Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax.

972-97442444

Round Table Review Summary – Office of the CIO

(IT Governance, Portfolio Management, Demand Management, Resources

Management, Tools etc.)

Present at the meeting were user organizations from various industries.

Representatives of the organizations were: Office of the CIO and PMO department
managers, CIOs, development managers, applications managers and so on. The object
of the discussion was to table subjects with which most IT organizations deal, at
present, within the IT management framework, to share existing experience in this
field; and also to examine the maturity of existing tools.

• What does the importance of the Office of the CIO (ITG) stem from?

The organizations agreed that IT management is an important and key subject.

Increasing dependence of industries on IT requires IT organizations to cease being a
“black box” in the hands of management. Users currently want to know and
understand the allocation of moneys in IT and also the real return on the investment in
IT.
The phrase that best characterizes IT is: “the cobbler goes barefoot”… IT
organizations currently do not possess mature tools enabling them to extract all the
necessary knowledge for IT management. While IT is responsible for most resources
in the organization, there is still no true information, available at all times, as
regards the real position of resources. Now more than ever, IT is seeking information
online, which coordinates all data and events in order to obtain relevant information
beforehand, and not as a tool for the analysis of an event that has already taken place.

IT is in need of knowledge on all the resources at its disposal at any given moment,
and also, it needs to be able to identify any resource constituting a “bottleneck”. In
addition, IT must obtain a full picture as regards planning, budgets, status of existing
projects, orders, incidents and so forth. The existing tools for project and portfolio
management are not providing a full solution and do not constitute a true tool for
decision making, one that is capable of presenting problems to the CIO before they
actually happen. On the whole, these would be BI tools, which enable the required
information to be concentrated in a single place on the managers’ Dashboard.

One organization noted that IT is entering into the domain of portfolio management
following its handling of another subject: management of suppliers in strategic
outsourcing projects, including maintenance and change management. To that end,
special purpose tools have been constructed. Following collection and analysis of
data accumulated in the EPM system the CIO saw that in order to promote an
improvement in IT management, what was needed was a decision making support
tool, which would facilitate constant improvement both in inward visibility and in the
This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 1
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444
 Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax. 972-97442444

face presented to IT “customers”. IT must be managed like a business firm. The CIO
currently needs a Dashboard, showing him the principal IT indices, the progression of
major projects, and the utilization of infrastructures.

The IT unit is to be examined as a profit and loss unit to all intents and purposes: IT
expenses compared with commercial value, quality of IT services and so forth. Since
IT value is currently being painstakingly measured, a difficulty arises in obtaining
budgets for the internal needs of IT. Part of the profits of IT comes from the provision
of outsourcing services to customers, and another part from the implementation of
projects for customers. On the whole, IT is managed without sophisticated tools,
despite the fact that it operates in a very dynamic environment. Just like the
commercial organization, it must be prepared for constant business changes, budgets
and work plans sometimes being totally revamped following the acquisition of new
companies or due to competition with business rivals.

A global organization with a number of branches dispersed all over the world
describes a similar situation. The organization requires IT to show constant
rationalization (reduction of costs per employee). In a decentralized organization, too,
it is desirable to achieve central IT management. Correct to the present, the company
has departments that are perceived as profit sources, such as training centres, and
therefore it is easy for them to obtain budgets and resources. The object is to cause
the organization to perceive IT in a similar light, and hence, IT must be capable of
demonstrating its commercial value to the company. IT must start conducting
public relations campaigns for itself vis-à-vis the organization. As things stand, IT
is always at the tail end of the order of priorities. Sometimes absurdity reaches the
point that it is easier to obtain budgets for placement employees than to obtain
additional resources for IT.

The IT world has undergone an evolution which enables and even requires processes
to be automated within the IT units. Today more than ever, genuine IT management is
lacking: projects are not being properly managed, there is no genuine visibility of a
work plan, there are no orderly processes of investment prioritization, and there exists
no analytical capability as regards project status.

For this reason, it is important to examine tools for the management of IT processes: a
tool that will support IT decision making in the outlining of work plans and will
enable IT investments to be classified in accordance with the organization’s strategic
goals. IT is under pressure to reduce costs and resources even though requirements are
constantly mounting.

