Information technology decisions - Sustaining Operational Innovation

Information Technology Decisions - Sustaining Operational Innovation

One of my articles got published in the Computer Society of India Communications in 2010. It is available for download at the link HERE

Information Technology Decisions - Article in Computer Society of India Communications

Information Technology Decisions - Practitioner's Perspectives on Sustaining Operational Innovation

Centrality of Information Technology (IT) in the globally distributed enterprises and in fact the modern day life has created an unmet need to help managers, engineers and businesses to make decisions that are not only robust but help create operational innovation in a dynamic world that we have created. Hence IT decision-making, be it offshore-outsourcing, large program management, software project management, system design and development or software development and maintenance, has taken a central position. The problem is that the existing methods of normative or prescriptive decision making described in decision theory, operations research etc fails miserably as they typically doesn’t take into account the non-physical nature of software, the difference in knowledge worker versus industrial worker, the global nature of software development and many imponderables due to technology and innovation pace. This paper explains various scenarios and methods developed, adopted and adapted for IT Decisions which has helped sustaining operational innovation and excellence in multiple real life IT projects the author has been part of.

The detailed article is available at the Computer Society of India Communications HERE

What is the function of IT?

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) focuses on the function that system delivers and then looks at how to achieve that function in an ideal way. I have recently added that the ideal way should also include ideal structure besides no cost and no harm. The ideal structure will be least complex structure - mind you I say least complex. not simple!

Coming to TRIZ thinking for IT. What is the function that IT delivers? (Information technology)

Information Technology is viewed as performing

(1) Processing function (transformation)

Data -> Information -> Knowledge

(2) Representation of

Data -> Information -> Knowledge

(3) Communication (exchange) of

Data -> Information -> Knowledge

Is there any other function IT performs?