Fluent Essays

QUESTION 1 The relationship between IT and other areas of the organization is critical for many aspects of IT within organizations.  Discuss the role of IT governance and leadership in understanding how organizations see the value of IT.  What is IT governance?  Discuss different approaches to IT governance. How can different types of IT leadership impact the role of IT within an organization? Provide specific examples where applicable. Use the readings (and, if you wish, other relevant references) to support your answer.  Please provide citations. QUESTION 2 Develop an IT innovation strategy for your organization (or an organization you are familiar with). Describe the organization’s situation and how a specific innovation approach (disruptive, architectural, routine, radical) would be most appropriate for it. QUESTION 3 Choose one of the following:1) internet of things 2) blockchain 3) big data/analytics  Describe two real-world applications of your chosen technology. How does this technology enhance business competitiveness/profitability in the two applications? Please Note the Following: 1- Make sure to cite the references (both required readings and external sources, if any) you use. Proper citing (using, for example, APA style) of an article includes necessary information such as author name(s), journal title, year of publication, etc. Just referring to Readings from Week 3 or Harvard Business Review is not proper citation.  2- As always, quality outweighs quantity. While your answer needs enough length to conduct a thorough analysis, it is very important to offer a coherent and readable answer that is well organized and that has a smooth and logical flow. The answer must reflect a reasonable mastery of the required readings. Answers that are too generic and that can be provided by a layman with superficial knowledge of the material is not acceptable. 3- Academic honesty is extremely important and any suspected plagiarism (including copying material without citing it) will not be tolerated.BETTER DECISION RIGHTS F or better or worse, the IT spending boom has ground to a halt, replaced by a more sober era where IT decisions are made with far greater scrutiny. Once bit- ten, twice shy is the name of the game, as CEOs take more control of IT initiatives and tighten the purse strings by demanding greater justification for new initiatives. This cautious, less trusting environment has resulted in a credibility gap between management and IT, with IT staff in the vulnerable position of feeling expend- able as long as the outsourcing bug is in the air. And IT staff frustration is often compounded as staff members are blamed for IT decisions made by top management! The irony of this scenario is that there has never been a more important role for IT in the e-business environment of today. Integration of IT in internal processes and external markets is grow- ing at a furious pace. The stakes for good communication are high. On one hand there is an adversarial relationship due to the credibility gap and the starkly differ- ent language spoken at the business and “The perils of screwing up (with technology) are greater every year, making the stakes for effective communication even higher.” —STAN LEPEAK, VP OF TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH SERVICES AT METAGROUP. FIX IT-BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH 80 December 2007/Vol. 50, No. 12 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM By Varun Grover, Raymond M. Henry, and Jason B. Thatcher IT ends. On the other, there is the need for executive management and the top IT brass to come together to synchronize organizational IT with business needs [1]. A sour relationship between these groups is not good in an environment where the downside risks of IT failure are catastrophic and the upside potential is often dictated by competitors. Just how bad is it? We surveyed senior IT managers in a variety of industries and focused on some very simple questions: • Who makes major IT decisions? Who is held accountable for them? • Does this affect the relationship of your group with top management? In this article, we discuss the concepts of decision rights and accountability, and the gap that might sour the relationship between IT management and top man- agement. DECISION RIGHTS AND ACCOUNTABILITY IT decisions in organizations are made in a wide variety of areas. Major decision areas range from those involving IT strat- egy, or the role of technology in trans- forming business, to more technical decisions concerning IT infrastructure. An appropriate decision-making frame- work is critical for organizations that want to effectively manage IT and information assets. These include not only the hard- ware and software assets, but the increas- ingly important data on customers, suppliers, and business processes. Without an effective framework that allocates deci- sion rights to the appropriate people, deci- sions regarding IT assets will be conducted in a piecemeal, incomplete, or sub-optimal manner. Such non-integrated thinking doesMIS Quarterly Executive Vol. 10 No. 4 / Dec 2011 157© 2011 University