The Problem of IS Planning Generating Ideas Ken Peffers Associate Professor of MIS UNLV October 2004

Setting the Scene SIM Interchange 2002—Snowbird Resort Utah 400 CIOs from around the country Two issues dominate meeting Security Managing the IS portfolio Where to allocate resources to IT investment in the firm Y2K and EC had hidden this problem

Managing the IS Project Portfolio McFarlan speaker at SIM Strategic Grid Managing the portfolio 1980 CSF (Rockart, 1979) Top down method to manage IS portfolio Why CSF? Only executives have strategic view. Maintenance Decision-making Operations Strategic

The IS Portfolio 20 Yrs Later Operations Tactical Strategic Maintenance Payoff Strategic 3 years Cost saving 1 year Option Bets 10 + years Service Operations Supplier Integration Value Chain Channel Integration Support Activities Knowledge necessary to determine what is important all available in the executive suite?

The IS Portfolio 20 Yrs Later More dimensions for allocating attention/resources Political & cultural Project size--$10 million, $100 K, $5 K projects Infrastructure Sourcing Seven dimensions—many cells How many ways are there to create dissatisfaction?

CIOs Concerned, Unsure How To identify most important new systems To determine what innovative IS users will pay for To identify the essential and valuable features for new system

Planning Framework Idea Generation Evaluation Feasibility Decision Making Design Portfolio Project Application Features Planning Requirements Determination CSF, CSC, Brainstorm Cost- Benefit, PIR CSC, JAD, Brainstorm, FG FG, JAD ER, DFD

Toward a solution Use knowledge distributed around in and outside of the firm. (Execs don’t have all the answers) Need for method to use this knowledge effectively. (Bottom up methods produce unusable portfolios of ideas.) Wouldn’t it be nice extend CSF to incorporate knowledge of many around the organization? (But keep focus on what’s important)

We Turn to Personal Constructs Theory State of Universe Consequence Value

Performance Consequence (CSF) Implicit CSF Theory System Feature Attribute Performance Consequence (CSF) Firm Value (goals) Implicit CSF theory a specific case of the general PCT model

New method for identifying important innovative applications Application of practical applied research methods from marketing, called “laddering.” Critical Success Chains (CSC) Use knowledge of many Create meaningful models of what is important for the firm (or customers, etc.) Understand reasoning

Setting: Digia, Inc. Digia small Helsinki R&D firm, specializing in developing applications for mobile communications industry Our mandate: identify “killer cocktails” for mobile financial services

Critical Success Chains at Digia Pre-study scoping Data collection—structured interviewing Analysis Content analysis Clustering Modeling Ideation workshop Post workshop analysis

Prestudy at Digia Participant sample Industry experts and lead end-users Experts: most knowledgeable scientists, professionals, and managers End users: wealthy, educated, technologically sophisticated, mobile, SMS users Identified 40, contacted 18 experts & 14 lead users Collected idea from each for stimuli Converted ideas into four bland application descriptions

Data collection: Structured Individual Interviews Asked participant to rank-order ideas For higher ranked ideas “Why would that application be important to you?” Series of “why is that important to you?” questions “What about the application made you think it would do that Transcribed responses as chains

Example chain Personal values Performance impacts Expected system feature

Analysis Resulting data Content analysis Clustering Modeling 147 chains, more than 1000 statements Content analysis Qualitative clustering to assign similar statements common label (construct) 114 constructs Clustering Cluster chains to minimize construct variance within cluster Modeling Transformed clusters into five network models

Example CSC Network Model

Ideation workshop Objective: translate 5 CSC models into feasible application projects Business and R&D people Chairman, Nokia Key Account Exec., 2 bus. Mgrs, 2 eng. Mgrs Five hours on one day Goals: ‘back of envelop ideas’ No outside help

Business model

My Financial Advisor Description An easy and intelligent way of receiving real time financial information. An 'aggressive' screensaver that pushes information. Architecture Always on connection (GPRS, i-MODE etc.), Multiple user interfaces / access methods, speak synthesizer, Browser, storing of information, chronological order of information (Archiving the information), structuring of the information, Lotus Domino client/server environment Players Stock Exchange, Customer, Infomediary, Analyst, Network Operator Customers for the developer Analysts for developer, For Analysts day traders Benefits for players and customer's) End-customers - Real time information, better decisions, Stock Exchange - more volume for trading, Infomediary - Revenues from Analyst, Network Operator - more network traffic, Analyst - increased revenues, better customer relationship Revenues and market size 2x People traveling in business class, Nokia Communicator users Profit model for the developer License sales to analyst(s)

Workshop results 3 ideas: My Financial Advisor, Transaction Assistant, Mobile Wallet For one model it was apparent that Digia wouldn’t be a part of the value chain. “Let’s move on.” For the last two maps, participants decided to treat them as one.

Post Workshop Analysis Prepare workshop results for presentation Interaction model Business value model

Interaction Model V{(a),(b)} Interaction(s) Involved processes Customer : Analyst 1:1, 1:Many Service fees, information requests, real time analysed information Analyst : Infomediary 1:1 Information brokering services, fees Analyst : Stock Exchange Financial information, fees Analyst : Company Information flow Analyst : Customer Information push, service fee revenues Company : Analyst Information push Stock Exchange : Analyst Information flow, fee revenues Stock Exchange : Customer 1:Many Information push (mass push) Infomediary : Analyst Information brokering services, service fee revenues Portfolio manager : Customer Customer service, information push

Business Model

Results for Digia According to Digia executives, results of the analysis exceeded their expectations Rich information about what lead users might value Modeling with reasoning to help turn preference into applications Solid information to support development Plan to develop some of the application ideas

CSC benefits to decision making and development Potentially uses knowledge of many about what applications may be important Suppliers, customers, employees Models reasons why applications important Promotes system ‘buy-in’

Agenda—Current Research Peffers, K. and C. Gengler, “How to Identify High-Payoff Information Systems for the Organization,” Communications of the ACM, 46:1, January 2003. Peffers, K., C. Gengler, and T. Tuunanen, "Extending Critical Success Factors Methodology to Facilitate Broadly Participative Information Systems Planning," Journal of Management Information Systems, (in press), 20:X, 2003. Peffers, K. and Tuunanen, T., “Using Rich Information to Plan Mobile Financial Services Applications with Maximum Positive Impact: A Case Study,” in review, Information & Management.

Research in Progress—Data Collection Stage CSC applied to requirements engineering Helsingin Sanomat Develop Multi-channel access to sell advertising Data collection similar to CSC Follow up survey to participants Kano modeling

Research in Progress Compare CSC and other methods In design stage Matched sets of case studies to compare the outcomes of CSC vs FG, CSF, etc. Extended research on RE 2008 EURO games and games leading up to it Sonera

Research in Design stage Requirements engineering. Survey of methods and synthesis—in design stage Requirements engineering—integrating CSC RE method with UML

Other Idea Generation methods Focus Groups Good for exploring customer preferences for features Weak on modeling aggregated ideas Surveys Must have ideas in advance Good for determining importance of ideas

Research that’s needed Idea generation for IS planning Demonstration projects: “action research”