[Seminar] by Gitte Tjørnehøj. From Claudio Ciborra's "Drift" to "managing drifting digital development"

People tried to do planning to manage situations, companies, technology and so on. However, when the situation radically change, all of the plannings cannot fully response to.

The idea of this seminar told that "stop planning" and be ready for every changes occurs. (Drift). The drifting caused by the complexity of the change, more control means more drift.

That is when the idea of "Improvisation" comes in. The change is important, urgent and people just do not know how, leads to Improvisation.

For example, within a specific situation, where the current system does not fully response to the user's needs, the user improvise by "hacking" (changing in some ways)

And improvisation leads to unique solution.

However, we need to frame improvisation within the specific context. (Minimal Structure)

Every people can improvise, why do we need managers?

• Communication and Collaboration?
• Setting and managing "minimal structure"?
• Aligning?

I though about using improvisation trend to identify the correct direction for organization strategy.

[Excercise] Workplace Assessment Checklist + The Weird Rules of Creativity

The assessment target is EY Vietnam - IT Risks Department that I worked for 3 years.

I did 2 exercises:

Exercise 1

 Exercise 2

Creative attitudes should be encouraged or minimized based on different strategies, phases, times and contexts throughout the life cycle. I believed that creativity and problem should correspondingly rise and fall together.

[Research Project Video] Dublin Bus Application

This research is completed by the cooperation between Phuong Tran and me.

Dublin Bus is a public transportation operator in Dublin City and the Greater Dublin Area. Founded in 1987, Dublin Bus is a subsidiary of the Córas Iompair Éireann (the Irish Transport System). One of the Dublin Bus strategies is to progress improvements in the customer experience through technological developments (Córas Iompair Éireann, 2014). Under the business driven, as the product managers, we want to enhance the Dublin Bus App so that all bus travelers can have better experience. 
We conducted some methods to figure out the customer's demands, suggest a recommendation to improve the app and analyze the feasibility as well as utility of the proposed function. Below is a short film about our research project.

MIS40670_Research Project - Dublin Bus App (Hoang and Phuong)
​
References:
Córas Iompair Éireann, 2014, Statement of Strategy 2015 to 2017. Available at: http://www.dttas.ie/sites/default/files/content/corporate/english/general/statement-strategy-2015-2017/cie.pdf [Accessed on 18 Oct 2015]

Arriva Bus (UK) (2015) Arriva M ticket 2015. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8KqxapVw_k (Accessed: 13 November 2015).

[Study] Economics of information technology

The resulting investment boom led to a dramatic run-up of stock prices for information technology companies:

• telecommunications deregulation in 1996

• the “year 2K” problem in 1998-99

• the “dot com” boom in 1999-2000.
• Combinatorial innovation: set of technologies, comes along that offers a rich set of components that can be combined and recombined to create new products
• Internet revolution took only a few years: The components of the Internet revolution were not physical devices as all. Instead they were “just bits.” 

The “New Economy”
As with technology itself, the innovation comes not in the basic building blocks, the components
of economic analysis, but rather the ways in which they are combined.

Differentiation of products and prices

• highly personalized products can be sold at a highly personalized price
• everyone faces the same menu of prices for a set of related products
• different prices to different groups

price discrimination that is of considerable interest in hightech markets is price discrimination based on purchase history

Switching costs and lock-in
Changing software environments at the organizational level is also very costly => not the trend anymore => Cloud computing

Supply-side economies of scale

• Competition to acquire monopoly. In many cases the competition to acquire a monopoly will force lower prices for consumers (not the trend anymore)
• Reduction in fixed costs (not the trend anymore)
• Competition with your prior production.  v
• Pressure from complementors

Competing for monopoly (not the trend -> disrupted innovation)

Bibliography:

Varian, H. R. (2001). Economics of information technology. University of California, Berkeley.

[Study] How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

What Is Creativity?
The view that good ideas are rarer and more valuable than  good people is rooted in a misconception of creativity.

Power to the Creatives

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they’ll screw it up. But if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they’ll make it work.

Our philosophy is: You get great creative people, you bet big on them, you give them enormous leeway and support, and you provide them with an environment in which they can get honest feedback from everyone.

Everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work. They really do feel

that it’s all for one and one for all. 

