Knowledge transfer,translation and transformation in the work of information technology architects

ContextInformation Technology (IT) architects are the professionals responsible for designing the information systems for an organization. In order to do that, they take into account many aspects and stakeholders, including customers, software developers, the organization’s business, and its current IT infrastructure. Therefore, different aspects influence their work.ObjectiveThis paper presents results of research into how IT architects perform their work in practice and how different aspects are taken into account when an information system is developed. An understanding of IT architects’ activities allows us to better support their work. This paper extends our own previous work (Figueiredo et al., 2012) [30] by discussing aspects of knowledge management and tool support.MethodA qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews for data collection and grounded theory methods (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) [5] for data analysis. Twenty-seven interviews were conducted with twenty-two interviewees from nine different companies through four cycles of data collection and analysis.ResultsCompanies divide IT architecture activities among different roles. Although these roles receive different names in different organizations, all organizations follow a similar pattern based on 3 roles: enterprise, solutions and software architects. These architects perform both the technical activities related to the IT architecture and the social activities regarding the communication and coordination with other stakeholders and among themselves. Furthermore, current tools used by IT architects lack adequate support for all these aspects.ConclusionThe activities of the different IT architects are highly interconnected and have a huge influence in the way the requirements are handled in every phase of the development of an information system. The activities of IT architects are also important for knowledge transfer, translation and transformation, since they receive from and spread information to different groups of stakeholders. We also conclude that they lack appropriate tool support, especially regarding support for their collaborative work.     

Spheres of It Project Complexity and It Project Manager Archetypes and Roles: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

Effective information technology (IT) project managers (PMs) are recognized as being essential for project success. However, little research has focused on the roles IT PMs must play. Utilizing a qualitative field study, we found 4 IT PM archetypes (checklist, technical lead, organizational process lead, and poly-synchronous) employed in practice. We discuss our findings regarding the assignment of multiple PMs in the presence of complex IT projects and provide organizations with practical inferences to consider.     

The IT Value Hierarchy: Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a Metaphor for Gauging the Maturity Level of Information Technology Use within Competitive Organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a hierarchy of progressive IT maturity using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a metaphor for articulating the increasing value that can be derived by the application of Information Technology within competitive organizations. The authors refer to this maturity model as the IT Value Hierarchy. Each level of the IT Value Hierarchy is described using examples and comparisons to Maslow's Hierarchy. The model can be used by IT executives as a framework for better explaining and discussing the value of increasingly sophisticated Information Technology use within the enterprise.     

Inside the adaptive enterprise: an information technology capabilities perspective on business process agility

Recent innovations in utility computing, web services, and service-oriented architectures, combined with a growing array of IT skills, have improved firms’ ability to be more agile in responding to change. Using the resource-based view of the firm, prior research suggests that IT resources, in isolation, are unlikely to yield superior performance and so as firms try to boost their agility, the question becomes how to configure IT resources to prepare for, or react to, change. In this paper, we posit that managerial IT capabilities based on IT-business partnerships, strategic planning, and ex-post IT project analysis lead to the development of technical IT capabilities associated with a flexible IT infrastructure which in turn drives agility or a firm’s ability to react to change in its products and markets. Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives in 241 firms, we find that managerial and technical capabilities affect agility. In further testing, we reveal that in a stable setting, technical IT capabilities are more important to agility than managerial IT capabilities, while in a dynamic setting, the opposite is true. Thus, for firms operating in volatile markets, effective models of managerial IT governance are essential for delivering superior agility or adaptiveness.

Internetressourcen zu IT/Business Alignment

IT/Business Alignment IT/Business Alignment has become a key issue for many companies. Therefore a lot of companies, institutions and universities have published documents about this topic. This paper is intended to give an overview of these resources found in the Internet.

     

Managing Your Security Future

ABSTRACT

Information technology organizations within most corporations are spending significant time and resources securing IT infrastructure. This increased need for security is driven by a number of factors. These factors include increased dependency on the Internet, financial and legal liability, protection of personal identity information and sensitive corporate data, increased numbers and age of legacy systems with limited vendor support, deploying complex systems, and new regulations governing corporate transactions. There a number of technologies on the market today that can mitigate most of these security factors. However, managers in IT organizations need to identify potential future threats and security technologies to assess and potentially mitigate risk through the deployment of those technologies. This article investigates three areas critical to the successful deployment and securing of information technology.     

