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Table of contents:

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………….2

2. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………..2

3.Cases…………………………………………………………………………………………………………3

3.1 SINTEF……………………………………………………………………………………………….3

3.2USIT……………………………………………………………………………………………………3

3.3Telenor Digital……………………………………………………………………………………4

4. Cases Similarities………………………………………………………………………………………5

4.1 organization structure………………………………………………………………………6

4.2 Units…………………………………………………………………………………………………6

5. IT Governance Design Framework…………………………………………………………….6

6. Key System……………………………………………………………………………………………….7

7.Management approaches………………………………………………………………………….7

8. Cases governance arrangements………………………………………………………………8

9. The Evaluation of the cases……………………………………………………………………….9

10. Discussion and suggestion for improvement…………………………………………10

11. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………….11

12. Reference……………………………………………………………………………………………..11

Telenor Digital, USIT and SINTEF

INF5890 IT and Management ,

Spring 2015

Yassin Isir Hassan

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1. Abstract

Every organization which has more than one person and more than one

department will need some form of governance framework structure.

Organizational governance structure is designed to promote transparency, to

enable discussion, to facilitate collaboration and, to ensure efficiency and

effectiveness. This paper addresses IT governance structure in three cases

(Telenor Digital, USIT and SINTEF), and clarify the process of governance

performance yield. IT governance, per se requires a solid decision either by

individual or group of people (archetypes) to prove it. It's not possible for IT

governance to meet every goal, thus, the most important aspect is that IT

governance should highlight conflicts with open mind. The purpose of this

paper is to analyze three cases similarities and to what extend do they agree

with the course theory and concept, their management approaches and

propose improvements. In order to answer these questions I will use three

major research strategies: (1) course theory and concept (2) three cases

paper and (3) cases websites.

Keywords: IT governance framework structure, performance improvement.

2. Introduction

Defining IT Governance is a complex task, due to differences of opinion,

knowledge and the organizational culture. Additionally, the IT structure is

shaped by various organization factors such as convergence, collaboration,

culture and past experiences. Related to this question about why the need to

study the impact of IT governance on cases performance, and why IT

governance correlate with various effective management practices in all

areas?. It is still possible that governance might have a positive impact on

performance (Weill and Ross, 2004 p.122) even thought their structure is unlike

Weill and Ross. To learn more about the cases structure, I will present briefly

the cases history and then their similarities.

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3. Cases

Brief history about the cases

3.1 SINTEF

SINTEF is a scientific research foundation founded in 1950 by NTH (group7,

p.3). It’s one of the largest research companies in Scandinavia and Europe.

SINTEF conducts scientific research in 70 countries. It is not-for-profit

organization. It has 8 local business units and a centralized IT department

(group 7, p.18). SINTEF provide support and services to education professionals

and researchers around local and global. SINTEF is a not-for-profit

organization.

SINTEF Governance arrangements

SINTEF doesn’t use any formal framework. Their in-the-house framework

enables them to identify and explain the main structure of each strategy and

highlights how they should coherently choose an organizational model on

the basis of not using any formal frameworks such as COBIT or ITIL to help

organize their IT governance (group7, p.18).Though, inspired by COBIT or ITIL,

they develop their own methods.

3.2 USIT

USIT was established in 1991 by fusion of departments USE (University

Center for Electronic Computing) and ADB (Administrative Computing

Center) (group2, p.3). USIT supports UiO's main areas of commitment:

research, education and applied knowledge (usit.uio.no/english/about/).

USIT is also a national center of competency in IT for higher education sector.

USIT main task is to ensure UIO enterprise meet legal and management

objectives. USIT provide leverage for UIO departments, such as developing

and providing support for most of the administrative, web, and other IT

systems used. USIT is not-for-profit organization.

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Although USIT structure is hierarchical with many managerial layers, they still

have one primary structure that organizes their organization into divisions,

business units, and their departments are aligned by their strategic

objectives (group2, p.4-figure2).

