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CIO Forum 19 June, at UWC |
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19th June, UWC EMS Building, Bellville. Included here is the invitation and notice of the meeting
SUCCESSFUL ALIGNMENT OF IT AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES
A review of strategic alignment tools and techniques, and a proposed capability assessment method Objectives: - To review available tools and techniques that deliver alignment of IT and business strategies
- To develop a plan for organisational capability assessment and development
Audience:
- CIOs, and all organisational managers dependent on information management for their success
- Service providers working to assist organisations in strategy formulation and implementation
- Researchers interested in examining and developing new means to achieve strategic alignment
Background:
A recurring and compelling theme in the world of the CIO is the need to deliver real benefits from IT- and IS-related investments. Measuring the costs of an investment is relatively easy; measuring the benefits is much, much more difficult and requires careful alignment of IT and business strategies. We hear this said frequently, but what does it really mean? What is an IT strategy? How can it "properly" align with a business strategy? This session will directly address these questions, and make specific proposals to assist those who are involved.
History:
As the first step in trying to address these issues, and to provide the capability to deal with them, workshops with more than 70 representatives of business, government and education in Cape Town set out an agenda for research. A partnership research project between CPUT and UWC then set to work (funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York) and delivered new curriculum content and a new repository of knoweldge: the "Information Management Body of Knowledge" (IMBOK - http://www.imbok.org).
The IMBOK and capability assessment: The IMBOK provides the means to align IT and business strategies, in great detail. Since it was first published, the IMBOK has been adopted as a standard course text and reference source by universities in Europe and the USA, as well as in South Africa. But it is more than just a repository of knowledge, it is a basis for the assessment of good information management practice. The session will therefore also explore the possibility of a joint "capability assessment" exercise that will assist participating organisations to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and finally show how strategic alignment can be achieved, but in ways that are specific to each organisation and to each situation.
Presenter: Professor Andy Bytheway came to South Africa in 1998 to establish a new Department of Information Systems at the University of the Western Cape. Previously he was a Research Fellow at the Cranfield School of Management in the UK, where he directed a series of research projects that examined current issues in Information Systems Management.
As well as his academic work, he has more than 20 years' experience in the software and services industry, and for eight years he worked on international software engineering standards, both as chairman of a UK technical standards committee and as UK delegation leader to international meetings within the IEC and ISO.
He has written three books and more than 70 academic papers and practitioner reports. |