Pixar’s Operating Principles

• Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with 
  anyone
• It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas
• We must stay close to innovations happening in the 
  academic community.

Bibliography:

Catmull, E. (2008). How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business School Publishing.

[Study] When collections of creatives become creative collectives: A field study of problem solving at work

Question:
how the locus of creative problem solving shifts, at times, from the individual to the interactions of a collective?

Research methods:
The model is grounded in observations, interviews, informal conversations, and archival data gathered in intensive field studies of work in professional service firms.

To understand how social interactions shape new perspectives on problematic situations and
uncover potentially relevant past experiences, the field study relied on ethnographic-research methods, which allow the researcher to uncover the perspectives of the people in the organization.

The research design collected data from five sources: (1) interviews with key informants, (2) project postmortems, (3) observations of work, (4) tracking of particular projects (whether “live”
or retrospectively), and (5) documents and technological artifacts of the organization.

Overall:

Generation of creative solutions draw from—and reframe—the past experiences of participants in ways that lead to new and valuable insights.

Model of collective creativity that identifies the precipitating roles played by four types of social interaction: help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinforcing.

• Help seeking describes activities that occur when an individual who either recognizes or is assigned a problematic situation actively seeks the assistance of others. 

• relied heavily on formal brainstorming meetings
• Monday morning meetings in which people would discuss the particular projects and problems they were working on 
• weekly meetings where they would discuss the status of current projects, and people in these meetings would often solicit help that focused on coming to a collective understanding of their particular problems
• when people had problems (or simply needed a break from their work) they would walk the halls asking questions and waiting for a head to pop up over a cubicle wall and begin a conversation
• Set up at least two introductory brainstormers [brainstorming meetings] to get the best minds in the company, the collective consciousness of the office, working on your problem
• Help giving, conversely, represents the willing devotion of time and attention to assisting with the work of others. 
• returned the message from an unknown colleague in San Francisco that day, but spent considerable time helping with that colleague’s request despite an already busy schedule
• willingness to give his time and attention ultimately 
• Reflective reframing represents the mindful behaviors of all participants in an interaction, where each respectfully attends to and builds upon the comments and actions of others. 
• The locus of creativity in the interaction moves to the collective level when each individual’s contributions not only give shape to the subsequent contributions of others, but, just as importantly, give new meaning to others’ past contributions
• relevant new ideas and insights and such reframing of a problematic situation come about not simply because the right people were brought in to help on a project, or because they actively contributed, but also because the participants in the process were able to mindfully consider those contributions and change their previously held conceptions of both the problem and relevant solutions???
• And, reinforcing reflects any interesting solutions they might have found. 
• help that is given may be viewed as criticism or an attempt to gain ownership of ideas—reducing opportunities for reflective reframing and also, ultimately, the likelihood of future help seeking or giving.

Bibliography:
Hargadon, A. B., & Bechky, B. A. (2006). When collections of creatives become creative collectives: A field study of problem solving at work. Organization Science, 17(4), 484-500.

[Study] Reframing the Dominant Quests of Information Systems Strategy Research for Complex Adaptive Business Systems

The competitive performance landscapes of products and services are highly dynamic and co-evolve. The author re-framed three main quests of research on information systems (IS) strategy:
(1) the strategic alignment quest,
(2) the integration quest, and
(3) the sustained competitive advantage quest.

to the co-evolution quest seeks to increase a firm’s agility and dynamism in repositioning itself, identifying profitable product-market positions as the evolving competitive landscape erodes the profitability of the firm’s existing positions

Complex adaptive business systems (CABS). 
In CABS, strategic problems faced by firms have become not only more complicated but also more complex (Camillus 2008).  Information technology (IT) has contributed to the emergence of CABS and wicked problems by fusing into the fabric of products, services, and business processes and by increasing the diversity, adaptiveness, interconnectedness, and interdependency of firms.

A complicated problem has many diverse parts and stakeholders, which increase the combinatorial space of possible solutions. Although difficult, it is feasible to find an optimal solution to a complicated problem because the parts do not dynamically adapt and mutually interact.

Complex problem or “wicked” problems has many diverse parts that adapt and morph into new forms with every attempt to solve the problem. Finding an optimal solution to a complex problem is not feasible; the parts of the problem interact with each other in nonlinear ways, selforganize, and produce emergent macrolevel behaviors that differ in scale and kind from the microlevel behaviors of the parts.

