TISM

A Tool for Information Systems Management

António Trigo

, João Barroso

and João Varajão

Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Oliveira do Hospital, Oliveira do Hospital, Portugal

Grupo de Investigação em Engenharia do Conhecimento e Apoio à Decisão, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

Porto, Portugal

Departamento de Engenharias, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

Keywords: Information System Function, Information System Management, Tool for Chief Information Officer.

Abstract: The complexity of Information Technology and Information Systems within organizations keeps growing

rapidly. As a result, the work of the Chief Information Officer is becoming increasingly difficult, since he

has to manage multiple technologies and perform several activities of different nature. In this position paper,

we prove the development of a new tool for Chief Information Officers, which will systematize and

aggregate the enterprise Information Systems Function information.

1 INTRODUCTION

The complexity of the Information Technology and

Information Systems (IT/IS) within organizations

keeps growing rapidly.

In order to manage that complexity, there are

several tools commercially available for Chief

Information Officers (CIOs). These tools vary

considerably in their capabilities and are almost

always focused on one specific management item.

Consequently, it is difficult for the CIO to get the

overall picture of the Information Systems Function

(ISF) of the organization, which may affect the CIO

job.

We hence advocate that it is needed a new

holistic and integrated tool to support the Chief

Information Officers (CIOs) activities. In this

position paper we propose the development of TISM

- a Tool for Information Systems Management -, in

particular, the conceptual model that supports it.

In this paper after this brief introduction we

present the background section where we describe

the main ISF activities and tools to support them.

Then we present the conceptual model for the future

tool to develop discussing its merits and challenges.

Finally we present the research agenda for the

development of the new tool.

2 BACKGROUND

In order to ensure the proper operation of IT/IS,

organizations require an Information Systems

Function (ISF) that is well structured and skilful in

order to provide IT services needed to support the

organization business.

Information Systems Function is composed by

the set of organizational activities aiming to

optimize the organization’s IS, and can be analysed

under three main complementary views, which

provide a complete perspective (Varajão, 1997,

Varajão, 2002): activities (planning, development,

exploitation, and management), resources (human,

financial, technological, and informational), and

influencing factors (structural, environmental, social,

cultural, psychological, and time-related).

It is useful to conceptualize the ISF by the means

of four main groups of activities (Varajão, 2002):

Information Systems Planning (ISP), Information

Systems Development (ISD), Information Systems

Exploitation (ISE), and Information Systems

Management (ISM).

ISP is responsible for identifying the systems

that are needed in an organization, thus preceding

ISD, in charge of developing the systems identified

during ISP. Afterwards, ISE is responsible for

ensuring the proper usage of the IS, in the best

interests of the organization. The ISM is required to

provide structure and control to all these activities.

303

Trigo A., Barroso J. and Varajão J. (2009).

TISM - A Tool for Information Systems Management.

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Databases and Information Systems Integration, pages

303-307

DOI: 10.5220/0002155403030307

 SciTePress

ISP is a necessary precursor to ISD, since it provides

a long-term vision, by identifying the potential

systems and defining a full set of management

policies and approaches. It is assumed that ISP is

integrated and aligned with the business planning,

being therefore a planning strength for

organizational change, provided by ISD, since a new

system frequently implies a new form of

organization.

In order to support the needs of the organization

as time elapses, IS must adapt to the naturally

occurring changes. In this sense, it is possible to

consider a cyclical and continuous sequence of ISF

activities: the several activities feed each other in

each system generation, and possess strong

interlinks.

It is possible to consider a logical sequence of

activities, under which an IS is thought-over (in the

scope of ISP), produced (in the scope of ISD), and

then used (in the scope of ISE). However, in practice

these activities take place concurrently, with

significant inter-relationships and interdependences;

and these relationships are strongly interactive. The

several activities cannot be approached in isolation;

they must be taken in account and integrated

together.

There are multiple propositions for ISP, ISD,

ISE, and ISM, each involving several activities

(Kendall and Kendall, 1992) and denominations

(Martin et al., 1994). It is somewhat hard to come

across two authors agreeing in detail over the same

proposition (Sager, 1990). However, in spite of all

variations, their nature is mostly similar. Table 1

presents those activities that met major

dissemination and are most commonly accepted for

the ISF.

