An organization which went through a major change, like the replacement of a strategic system (e.g. ERP/BI implementations), needs to go through a period of attentive supervision to address the inherent issues that ideally need to be handled as they arise, to minimize their future effects. Some organizations might even go through a convalescence period, which risks to prolong itself if the appropriate remedies aren’t found. Therefore, one needs an entity, who/which has the skills to recognize the symptoms, understand what’s happening and why, respectively of identifying the appropriate actions.
Given technologies’ multi-layered complexity and the volume
of knowledge for understanding them, the role of the doctor can be seldom taken
by one person. Moreover, the patient is an organization, each person in the organization
having usually local knowledge about the patient. The needed knowledge is dispersed trough
the organization, and one needs to tap into that knowledge, identify the people
close to technologies and business area, respectively allow such people exchange
information on a regular basis.
The people who should know the best the organization are in theory
the management, however they are usually too far away from technologies and often
too busy with management topics. IT professionals are close to technologies, though
sometimes too far away from the patient. The users have a too narrow overview, while
from logistical and economic reasons the number of people involved should be kept
to a minimum. A compromise is to designate one person from each business area who
works with any of the strategic systems, and assure that they have the technical
and business knowledge required. It’s nothing but the key-user concept, though for
it to work the key-users need not only knowledge but also the empowerment to act
when the symptoms appear.
Big organizations have also a product owner for each
application who supervises the application through its entire lifecycle, and who
needs to coordinate with the IT, business and service providers. This is
probably a good idea in order to assure that the ROI is reached over time,
respectively that the needs of the system are considered within the IT
operation context. In small organizations, the role can be taken by a technical
or a business resource with deeper skills then the average user, usually a key-user.
However, unless joined with the key-user role, the product owner’s focus will be
the product and seldom the business themes.
The issues that need to be overcome after major changes are usually
cross-functional, being imperative for people to work together and find solutions.
Unfortunately, it’s also in human nature to wait until the issues are big enough
to get the proper attention. Unless the key-users have the time allocated already
for such topics, the issues will be lost in the heap of operational and tactical
activities. This time must be allocated for all key-users and the technical resources
needed to support them.
Some organizations build temporary working parties (groups of
experts working together to achieve specific goals) or similar groups. However,
the statute of such group needs to be permanent if the organization wants to continuously
have its health in check, to build the needed expertize and awareness about occurred
or potential issues. Centers of excellence/expertize (CoE) or competency centers
(CC) are such working groups with permanent statute, having defined roles,
responsibilities, and processes for supporting and promoting the effective use of
technologies within the organization, respectively of monitoring and systematically
addressing the risks and opportunities associated with them.
There’s also the null hypothesis, doing nothing, relying solely
on employees’ professionalism, though without defined responsibility, accountability
and empowerment, it can get messy.
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