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The Nuts and Bolts of Alignment

The Nuts and Bolts of Alignment

IT-business alignment.Business buy-in.Business sponsors for IT projects. CIO checks out eight IT projects to see if it's just ‘yadda, yadda, yadda' or if business and IT are walking the talk together

Country Fire Authority of Victoria

Nature of Project: Development of information management strategy.

Business Users: Across the spectrum.

Project Leader: Hunter Smith, business manager, IT strategy.

In the past the CFA had numbers of systems developments and information management strategies. Smith says his role is to address management's desire to bring "the various wishes and dreams of people and projects" together into a single framework with a strong information management and business objectives focus to ensure systems are there to support the authority, rather than technology driving the business.

Late last year the board approved an information management strategy supported by a future systems framework, thus ensuring agreement at a fairly high level about the CFA's information management objectives. Smith says the three words that encapsulate the strategy are spatial, integrated and acceptable.

The strategy, comprising seven major projects plus some infrastructure development, is supported by a future systems framework and has been developed into a program for progressive implementation over the next four years.

"We are currently implementing the SAP finance system, and we're doing that via a resource-sharing arrangement with our metropolitan fire fighting cousins, but we're also committed to implementing a Victorian state government bureau service for a new asset management system which is provided by Mincom," Smith says. "That is a bureau service arrangement through the Department of Justice and we're looking to go live with that system in April or May next year."

The framework is a powerful force working to ensure alignment. Smith says he cannot get a project up unless he can put a proper business case to management clearly spelling out how it aligns to the strategy and the progressive program plan for implementation over the next four years.

"The business case is very much business driven. I have to be clear on how it aligns to our annual plan objectives, as well as all of the usual things you have in a proposal about the resource, cost, technological implementation etc. It all comes from a business objectives perspective," he says.

A program charter aligns the business benefits and the objectives of the CFA business plan to the technology projects that are required, with project governance driven through the program. A program director drives the program and has a fairly senior role within the organisation. The charter is being driven by Smith, who has a business rather than an IT orientation.

The charter will provide a scope and the boundaries for each project and will define a series of stages of development of the program against business objectives, prioritising the delivery of those business objectives over the life of the program.

"It will also ensure that there's business benefits defined at each stage of the program, so that you can clearly align the outcomes from the projects and the technology implementation back to the realisation of business benefits," Smith says. "So therefore the progress of the program can be measured and monitored by the executive at the CFA and by making sure that the projects are delivering the business outcomes as opposed to just the technology."

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