Simple Competitive Landscapes

When a firm faces few choices and the choices do not interact with each other, the emerging competitive landscape is simple. The highest point was the optimal shovel weight. (Mount Fuji )

Rugged Competitive Landscapes

When the firm faces many choice variables and the choices interact with each other, the performance landscape becomes rugged (Beinhocker 1999, Kauffman 1993, Porter and Siggelkow 2008). Multiple peaks and valleys with varying heights and depths emerge. The landscape can look like the Rockies, the Alps, or the Himalayas. 

Dancing Rugged Competitive Landscapes
When the many choice variables of a firm become interdependent with the choices of other firms, the
rugged competitive landscape starts “dancing.” peaks, valleys, and plateaus start changing dynamically in unpredictable ways: peaks that represent profitable business opportunities can buckle, collapse, and morph into valleys that represent losses, and peaks that represent new opportunities can emerge rapidly.

Complex system properties:
Complexity science informs us that a system becomes “complex” and produces a “dancing,” rugged
landscape when the elements of the system show moderate rather than extreme degrees of the following four properties:
(a) diversity,
(b) adaptation,
(c) connectedness,
and (d) interdependence

The Strategic Alignment Quest

A firm’s strategy has two components: 

(a) corporate strategy and 

(b) competitive strategy.

The strategic alignment quest has focused primarily on competitive strategy.

The Integration Quest

The second quest of IS strategy research has been to achieve IT and business process integration within and across firm boundaries (Barki and Pinsonneaultc2005). 

The Sustained Competitive Advantage Quest

The third quest of IS strategy has been to sustain a firm’s competitive advantages. However, with the emergence of CABS and dancing, rugged competitive landscapes, sustaining competitive advantages has become increasingly difficult. 

Reframing the Three Quests of Information Systems Strategy for CABS
To remain fit, survive, and thrive in CABS, a firm must co-evolve with the dancing, rugged competi-
tive landscape. IS researchers have recognized the importance of turbulent environments and argued for firms to develop IT-enabled dynamic and improvisational capabilities and IT-enabled agility

Bibliography:

Tanriverdi, H., Rai, A., & Venkatraman, N. (2010). Reframing the Dominant Quests of Information Systems Strategy Research for Complex Adaptive Business Systems. Information Systems Research, 21(4), 822-834.

[Study] The Platform Organization: Recombining Strategies, Structures, and Surprises

In a rapid changing environment where frantic pace of technology change happens, fixed organizational arrangements or framework can effectively optimize resource utilization. Sharpless organization (Generating new form by recombination) does settle the situation.

Characteristics of Chameleonic organization:
1.  Flexibility
2. Movement
3. Transformation
By 1. Interecting; 2. Penetrating; 3. Collating different organizational arrangements

It looks fragmented and intertwined; still it may be the only form capable of surviving in a high-tech
industry where a monolithic, rigid business identity would not seem as able to cope with the frantic pace of technological change.

The organizational structures which support the technology strategy must be able to cope simultaneously with the management of discontinuities and incremental innovation.
This has put, over time, a premium on the firm's ability to develop multiple, often inconsistent competencies, to deal with the emerging, divergent technological and organizational requirements (Burgelman 1983). As a result, existing structures, procedures, and schemes which influence action
are usually under severe strain, and managers end up feeling they are operating in a very fuzzy organizational environment.

The goal of Chameleonic organization:
In different natures, it meets frequent, sudden and radical changes, not just in products, markets and technologies, but in the very business identity and industries to which it temporarily belongs.

Trend in product life cycle:
The distinctive aspect,  the product—life cycle is extremely short and is becoming increasingly shorter. Thus, these companies must migrate from one industry to another, and even create new ones, at a pace which would be very fast even for simply implementing product changes within a stable technological horizon.

