How It Can Go Wrong – Key Lessons to Learn from Is/It Strategy Implementation

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

When organisations want to implement change they need to have a plan, taking into consideration existing information that leads to the change, stakeholders views have to be followed for successful implementation, the public views is important, service user’s expectations have to be met by appointing a service team.

An IT implementation process can be long and tedious, or short and simple, depending on the size and needs of an organization. While implementing this process it is important to understand the roles and responsibilities of each step. Sometimes when the process is not thought out correctly, IT failures happen. IT failures are common reasons that systems do not work, or have many flaws.

Implementation of new information technology systems can be both a daunting and exciting task for many companies. Most of these new systems promise seamless integration of all the information flowing through the organization. For most companies, the opportunity to solve the problem of business integration is very exciting. However, for every story of successful implementation of IT systems, there are also horror stories of failed implementation (Davenport, 1998).

McKeen, James D; Smith, Heather (2012). IT strategy: Issues and practices (2nd ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall. Kindle Edition.

Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.

The case study of the Memorial Health Systems CPOE implementation illustrates why the IT implementation process needs to be rigorously applied to complex system definition, implementation and maintenance. The lack of role and responsibility definition, followed by the highly dysfunctional performance of the entire executive team serves as a cautionary tale of why rigorous use of IT implementation processes and frameworks are essential. The implementation failed on many levels, with the factors from Chapter 7 of our text (Wager, Lee & Glaser, 2009) providing a framework for evaluating why the organization in the case failed. In addition, the five dominant causes of project failure as defined in Chapter 14 of our text (Wager, Lee & Glaser, 2009) are also very evident in this case.

The role played by the IT in the company to the rest of the organization is reactive to business conditions rather than a proactive approach. IT has been busy establishing several IT processes, policies, and projects in order to catch up with current demand from customers, and has been relying on the “diving catch” approach of finishing things at the very last minute.

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

The change plan prepared for the business provides significant information regarding the current situation in internal environment. The information provided is based on analysis of internal elements necessary in formulating an overall organizational culture. The desired performance and culture is also defined in terms of its tangible elements. A detailed plan includes the necessary steps for an organization to carry forward its change objectives including the handling of transition. The process adopted for change management should include a clear purpose for change as well as a strategy for implementing the desired change.

This portfolio focus on what I have learned during the whole IT Strategy and Control paper, a critical reflection of this paper would be provided. This reflection includes the key points, support reference and the demonstration of my own understanding about the paper itself and all of my personal understandings are based on the learning outcome of this paper. In the first part of this portfolio, I would discuss all the key IT Operations Management framework which have been introduced in the paper, the analysis of the processes based on my own understanding would be given. In the second part, analyze processes required for aligning IT infrastructure and operations with the business goals of an organization would be talked about, and I would focus a business organization which has been mentioned in the caselets as a sample. In the third part, some critical evaluate operational IT organizations and their processes against the studied models would be listed and analyzed. In the last part, the recommendations and analysis of my own would be given against those organizations (caselets) which have some problems and current issues arising from the implementation of the IT framework.

Sometimes not just one approach is used but several. When developing an IT strategy for a

All these factors are creating new challenges and new opportunities for businesses of all kinds and for the public sector. Adapting to the volatility and change is crucially dependent on, and in many cases driven by, IT. But to successfully meet these challenges and grasp these opportunities, you must focus on what you do best, not on becoming systems experts. Yet at the same time you must be 100 per cent certain that your IT support is efficient, cost effective and totally tuned to your needs.

This paper will discuss the processes and pitfalls faced by Information Technology managers in today’s world of business. Today’s IT managers need not only be savvy about existing equipment and upcoming technology; but must also understand the budget issues they face and how to properly address them. The IT manager is asked to look into a crystal ball and predict what products will be beneficial and which requirements can be cut from the budget. They must be able to differentiate between the new shiny fad and products that will be a true asset to the company’s visions and goals. An IT budget can no longer be a static number on the company’s finance sheet; it must be a clear vision of the department’s future spending while falling in line with the goals and expectations of the company.

Frenzel (2004) claimed that to be successful, a firm’s IT management team must take action on the following critical areas: business management issues; strategic and competitive issues; planning and implementation concerns; and operational items. If for any reason, the organisation experiences difficulties in the above areas, the manager will need to set goals and objectives to overcome and prevent these issues.