Assessing Existing IT Applications for Business Impact, Quality, Service Level, and Risk

Length of Workshop:

Half day or full day

General Overview:

Business and IT managers spend 90% of their time analyzing the business impact of proposed IT investments. However, 75-90% of IT dollars are spent on existing IT activities, which receive very little management scrutiny regarding their continued effectiveness and relevance to the business. This seminar provides tools which allow both business and IT managers to assess how well individual applications and IT portfolios are performing in supporting the business, and in identifying under-performing IT assets that can be re-directed at higher-payoff activities.

Leader:

Bob Benson

Workshop Goals:

Participants will leave with a concrete plan of action for assessing and analyzing the state of their company's IT portfolio.

Intended Audience:

Business and IT Managers (up to and including CIOs and CFOs) responsible for making resource and spending decisions for IT

This seminar is well-suited to an audience made up of a number of participants within a single company. This allows not only for specific tailoring of the material to the audience but also provides an opportunity for creating a specific plan that the company can use to perform a detailed assessment and analysis.

Outline/At a Glance:

• Introduction: The IT Improvement Zone
• IT Portfolios: The basis for cost control and business impact
  1. Applications
  2. Infrastructure
  3. Services
  4. Management
• New IT Investment vs. Existing IT Activities: An overview of assessment tools
  1. Strategic Intentions
  2. Prioritization Tools
  3. Alignment Tools
• Alignment Assessment
  1. Strategic and Process Alignment
  2. Service, Quality, Depth, Breadth
  3. Technical Risk
  4. Business Risk
• Alignment Data Analysis
• IT Investment Strategies
  1. Eliminating Under-Performing IT Assets
  2. Resource Allocation for Maximum Business Impact
  3. Risk Mitigation Strategies
• Conclusion

Prerequisites:

Audience should be familiar with the general state of IT within their company, and with the governance processes used to make IT resource decisions.