IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

Qualifiers

• IT Projects vs Business Projects: though all IT projects or IT-enabled projects are ultimately business projects, we will use the term IT projects to underline the fact that IT is the enabler (as opposed to, 'non-IT' or business projects like, for example, building a new factory).

• IT vs IS: Though some organizations distinguish between IT (Information Technology, or the operations group that manages the infrastructure and 'keeps the lights on') and IS (Information Systems, or the development groups in contact with the business and responsible for developing and delivering production applications), such a distinction would be overkill for this book. We therefore use the general term IT to refer to the entire IT department. This happens to correspond to how the rest of the business views the IT department anyway.

• New model? What new model? In this book we will often refer to 'the new model' or 'the proposed model' as an alternative to the traditional model. Most of the recommendations however, e.g. iterative development or portfolio-based investment planning, are anything but new. Indeed, most readers will probably already have come across them in the course of their work, by reading books or articles or by attending industry events. However, such tips, techniques and approaches are usually presented as 'point solutions' to a particular problem, e.g. to increase the quality of requirements or to increase business alignment – but rarely as part of an overall solution which ...