• Most common work practices in organizations, tools currently in use,

and recommendations

This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 2
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444
 Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax. 972-97442444

One organization stated that the Office of the CIO existed within its IT unit.
This office was responsible for the strategic IT plan, for contract management
and also for management of internal customer services at a high level of
transparency both in budgetary terms and in terms of the level of service.
Such activity is conducted with the aid of an HP Project and Portfolio
Management Centre (IT Governance of Mercury and the former Kintana)

The assimilation of IT Governance tools followed on from the understanding

that whereas every one works on his own private Excel sheets – there is no
one tool that coordinates all users’ requests, indicates the status of open
requests, supports the decision making and approval processes, and presents
all information in centralized format. Even after the work plan has been
finalised and executed, there can still be more efficient follow up of the
progression of realisations using the tool. People report on the completion of
the task, on the progression status and so forth. In addition, a Web product was
constructed which connected to the ITG for the reporting of hours. Hours are
reported in accordance with work packages, including completion of tasks.
In the final analysis, the assimilation of an ITG solution was not as successful
as hoped. An attempt was made at imposing upon this tool the matrix work
method already existing in the company. An attempt was also made to force
the tool to work precisely in accordance with existing work processes, which,
however, made it very cumbersome, with slow response times. In addition,
assimilation and training took a long time since it was difficult to alter the
habits of field personnel who were required to report on all their activity.
Managers want to obtain reliable information on the basis of the reports from
the field and it is therefore most important that the tool should be user friendly.
When a solution of this kind is assimilated, the company must take into
consideration not only the needs of management but also the convenience
of field personnel.

The solution incorporates 2 modules and a Dashboard, adapted to commercial

requirements and presented in the form of portals; Workbench - a Project-like
tool. It is a known fact that users prefer to work with MS Project and ITG
tools still do not interface well with Project. It is important to note that the
new version of Portfolio Centre offers much better synchronization and
export of the data, thus enabling users to continue to work with Project and
to view the entire picture properly with an ITG module for the management of
requests.

Correct to the present, the initiation of a new project passes through many
approval stages in ITG - which renders technical realization very cumbersome,
since numerous formats must be gone through en route. Participants
recommended simplifying the approval process. Complicated workflow does
This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 3
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444
 Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax. 972-97442444

not serve the best common interest; rather, it ultimately makes it difficult
for the person responsible for the overall process to advance. Customers
moreover recommend lowering the level of task reporting. The simpler and
the less cumbersome the process, the greater the likelihood that users will
put their shoulders to the wheel and that reliable data will be obtained.

Another important theme is that of connection to an ERP budget system (such

as Oracle Application), that is suited to outside customers’ projects, but does
not provide a solution for the organization’s internal projects. Moreover, an
organization that used PS of SAP stated that the solution was not suited to the
management of internal projects since it contained a great deal of non usable
information.

Users also recommended the use of a BAC product of Mercury which

provides excellent information on the status of the system. BAC is a product
that examines end user experience, verifies the transactions of the end user,
and reveals malfunctions which, in the past, would have been missed.

With a view to providing a solution to the difficulty of measuring

development quality, a software program has been developed that
examines the new software packages in accordance with predetermined
parameters of software quality. The parameters are set prior to the software
being forwarded for testing. This practise has succeeded in bringing about a
double-digit decrease in the number of incidents in manufacture. One example
of the relations between QA and the organization’s development personnel is
40:700.

Another organization revealed that it was at the final stage of assimilation of

the PSNext tool of Xioma, which had undergone success application in IT and
is about to be installed throughout the organization. This system enables all
concerns to report on the number of hours invested per project and per type of
activity: maintenance, new development and so forth. An analysis of the
investment of hours is made on a system level rather than on the level of the
individual employee. In addition, there is integration between the hours-
reporting system and PSNext. Hours-reporting is on the responsibility of the
designers and is made at the end of the day, since it has transpired that
reporting hours on a once-a-week basis is almost valueless. 97% of activity,
including reporting by contractors’ employees, is currently being reported in
the system, and the reliability of the reporting is being checked.

Reporting of hours in accordance with activity brought to light inefficient

processes, and therefore, following use of the system and Dashboard of critical
indices, IT contrived to improve many work processes and to bring about a
This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 4
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444
 Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax. 972-97442444

reduction of the percentage that was being directed to maintenance activity as

compared to development activity from 70% to 40%. The IT budget is
currently divided into 30% maintenance, 20% CR (change request) – requests
that were not pre-planned, and 50% development.
Demand management and follow-up of decisions is managed with the aid of
an ActionBase.

Demand Management is implemented with the aid of designated development

which connects to the PSNext system and automates the process of transfer of
the requests via referents who are present in every department and who
explain the commercial need for the projects. Automation of the process
enables the projects to be more easily prioritized. IT today has the capability
of pricing the requested project, such that sometimes a customer, seeing the
volume of the investment required for implementing the project before it
commences, may also reach the decision that this investment is higher than he
thought, and that he would be well advised to relinquish it in favour of another
project that is critical for his department.

