The Hindu Business Line : Stop managing IT by illusion

Fundamental business dissatisfaction with IT service is endemic. The reason behind this is the gulf between promise and delivery of business value from IT. The cure lies in focussing IT delivery on business value. And you can adopt a set of practices and initiatives to focus and optimise.

These are `the four noble truths' that Iain Aitken begins with in Value-Driven IT Management: Commercializing the IT Function, from Elsevier (www.books.elsevier.com) . Brace up, because the book has unpalatable warnings.

Such as, that project failure statistics will continue as long as those in the IT industry don't cease to collude with their customers, and stop managing by illusion! And that the IT industry continues to be `relatively good at the things that are relatively unimportant (from a value perspective) and relatively poor at the things that are relatively important.' Charges the author: "We have focused our energies on getting right the things that we find easiest to get right and with which we are most comfortable."

To the eager beavers, however, Aitken has many insights to share, with a missionary zeal. He dins in that IT function's raison d'être is to deliver products and services of the right commercial quality that add value to the business, whether through `revenue enhancement, cost reduction or risk reduction'. A system delivered to budget and schedule, and providing the requested functionality may be satisfactory but it is not in itself a success, says the author. "It is only successful if the deliverables are of commercially appropriate quality and they (to a tolerable margin) add the promised value to the business." In a chapter on `optimising effectiveness', Aitken describes the principle of `transfer charging', which aims at making the cost of IT service provision more visible to the business and so incentivises users. He speaks of `cost recovery' and `market-based pricing' models.

The latter "begins by assessing the components and scope of the IT service and the total costs of providing that service over its lifetime." It then builds up a tariff per `service unit'. The former, that is, the cost recovery model, is simpler; it adds up the cost of delivering a service and apportions the same on some reasonable basis.

Of interest to professional accountants should be the chapter on `optimising cost-efficiency'. Key to this is `the creation of a commercial culture', says the author. He rues that IT functions, especially in large organisations, display strong `corporate' and `uncommercial' behaviours, rather than `entrepreneurial'.

Don't forget to measure success. "Metrics do not directly add value to the business but can be very powerful indirect value adders by changing people's behaviours to become more commercial," counsels Aitken. He insists that metrics should focus on key value indicators rather than the more traditional key performance indicators that often measure what is relatively easy to measure!

Compelling read.

A world with no privacy

An RFID-tagged uniform can inform the management `who you're chatting with at the water cooler and how long you've spent in the restroom.'

Wake up! You are under watch! That, in short, is the message of Spychips by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, from Pearson (www.pearsoned.co.in) .

"You won't like this book," warns Bruce Sterling in his foreword. "Spychips will hurt your feelings. You will blush, and itch, and sweat, and drum your heels... "

Why so? Because the book talks about how RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) impacts your lives. It is the Devil's Dictionary for RFID! "The people of the RFID biz are very covert, spooky, and security-conscious, with deep, profitable ties into Homeland Security and the Pentagon. And yet, they're also very large, everyday public companies: Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Benetton, Philips, IBM, Cisco, Exxon-Mobil... " This is not a story about a Watergate break-in. "The so-called secret is literally and physically scattered all over the landscape," points out Sterling. "RFID bugs are attached to diaper boxes, shampoo bottles, and women's underwear, and they cost a few cents each and are supposed to become ubiquitous."

Chapter 1 opens on a grim note: `Imagine a world of no more privacy.' That's the world where everything in your closet can be tracked remotely! For starters, the technology that we are talking about uses `tiny computer chips - some smaller than a grain of sand - to track items at a distance'. The authors call these spychips, `because of their surveillance potential'.

An RFID-tagged uniform can inform the management `who you're chatting with at the water cooler and how long you've spent in the restroom - even whether or not you've washed your hands.' If embedded in passbooks and ATM cards, the bank employees can profile the customers as they enter the lobby. And when school students wear these chip-badges, the system would know who is late for the class, and more.

"RFID spychips in your shoes and car tyres will make it possible for strangers to track you as you walk and drive through public and private spaces, betraying your habits and the deepest secrets even your own mother has no right knowing," say the authors. "Pair RFID devices with global positioning (GPS) technology, and you could literally be pinpointed on the globe in real time, creating a borderless tracking system that already has law enforcement, governments, stalkers, and voyeurs salivating."

Albrecht and McIntyre foresee that governments, which are eager to track captive populations with implantable microchips, would start with `society's outcasts' such as prisoners and the homeless, `justifying it as a security measure'. Then would come the semi-captive population such as `the elderly, the school kids, and the military'. After that, `government employees and those working for major corporations'.

Therefore, `pull the plug!' urges the book. "We don't have to feel hopeless, outnumbered, or discouraged in the face of the RFID threat," assure the authors. "The good news is that businesses depend on our shopping dollars, and this gives us powerful leverage. If consumers don't want spychips - and act on that preference in the market - companies will stop using RFID, plain and simple."

Imperative and explosive!

Tailpiece

"Sir, the RFID radar shows that hundreds of our `customers' assemble daily!"

"Where?"

"Just around the corner near our shop."

"That must be the dustbin, where they trash the tags!"

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com