R&D guideline:The problem of defining the mission and direction of R&D, and in general terms, the global technology strategy, does not consist in choosing an alternative among various product lines or markets, but more radically, in repeatedly asking the question,  "what business are we in," i.e., what is the identity of the product, the market, the production process, and the boundaries between what should be done internally and what has to be procured externally, knowing that many of the core innovations are in the hand of external suppliers


Management guideline:
Though managers picture themselves as busy in decision making (forecasting, planning and selecting alternative courses of action) according to the strategy models in good currency, they would be better described as engaged in "sensemaking" (Weick 1979), i.e., in relentlessly picking up the pieces and left-overs of the "broken cosmologies" (past plans, marketing choices, goals, and outlooks) and trying to paste them together in order to make a new sense of t he emerging technologies, markets and industries they are enacting

Bibliography:

Ciborra, C. U. (1996). The platform organization: Recombining strategies, structures, and surprises.Organization science, 7(2), 103-118.

[Study] Embracing change with extreme programming

After reading through the article, I had some thoughts:

1. Planning game: Customers decide the scope and timing of releases
=> It is difficult even for PM to perform planning for scope and time. Besides, customers are ambitious so they may try to get the most out of the programmer by setting unrealistic scope and time.


2. On-site customer: A customer sits with the team full-time
=> A assigned customer to the team is currently a staff within a company. This staff must clearly know everything about the requirements so they must be a key staff in the company. It is hard to get them full-time in the project and remove them completely from what they are currently doing.

Bibliography:

Beck, Kent. "Embracing change with extreme programming." Computer 32.10 (1999): 70-77.

[Case] The Scrum proposal

Please refer to the Link for the case made by my lecturer.

After reading the case, I identified some significant points (P):

P1. Most of the engineer's time is for support and maintenance
P2. There is an increasing trend for the support queue activity overtime (Y1 - Y4)
P3. The current project development process is not suitable for existing product maintenance. Management team and engineers propose Agile iterative development lifecycle.
P4. Agile raises an significant concern related to current certified ISO9001.

My recommendations and support arguments include:

For P1 and P2: I don't see the increase in support and maintenance time is an issue because it is an increasing in customer's demands. The demands come with revenue. The company can make  money through supporting and maintenance fee. One of my client back in Vietnam did recognize this opportunity and turn it into revenue by divide a product for a customer to a specific team. The team will follow the product to the end (Development to Maintenance). By this way, each team becomes a profit center. In fact, my client reduced the software package and installation fee (one time revenue) to attract more customers and charge more in support and maintenance activities (recurring revenue).


For P3 and P4: Agile is suitable for support and maintenance as well as ISO9001 with the following modifications:

1. Ensure placed controls and documentations throughout the product development and maintenance processes. (ISO9001)
2. Product for a specific customer is now allocated to team. Team lead now will become review bugs, customer requests and assign to the next sprint or iteration.
3. Pay more attentions on SLA agreement in term of fee, scope for support, time, and quality of the patches.

[Research project] Brainstorming some methods for project requirements gathering

Our group [Me and Phuong Tran] wants to understand the "Dublin Bus" Mobile application (App).

Look:

Still-Photo Survey:
How: Follow a planned shooting script and capture pictures of the people using the App
Why: uncover patterns of behavior and perceptions

Fly on the Wall:
How: Observe and record behavior within its context, without interfering with people's activities when they use app.
Why: see what people actually do within real contexts

Learn:

Combine observation with Character Profiles method
How: Based on observations of real people, develop character profiles
Why: Communicate the value to different concepts to various target groups.

Ask:

Extreme User Interviews: 
How: individuals who are extremely familiar or completely unfamiliar with the product and ask them to evaluate
Why: highlight key issues

Combine Interviews with Five Whys method
How: Asking "Why?" questions in response to five consecutive answers
Why: force people to examine and express the underlying reasons


Appendices:

Questions for the interview:

Have you ever use Dublin  Bus Application on mobile?

If yes, 

[Ask them use the App to perform their regular tasks]

Would you mind if I film your activities?

[If yes, Film their activities when they use the App] [If no, observe]

How many times per week do you use it?

Can you tell me something about the App's functions that you prefer? and some that you don't like and want to improve?

[Apply Five Whys method] for each answer.

Have you ever use other similar app for checking bus/train times, locations, buying bus/train tickets?

Are there any function in other apps that you love? Are there any function that you want Dublin Bus app to have?

[Apply Five Whys method] for each answer.