USIT is divided into three organizational units. Every unit has different

managerial structures and function, such as:

(1) IT Director’s Office Staff and Interdepartmental (2) Support Services,

Division for IT operations and (3) Division for Enterprise services.

USIT Governance arrangement

The administration of such a huge organization need some form of

framework to manage the growth number of administrative IT systems, users

(students), services etc. USIT framework enables identifies and realizes the

administrative systems of UiO. Framework was designed to govern

University’s work processes, to enable transparency and robustness ((group2,

p.10).

3.3 Telenor Digital

Telenor Group is a Norwegian multinational telecommunications company. It

is one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications companies with

operations in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Asia. Telenor owns networks

in 12 countries, and has operations in 29 countries. Telenor digital is

community within Telenor that exists to shape the organization’s digital

features. The main function for Telenor digital is to converse Telenor Group

into a leading Internet Telco, as the home of Telenor’s high-tech

development house, Telenor digital creates global scalable solutions within

next-generation communication services, cloud services, e-commerce, and

the “Internet of Everything”. They enable global distribution of Telenor and

third-party services and support new ventures within digital

entrepreneurship Telenor (group2,p.4)

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Telenor Digital is lean organization (company), established in 2011, as an

Information Technology and Services industry; with up to 500 employees.

Furthermore, Telenor Digital is not-for-profit organization.

Telenor Digital has four units; every unit has different managerial structures

and function, such as:

1. DEVELOPMENT: Software development (in-the-house).

2. GLOBAL SCALE: provides a new global infrastructure

3. COMMERCIAL: ensure Telenor’s competitive edge in the future

4. GROWTH COMPANIES: enabling global connectivity and new mobile

marketing solutions.

Telenor Digital Governance arrangement

Telenor Digital as an organization has a board and a CEO; it’s a self-

maintaining functioning organization with its own annual budget but, has no

strategy on its own or as unit. But they often or in some cases use Telenor

strategy for buying and selling (contracts). Telenor Digital is an ambitious and

innovative organization operating in changeable and unstable settings, so

flexibility and agility are the only way to respond faster to the ever-changing

technology trends.

4. Cases Similarities

The three organizations have many similarities; they are well known organizations both locally and global. None of the organization has framework such as COBIT or ITIL. Instead they each have their own framework or methods inspired by COBIT and ITIL to provide them guidelines, for example how to implement IT governance or how to govern. They are located in Oslo and their work is almost related such as: they are IT organization, work with development, research, offer services and carry out their work to generate value. Their customers are related somehow: students, researcher and developers. I will look for some similarities in their organizational structures as well, units, key systems and their IT Governance Design Frameworks

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4.1 Organizational structure

Telenor Digital, USIT and SINTEF are three preceding IT (services) developers based in Oslo. Although some of their organizational structure is somehow different, both organizations display a remarkable similarity. Each structure has a three layer model, additionally; their structure supports and organizes various business capabilities that are based on their organizational requirements to achieve their objective goals. At the top layer is the board member, the CIO’s are in the middle layer and at the bottom layer they define who is performing the various functions and tasks and how these components relate to one another. The model ensures that all components of a business function cohesively achieve its goal (see cases paper).

4.2 Units

They each divide their unit into small senior team and focuses to promote

and facilitate entrepreneurial activity and provide support on determining

expansion and innovative business activities. From there, they create a unit

to deliver services based on their organizational strategy. Their teams are

obvious, formed around business units so communication occurs within the

teams is very important. They use component interfaces for teams or units

communication boundaries.

5. IT Governance Design Frameworks

Each organization has a board member and CIO/CTO or local managers include well-structured IT governance on more mature business governance mechanisms (see cases paper). Their architects have a unique opportunity to assess organizational alignment at both the managerial and operational levels. In fact, their architecture reflects the idea to support their organizations. Their framework is sensitive to all current state, whether governance, technological (services), business processes, investments, project management or managerial.