of Minnesota CIO and Business Executive Leadership Approaches to Establishing Company-Wide Information Orientation CIO and BusIness exeCutIve LeadershIp apprOaChes tO estaBLIshIng COmpany-wIde InfOrmatIOn OrIentatIOn1,2 William J. Kettinger University of Memphis (U.S.) Chen Zhang University of Memphis (U.S.) Donald A. Marchand IMD (Switzerland) MISQUarterly Executive Executive Summary12 In the digital world, business executives have a heightened awareness of the strategic importance of information and information management to their companies’ value creation. This presents both leadership opportunities and challenges for CIOs. To prevent the CIO position from being marginalized and to enhance CIOs’ contribution to business value creation, they must move beyond being competent IT utility managers and play an active role in helping their companies build a strong information usage culture. The purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of the leadership approaches that CIOs and business executives can adopt to improve their companies’ information orientation. Based on our findings from four case studies, we have created a four-quadrant leadership-positioning framework. This framework is constructed from the CIO’s perspective and indicates that a CIO may act as a leader, a follower or a non- player in developing the company’s information orientation to achieve its strategic focus. The article concludes with guidelines that CIOs can use to help position their leadership challenges in introducing or sustaining their companies’ information orientation initiatives and recommends specific leadership approaches depending on CIOs’ particular situations. THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF INFORMATION AS A BUSINESS RESOURCE In today’s digital world, enabled by social media, cloud computing, sensor networks, online service offerings and big data applications, the volume, velocity and variety of data are growing at unprecedented rates as individuals are constantly producing, gathering and sharing information. Consumers, including the growing number of digital “natives,” demand information competence in their network-based communication. From a business perspective, IT and information are increasingly embedded in products, services and business processes, leading companies to collecting and managing ever greater amounts of data. Transforming the vast amount of data both inside and outside companies into relevant information offering business insights and helping companies improve efficiencies, seize opportunities and compete is a critical challenge in the dynamic digital business environment. Today’s leading CEOs, CFOs and COOs understand this. They recognize that improving information management and leveraging the power of information and digitization throughout all aspects of their business is critical to the execution of their business MIS Quarterly Executive Vol. 7 No. 2 / Jun 2008 57© 2008 University of Minnesota CIO Leadership Profiles: Implications of Matching CIO Authority and Leadership Capability on IT Impact CIO LeadershIp prOfILes: ImpLICatIOns Of matChIng CIO authOrIty and LeadershIp CapabILIty On It ImpaCt1 David S. Preston Texas Christian University Dorothy E. Leidner Baylor University Daniel Chen Texas Christian University MISQUarterly Executive Executive Summary Ultimately, organizations invest in information technology (IT) initiatives to improve their level of performance. However, there have been mixed results from the payoff of IT investments. This article presents evidence that the variation in benefits derived from IT is in part due to the organization’s CIO leadership profile. This profile is determined by whether the CIO’s level of strategic decision-making authority is high or low, and whether his or her strategic leadership capability is high or low. We label the resulting four CIO leadership profiles: (1) IT Orchestrator, (2) IT Laggard, (3) IT Advisor and (4) IT Mechanic, and have identified the typical characteristics of CIOs that match each of these profiles. Based on empirical data collected from a field study,2 we show that the level of IT contribution to a firm’s performance varies according to the leadership profile of its CIO. We show how organizations can assess their current CIO leadership profile and provide recommendations for CIOs who need to change their CIO profile to best fit their organization’s goals. Over time, there will be a shift to IT Orchestrators, and CIOs lacking the necessary characteristics should plan to acquire them. THE IMPORTANCE OF CIO LEADERSHIP TO THE MODERN ORGANIZATION Over the past several decades, information technology (IT) has become essential for organizations to increase operational efficiency and to obtain strategic success.3 However, many organizations have experienced the “productivity paradox”— they have not been able to observe business value that is directly linked with their investments in IT. Savvy organizations have realized that they cannot derive business value by simply pouring vast sums of money into IT; rather, the strategic leadership of IT is the key to maximizing its potential benefits. The