If no, 

[Assist the interviewee to use the App]

and perform the above steps

Besides, here are some extra brainstorming ideas for "Try":

Try: 

Empathy Tools: 
How: tools like clouded glasses + weighted gloves to experiences the processes
Why: prompt an empathic understanding for users with disabilities or special conditions

=> voice commands

Experience Prototype:
How: quickly prototype a concept using available materials and use it to learn from a simulation
Why: reveal unanticipated issues or needs + evaluate ideas

=> build a app prototype

Bibliography:

Ideo Product Development. IDEO Method Cards: 51 Ways to Inspire Design; Learn, Look, Ask, Try. Ideo, 2003.

[Study] On the assessment of the strategic value of information technologies: conceptual and analytical approaches

With years of intensive research, no consensus about strategic value of IT reached. This may due to lack of divergent theoretical frameworks applied.

2 predominant conceptual bases are:

1. Resource-centered view (IT as a strategic resource that when combined with other strategic resources directly influence org. performance)
• Production function view: Scale of IT resources [size of IT investments]: consider IT capital and labor to be independent production inputs that can affect a broad range of financial measures.
• Resource-based view: Scope of IT resources [nature or uniqueness of IT applications]: resources confer a competitive advantage to a firm only when they are firm-specific, valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable.

=> strategic resource can produce important benefits for firms (reducing costs and improving revenues)

1. Contingency-based view (IT business alignment)

• IT resources per se may add little value and play a major role in improving a firm's performance only when they are planned and used to support a firm's main strategic objectives.
• A possible explanation for the inconsistent findings presented could be that different studies have used different approaches to conceptualize SAIT and measure its effect on org. performance.

=> fit: the degree to which the needs, demands, goals, objectives, and/or structure of one component are consistent with the needs, demands, goals, objectives and/or structure of another component. Extent:

• Adaptation (personal - org)
• Compatibility (individual-org)
• Assimilation (org - org)
• Coupling (inter-exter org)

=> focusing on how IT strategy is developed and implemented in conjunction with business strategy => which the IT portfolio of IT applications is aligned with the business objectives of the firm.

The relationship between alignment and organizational performance is typically assumed to be linear.

The dynamics of unpredictable environments call for a research approach that can fully capture the relationship between bus. strategy, IT strategy and performance.

Components of SAIT:

1. Cost-reduction: most efficient producer (minimize operation
2. Quality-improvement:
3. Revenue-growth:

=> IT alignment with cost reduction strategy generate more immediate and tangible benefits for firms than IT-strategy alignment that aims to facilitate revenue growth.
=> extracting benefits from strategic IS resources designed to help firms grow is more difficult than extracting benefits from operational IS resources developed to cut costs.

Bibliography:

Oh, Wonseok, and Alain Pinsonneault. "On the assessment of the strategic value of information technologies: conceptual and analytical approaches."MIS quarterly (2007): 239-265.

[Shadow IT Research] Managing Shadow IT Instances–A Method to Control Autonomous IT Solutions in the Business Departments

Following design science research and guided by a multiple-case study, this research aims towards the design and evaluation of a theoretically justified and practically applicable method to manage Shadow IT

The importance of this long-standing phenomenon rises due to

• increasingly tech-savvy users, 
• easy access to web-based solutions, 
• and available end user computing tools

Occurrences of Shadow IT are applications, spreadsheet and database solutions, cloud services, mobile devices, hardware, support structures, or a combination thereof.

Shadow systems, feral systems, grey IT, rogue IT and hidden IT are equivalent keywords
used in literature for Shadow IT

RQ1: What measures are necessary to manage Shadow IT instances? 
RQ2: How can organizations define adaptive and efficient IT Governance structures for autonomous IT solutions in the business departments?

Shadow IT characteristics can be viewed similar to those of informal organizational structures 

Both, Shadow IT and informal structures, differ from formal rules. They result from peoples’
need to fill gaps in formal structures to cope with tasks. Both phenomena usually emerge spontaneously, driven by employees on the bottom-level.

Therefore, research examines approaches to access, measure, evaluate, and control informal structures, which can be applied to manage Shadow IT

This decision results from two options on how the business side can fulfill an IT need: Either implementing a solution autonomously or formally initiating a demand at the IT department. This option represents a make-or-buy decision. Transaction Cost Theory is used to explain why institutions insource or outsource capabilities.