6. Key System

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They use integration software that serves to join or mediate between two

separate already existing programs, applications, or systems such as

Maconomy (ERP), Cerebrum (SAPUiO, Active Directory and NIS.) and Eye-

Share faktura etc. They store the data with software system aims to describe,

predict, and improve development, maintenance, and management of

complex software such as SAP, LDAP, oracle and cloud computing etc. They

use web application and services such as SharePoint and Amazon EC2 for

web application framework and platform development or for confidentiality.

They also use Business Intelligent platforms to enable build applications that

help their organizations learn and understand their business such as QlikView

and collaboration software such Confluence, SKAIT etc. Their also outsource

software (such as SaaS), etc. In order to ensure their user’s authentication

and authorization they use software such as AD or SharePoint etc.

7. Management approaches

The implementation of the above mentioned resources of the three cases is

not enough to obtain the expected uses of IT. These resources only offer a

potential that they should develop and adapt to their specific business

context, using management skills. Weill and Ross prove with their study (Weill

and Ross, 2004 p.2). that companies show a successful return on IT investment,

have better IT management practices that allow them to adapt their

organizational routines to meet business needs. I will use Weill and Ross IT

governance arrangement model on “page 133” to analyze the three cases

performances and identify how the five decision making approaches fit

together in strengthening total governance design. As mentioned above the

cases are not-for-profit, but still they do produce or develop services and ROI

determines whether or not an action will take place or not, hence effective

modeling and planning of the business strategies is inevitably. In order to

examine their approaches fit the course concept; I will first identify the cases

governance arrangements and then analyze who make the appropriate

decision.

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The cases decision rights and accountability framework are first of all

implemented to encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT. The outline

approaches is based on IT governance decision making followed by who

make those decision according to Weill and Ross book.

8. Cases governance arrangements

IT Governance Archetypes framework identifies the people or groups of

people behind all decision made in an organization. The framework answers

the question such as who decides or has the (authority) for these decisions,

and how decision and IT keys merge to create balance management. (Weill

and Ross,2004, p.27).

I use different colors to differentiate the case (Telenor Digital: blue, USIT:

green and SINTEF: red) to map to their IT governance management.

IT

Principles

IT Architecture IT

Infrastructure

strategy

Business

Application

Needs

Investment and Prioritizing

Business

Monarchy

(3) (1)

(2) (2) (3) (2)

(1)

IT

Monarch

(2) (3) (1) (2)

(3) ) (1) (1)

Feudal (1*)

Federal (3)

Duopoly

Anarchy (3*)

The Governance arrangements matrix directly maps each case organization

into possible structures, and allowed the right types of decisions to be made

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according to their needs. The cases arrangements balance multiple

performance objectives (see their papers under).

9. The Evaluation of the cases

Telenor Digital: Telenor Digital arrangement uses business monarchy for

principles and investment, IT monarchy for architecture and infrastructure

strategies and federal for business application needs. Telenor Digital federal

arrangement for business need application is nicely balanced with business

monarch for IT principles. The arrangement ensures a competency across

operational units and at the same time recognizes the differences between

business units (Weill and Ross, 2004 p.140).

The arrangement might requires some involvement of business monarchy in

IT architecture in order to centralize their governance, where business

decision making with IT group will provide advices, education, and research

(Weill and Ross, 2004 p.140).

USIT: USIT arrangement uses IT monarchy for principles and architecture and

business monarchy for infrastructure, business needs and investment.

The arrangement is not centralized; they need more involvement from

business monarchy for a more centralized architecture and infrastructure.

They also need to harmonized business needs application into a federal

model and IT principle (business monarchy) to create competency across

operational units while recognizing the differences between business units

(Weill and Ross, 2004p.140).

SINTEF arrangement uses business monarchy for principles and investment

and IT monarchy for architecture, infrastructure and business needs.

