Top management toolbox for managing corporate IT

Reviewer: David Gary Hill

New business applications play an increasingly important strategic role in corporations, but application development project risks can lead to disastrous results. This paper suggests a top management toolbox that consists of a series of check-and-balance management techniques designed to prevent project runaways and to deliver systems that support corporate strategy. The authors advocate the toolbox as a means to ensure the necessary general management control over IS management as well as IS projects individually and as part of a portfolio. Control ensures that technology progresses according to overall corporate strategy. The paper discusses both the locus and the method of control for managing three dimensions of risk—project size, staff experience with technology, and project structure. There is a need to balance the influence over projects both inside and outside the IS staff. The management toolbox complements this balancing at both a macro and a micro level. The macro level is general management control over the IS function without getting into project specifics, and the micro level is when general management becomes a partner with IS in steering critical IT projects. The toolbox specifies economic tools (such as budgeting) and managerial tools (such as a steering committee and feasibility analysis) for both the macro and the micro levels. An extension of the paper to include strategies for correcting—rather than just identifying—runaway projects would have been useful.