The Iceberg – Reflections to the present challenges using IT systems

IT systems of today are very complex as the use of data has increased dramatically due to the available technology. Proper IT Design is very expensive and time consuming to implement whether it is on-site or as a
hosted service – unfortunately there is no shortcuts available if you want a stable and flexible IT Platform supporting your business activities.

You will have to see your IT Platform as an Iceberg – the majority is hidden under the surface.

Here in my second article I will address why the Management Team have to take ownership of securing the match between the Business Strategy, Business Processes, Data Processes and Legal requirements.

Education is a must – delivered as continuous learning

Before continuing I would like to step aside and address one very important activity no matter what you are dealing with: EDUCATION or as some prefer to label it: CONTINUOUS LEARNING.

Everybody needs education matching the role they are expected to fulfil. However it should be common sense, that education (outside the mandatory topics) as an ongoing activity will have a positive impact to the culture within the organization and the general awareness.

Time consuming? Yes – Costly? Not when you count the hours lost when a resource has a lack of knowledge – Investment? Definitely as the more knowledge shared among your resources, the less risk you have for mistakes (but this also requires an open business culture…)

Business Strategy

Over the years I have seen a Business Strategy process being handled as a “Top => Bottom => Top” process with the result, that the bottom level in the organization did understand his/hers role in the big picture and the expectations for the next year related to performance targets. When you meet employees from this organization you meet proud people fully aware of their role in the big picture.

I have also seen the Business Strategy process being handled as a management activity, where the lowest level engaged in the process happened to be the department manager. One outcome that I have seen, when handling the process this way, turned out to be a customer satisfaction index heading the wrong way.

In my humble opinion the best Business Strategy process is the “Top => Bottom => Top” process, consisting a 5 year strategy at top level, a 2 year strategy at medium detailed level and a 1 year detailed action plan (created by the business units), where there are a direct relation to the targets in the 2 year and the 5 year strategy.

Documenting the Business Process is no simple activity, it requires valuable man hours and needs to be maintained. As there are no direct measurable relation to the generated revenue, this activity often is given less if any attention as long as there are no critical errors.

When referring to the Data Process I have in my mind any manual or by an application action like data captured in the business process and data captured electronically, data manipulation executed manually/ electronically and any data exchanged with other systems – manually or electronically.

Today most of the companies are using several IT Applications to support their business teams. In order to achieve the benefits then many of these applications are exchanging data via interfaces or by manual input from printed forms. Technically no big deal, but how is this documented and matched to the Business Process and the Legal requirements?

My understanding of the role as Enterprise Architect is that this resource was meant to have the full overview within the business of active applications, interfaces, which data exchanged internally and externally and where they are stored.

Unfortunately this role turned up on the list of head counts to spare during the past decades. With the upcoming GPDR regulation many companies would have benefited if they had kept the Enterprise Architect position alive.

Any organizational change, i.e. acquisitions, staff reductions or changes in Legal requirements requires a review of both the Business Process and the Data Process.

As this design requires a major investment in hardware, software licenses, controlled process for implementing changes and execute testing, i.e. version control management, then many companies have chosen to live with two environments; “a low-budget development/test/QA” and Production.

This choice has increased the risk for issues related to data quality, security and stability.

With the technical solutions available today then the hardware cost should not be an major issue any more.

In my opinion then a licensing model from the vendors, where the business can assign a reasonable number of “low-cost” licenses for use in the Development, Test and Quality Assurance environments will be beneficial for both vendor and customer.

Review and Quality Assurance are strategic priorities
I have mentioned a couple of times that I believe reviews are important and I have talked about the Quality Assurance process. I have to admit that I am no better that many other – I was of the opinion that an audit was time consuming and that the time could be spend more wisely. On the other hand then most of my audits turned out with no errors, a few comments and my customer got a stable solution implemented, so the team must have been motivated to things right.

With the present treat scenario the audit could be your lifesafer. Sometimes a question like: “Why is this solution not using the “Best Practise” for the industry?” would make you aware of a potential risk.

In my objective then reviews, audits and the Quality Assurance process cover critical strategic activities – unfortunately not measurable on the End-of-Month financial report, but errors are very costly to repair when things have gone bad.

In my next article I intend to give the reader my point of view on where I see a benefit using some of the global reference models issued by ISACA, Open Group and UK Government.

This article was published initially on LinkedIn on July 28, 2017 and updated on October 19, 2019.

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Thank you for having read this article – hope you have enjoyed it and that it has given you some ideas of where to start improving your own business or individual role.

Best wishes for the future.