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Chapter 13
Leading the Information Systems Function
Objectives and Overview
organizational responsibilities of IS leaders. A major theme of this chapter, however, is that
effective IT decision-making requires some level of participation by every major organizational
unit and key business managers. The chapter content should also sensitize students to the
importance of having strong IS leaders who also have business skills and knowledge similar to
other corporate business leaders.
After a brief description of the CIO role (first mentioned in Chapter 1), governance designs for 1)
The chapters in Part I present in some detail the computer and communications technologies that
are relied on to effectively and efficiently deliver IT services, and the chapters in Part II describe
this technology foundation and focuses on some technology tradeoff decisions, chargeback
systems for IT services, and service level agreements (SLAs) for internal units, strategies for
managing computer user support (including policies and support services), and some special
issues associated with supporting telecommuters.
increasingly global economy: managing the IS function for a global organization and managing
IT outsourcing.
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Teaching Suggestions
Depending on the background and experiences of the students, instructors may wish to expand on
some of the topics in this chapter with additional materials. For the experienced IS student, for
example, some of the processes in the ITIL framework could be examined in detail. If the text is
If you are teaching a class of part-time graduate students, a useful assignment could be for
students to investigate how their organizations deal with some of the issues raised in this chapter.
For example, an individual student or team could examine the IS outsourcing strategy of an
organization or how an IS organization develops and monitors a chargeback system or SLAs.
This chapter also provides good background reading material in preparation for IS leaders as
Several of the cases at the end of Part IV provide in-depth examples of IS leader roles in
different organizational contexts:
Case IV-2: FastTrack IT Integration for the Sallie Mae Merger. This case demonstrates how
strong IS leaders from the acquired firm (USA Group) were able to successfully deliver a
complex systems integration project with minimal consultant expenses, despite their geographic
distance from the headquarters of the firm that acquired them (Sallie Mae).
Cases IV-3 and IV-4: IT Infrastructure Outsourcing at Schaeffer (A and B). This pair of
Chapter 13 Leading the Information Systems Function
One of the case studies is especially useful for discussing the different career paths available to
Case Study IV-7: Meridian Hospital Systems, Inc.: Deciding Which IT Company to Join, in
which an undergraduate student is deciding between working for a new IT startup versus an
established company in the IT industry.
Review Questions
1. Why has the IS leadership role in organizations become so important?
2. What benefits are associated with centralized governance of IT resources, and how do
these differ from those associated with decentralized governance?
Centralized governance of IT resources provides greater cost efficiencies when these resources
3. What are some of the IT service trade-off decisions that IT leaders face today?
4. What practices help ensure that the costs of providing an IT service are aligned with the
needs of business managers?
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5. What are the key objectives for managing IT applications from a portfolio perspective?
1.Make decisions about the development of new applications vs. maintaining existing legacy
6. Compare the Acceleration and Containment strategies for supporting user computing,
and provide a rationale for why a firm might choose one or the other.
Acceleration Strategy: Organization invests heavily in resources to support user computer with
7. Describe how a company policy could minimize a specific business risk associated with
user computing.
8.
personnel?
1. Ensure the right set of skill-sets is identified for the organizational needs, and the best people
are recruited for these needs
2. Annual Retention Rates for IT personnel: IS leaders should monitor their turnover rates based
9. What types of mechanisms can be used to help increase collaboration across business and
IS leaders?
Formal Groups Formally established councils or teams with specific linking or oversight
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10. What is a balanced scorecard approach, and why might it be useful for measuring
overall IS performance?
11. What are some of the global IS management challenges that face IS leaders today?
Country Telecommunications Infrastructures: Some countries do not have the
infrastructure to support seamless cross-national communications.
Legal and Security Considerations: Governmental regulations on technology transfers,
12. What are some of the potential benefits from outsourcing arrangements that need to be
carefully assessed?
Financial benefits: IT workforce supplies in nations with lower labor costs are attractive to reduce
the IT costs.
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13. What are some special issues associated with managing an offshore outsourcing
arrangement?
Discussion Questions
1. What mixture of education, skills, and experiences might be considered when an
organization chooses an executive to fill a chief information officer (CIO) position? Why
might the importance of these characteristics not always be the same?
Organizations with CIO positions consider IT decisions to be executive-level decisions.
Responsibilities of a CIO go beyond finding the right answers to technical problems. CIOs need
2. This chapter emphasizes the need for strong business/IT relationships for managing IT.
Describe what you think contributes to a strong cross-unit relationship and whether or not
you think it may be more important for managing IT than managing other business
functions.
An effective IS-business management partnership starts with a shared understanding of the IS
role in achieving business goals. Each partner needs to possess an understanding of the other
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3. What circumstances might lead an entire organization (or business unit) with a federal IT
governance design to change to a centralized IT governance design?
The enterprise-wide implementation of an ERP system may lead an organization to change from a
4. Identify
primary advantages associated with this business model.
[Note: Many large organizations have such units, some with IT functions. Students might start
with examples found at Wikipedia (last accessed January 2011):
5. Find an article on a green computing initiative. What potential benefits were associated
with the initiative, and were they achieved?
[Note: Examples available by Q4 of 2010 include:
6.
leaders. Why do you think this happens, and what might an IS leader do to alleviate them?
7. Describe a circumstance under which you think it will be difficult to enforce a corporate
such as a BlackBerry or iPhone (or
other type of handheld device or PDA).
A corporate standard on use of PDAs can be difficult to achieve due to personal preferences.
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8. If you were employed as a salesperson, but were asked to work from your home (as a
telecommuter) on days that you were not out in the field, what would you like, and dislike,
about this arrangement and what could the company do to address some of your
Telecommuting has a lot of advantages. Flexible hours, eliminating the commuting time and
9. If you were a chief marketing officer, what metrics might you use to evaluate the
performance of the IS organization in your company?
10. Research some ads for IT professionals in a company and/or geographic location that
you would like to work in. Which types of jobs would you be the most interested in, and
why?
11. Develop a list of pros and cons for an IS leader to consider when deciding whether or
not to outsource (a) its computer and network operations (e.g., data center, networks,
helpdesk) and (b) a large software development project. What are the differences (if any)
between your two lists, and why?
For computer and network operations
For large software development projects:
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12. Select one of the special challenges discussed for managing a global IS organization.
What types of education and training programs would you like to participate in to help you
better prepare for this type of challenge?
[Note: The following is