chief information officer (CIO) plays a critical role in the ability of an organization to derive business value from IT. Organizations that view the CIO as a strategic asset are more likely to create business value through IT and thereby achieve superior business performance.4 However, not all firms need to include IT as an integral part of their business strategy. We argue that the impact of IT within an organization depends on the fit between the CIO and the strategic context of the organization. This article describes four distinct profiles of CIO leadership. We examine the influence of these four profiles on IT’s 1 Jeanne Ross is the accepting Senior Editor December 2018 (17:4) | MIS Quarterly Executive 281 Digital Workers and the Gig Economy1, 2, 3 The gig economy is rapidly transforming labor markets in the U.S. and other countries worldwide by creating demand for short-term contracts or freelance work, and reducing the availability of full-time permanent jobs. In the U.S., 20\% of the workforce participates in freelance contract work, and experts expect that proportion to rise to 50\% within the next 10 years.4 Our focus is this article is on what this changing labor market means for IT leaders. Are they prepared for the gig economy? Can they take advantage of it to find talent in an increasingly difficult hiring market for digital professionals?5 What challenges will they face as they tap into this growing freelance workforce to meet their staffing needs? What can they do to overcome these challenges and ready themselves to benefit from this new labor market? This article provides answers to these questions from the perspective of a group that is sometimes overlooked: workers. We focus on one group of gig economy workers: digital workers6 who use crowdsourcing platforms to obtain and deliver work and to receive remuneration for the work they do. The term we have coined for this segment of the gig economy is information technology crowdsourcing (ITCS).7 By sharing what we have learned about this particular group, we can provide guidance to IT leaders on the actions they can take to benefit from the gig economy. 1 10.17705/2msqe.00002 2 Michelle Kaarst-Brown, Tim Weitzel, Jeria Quesenberry and Fred Niederman are the accepting senior editors for this article. 3 A previous version of this article was presented at the MIS Quarterly Executive Academic Workshops held at the Hawaii Interna- tional Conference on System Sciences on January 3, 2018. The valuable feedback received during the workshop has been incorpo- rated into the manuscript. 4 National Public Radio recently broadcast a series of articles examining the growth and implications of contractors in the U.S, economy, an example of which can be found in Noguchi, Y. “Rise of the contract workers: Work is different now,” January 22, 2018. 5 Difficulties in staffing digital roles is a commonly cited concern of IT executives. See, for example, Kappelman, L., McLean, E., Johnson, V. and Torres, R. “The 2015 SIM IT Issues and Trends Study,” MIS Quarterly Executive (15:1), March 2016, pp. 55-83. 6 Our focus in this study was on digital workers who participate in technology-related tasks—e.g. programming, project manage- ment, requirements gathering, security assessment, etc. 7 In this article, we use the term “crowdsourcing” to describe a form of micro-sourcing (small contract engagements) that are facilitated by online transaction environments. This approach is based on that presented in Oshri, I., Kotlarsky, J. and Willcocks, L. P. The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. How IT Leaders CanMIS Quarterly Executive Vol. 5 No. 4 / Dec 2006 181© 2006 University of Minnesota Sustainable IT Outsourcing Executive Summary This article explores the relationship between IT outsourcing and enterprise architecture. An earlier article described four stages of architecture maturity (business silos, standardized technology, rationalized process, and business modularity).2 In this article, we conclude that three different outsourcing arrangements support transitions from one stage to another, as follows: Firms transitioning from Stage 1 (business silos) to Stage 2 (standardized technology) can use a strategic partnership form of outsourcing to support the transition. The vendor can take the lead in defining, implementing, operating, and updating a standardized technology environment so that the client need not invest in developing these world-class skills. We describe how a partnership between Campbell Soup and IBM helped Campbell transition to Stage 2. Companies transitioning from a Stage 2 enterprise architecture (standardized technology) to Stage 3 (rationalized process) can benefit from a co-sourcing alliance form of outsourcing in making this transition. The vendor, who is in a close working relationship with the client, can help implement the technology changes to support the new business processes while the client can focus on the change management aspects of the transition. An alliance between The Dow Chemical Company and Accenture serves as an example. Companies transitioning from a Stage 3 enterprise architecture (rationalized process) to Stage 4 (business modularity) can benefit from the transaction exchange form of outsourcing. Our example is eFunds, a transaction exchange vendor, that helps its clients implement, process by process, their vision to become sleek, high-performing firms that use plug-and-play, industry-standard components. 