February 2002 Ackoff Center for Advancement of Systems Approaches

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Research Circle on Managing IT:Challenges in

Emergent Organizations

Joel Adler Ph.D

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Agenda/Contents What is a Research Circle? Circle Participants Circle Activities Circle Focus Areas Value Proposition Summarized How to Participate

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What is a circle? Circles bring together practicing experts in the field with

academic experts and researchers to address a central theme of interest and challenge to the business.

Circle projects provide an opportunity to leverage a diverse source of talent and experience not available within the corporate boundaries.

Circle discussion sessions and lecture series introduce new approaches and ways of addressing issues.

Circle participants determine the focus of the circle. The goal of a circle is to generate ideas and solutions that

can help improve a company’s ability to manage complex IT Challenges

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Circle Academic Sponsors The University of Pennsylvania :

The Ackoff Center for Advanced Systems Approaches

Executive Masters program of Technology Management (Penn Engineering & and the Wharton School)

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Circle Participants

CIO’s and their senior staffs from many industries

Organizations with compelling desire to address issues

Key topical experts and academicians

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Circle Activities Circle Practice Research Quarterly at Penn for One Day:

Education Sessions 1/2 day Research Circle 1/2 day

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Circle Research Research to develop best practices

Case studiesDiagnostic tools Industry analysesPractice guidelinesEtc.

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Quarterly morning Education Sessions

Lead by authorities in the topic of interest

Substantive,digestible and applicable Topics chosen by subscribers 6 to10 attendees per subscriber $12.5K to $25K/yr depending on firm

size $25K for sales greater than $1 billion

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Quarterly afternoon Research Sessions

Research projects chosen by subscribers Team for each research project

Systems and Executive Masters students A topic scholar/authority supervises Direct project/program supervision- Joel Adler QA for systems principles – R. Ackoff or J. Pourdehnad Joint paper authorship by team

Projects .5 to 1 year duration $12.5K to $25K/yr depending on firm

size, $25K for sales greater than $1 billion

2 participants per company First viewer privileges

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Quarterly afternoon Research Sessions

Agenda Facilitated by Joel Adler Results presented by leading scholar

& student Sponsor adjustments to research

agenda Inter-company discussion and forum

on topic of choice

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Circle Theme for 2002

IT & organizational evolution Managing difficult IT management

challenges generated by Technology Enabled Organizational Transformation

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Objectives Improve current practices for IS

planning and IS Development Concentrated focus on managing IT

driven organizational change Address both currently common, and

emerging organizational structures spawned by technology innovation

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Why this is needed IT projects fail consistently Best practices often don’t help such as,

more user involvementmore complete requirements specs

Not much guidance available on IT project coordination with organizational change

Deeper problem may be related to:Some organizations are inherently “emergent”,

others increasingly so,facilitated by IT and Telecoms

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Some terminology “Emergent” organizations are “complex systems” “Complex systems” are “chaotic” & behave unpredictably “Agility” is the ability to adapt to unpredictable change Limitless B to B e-commerce partnerships become

“interprises” “Interprises” are “emergent”

Complex systems not the same as “Complicated” systems which have a very broad and/or

deep problem scope but are not necessarily “complex”., e.g. artificial intelligence and robotics.

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Factors of Complexity and Challenge to IT organizations

Unpredictable behavior and events create unstable backdrop: mergers, reorganizations, leadership changes, market factors.“Complexity theory” explains some unpredictable behavior.

Technological innovation in IT and Telecoms create emergent organizations: Web enabled enterprises, interprises, B-to-B ecommerce partnerships, supply chain innovations.

Distinction between “user” of technology and technologist are blurred

Organizational & Systems “Agility” is required to adapt to unpredictable change

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Topical Themes Identified to Date -

IT Organizational evolution questions: Do today’s organizational models support the

blurring of lines between business and technology?

Is a new IT organizational model required to keep up with the pace of technical change?

What are the key changes that are most likely to be the challenge to the IT organization?

Organizational models-is there one that yields a higher ROI on IT investment?

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Topical Themes Identified to Date

IT Organizational evolution research areas: Case studies of IT facilitated emergent

organizations Future prevailing business organizational

structures Industry sector differences? New IT management/leadership priorities

Developing agility!! Facilitating technologies and their timetables Best practice guidelines for:

IT driven user organizational change IT organizations

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Topical Themes Identified to Date

Decision support systems Delivering faster to meet the demand for

information Application Successes and Challenges: Lessons

learned across industries Advanced technical solutions (are they

industry specific?) Complicated but not complex challenges, e.g.

Medical diagnosis support.

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Topical Themes Identified to Date

IT Management tools in highly changeable emergent organizations

Education: Creating IT leaders that can navigate the change

Do metrics work in fluid and emergent organizations? Prevalent metrics and controls. Is a new scorecard for IT management needed?

Characteristics of new IT planning & IS development tools? Alternative processes and controls:

What’s used: SEI/CMM, ISO 9000… Getting pay back. (How to accelerate adoption to deliver

results with less overhead.)

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Topical Themes Identified to Date

Technical tools for emergent organizations - what value?

1: Open interfaces with content standards 2: Knowledge management tools for coopitition 3: OOPS for limitless process granularity 4: Very high level/fast development tools Is current technology OK for simple process orgs? Otherwise are more advanced tools needed?

e.g. Model driven architectures, Metamodelling, Adaptive Object Models, Knowledge Sharing Management…

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Systems Research Principles

Solving the “wrong problem right” often creates worse problems

Too see the right problem, i.e., “the mess”, understand the:

The entire context of the problem The relationship between the sub-problems

Then attack the right problem or sub-problem first Reducing problem difficulty always the goal Total solution often is elusive.

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Circle Value Proposition Obtain ideas and solutions generated

through interaction with CIOs and practitioners from diverse industries.

Direct access to research and insight offered by academicians and researchers in the field

Collaborative development of solutions to issues that the Circle selects

Applied innovation and access to emerging best practices

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Getting InvolvedInitial group meeting

Attended by prospective subscribers Review administration of circle Establish Research Agenda

Call Joel Adler, EMTM and Ackoff Center,

215-898-2896 to attend initial group meeting