Like the truth in the epic series of the X-files pretty much anything of what you need to conduct and improve your daily work is already out there. One of the instruments that holds more than meets the eye is the IT Strategic Impact Grid that was introduced by Nolan and McFarlan back in 2005. Enhancing its usability to other levels than originally intended, it provides you with a great and easy way to improve your overall companies IT performance.
IT outcome is produced by different components. A business information system employs people, information, processes, applications, communication and innovation. All representing capital your company puts to work to achieve its projected results. One of the insights that greatly aid answering how, when and where to invest your limited resources in this context is the IT Strategic Impact Grid (Nolan/McFarlan):
The IT Strategic Impact Grid (Nolan/McFarlan), Harvard Business Review 2005.
Depicted in a Harvard Business Review article on a suggested framework to develop IT policies, it clearly visualises the considerations to make when deploying IT for business purposes. Four modes show where your IT is at, if put against operational and competitive ability need. Depending on the outcome different governing approaches are suggested.
Great stuff! Pitty though that applicability of thought is mainly restricted to the strategic level of IT talk.
Why not broaden its perspective and use it as a baseline consideration in day tot day decision making on all organizational IT levels. Quite easy to do in substituting information technology by your subsequent activity on the axes of the matrix.
It would stimulate and cultivate the overall business involvement of your workforce, raise understanding and awareness on (if and) how their work contributes to business and IT goals, stimulate cross border thinking and cooperation, identification of problems, bottlenecks and blanks as it would help increase innovative thinking. Benefits large and small at no or just marginal costs.
Practical: make the consideration part of your design documents, reports, manuals, business cases, portfolio thinking (1) , meeting minutes, personnel assessments and development plans. Consider contemplating variances that enhance the insights you need.
Be inventive, decisive, see what works and what not. Let your people help in developing an overall practice that works. And of course as usual, keep it SMART.
(1) McFarlan already did that for you back in 1981 regarding IT portfolio Management in an article called Portfolio Approach To Information Systems, published in the Harvard Business Review at the time.