1. 2. 3. SuStainable it OutSOurcing SucceSS: let enterpriSe architecture be YOur guide1 Jeanne W. Ross MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research Cynthia M. Beath University of Texas MISQUarterly Executive The InTerplay of enTerprIse archITecTure and ouTsourcIng�,� In the early 1990s, management gurus envisioned future organizations as sleek, high-performing entities engaged in a small set of core competencies.� This 1 Jack Rockart was the accepting Senior Editor for this article. � Ross, J.W. “Creating a Strategic IT Architecture Competency: Learning in Stages,” MIS Quarterly Executive (�:1), March �00�, pp. �1-4�. � Many authors have written on this topic. Among them are: Hamel, G., and Prahalad, C.K. Competing for the Future, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 1996; Quinn, J.B. “Strategic Outsourcing: Leveraging Knowledge Capabilities,” Sloan Management Review (40:4), 1999, pp. 9-��; Quinn, J.B., and Hilmer, F.G. “Strategic Outsourcing,” Sloan Management Review (�5:4), Summer 1994, pp. 4�-55; Malone, T.W., Yates, J., and BenjamiMarch 2014 (13:1) | MIS Quarterly Executive 15 MISQUarterly Executive Many IT Projects Still Suffer From Poor Estimation1,2 Despite a great deal of attention in the trade and academic press, IT projects continue to fail at an alarmingly high rate. One of the most-cited reasons for these failures is poor estimation practices. “Unrealistic expectations based on inaccurate estimates are the single largest cause of [IT project] failure.”3 Estimation is defined as an informed assessment of an uncertain event. For IT project managers, accurate estimates are the foundation for effective project planning and execution and, ultimately, project success. Unfortunately, most project managers do a very poor job of estimating and, as a result, most IT projects are classified as failures—61\% in the latest Standish Group report.4 The Standish Group’s data shows some improvement in the overall success rate since 2004 (which it partially attributes to the Agile development process and improved project management expertise). However, its figures show a slight increase in both time and cost overruns since 2010—signaling that there is still much room for improvement. According to Standish, 74\% of challenged projects experience time overruns and 59\% 1 Leslie Willcocks is the accepting senior editor for this article. 2 The authors would like to thank Steve McConnell and Arin Sime for their input throughout this research project. We would also like to acknowledge the McIntire School of Commerce for providing financial support for this research project, thank research assistant Meg Raymond and thank the Project Management Institute for posting a link to our survey. 3 Futrell, R. T., Shafer, D. F. and Shafer, L. I. Quality Software Project Management, Prentice Hall, 2002. 4 The Standish Group: Chaos Manifesto 2013, available at http://versionone.com/assets/img/files/ChaosManifesto2013.pdf. IT Project Estimation: Contemporary Practices and Management Guidelines Many IT projects continue to suffer from poor estimation. Indeed, the accuracy of estimation has hardly changed from that reported in a seminal study carried out over 20 years ago. Based on findings from two recent survey-based studies, which replicated and then extended the original study, we provide guidelines for improving IT project estimation, taking account of the greater use today of Agile, rather than traditional Waterfall, development methods.1,2 R. Ryan Nelson University of Virginia (U. S.) Michael G. Morris 16 MIS Quarterly Executive | March 2014 (13:1) misqe.org | © 2014 University of Minnesota IT Project Estimation experience cost overruns. Further evidence can be found in a review of 180 IT projects completed between 1999-2013,5 64\% of which suffered from poor estimation. In this article, we examine the practice of IT project estimation, report the findings from two studies and provide recommendations to help project managers improve project estimation.September 2019 (18:3) | MIS Quarterly Executive 191 IoT Field Data Can Be Leveraged throughout the Product Lifecycle12 Across all industries, smart, connected products—such as connected cars, smart home appliances, smart fitness trackers and connected drilling machines—are altering how manufacturing companies interact with their customers and ultimately how they conduct business. This new generation of offerings results from the merger of the physical and digital worlds, often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT solutions involve equipping physical objects and devices with sensors, actuators, and connectivity, and applying data analytics to the digital data streams (DDSs) flowing from the devices to offer complementary digital services.3 The DDSs provide real-time data on usage and device behavior, as well as on environmental parameters.4 Figure 1 shows there are four areas (domains) where IoT digital data streams can be used for innovation. These four domains are determined by the DDS source (supply-chain data or field data) and the focus of innovation (product/service or process). Manufacturing companies’ early initiatives to benefit from IoT field data focused mainly on offering new digital services 1 Gabriele Piccoli is the accepting senior editor for this article. 