding information systems within socio-technical Systems."

Agile Enterprise IT: Oxymoron to Reality

by Bruce Skaistis

THE PROBLEM

In today’s dynamic environment, competitive success depends on being able to quickly

respond to changing market, economic and regulatory conditions. Everything in the
enterprise has to be done much faster than it was done in the past--and that means
enterprise IT has to be able to quickly respond and change directions to support critical
strategic initiatives and requirements.

The need for speed is focusing attention on the importance of enterprise IT agility.
Unfortunately, agile enterprise IT is an oxymoron in many organizations because quick
response to changing conditions and requirements is not an enterprise IT characteristic.
That has to change. Enterprise IT has to be reshaped to become an agile asset the
enterprise can quickly redirect to compete and operate effectively in an increasingly
competitive global marketplace.

THE SOLUTION

Making enterprise IT fast and flexible has to happen, but it isn’t going to be easy. It’s
going to require major changes in enterprise IT processes, infrastructures and
technologies. Before addressing the process and structural changes, enterprise IT
needs to create a culture that focuses on the importance of quick response and quick
change. Here’s a five-step approach for creating an agile enterprise IT culture:

Step 1: Clearly Define Benefits of Agility

The first step in creating an agile enterprise IT culture is to clearly define and
communicate the benefits of making enterprise IT fast and flexible. The enterprise IT
team needs to understand the new found obsession with agility.

Some organizations have focused on improved customer service, improved productivity

and even improved employee morale as benefits of making enterprise IT quicker and
more flexible. Those are benefits of making enterprise IT more agile, but those benefits
are used to justify just about every process and procedural change enterprise IT makes.

The real benefit of improving enterprise IT’s ability to quickly respond to changing
conditions and requirements is making the enterprise more competitive and more
successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace. That’s the benefit the enterprise
IT team needs to hear on a regular basis.
Step 2: Establish Expectation for Quick Response and Quick Change
The second step in creating an agile enterprise IT culture is to create an expectation for
enterprise IT agility. Building on the benefit of making the enterprise more competitive
makes it easy to create an expectation for quick response and quick change within the
enterprise IT team.

You also need to create the quick response expectation with enterprise IT’s customers
because the customers will really benefit from enterprise IT agility. Creating a quick
response expectation with customers requires a real commitment to agility. Once
customers are told they can expect quick response, they will make a lot of noise when
they don’t get quick response. Their expectation will put tremendous pressure on the
enterprise IT team to be more agile.

Step 3: Foster Quick Decisions

Enterprise IT decision making has to speed up. In most organizations, enterprise IT
decisions are thoroughly analyzed, discussed, and reviewed before a decision is made.
That means it takes a long time to make enterprise IT decisions. It’s very difficult to be
agile if you are sitting around waiting for decisions.

The thorough review and decision making processes used in enterprise IT were
introduced to control major enterprise IT expenditures--which is good. Over time, use of
the thorough review and decision making process expanded and is now used for just
about every enterprise IT decision in some organizations--which is bad.

To speed up enterprise IT decisions, you have to make a conscious effort to "fast track"
decisions. It may not be practical to fast track all enterprise IT decisions, but you’ll be
surprised how many decisions can be moved to the fast track.

Step 4: Minimize Long Term Commitments

In the past, enterprise IT has been big on long term commitments. Long term
commitments for software, equipment, facilities, services--and even people are pretty
much standard in the enterprise IT world. Long term commitments are typically justified
as the most cost effective approach.

Long term commitments limit agility. The more long term commitments enterprise IT
has, the less agile enterprise IT will be. It’s that simple.

I don’t get to say "paradigm change" much anymore, but limiting long term commitments
requires a real enterprise IT paradigm change. Enterprise IT has to start thinking in
terms of making short term commitments, so the commitments can be changed quickly
and enterprise IT resources and expenditures can be quickly redirected to support the
enterprise’s most critical requirements. I don’t want to upset any financial types who
might read this briefing, but sacrificing cost effectiveness for flexibility is a good trade-off
in today’s quick change world.
Step 5: Measure Agility
To paraphrase Peter Drucker, "you can’t improve what you can’t measure." If you want
enterprise IT to be agile, you have to measure enterprise IT agility.

Sounds good, but how do you measure enterprise IT agility? A lot of research is being
devoted to measuring corporate and enterprise IT agility, and this research is not finding
any easy answers.

I’m going to keep this pretty high level, but the first step in measuring enterprise IT
agility is determining what needs to be measured. In most cases, a number of factors
should be considered in measuring agility, including how quickly change requests are
handled, problems are resolved, new enterprise IT solutions are rolled out, and
decisions are made. Yes, you even need to track how long it takes to make decisions.
How’s that for pressure?

After determining the factors to be measured, you have to decide how you are going to
measure the factors. In most cases, the best approach is to establish an agility baseline
measure and then compare performance to the baseline. As you get more agile, you will
probably want to adjust the baseline and add more precise agility measures.

Bottom line, you aren’t going to know if you are really becoming more agile unless you
measure agility.

THE MORAL

The future of enterprise IT is all about agility. Since enterprise IT in many organizations
is slow and deliberate, which means some big changes are coming.

Turning enterprise IT into an agile asset starts by creating a culture of quick response
and quick change in enterprise IT. Creating the agile culture provides a foundation for
all the other changes that have to be made to make enterprise IT truly agile. Changing
cultures is never easy, but it has to happen to change agile enterprise IT from an
oxymoron to a reality.