IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

3.2. In search of a pizza parlour manager

The only way round this 'it's not my problem' problem is to have an overall process owner responsible for ensuring that the sum of the processes adds up to produce a desirable outcome. In our pizza parlour example, this would of course be the store manager, whose job it is to produce the desirable outcome of increased sales.

In the traditional IT model of Figure 2.1, with its discrete sequential processes, each performed by different teams of specialists working on input from upstream, we are essentially faced with the equivalent of a pizza parlour with no manager to mind the store, in other words to coordinate the various processes so as to produce the desirable outcome of delivering business benefits.

The reason why no one is minding the store to ensure an overall desirable outcome from a BU or company perspective is that the definition of a desirable outcome rarely exists in practice. It exists in theory, since all IT investments are supposed to generate business value, ROI or process improvement, but because there usually isn't anyone responsible for obtaining and measuring it, it ultimately doesn't exist. And the reason no one is responsible for it is because it is assumed to be enshrined in the business case in the form of the ROI which was used to launch the project. Since the business case is taken at face value and all parties have committed to meeting it, it becomes implicitly cast in stone, hence there is no reason to ensure ...