The Podcast on Organizational Excellence - Digital Business Best Practices

To download free reports on IT Alignment and best practices on steering committee’s role in shaping an organization’s governance framework, enter your E-mail below. You will learn the following:

• Business strategy formulation and role of committees
• IT strategy and IT Steering committees
• Corporate and IT alignment issues
• Role of steering committees in organization’s strategy formulation
• Best Practices in establishing IT and other Corporate Steering Committees
• and more

In this episode, we will review some best practices related to establishing an IT Steering Committee function. An IT steering committee ensures alignment of IT and business and thus is a crucial function that is needed in organizations.

So, first, let’s take a look at what is an IT steering committee and the benefits that it serves to the organization. After that we will review some best practices related to establishing this function within an organization.

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IT steering committees bring key IT and business stakeholders in a common forum to discuss matters related to strategic planning, program planning and project and program approvals. A typical steering committee usually includes the CIO, other key members of IT management, and executives from various Lines of Businesses such as Finance, Marketing, and others. When instituted correctly, programs are strategically planned and approved mutually between both parties, and thus one can expect IT and Business alignment.

Although a number of organizations have IT steering committees in place, only a number of them are really effective. In fact, a research conducted by the Info-Tech Research Group highlighted that 88% of CIOs believe that their governance structure and processes are not effective. As IT steering committees serve as an important glue in the overall IT governance process, they can encapsulate a number of critical decision making processes and activities, especially those related to the review and approval of key technology related initiatives. Due to the criticality of this organizational function, it’s prudent therefore that organizations should invest in improving the effectiveness of these committees.

Best Practices

Here are some best practices that an organization can follow to improve their effectiveness.

• Ensure Executive Support – One of the most important factors that contributes to the success of IT Steering committees is to ensure that they have the full backing from the CEO and LOB senior executives. Obviously, if the committee’s main function is going to be to mutually review and approve an organization’s key projects and initiatives then it must have that high-level support for it to be effective. This also ensures that both IT and business become accountable for their decisions rather than having one group blaming the other for failed IT projects and initiatives.
• Establish a Committee Charter – One of the reasons that committees usually fail is the lack of an appropriate structure and definition of key processes that are needed for the ongoing execution of the committee functions. Therefore, one of the important steps when initiating a steering committee is to document its charter. The charter helps shape the overall governance structure, processes and roles of the committee and ensures that the committee continues to be effective. The charter should provide details such as the purpose of the committee, its scope, key roles and responsibilities of the committee members, details on various processes such as those of project approvals, ongoing deliverables, governing documents, etc.
• Integrate committee with the organization’s PPM processes – Some organizations have Project and Portfolio Management or PPM functions in place that provide a vehicle for ideas and initiatives to be evaluated, and prioritized. The selected projects are then put through a project execution framework. In such cases, the organization should ensure to effectively integrate IT steering committee processes with the organization’s project portfolio management or PPM processes and ensure that the functions are not duplicated or missed and that the overall framework is properly defined.
• Establish Project Prioritization and Selection Criteria – One of the most important IT and business alignment functions is that of project evaluation, prioritization, and selection. This ensures that only those projects are selected for execution that are properly aligned to an organization’s strategy. In this context, the steering committee that is made up of key members from both the...

This podcast episode on Design Thinking is a recap of the discussion that I had with a Design Thinking practitioner, Randah Tahir. Randah is a cultural designer, innovation facilitator, a TEDx, and a Keynote speaker. She is quite active not only in the Design Thinking space but is an active practitioner of a number of other problem-solving approaches as well.

Here is a quick rundown of the issues that we touched upon within the context of Design Thinking. First, we discussed whether Design Thinking is a strict methodology versus a set of loose principles that can be applied in the context of problem-solving. Then we will discuss if Design Thinking can be used alongside other approaches in a hybrid fashion to solve problems. After that, we touch upon the topic of Empathizing with the users, which as we know is one of the important steps in the Design Thinking method. We then also talk about another important step of the Design Thinking method, which is about Idea Generation and how that works within the context of organizations. And then we conclude the episode today by discussing one of the most topics in this context, which has to do with the cultural challenges that must be addressed before introducing Design Thinking in organizations.

The post Design Thinking in Organizations – Practical Considerations and Examples first appeared on CorpExcellence.com.

In this episode we cover the topic of design thinking, which is a problem-solving approach used in the design and development of products and services and in solving other problems as well. In this episode, we will answer the following questions:

• What is design thinking?
• Why should organizations adopt this practice or approach for designing and developing their products and services?
• How’s it being used in organizations and in the industry today?
• What types of tools are used for design thinking?

The post Design Thinking – The What, Why, and How? first appeared on CorpExcellence.com.