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The arrangement needs to involve business monarchy in decisions-making

for the architecture so that it could be more centralized. The decision making

with IT group will provide advices, education, and research (Weill and Ross,

2004 p.140). They also need to harmonized business needs application (into

federal) and IT principle (business monarchy) to create competency across

operational units while recognizing the differences between business units

(Weill and Ross, 2004 p.140)

10. Discussion and Suggestion for improvements

Telenor Digital structure almost fit the theory concept of Weill and Ross

book, but they need to create a stronger level of trust between the business

and IT architecture (Weill and Ross, 2004 p.140). Telenor Digital is more

centralized when it comes to IT principle and investment they use business

units to appropriate decisions and, they use IT monarchy for infrastructure.

The federal model for business application needs can capitalize on potential

synergies across business unit. USIT and SINTEF have a way to go. Both USIT

and SINTEF need to improve the structure in order to fit the theory concept

of Weill and Ross book. They need to involve more business units in decision

making in order to centralize their governance (see above). They need to create

a centralized IT management designed to manage infrastructure,

architecture and shared services (Weill and Ross, 2004 p.141).The also need federal

arrangement for business need application so that they can manage and

balance their business units. They need federal model for creating

competency across operational units (Weill and Ross, 2004 p.140).

11. CONCLUSION

In this paper, I presented general procedure to analyze, evaluate and improve IT Governance in three cases. The procedure considers the alignment between archetype and IT key decisions, in order to find out if the

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cases fit the course theory and suggest improvement. The approach of processing maturity IT governance and management is an ongoing process. The structure and content of the cases proposed ensure the cycle of continuous improvement for IT governance. The evaluation of the cases integrates their governance framework aligning to responsible management and IT decision keys, considering what are best performance satisfaction, thus allowing a comprehensive assessment of IT governance in the organization. The proposal part is based on the assessment and guide from Weill and Ross- book construction of the IT governance process as a central proposal for improvement. This part is also vital to ensure continuous improvement; it allows balancing goal and performance indicators that ensure proactive improvement actions. It also encourages managers or management to include business unit in every IT decision-making for more centralized and balanced governance.

12. References

Amazon EC2: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ (2015)

file:///C:/Users/isir/Documents/inf5890/group-7---sintef.pdf

file:///C:/Users/isir/Downloads/group-2---usit-admin.pdf

https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5890/v15/projects/group-reports/group-3---

telenor-digital-%28final%29.pdf

IT Process wiki on ITIL: http://wiki.en.it-

processmaps.com/index.php/ITIL_Processes (2015)

Proff.no on Telenor Digital. http://www.proff.no/selskap/telenor-digital-

as/fornebu/telekommunikasjon/IGHASW001PE/ [2015]

http://www.sintef.no/home/

Telenor on Telenor Digital http://www.telenor.com/about-us/our-business/telenor-

digital/ (2015)

Telenor Digital Brief history: https://www.linkedin.com/company/telenor-

digital (2015)

https://www.usit.uio.no/

Weill, Peter, and Jeanne W. Ross: (2004) IT governance: How top performers manage

IT decision rights for superior results, p.1-269

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Wikipedia on Every: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evry (2015)

Wikipedia on new relic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Relic (2015)

Wikipedia on Lean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean (2015)

Projects:

Telenor Digital: ( Yassin Isir, Dennis Gan, Julian Nyark, Anna Hoel, Halvorsen) IT Strategies and Governance at Telenor Digital ,

INF5890, IT and Management spring 2015)

USIT (Viktor Malík, Ján Švehla, Magnus Øren, Zhang Jin, Bo Zhou)

Analysis of IT governance at the University of Oslo

INF5890, IT and Management spring 2015)

SINTEF: (Kristian Bekkstrand, Martine Rolid Leonardsen., Espen Andreassen)

SINTEF

IT and Management spring 2015)