System Transformation Portal

The requirements analysis phase of the IT organizational transformation project involves identifying stakeholders, uncovering outstanding issues and determining key drivers to be input into the project plan.

Identify Key Project Stakeholders
Each of the stakeholders in the organizational transformation project should be listed at this time. Stakeholders may include IT management, customers, users, suppliers, IT personnel, business unit executives, business unit personnel, external governing bodies or other entities. Each of these stakeholders must be incorporated into the planning stage later in the project.

Identify Outstanding Issues
List the outstanding issues that have brought you to this point in the transformation planning process. Some common issues are listed below.

1. Business units are at constant odds with IT.
2. Executive strategies are out of step with worker actions.
3. Communication among departments is ineffective.
4. Business units want to know where all of the IT money has gone.
5. New technologies cannot be deployed across the infrastructure in a reasonable time.
6. 80% of everyone's time is dedicated to working around the system and 20% of their time is dedicated to doing their job.
7. IT-related tasks are distributed across the enterprise, many of which are beyond the oversight of the existing IT function.
8. Redundant roles and processes have caused confusion and ineffectiveness within IT.
9. IT systems are ill prepared for major migrations.
10. IT funding requirements are not being met by current budgets.
11. The tracking of IT spending and charge-back is inadequate or ineffective.
12. There is a lack of discipline and procedural adherence.
13. There are too many procedures to follow, which bog down projects.
14. Vendor / supplier coordination is inadequate.
15. External spending is out of control.
16. Outsourcing management is not being done effectively.
17. Staff lacks training in appropriate technologies.
18. Human resource management is not filling staff positions.
19. There is not cohesive strategy for IT to deploy the business vision.
20. Project oversight is inadequate and has resulted in cost overruns on a regular basis.
21. There is a great degree of finger pointing when things go wrong.
22. Workers do not feel they have enough input to how things have been organized.
23. Outsourcing has splintered the ability of IT to effectively manage the information function.
24. IT is not ready to participate in external consortiums with suppliers and / or customers.
25. IT is not ready to deploy e-business requirements.

Identify Key Drivers Beyond Transformation Project
In addition to the issues identified in the previous task, a number of key drivers will serve as the major motivation for the transformation project. A sampling of motivational factors are listed below. These, along with other key drivers should be identified during this process.

1. Does IT need to have the ongoing capacity to dynamically realign itself with an evolving business and technical infrastructure?
2. How can IT more effectively collaborate with internal and external business units?
3. What framework should IT employ that would allow it to readily adapt to the accelerating pace of technological change?
4. How can IT move away from outdated command and control hierarchies and embrace organic infrastructures inherent in today�s global business models?
5. How will IT embrace the growing outsourcing movement and accommodate the shift to virtual organizations?
6. Can IT be a driving force in changing information management across the enterprise?

Additional Factors in Defining Transformation Project Requirements
Other factors may additionally be included in the requirements phase of this project. A cost analysis may be required. This would typically involve determining how well IT could help business units better serve the bottom-line, particularly where it impacts revenue procurement or cost management. This and other items should be included at this time.

Project Requirements Review Deliverable
The deliverable from this project phase is a list of project stakeholders, issues, driving factors behind the project and other items needed to establish a basis for moving forward with a plan that will rectify these issues.