VSJ – May 2005
Symposium Report
As regular readers know, Council member Paul Lynham traditionally writes a report on the annual symposium to which we devote the whole of ‘IAP News’. Here’s this year’s.
The annual symposium of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers was held on Thursday, 11 March in Trinity House, Tower Hill, London. Mike Ryan, the Director General of the Institution began by calling for IT to be allowed to lead the way. He also noted that more business analysts are approaching the IAP as prospective members. The IAP is extending to businesses the partnerships that it has always had with academia. Mike went on to introduce this year’s chairman, David Morgan, a long-standing Council member of the Institution.
David introduced the first speaker, Peter Green, IT Director at the Daily Telegraph. Peter talked authoritatively about the Radiate Theory, which can be summarised as allowing IT to drive the business. From a legacy viewpoint, this might be seen as ‘the tail wagging the dog’. The concept of the theory is to make functional IT a business integration tool, allowing the integration of users, senior managers and business units.
Often, Business Unit Managers consider requests for new systems or IT upgrades only in terms of their relevance to that business unit, rather than to the business as a whole. Peter went on to give diagrammatic examples of the perception of a request from a sponsoring business unit (unit A), by other units within the organisation. For instance, “if the system can do X, then we will change our model to that of unit A”. “If unit A changes its model, it will cause our unit additional costs”. “The factory is unclear if it can keep up with the new model”. “Unit D loves the new model”.
Such requests can be managed by gathering all business units together for brainstorming sessions. The idea is to create a large map of the upsides and downsides. Each element can be expanded, so that several layers are produced. This can then help in deciding on the true benefits of the change and in fully costing it. Peter went on to show a simple formula that can be used.
As with any serious project, it must not only be correctly defined but also have a champion to give active support at board level. Peter gave some pointers to successfully implementing such changes, including an iterative approach, the importance of soft systems management and checking the validity of the statements of objectives and their continual review.
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