Step 1: Identify Shadow IT Instances in the Business Processes

Step 2: Evaluate the Shadow IT Instances 

Step 3: Control the Shadow IT Instances

Further research on userdriven IT innovations may focus on the promotion of business-located processes, the distribution of innovations into the organization and the hand-over process to the IT department for established solution.

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: applications, spreadsheet and database solutions, cloud services, mobile devices, hardware, support structures, or a combination thereof.
Approach: user-driven
How: Transaction Cost Theory

=> good article to have ideas for future research

Bibliography:

Zimmermann, Stephan, Christopher Rentrop, and Carsten Felden. "Managing Shadow IT Instances–A Method to Control Autonomous IT Solutions in the Business Departments." (2014).

[Shadow IT Research] Bringing IT out of the shadows

Article's argument:

Shadow IT: describe the use of unauthorised applications within a corporate environment, and the processing or storage of business information on unapproved devices.

So shadow IT is not a new problem.

The terms ‘rogue’ and ‘shadow’ imply illicit behaviour and malicious motives.
However, most instances of shadow IT are driven by convenience.

Using Tools

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: software
Approach: Using Tools to control
How: Using Tools

=> dont like the idea of using tools as its fixed

Bibliography:
Walters, Richard. "Bringing IT out of the shadows." Network Security 2013.4 (2013): 5-11.

[Shadow IT Research] Shadow IT A view from behind the curtain

1. What type of Shadow IT software is used in organisations?
2. What are the IT risks for organisational information security when using Shadow IT software?
3. Does the IT risk increase when using open-source Shadow IT software? (Yes)
4. What is the motivation to use Shadow IT?

The study used triangulation approach [The idea is that one can be more confident with a result if different methods lead to the same result] to investigate the Shadow IT phenomena and its findings open Pandora's Box as they lay a new picture of what Shadow IT looks like from the software perspective

Risk bring by Shadow IT: Information Security (Most significant), Compliance issues, wasted time, inconsistent business logic, increased risks for data loss or leaks, wasted investment, etc.,

Research Methods:

• 1. in-depth analysis of organisational Shadow IT software. Fortune 500 firm that has over 10,000 employees. data collected from the firm's endpoints where each endpoint (PC, laptop, etc.) was scanned and all installed software was retrieved
• 2. four practitioner surveys found online. 
• 3. Case study
• 4. Literature review

Findings:

The report argues that employees are much more tech savvy than they were a decade ago. This fact also means that employees will have no issue bypassing IT departments.  => educate them better on [the] risks that their acts may have’ => raising awareness not providing policies that noone reads

• 1) Risks behind Shadow IT use are high; 
• 2) Data integrity and account information represent the biggest threats; 
• 3) Employees are aware of the possible risks when using Shadow IT; 
• 4) IT policies are either non-existent or unclear to employees; and 
• 5) Employees, despite their knowledge about the risk, continue their behaviours.

1. What type of Shadow IT software is used in organisations?

1) productivity software (e.g. Google apps),
2) communication software (e.g. Skype),
3) utility tools (e.g. CCleaner or 7-Zip),
4) internet browsers (e.g. Firefox), and
5) PDF tools (e.g. PDFCreator)
6. Greynet: Network applications installed by the end users that use evasive techniques to traverse the network.

4. What is the motivation to use Shadow IT?
employees extensively use Shadow IT software that leverages their productivity and enables faster
and better collaboration and communication. Moreover, employees believe that they are not doing anything wrong and simple naivete is driving their behaviours

Restriction is a valid countermeasure, but not a solution, to Shadow IT challenges that can become
opportunities for the entire organisational ecosystem

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: software, hardware, other solution
Approach: user-driven
How: not mentioned

=> good article to have some background understanding of Shadow IT

Bibliography:

Silic, Mario, and Andrea Back. "Shadow IT–A view from behind the curtain." Computers & Security 45 (2014): 274-283.

[Shadow IT Research] Shadow IT Is Out of the Closet

Article's  Argument:

Cloud is one of the reason for the rise of Shadow IT

Line of business are now getting their own official technology budgets for non-standard software products. Shadow IT has been freshly-labeled "departmental IT"

IT department is busy with maintaining operating systems and reacting to the demand of increasingly tech-savvy user community.

Talk about the idea of small, controlled projects is more efficient.

