SteveJ-restore-test

Prior Related Posts: Quantifying the Business Benefits of I.T. Operations The Triple Whammy - the true cost of I.T. Waste Force Multipliers - Tools as Physical and Cognitive Amplifiers I.T. in context Alan Kohler and Robert Gottleibsen have been writing in "Business Spectator" about the relationship between jobs and Economic Productivity. They note that the USA has improved productivity in the last year while in Australia it has declined (+4% and -3% respectively).  My take on this is: a gross Failure of Australian Management. There is solid research/evidence that "ICT" is the single largest contributor to both partial and multi-factor Productivity, and is expected to be so for the next 20 years.  This is an big issue. Kohler ties this back to a Telstra survey , now in its second year. The 2009 ACIL Tasman whitepaper notes: While investment in ICT has boosted the productivity of workers, Australian firms, industries and the national economy, productivity levels in ...

Objectives (The What) Having begun around 1950, the world of Commercial I.T. is now mature in many ways. "Fields of Work" and professional taxonomies are starting to become standardised. Professional "Best Practices" are being documented and international standards agreed in some areas. For the first time, audits of one of the most pragmatic I.T. disciplines, "Service Management", are possible with ISO 20,000. Business managers can now get an independent , objective opinion on the state of their I.T. operations - or of their outsourcers. Being "documented common sense", ITIL and the related ISO 20,000 are good professional guides, but not underpinned by theory. Are there any gaps in the standard? How does Service Management interface with other IT Fields of Work? and What changes in those other disciplines are necessary to support the new audited practice? Analysis of the full impact of I.T. Service Management, creation of a full taxonomy...

Objectives (The What) That "I.T. is done for a Business Benefit" seems axiomatic. But where's the evidence after 50-60 years of computing? It's not coming out our ears - just the reverse. Businesses understand the importance of hard data and it's through analysis for marketing, but don't apply the same techniques or management principles to their I.T. Operations. I'd like to model and quantify the Business Benefits of I.T. Operations across multiple organisations to provide baselines, benchmarks and trend analysis. The impact of all aspects of I.T. is beyond the scope of a single researcher project. Approach (The How) Data is fundamental input for analyses. Leveraging what's available means the outputs can be commercially reproduced and aer within the project budget (zero cost). Three separate data streams will be mined: Historic "ITSM" tool data from multiple organisations. Detailed I.T. accounting information from selected organisations. Pr...