Fred Mapp, former AMD CIO

Instill business process management principles in your IT department

Last issue we began our discussion of the Seven Initiatives for attaining maximum business value from IT. Initiative 1, "Align IT strategies with business strategies," could be summarized as describing how to plot your course to achieve maximum business value. This issue, with Initiative 2, we're refining the tools you'll need to get started and stay on course.

As an aside, you may notice that I use the word "discussion" to describe my columns. That is precisely what I hope the result will be. We've inserted an email link at the end of each column to allow you to ask questions and add to the dialogue. I look forward to hearing from you.

You know where you want to go. What's next? Once you have determined an overall vision and business requirements, you'll need processes to make things happen. A familiar example is the top five or ten goals that most companies establish. How do you communicate to your people the steps they need to take to achieve these goals? What ties their responsibilities to the vision? The answer, of course, is processes.

De-mystify your vision. You can begin with a vision for the IT department that's designed to fulfill the overall corporate vision. And remember that the vision itself is a product of a process. There's nothing mystical about it. Quite the contrary, it should be simple, practical, and easily understood. At AMD, I've established a Vision System supported by a practical, actionable strategy and metrics to check progress. We continue to develop and refine our IT vision, goals, strategies and metrics that support the corporate vision and goals.

Everyone should share your vision. It's absolutely critical that you bring everyone on board for this. At the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program where I worked some years ago, their evaluators considered it critical that the companies they were evaluating were able to effectively share the vision with every employee. In fact, I noticed that during the assessment process evaluators often talked with employees in the halls or the cafeteria. If those employees they talked to weren't familiar with the company's vision, goals or strategies, the company lost points on the evaluation.

Bring your people on board. It's not always simple to convince your people of the importance of your vision, mission statements, and other high-level initiatives. At AMD, we implemented the financial and procurement modules of SAP-a part of our strategy to fulfill AMD business needs -in about nine months. It was an enormous task, and we couldn't have done it without everyone on board. We involved people from the business units early in the process. It was amazing how quickly they became interested.

Consider your processes. Once the vision has been established and communicated, you need to make sure you have the processes and people in place to make things happen. How antiquated are your processes? Do they make sense? Can they be streamlined? It's often a waste of money to automate old processes. Also, you'll find that it's difficult to automate processes that don't exist. It's quite probable that your processes will need work.

You can't have too much expertise. It takes expertise to create new processes and manage projects. Do you have people with the right skills and proper process management certifications? Trained, certified people and an understanding of the importance of standards like PMI and SEI certification are some things that most successful IT organizations have in common. As an example, to prepare for the SAP implementation, we helped a lot of people receive process management certifications. And we still chose to bring in some outside experts to help validate our move to SAP. You need this kind of expertise in order to proceed logically with facts and data instead of emotion. I've heard it said that emotion is great for weddings and birthday parties, but not for decision making and changing business processes.

No need to innovate. You should understand that sometimes you don't need to blaze a new trail. Most of what you want to accomplish as an IT organization has probably already been accomplished by someone else. Surveys, studies, comparisons, benchmarks, and consultants - they're all essential to your progress. Why go on a trip without directions if the course is well mapped? I always say, "you don't know what you don't know." Without properly trained people and extensive research, there's a whole lot you don't know.

Once your people are trained in process management, they'll understand the importance of documenting processes and measuring their effectiveness. Without documentation, you're operating very informally, relying on memory and habits. Without metrics and measurements, you can't possibly know how effective you are. You won't know when you need to change course. You don't know what you don't know.

Hold off on the implementation of technology. I realize that for many of us the instinct is to roll up our sleeves and tackle a big project, to bring in some new applications and servers and get rolling. This is the opposite of what you need to be doing. Without sharing the vision, goals, and proper process management, IT projects are doomed to mediocrity, at best. Be patient. Chart your course, put the necessary processes in place, and learn to measure their effectiveness. The technology can wait until the processes are mapped to the business needs.

Want a list of specific considerations for getting Initiative 2 off the ground in your organization? Download the pdf.