Business owned applications are a reality- Manage it

Establishing 'Making it Happen' as a 'Formal & Predictable' Discipline

Principles and Rules Listing Page
Business owned applications are a reality- Manage it
Business owned applications seem like an inevitable reality, where businesses are funding, developing and managing the applications on their own. This leads to data quality issues and chaos. Instead of fight or flight approach, a CIO can embrace this reality and manage it to minimize risk and disruption. Added benefit will be a reduction in these non IT-owned applications over time.

This page of 'Principles and Rules' is linked to: Data Quality, Core Data Management Tools,

One of the key reasons for data quality issues is the mushrooming of small-time applications which are funded, developed and owned by business. (Please refer reasons for bad data quality). These applications come-up because of the following reasons:

IT cannot meet the delivery and demand expectations, as they have limited band-width and they want to focus (rightly so) on big things first.
IT cannot meet the cost expectations. IT has certain standards and Vendor management principles, which can make small applications too costly for business. Business feels that they are smart enough to do these small applications much cheaper and much faster.

CIOs have varying responses to these applications. One typical response is that CIOs disown these apps. This means that:

They will not provide production support these apps,
They will not include the data from these apps in their enterprise reporting system
They will not have data exchange between IT owned and business owned apps etc.

Some of these responses are valid from control and stability perspective.

ExecutionMiH.com recommends that that there is no wide blade single response to business owned application portfolio. We feel that the CIO should embrace the inevitability of non-IT owned applications. The CIO should work with business to ensure that they cause least risk and disruption to business.

The appropriate steps could be:

Create complete inventory of these applications and excel sheets:

This inventory should contain the following details:

The name of the application along with the brief purpose
The details on the business processes it support and data it provides in the reporting.
The owners and the team which supports it.
Brief history of changes
Technology platform of the application
Comments on the level of stability, risks and recent production issues.
The kind of data it contains (for example if it contains credit cards information or a customer's private information)

Classify the inventory. One line of classification could be:

Business-critical: The applications which if switched off for one day will cause significant disruption or exposure to business or reporting.
Business-important: The apps which if switched off, will not cause disruption as there can be a manual work-around. But the manual work-around is not sustainable.
Business- sensitive: The apps will not cause the business disruption, even if it is switched off for long, but it will add a significant manual load.
None of the above- These applications will not have a significant manual work-around and they are not part of core business processes.

Build a road-map for each of the application:

Create a road-map for each application, given its details and the classification. It makes sense to bring all the applications which have a strong linkage to core business processes into IT fold. One may not do that from day 1, but existence of a plan, can help us avoid risks. Following could be various options to a road-map:

Merge the applications with IT owned core system.
Implement the IT controls and procedures to the application, while it still being owned by business.
The application to be hosted in IT hosting infrastructure, while it still being owned by business.
IT takes over the application as is and merge it with IT core systems at a later date.
Shrink wrap the application and further enhancements to be done in IT systems etc...

Create a well-laid out policy for applications to be owned by business

The management team can agree on a well defined policy on how a business can own the applications. This can include:

Review by CIO before business goes ahead
IT laying down the architectural and controls guidelines, which business needs to follow
Given that IT might have invested into an ERP system, IT can lay down the list of functionalities which cannot be automated thru the business apps, and they have to be done through ERP.

This whole exercise will provide a great reference for the CEO and the management team on the extent of risk they are living with. Instead of IT to come-in once a business-owned application is in complete mess, this effort will allow you to be more pro-active. It is better to run a health-centre instead of an emergency unit.

DISCLAIMER- ExecutionMiH.com is not endorsing the principle of business owned applications. The whole premise is on how to best manage the situation. The fight or flight approach can be detrimental. The advise here will be that IT should not take the above as one mega initiative, as it will de-focus IT and business from business as usual. One can start with a function or with a set of business critical applications.