Valuing information technology infrastructures: a growth options approach

Decisions to invest in information technology (IT) infrastructure are often made based on an assessment of its immediate value to the organization. However, an important source of value comes from the fact that such technologies have the potential to be leveraged in the development of future applications. From a real options perspective, IT infrastructure investments create growth options that can be exercised if and when an organization decides to develop systems to provide new or enhanced IT capabilities. We present an analytical model based on real options that shows the process by which this potential is converted into business value, and discuss middleware as an example technology in this context. We derive managerial implications for the evaluation of IT infrastructure investments, and the main findings are: (1) the flexibility provided by IT infrastructure investment is more valuable when uncertainty is higher; (2) the cost advantage that IT infrastructure investment brings about is amplified by demand volatility for IT-supported products and services; (3) in duopoly competition, the value of IT infrastructure flexibility increases with the level of product or service substitutability; and (4) when demand volatility is high, inter-firm competition has a lower impact on the value of IT infrastructure.     

Market Potential for ITSM Graduates: A Survey

Abstract

IT Service management is an emerging discipline likely to enhance existing academic IT program offerings. One barrier to adoption of ITSM in IT academic programs is the uncertainty that students can get jobs as a result of such education and knowledge. To overcome this barrier, a survey of the membership of the U.S. IT Service Management Forum, a practitioner organization, was conducted. The results of this survey show that there is a market of at least 15,000 hires per year in the U.S. for undergraduate and graduate students who have ITSM skills, and that companies are willing to hire ITSM-trained graduates.     

Evolving a pervasive IT infrastructure: a technology integration approach

Over the past five years or so, pervasive computing has emerged as a new computing paradigm with a great deal of appeal. Enterprises are increasingly showing interest in deploying pervasive information technology (IT) infrastructures to realise the perceived benefits offered by this new computing paradigm. However, a return on the investment and considerations of the currently deployed infrastructure is a constraint for businesses to invest in a pervasive IT infrastructure. Realising that the economics of an investment in a new infrastructure can affect the embracing of pervasive IT, we suggest an approach that shows how the existing technology solutions available in the market and deployed in an enterprise can be used to develop a pervasive IT infrastructure, thereby protecting investments and maximising returns. We present an evolution model to systematically and incrementally achieve a pervasive IT environment, and present guidelines for evaluating which services to develop first based on evolving the existing infrastructure point of view. This work provides practical implications for enterprises as well as pointers for research.

Managing the Reliable Design of an Enterprise IT Network Infrastructure

Today's businesses are more and more dependent upon their information technology (IT) infrastructure. Therefore, the managers are aware of the huge costs associated with data loss (and recovery) and invest millions of dollars in special equipments in order to increase the reliability of their IT systems. Thus, the focus in this article is on the practical modalities of designing a reliable IT network infrastructure in an enterprise. In this direction an algorithm has been developed that is a hybrid between classic greedy and simulated annealing that search for the most reliable IT network infrastructure meeting the imposed budget cost constraints and the enterprise managers' decisions constraints. A key point of the proposed solution is the way in which the enterprise managers are involved in the estimation of the relative importance of their interconnections between their business's data centers. Furthermore, the algorithm presented in this article has been evaluated in the case of a retail enterprise for addressing the business's demands for a higher reliability of their IT network infrastructure.     

中小企业IT基础设施

典型中小企业IT基础设施包括:网络连接、网络服务、目录服务、互联网连接、发表内部资源、文件和存储服务、备份和还原、打印服务、终端服务、证书服务、软件升级服务、抗病毒和防攻击等。配置中小企业IT基础设施可以使用网络操作系统提供的服务组件。一个企业的IT基础设施不为企业提供直接的服务,而是支持企业开展业务。中小企业IT基础设施服务器包括主要基础设施服务器和次要基础设施服务器,次要基础设施服务器为企业提供了冗余。此篇以Windows Server2000或Windows Server2003网络操作系统和服务组件为例,配置主要基础设施服务器和次要基础设施服务器。     

Motivations for the IT Professional Turnaway Intention: A Delphi Approach

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we use the Delphi method to identify the main motivations that have led IT professionals to intend to move to another area. We found that the pursuit of career growth and the quest for acquiring new experiences and abilities have a marked impact on the IT professional turnaway intention. Moreover, female IT professionals and IT professionals oriented by the career advancement paradigm have a higher propensity to abandon the IT area.     