There are organizations whose IT is outsourced. The outstanding advantage of

outsourcing is that it forces the organization to work in a structured and
orderly manner, and vacates time for IT management for making strategic
decisions and for routine follow up of operational performances, such as: load
on the servers, utilization of disks, incident reports, time taken in addressing
problems and so forth. The IT management is not required to deal with day to
day operation; it is at leisure for IT management matters, and for choosing
management methodologies and methods, including an examination of tools
that support those processes. It is important to note that tools for Project and
Portfolio Management were examined in the past and were disqualified due to
being excessively costly.

Another example serves to describe an organizational structure that includes a

PMO unit in each division (in IT, also). Participants complained that what is
currently lacking for the efficient management of the IT organization is ERP
for the IT. ERP with a strong financial aspect and development oriented core
business. However, following an examination of most of the tools currently
found in the market, one realises that there is no one tool that fully provides
the entire solution to the IT. It is possible, of course, to go on working with
MS Project and Excel, but that solution does not provide data in real time, IT
projects are constantly increasing in volume, and many tools and
infrastructures in IT are already becoming confused. Customers have stated
that the solution will come from constructing interfaces between project
management systems, reporting of hours, budget management, demand
management; all these will interface with one single central CMDB and with
This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 5
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444
 Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax. 972-97442444

BAC. Before a number of systems are hooked up to one another, with the
object of reflecting data from several worlds on a single Dashboard, a decision
must be reached as regards how low a degree of resolution one truly wishes to
reach, what objects one wishes to attain, where will it be possible to see an
order of priorities covering all of them together and so forth. In addition, IT
also lacks software for managing its IT budgets. Organizational software
packages for budget planning are not suited to IT needs. Attempts were
made to download from the Internet a not very large software package with an
uncomplicated WF for approvals, but these efforts did not meet with success.

Another organization conducted a test of IT Governance tools, which are

supposed to reduce the time currently invested in daily monitoring, so as to
make time for more strategic tasks.
Generally speaking, there is a sense that the tools are over spec to basic
requirements and are expensive. The organization is not yet ripe for a
complete, complex tool of the kind suppliers are offering, despite the fact that
the impression gained following an examination of HP, IBM and Microsoft
PPM was that existing tools present a vision that is most attractive to the
organization.

For the present, the decision was reached to focus on the creation of an
organizational culture that is compatible with IT Governance mechanisms,
all by creating “home grown” methodology and tools which in future will
enable tools of this type to be more easily implemented.

The current methodology enables them to institutionalize processes such as

project control and work plan management.

This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 6
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444
 Moshav Bnei Zion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel Tel. 972-9-7444474 Fax. 972-97442444

Organizations are, however, desirous of expanding:

• The mode of prioritization and optimization of IT investments

• Presentation capability of distribution of investments

• Capability of grading projects in accordance with the commercial

value they adduce (this is currently done by gut feeling)

• Better regulated planning of the annual work plan on a more automatic

level of control

The work method in another organization: at the beginning of the year, a calculation is
made as to the capacity level of the IT. After that, the organization computes the net
amount of work days, subtracting the time required for routine maintenance
(calculated on the basis of past figures), and thus arriving at “the budget” of
development days that customers have in work days. Maintenance works (mostly
dealing with bugs) are determined following meetings that take place once a month
between the team leaders and the programmers. In addition, the organization has a 3-
member PMO office, which is responsible for constructing the Gantt charts, budgets,
and internal customer management. IT management tools: Microsoft Project Server
and Excels for the management of Gantt charts and reporting on hours. Team leaders
and programmers report on all tasks: maintenance, ailments, and vacation days into
the system. The reporting is also subdivided into routine tasks and development tasks.
It is important that the reporting on tasks and hours be made through one screen and
in convenient form by means of SharePoint for example.

A customer recommends the use of SharePoint, where it is very easy to build the
requisite forms, there is mini workflow, a reports catalogue can be constructed, users
can easily see all meters and indices, and the project milestones can be exposed to
them. Correct to the present, only IT reports hours by Web.

What is still lacking is a demand management tool (this is currently done using
Excel). There is a problem with tools such as Test director for the management of
requests that have no automatic data update.

This report constitutes the opinion of STKI – a consultancy firm providing its clients with 7
strategic and tactical information based on its research in Israel’s IT market and also on
research by international firms such as Cutter, Experture, Datamonitor and Butler.

Moshav Bnei Tzion P.O.Box 151, 60910 Israel

Tel: (972)-9-7444474 Fax: ( 972)-9-7442444