2 The authors thank the 46 practitioners who participated in this study for providing interesting insights. Thanks also to Gabriele Piccoli, and two anonymous reviewers, and to Professor Stefan H. Thomke (Harvard Business School), Timo Gessmann (Bosch Digital Solutions) and Dr. Jannis Beese (SAP) for their valuable input and constructive feedback. This research was supported by the Bosch IoT Lab at the University of St. Gallen, and ETH Zurich. 3 For an introduction to the IoT, see Wortmann, F. and Flüchter, K. “Internet of Things – Technology and Value Added,” Business & Information Systems Engineering (57:3), 2015, pp. 221-224. 4 For an overview of digital data streams, see: Piccoli, G. and Pigni, F. “Harvesting External Data: The Potential of Digital Data Streams,” MIS Quarterly Executive (12:1), March 2013, pp. 53-64. Driving Process Innovation with IoT Field Data The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to deliver tremendous business value and dis- rupt various industries. However, many companies are taking much longer than anticipated to realize these opportunities. To exploit the digital data streams flow- ing from their smart, connected products (IoT field data), companies need to identify new opportunities that go beyond well-known product and service in- novations. We describe how manufacturing companies are leveraging IoT field data to innovate in their internal processes at all stages of the product lifecycle.1,2 Dominik Bilgeri ETH Zürich (Switzerland) Heiko Gebauer University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) Elgar Fleisch ETH Zürich and University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) Felix Wortmann University of St. Gallen (SwitzerlandKudos to Robert Kaplan and Michael Porter for their illustration of careful process analysis and cost accounting in health care. Their idea is terrific—but it is hardly novel. Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and Intermountain Healthcare in Utah have long employed process analysis, and in my 1997 book, Market-Driven Health Care, I advocated activity-based costing of medi- cal care bundles, which I called “health care focused factories.” Kaplan and Porter barely mention, how- ever, that people are not fungible, so their costs cannot be measured like the costs of widgets in manufacturing. Some patients are much sicker than others. A process fre- quently called risk adjustment accounts for these differences. The impact of risk ad- justments on costs can be enormous. In a risk-adjustment and activity-based costing analysis that my students and I performed for a total-knee-replacement procedure, we found that while the average payment was $35,000, the top decile averaged $615,000. Useful risk adjustment requires complex statistical analysis. If it were done as the authors suggest, by simply adding comorbidities, the analysis could create thousands of different products, each requiring separate analysis. Furthermore, the implementation of activity-based costing can “solve the U.S. health care cost crisis” only if, as the authors suggest, payers switch to reim- bursing providers for value and bundles of care. But those adopting the Kaplan-Porter methods could repeat the mistakes of the California health care providers that used process analysis to price their offerings to insurers in the 1990s: Many suffered sub- stantial financial losses, in part because their prices lacked risk adjustments and reinsurance to protect them against ad- verse selection by very sick patients. Regina E. Herzlinger, Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School HBR article by Robert S. Kaplan and Michael E. Porter, September 2011 “U.S. health care costs currently exceed 17\% of GDP and continue to rise,” say Harvard Business School professors Kaplan and Porter. They trace spending to its source: health care providers. Doctors, nurses, and specialists do not understand the value of medical care to the consumer; they overspend because they can’t accurately measure health outcomes. The authors take a look at providers that are measuring costs the right way, and then prescribe a cost-measurement system based on individual patient conditions. How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Health Care Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think HBR article by Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier, September 2011 The authors’ research found that one in six IT projects finishes wildly over budget, with an average cost overrun of 200\%. The article avoids the root cause of IT failures: the lack of a framework for effective collaboration. Far too many organizations can’t do joined-up think-