中小企业IT基础设施

典型中小企业IT基础设施包括：网络连接、网络服务、目录服务、互联网连接、发表内部资源、文件和存储服务、备份和还原、打印服务、终端服务、证书服务、软件升级服务、抗病毒和防攻击等。配置中小企业IT基础设施可以使用网络操作系统提供的服务组件。一个企业的IT基础设施不为企业提供直接的服务,而是支持企业开展业务。中小企业IT基础设施服务器包括主要基础设施服务器和次要基础设施服务器．次要基础设施服务器为企业提供了冗余。此篇以Windows Server 2000或Windows Server 2003网络操作系统和服务组件为例．配置主要基础设施服务器和次要基础设施服务器。     

Exploring IT Governance in Theory and Practice in a Large Multi-National Organisation in Australia

Abstract

IT governance is critical to most organisations and has an influence on the value generated by IT investments. Unfortunately, IT governance is more aspiration than reality in many organisations. This research seeks to address the dearth of empirical evidence about IT governance in practice, presenting the findings of an IT governance case study in an Australian organisation. Recommendations are provided to assist organisations to maximise potential of IT governance and insights are provided for researchers.     

Examining the role of information technology in cultivating firms’ dynamic marketing capabilities

Most prior research has investigated an organization's dynamic capabilities in general and overlooked their effect on critical business functions. Our study considered the role of IT in improving firm's dynamic marketing capabilities. We developed a model consisting of market orientation, IT infrastructure capabilities, and the use of IT in customer relationship management (CRM). With data collected from 135 manufacturing and service firms in Taiwan, our results supported most of our hypotheses. Our results showed important direct effects of a firm's market orientation, use of IT to support CRM, and the functionality of IT infrastructure capabilities on its dynamic marketing capabilities.     

Sky Computing

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing is revolutionizing how we approach computing. Compute resource consumers can eliminate the expense inherent in acquiring, managing, and operating IT infrastructure and instead lease resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. IT infrastructure providers can exploit economies of scale to mitigate the cost of buying and operating resources and avoid the complexity required to manage multiple customer-specific environments and applications. The authors describe the context in which cloud computing arose, discuss its current strengths and shortcomings, and point to an emerging computing pattern it enables that they call sky computing.     

Applying Security within a Service-Oriented Architecture

ABSTRACT

To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, the business of the Internet is business ^{1 1}Coolidge, C. (1925, January 17). The press under a free government. Given before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, DC, The quote is actually “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” . The more business done on the Internet, the more need for regulation of that business. Many of the existing government and industry regulations deal with security measures, and for that reason it's more important than ever to secure your company's IT infrastructure, no matter how large or small your company. Even if for some reason you're not subject to regulations, it's still a very good idea to secure your assets as if you were. At some point, your status might change, and besides, nobody wants to be hacked.     

Can Political Skill Enhance Business and IT Knowledge?

ABSTRACT

We examine whether Chief Information Officers’ (CIOs’) political skill enhances their IT and business knowledge as a means of influencing executive teams’ commitment to strategic and operational IT initiatives. We empirically examine these relationships using data collected from 139 CIOs. The results suggest CIOs’ business and IT knowledge is significantly related to influencing executive team commitment to strategic and operational IT initiatives, but political skill only enhances business knowledge for influencing executive team commitment to operational IT initiatives.     

THOMAS FLEISHMAN On The Role of IS in Health Care

Abstract

MORE THAN 50 PERCENT OF firms are expected to use IT outsourcing in 2006. the sourcing issue is among the top five agenda items for IT executives, as the amount of such outsourcing grows, its impact on the economies of companies and nations increases and political controversy over the consequent jobs lost to off-shore outsourcing heightens. Thus, outsourcing is, and will likely continue to be, a hot professional and political topic and a major determinant of the future of IT.     

IT基础设施与信息系统战略对应模型

IT基础设施是IT组合的基础,其在组织范围内为IT应用和核心业务提供可靠的共享服务。IT基础设施能力关系到企业战略及BPR的成功与否。IT基础设施与信息系统战略之间的对应是战略对应的一项基本问题。该文建立了基础设施与信息系统战略之间的对应模型,并根据该模型采用多目标规划方法和AHP方法解决信息系统规划中的基础设施规划问题,建立了IT基础设施的多目标决策模型。