Table 1: ISF activities. Source: (Varajão, 2002).

Groups of activities Activities

ISP IS Strategy analysis

IS Strategy definition

IS Strategy implementation

ISD System analysis

System design

System development

System deployment

System maintenance

ISE System operation

IT management

Human resources management

Procurement of services and

resources

Other, diversified activities

ISM Organization and control

To support the ISF activities there are several

tools, as identified in a previous study (Trigo et al.,

2008a): Sarbannes-Oxley Act (SOX), Basel II,

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

(HIPAA), IT Balanced Scorecard, Return On

Investment (ROI), Total Cost of Ownership (TCO),

Earned Value Analysis (EVA), Enterprise Risk

Management - Integrated Framework (COSO),

Control Objectives for Information and related

Technology (CobiT), Project Management Body of

Knowledge (PMBoK), PRojects IN Controlled

Environments (PRINCE2), Capability Maturity

Model® Integration (CMMI), Software Process

Improvement and Capability dEtermination (Spice),

Six Sigma, ISO 9000, TickIT, ISO 27000,

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

(ITIL) with several software tools from IT vendors

sucha as System Center from Microsoft, HP

Openview from HP, Tivoli platform from IBM, etc.,

ISO 20000, enhanced Telecom Operations Map

(eTOM) and Business Process Management (BPM).

Beyond the CobiT framework, which must be

implemented on some software architecture, none of

the above tools covers all the ISF activities.

This is a problem because CIOs need a tool that

supports the management of the ISF activities in an

integrated way and not the sole management of each

one of them.

3 TISM

TISM stands for Tool for Information System

Management, and enables the management of ISF

based on the architectural vision of the ISF.

There are numerous propositions for the

definition of the IS architecture of an enterprise,

being one of the most widely used, the framework

proposed by Zachman (Zachman, 1987), which is

easy to understand and addresses the enterprise as a

whole being independently of tools or

methodologies, and any issues can be mapped

against it to understand where they fit (Lankhorst,

2005).

Our tool and respective conceptual model is not

an implementation of this framework, but it does

inherit the idea of the use of matrices to map the

different IT/IS elements, some of properties derived

from Zachman framework dimensions and the use of

perspectives looking at the organization IS

architecture and ISF.

Based on the this architectural vision of ISF, we

reached the conclusion that one best way to

implement a tool for ISF management would be

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through the use of matrices that would link the

various elements of the ISF, be they management

objects, activities or resources (and other elements

that maybe necessary), as shown in Figure 1.

The importance of using matrices is reinforced

by a previous study conducted with the purpose of

identifying and characterizing which software tools

CIOs of large Portuguese companies use in their

work, that revealed CIO’s preferred software tool to

support their activities is the spreadsheet (Trigo et

al., 2008b).

Figure 1: Conceptual model of TISM.

In TISM matrices are used to map different types

of elements. Only two types of elements, and their

relationships compose each individual matrix.

One example, of this kind of construction would

be the matrix Activities/People, where we would

map how human resources are involved in the

different activities, such as, being responsible (R),

having a strong (S) or some participation (SP), in the

development of one activity, which would consist in

the relationships between activities and people. This

would allow the CIO to have a complete picture of

how the human resources are allocated. A brief

example is provided in Table 2.

Table 2: Activities/People.

Activities / People

Joe

John

Johan

…

IS Strategy analysis R S

System maintenance SP S

System operation SP S

IT management S S

The use of a software tool based on this model

would be straightforward, given that the user would

do five steps for the matrix definition: define the

element types, with respective characteristics; create

the elements and assign the values for the

characteristics defined; create the matrix, selecting

which elements of a given type to include; define the

relationships for the two types of elements of this

matrix; and assign relationship values to the

elements of the matrix. This process would be done

only once, at matrix creation.

It is important to enhance that elements are

reusable and can belong to as many matrices as the

user wishes, so for some matrices, he/she just needs

to select elements and create relationships.

