The Future
I've created a new lecture note for my MIS in Transportation class, The Future.
The concluding portion of this note is:
"The fourth principle for applying information technology is, “Information systems are technology plus process plus tools plus skills plus culture.” Examination of the antecedents of this phrase would reveal that I did not always write it this way. I expect that if one examined a consensus of experts on the significant issues associated with information systems (once called data processing systems) over the last four decades, one would see changes in this list also.
The argument being advanced in this lecture note is that while significant and radical change is likely to occur in the underlying technology (i.e., the components described above) simply because it seems to have its own momentum, the significant and radical change that must take place is in the processes, tools, and skills with which we make change our ally, at best, and cope with it, at a minimum. At worst, of course, we fail on both counts and perish.
I have strongly suggested the processes, tools, and skills that we have long held to be satisfactory are becoming less so; that the big bang theory of information systems has outlived its usefulness; that continuous improvement, innovation, and the rise of the COMS, collaboration, and short SIDAL cycles will be beneficial to the health of the enterprise.
Alluded to, but now needing to be made explicit, are people as the critical success factor. I repeat here;
“Managing the future is beginning to center around the quality of people, and the degree to which they understand the characteristics of the organization to which they belong and are empowered to act on that understanding.”
The role of the educational systems, particularly those in higher education, will be to produce a graduate attuned to the times, able to step into leadership positions, and with an uncommon integration of technical, business, and relationship skills, will be paramount. My sense is that there is significant advancement to be made on this front.
The products of a high performance educational system need an equally enlightened enterprise framework, particularly with respect to the management of the human asset. The value of people to an enterprise is almost never accounted for, only their costs. This needs to change.
Innovation and continuous improvement would seem, on the face of it, to be oil and water. But I wonder whether this is indeed true. The future of information systems may well lie in aligning the strengths in each of these concepts. "
James Drogan
2 Comments
Reader Comments (2)
The end result is an IT group that lacks adult supervision internally and a business group that's unwilling to take responsibility.
What's needed, IMHO, is a management system that not only rank-orders projects but reserves space for strategic investigations but, and most importantly, jointly commits all the stakeholders involved in a project, space or strategic initiative.
A corollary to all that is the requisite for the appropriate skills and liaison processes.
My MIS course takes students through this structure, focusing on the issues that middle and upper management need to confront whilst on their way to an investment decision. The Future wonders about how future developments will affect this structure, but it talks little about how the strategy process might itself change.
There is a module on MIS Strategy in my course, but I have not constructed an accompanying lecture note. I rely on the text here. Much of what I have to say in this course is about the development of strategy. Hence, a lecture note may be redundant. On the other hand, I have recently been provoked to reconsider at this matter by a short report from McKinsey. There is a brief post on this (A Discussion of The Next Frontier in IT Strategy -- A McKinsey Survey).
I don’t think that developing the management system of which you speak is difficult – getting management acceptance is the issue.