DCG-SMS

Author Archive

“I am trying to develop an IT strategy for our company, but I can’t get the board to decide on a business strategy. How can I solve that problem?”

This was the question put by one CIO to DCG-SMS Managing Director, Alan Cameron a year or so ago. In this paper, Alan says, “I had a few thoughts, but I could see his issue, and, crucially, there appeared to be no standard approach. I now know that there is just such an approach – IT-CMF. It’s not a cure-all, but it is a very powerful tool to address just that sort of question.”

Download paper: ITCMF

DCG-SMS Managing Director Alan Cameron has characterized some distinct metrics behaviour patterns we’ve observed into a “Metrics Maturity Model” showing how correct use of metrics changes the way people think about managing knowledge-work such as software  development:

 Download pdf - Why Metrics Maturity Matters

Whatever the terms of an outsourcing agreement, it remains the fact that it is the client’s business that will suffer lost revenue and lost opportunities from a software application’s failure to meet the real business need. This paper explores how quantitative methods help organisations better manage the systemic risk of under-performing software projects and get better value from outsourced software suppliers.

 Download pdf: Outsourcing and Risk

Download pdf
Transforming IT from Cost Centre to Strategic Enabler

This article is based on a webinar presented by Sue Rule, with Alan Cameron, Tom Cagley and Mike Harris of the David Consulting Group, broadcast by ITMPI on 4^th December 2012.

 Download pdf
SMS looks forward

SMS looks forward to a dynamic future with the David Consulting Group

Download article as pdf:  

Myth 1: Efficiency means reducing costs
Reality: Efficiency means maximising value

Myth 2: Efficiency means cutting staff
Reality: Efficiency means getting the most out of your people

Myth 3: Efficiency means people working harder/longer
Reality: Efficiency means working smarter

As all good managers know, efficiency is about doing – and paying for – all the things that are necessary to deliver value to your customers; and not doing – or paying for – things that are not necessary.

In order to achieve efficiency therefore, it is absolutely essential to understand:

• what your customers value and
• where your current system of work is wasting money.

With more and more direct customer interface with your organisation’s systems, and increasingly computer literate customers, now is not the time to make ill-informed decisions about IT management. Cuts which eliminate waste contribute to business prosperity. Cuts which deliver a short term saving at a huge future cost will simply drive your business into the ground more quickly and more surely.

An objective, comprehensive investigation into where your current system of work wastes money, skills and time is the essential first step to improved efficiency. Only by expert, in-depth analysis of what is really going on in your organisation’s software supply chain can you work through answers to your organisation’s issues. It is undoubtedly the case that business IT has grown somewhat complacent in an economy which had money to burn on technology solutions, and it is essential in these straightened financial times for IT professionals to grasp the nettle and look objectively at how to obtain maximum value for the available budget.

The SMS Symptomatic Diagnostic of Business Effectiveness is an objective survey of your software intensive systems which shows you where waste of money, skills, or time is occurring in your processes and work practices.

Reducing costs vs maximising value

Everyone is under pressure to spend less and make the money they have go further. The global economy has spent years living on credit and the bill has now arrived. There is simply less money in the system.

IT systems management should be subject to the same discipline as all other aspects of the business. Practices based on a continual growth model are no longer viable. If there is a finite amount of money available to fund a project; a service; an activity; then the desired outcome MUST be delivered within that budget.

Efficiency is about making every penny of your budget work to maximum effect. If you don’t have an objective measure of where you are wasting money now, you cannot make the changes which will ensure you achieve the maximum benefit from current or future budgets.

The first step to better budget management is therefore to measure your current effectiveness and identify which steps in your processes add value and which do not.

Getting the most out of your people

95% of performance loss is due to the system of work itself. That means ‘employing good people’ can only ever influence performance by 5%. Staff under continual threat of losing their jobs, or having their pay cut, will disengage no matter how good their cv was when you engaged them. Efficiency and effectiveness will both suffer, and your best people are likely to vote with their feet.

Several studies have shown that while low pay is a disincentive to high performance, high pay does not of itself incentivise staff to engage in delivering the desired business outcome. Job satisfaction, a sense of worth, team spirit, the ability to apply expert skills and an open learning culture which offers the opportunity for workers to hone their skills and develop new ones are all far more important factors.

Good management practice focuses on enabling staff to use their skills and talents to deliver real value to the business. The first step to delivering better value from your people is to look at how effectively your organisation currently manages skills and talent, and where it can improve.

Working smarter: managing time

Time is a non-renewable resource. Time cannot be either expanded or contracted. Like financial budgets, time should be managed to deliver the best results not be squandered on non-value-add activities. ‘Making time’ for one thing means stealing it from something else – such as giving your highly skilled staff sufficient ‘downtime’ to think and to re-charge their batteries.

The first step to better time management is to take a long hard look at your current work systems to see where time is wasted. Are people required to spend time on activities that add no value? Are these activities essential, or are they an artefact of poor management practice?

What you measure is what you get

Don’t measure activities. Measure results – outputs, and outcomes. If the results aren’t what your organisation needs, ask why.
At least five times.

Download proceedings of a Forum held on 25th November 2010

20101125 SMS BMIF Lean Management of Extended Supply Chains

Lean Enterprise Architecture: Making the Change