Complete Roadmap for Effective IT Implementation

The biggest issue when it comes to technology implementation is not the availability of technology, or even the complexities involved. The issue often boils down to a question of prioritization of projects and resources in alignment with the larger business needs.

Unfortunately, most of us spend quite a lot of time in operational issues and in

firefighting that we often loose sight of the larger picture. So this piece is more about how to prioritize, rather than about

implementing technology. Implementation comes after prioritization and is covered in the pages that follow.

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src='/IMG/043/62043/bluebulletjune2k2.gif' width=5 vspace=5 border=0> Enterprise Connectivity Enterprise connectivity is no longer about just signing an SLA with your ISP for an Internet connection. src='/IMG/043/62043/bluebulletjune2k2.gif' width=5 vspace=5 border=0> Enterprise Security There are good IT trends and bad ones. The good ones help meet your organization's business objectives and give you a good ROI for your IT purchases src='/IMG/043/62043/bluebulletjune2k2.gif' width=5 vspace=5 border=0> Legal Compliance Every organization has shareholders or stakeholders involved with, or having a stake in, its operations src='/IMG/043/62043/bluebulletjune2k2.gif' width=5 vspace=5 border=0> Managing Infrastructure Managing your technological infrastructure, whatever the size of its deployment src='/IMG/043/62043/bluebulletjune2k2.gif' width=5 vspace=5 border=0> Printing solutions MFDs are in. Last year, we had said that this market is being increasingly targeted by printer src='/IMG/043/62043/bluebulletjune2k2.gif' width=5 vspace=5 border=0> Document Management X-ray films, DNA prints, finger prints, ECG reports, live tissues and cultures

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Prioritization, whatever be the wake of life we are talking about, needs a

certain aloofness from the tasks being prioritized. So, we recommend that you do this away from your work place, maybe over a slow weekend. This could also be a team exercise, with each person in the team developing his or her own prioritization, a team exercise would also ensure that the teams' priorities are in sync. If a

team exercise is not possible, there is no reason why you should not attempt it on your own.

The simple framework we will use to identify and record this prioritization is the 2 x 2 matrix printed on the adjacent page. The x-axis of the matrix depicts time and the y-axis depicts the business criticality of the action. You will notice that we are not using any technological parameters. Why?

Technology is a means, and not an end. It is a means to achieving a business end. So, for the time being, we have assumed that technology will play second fiddle to your business needs, and will have to fit the business time line. The origin of the matrix (0,0) is 'now' in time, and most business critical in priority. The first half of the x-axis is the short term (say six months to a year) and the second half is the medium to long term (say one to two years). Similarly, the lower half of the y-axis is denotes the most business critical IT issues and implementations to be cleared, while the upper half denotes those of medium to low criticality.

Now it is clear that of the four quadrants, your priority will be the highest for quadrant one, followed by quadrant two, three and finally four. The difference

between quadrants one and two is that quadrant one is for immediate action while two is for later action.

How do you mark activities/issues in this matrix? They can be marked as points or as lines. A point can indicate an activity of short duration or can indicate the start of an activity that you are involved in, but which you subsequently hand over to someone else. An example of this would be the complete re-documentation of your

network. Lines will denote activities that will take a longer time span to be implemented, like the ERP rollout across all your sites. The slope of the line could be used to indicate the change in business criticality of that activity. A slope upwards (positive slope) would mean a reduced level of



criticality, leaving you with more time to focus on the more critical areas, while one downwards (negative slope) means an


increase in criticality, needing you to focus more on that particular activity as time elapses.

Basically, you are keeping the demands of technology out of the way and deciding on your priorities. Once that's done, you can figure out the best technology or solution that suits your needs and go about

implementing it as per your priorities.

Anil Chopra, Krishna Kumar, Rinku Tyagi and Sujay V Sarma