Apply structured taxonomy to propose IT initiatives based quantifiable metrics like complexity, breadth of need and ROI.

IT can transform itself from "we build everything" to "here's how to build it", and thus be viewed as a competency center focused not on technology, but on process creation and refinement. IT delivering straightforward development methodologies to business departments, coaching them on how to build their own systems, streamlines deployment, ensures domain expertise, eases organizational tensions, and drives economies of scale.

Comments

Define Shadow IT: software, 
Approach: user-driven
How: focus on process, development methodologies for business departments, coaching

=> good article with ideas of new development methodologies, coaching

Bibliography:
Dyché, Jill. "Shadow IT Is Out of the Closet." Harvard Business Review (2012).

[Shadow IT Research] Shadow IT Evaluation Model

Shadow IT: supplement of "official" IT by several, autonomous developed IT systems, processes and organizational units

Different from EUC (End user computing) - which is initiated and supported by IT department.

Young employees with a strong bond to the usage of IT
Increasing focus on compliance and risk management


=> integrated methodology to handle shadow IT

=> IT asset portfolio (map the technical quality and the business value of IS) could be used as a starting point. I set of criterias are given: 

• A. Relevant
• B. Quality
• C. Size
• Initiative potential
• Parallelism

=> the criterias must be discussed between IT and Business

=> Assess the risk and opportunities of shadow IT have been regards
=> the evaluation model criterias can be develop further into "User-Driven IT"

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: software, hardware, services, processes organizational units
Approach: user-driven
How: provide a evaluation criterias, meeting between IT and Business for discussion

=> good article with ideas of discussion between IT and Business

Bibliography:

Rentrop, Christopher, and Stephan Zimmermann. "Shadow IT evaluation model." Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2012 Federated Conference on. IEEE, 2012.

[Shadow IT Research] Management Matters: Shadow IT

Article's arguments:

User want to use the latest application, wireless technologies

The problem with shadow IT poses security risks

Fighting Shadow IT could be counterproductive. => Agencies that institute prohibitive policies will face substantial pushback. (IT controls)

Find the right balance between individual productivity and the needs of the IT department
=> Just highlighting the stuff you cannot do is a bad way
=> create "white lists" of approved applications and popular web destinations

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: software, hardware, services
Approach: IT controls
How: create checklists for what can do, what cannot

=> cannot create the huge checklist like that

Bibliography:

Noyes, Andrew. "Management Matters: Shadow IT."Government Executive 10 (2007).

[Shadow IT Research] The Upside of Shadow IT

Article's arguments:

Employees have been doing an end run around corporate IT using shadow IT systems

Systems built and used in companies without organizational approval

IT controls less than 50% of corporate technology expenditures

CIO are embracing and even encouraging so-called rogue IT.

IT focuses on what data the application use, whether or not an application is mission-critical, and who is in the best position to know the application is running properly.

=> forcus on managing risk

IT getting ahead of technologies, users will now come to us when they want to use something like Basecamp, when they do, we tell them about Central Desktop, similar cloud-based project management service but with better integration into the enterprise.

=> save money, IT as an initiative

Redefine IT's Role as Educator and Policymaker

Sales and marketing department (front-line workers)

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: systems type
Approach: user-driven
How: manage risks, educate users

=> good article with ideas

Bibliography:

King, Julia. "The upside of shadow IT."Computerworld 46.8 (2012): 18-23.

[Shadow IT Research] Bringing IT out of the shadows

Author's arguments:

Shadow IT – where business users implement a solution outside the official corporate architecture
without consulting the IT department – can include everything from the use of free online services to departmental decisions to adopt SaaS solutions, let alone the actual importing of users’ own hardware devices.

After all, the prime driver for shadow IT is the desire to do one’s job effectively and to use whatever
tools can help – so an IT department that forbids this is no-one’s friend.

Policy-based networking offers a very useful solution to this dilemma.

The IT Department is now relieved of the need to play the heavy-handed policing role

Comments:

Define Shadow IT: software, services, harware
Approach: IT controls
How: make policies, control networks

Policy is only a way of restricting users. => IT department that forbids this is no-one’s friend

Bibligography:
Johnson, Steve. "Bringing IT out of the shadows." Network Security 2013.12 (2013): 5-6.