The use of matrices with only two types of

elements allows to see how one element relates with

all the other elements of the ISF, giving not only a

holistic perspective of that element, but also making

it easier to identify where errors/redundancies of its

use. We can, for instance, detect trough the use of

this model if a certain resource is well allocated.

Since the application will be used to map all the

elements, or at least the most important ones, for the

ISF management, we anticipate an important

drawback, given the dimension of the organization

and ISF where it will be used that may produce

matrices of very large dimension, which is the

manipulation of the matrices created, something that

would also happen with a spreadsheet.

In order to facilitate the manipulation of the

matrices, in the application to develop, we suggest

the creation of a “split” functionality that would

keep the elements (headers of the columns and rows)

fixed and visible, while navigating through the

matrix to manipulate a certain relationship. In order

to facilitate the element creation we consider that is

also necessary to create a mechanism to important

all elements of a given type from a file, a task that

should be done by another member of the IT team

rather than by the CIO, to who the application is

intended.

While the process of defining the different types

of elements, elements, matrices and relationships is

done by the user of the application, in most cases the

CIO, we considerer that the application should

possess routines (e.g. web services) to allow it to

interact with other systems in order to collect the

management information needed, similar to what

some ITIL suits already do (Baldwin, 2008, IBM,

2006, Hewlett-Packard, 2007), by indicating the

usage of hard disk drives by servers or by knowing

how much licences are in use of a certain software

application. This would avoid the CIO need to recur

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305

to a third party application to get information

needed.

Beyond this integration, which would allow

maintaining the management information updated,

there is another situation, which could be addressed

in the development of the application, that is the

self-management of some systems based on the

management information provided by them through

the use of software agents, using decision making

algorithms that are tuned to evaluate different

decision making strategy and implementing different

decisions in real-time (Banker and Kauffman, 2004,

Shirazi and Soroor, 2007), which would free the

CIO from some more trivial management decisions.

Although the conceptual model does, in our

opinion, covers all the management issues of the

CIO activity, there is an important drawback, which

is the knowledge that the CIO has of the ISF and of

the IT/IS solutions in use within the organization,

since the conceptual model does not indicate which

elements, matrices or relationships to create to

support the management of ISF.

To shorten the CIO learning curve towards the

use of an application based in this conceptual model,

one should include a set of examples, which include

element types, elements, matrices and relationships

so that the CIO can see what he/she can and cannot

do with the application.

4 AGENDA

Our research agenda will have to focus on two

items: on the development of the tool based on this

conceptual model and on the creation and

characterization of element types, elements,

relationships and matrices that will be part of the

tool.

We are now developing the TISM prototype

based on this conceptual model, with PHP, MySQL,

and also AJAX libraries, such as jQuery, which

allow producing richer interfaces, making it easier

for the user (CIO) to use it. One of our objectives is,

due to the complexity of the issue, to produce an

easy to use and learn interface. Otherwise CIO will

not spend time to learn how to use it.

Figure 2 shows a screenshot of a real matrix

Activities/People of the IT team of a Portuguese

university, which, as we can see, is of a considerable

dimension. Other matrices such as

hardware/installations, enterprise software/

hardware, etc., are being implemented and tested, for

their usefulness and validity. But the work is still in

progress.

Figure 2: TISM prototype screenshot.

Another challenge is to create the initial set of

element types, elements, relationships and matrices,

a task that is independent from the development of

the tool itself, and from the tool, since the

conceptual model presented here can be

implemented with other technologies beyond the

ones we are using.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Commonly found activities in the ISF are thus, e.g.,

project management, application development and

maintenance, IT management, help desk, network

management, and many others.

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For management and development of these

activities, CIO have at their disposal a wide variety

of approaches and tools, which usually are not

supported in an integrated manner by one single

software tool. Such a tool is needed to allow the

management of all ISF related activities and

resources.

In this paper we described a conceptual model to

support the development of an application that will

support the management of the ISF in a holistic and

integrated way, which can contribute for the CIO

overall success.

The next stage in our research will be to

implement this new conceptual model into a fully

functional prototype, which we have already started,

and test for its usefulness.

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