For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Driving Multitenancy In Your Virtual Environments

How To Get Business Units To Share Your Consolidated Infrastructure

by James Staten, November 18, 2009

As you continue to consolidate your server infrastructure and make it more cloudlike, a key hurdle you and most enterprises must overcome is the sharing of physical infrastructure between business units (BUs). While some organizations have a centralized . . .

For CIOs

Forrester's Best Practices Framework For BT Leadership Maturity

Use Our Self-Assessment To Accelerate Your BT Transformation

by Bobby Cameron, Tim DeGennaro, November 6, 2009

As CIOs help their firms succeed with business technology (BT) — pervasive technology use with increased direct control by the business — they struggle to answer two deceptively simple questions: 1) How are we doing? and 2) what should we do better? These . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

When Selling EA Value, Context Is Everything

Align Your Value Message With Your Marketplace To Make It Stick

by Katie Smillie, Jeff Scott, November 3, 2009

Describing success as a result of being at "the right place at the right time" is often akin to saying "I just got lucky." So rather than waiting for the right place and time to market EA's value, continuously craft your message around what will be successful . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Case Study: WestJet Creates Clarity With Its Architecture Services Catalog

by Jeff Scott, October 26, 2009

EA organizations struggle to define what they do in terms the organization both understands and appreciates. The root cause for this struggle is often that the EA team itself is not clear about what it delivers, what stakeholders it is delivering to, . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Successful EA Programs Integrate Specific Value Levers And Accelerators

by Jeff Scott, October 22, 2009

CIOs intuitively understand the value of a well-architected environment but are less certain of how (or if) their enterprise architecture (EA) teams deliver that value. This disparity generates a great deal of discordance in EA efforts: Companies charter . . .

For CIOs

The Value Of A Green IT Maturity Assessment

Introducing Forrester's Green IT Maturity Assessment Methodology

by Doug Washburn, Christopher Mines, October 20, 2009

CIOs recognize the importance of environmental considerations in planning IT operations, but they are often unsure about how to put that recognition into action. With sustainability rising on the corporate agenda, and the cost, risk, and revenue benefits . . .

For CIOs

Driving Value With Process Improvement

CIOs Recommend Nine Best Practices For Business Processes Management

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., October 6, 2009

Senior business executives recognize the value of technology in supporting business operations and expect CIOs to help drive process improvement efforts — all while tuning and elevating IT's relationship with the business. CIOs from various industries . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

A Sample IT Infrastructure And Operations Balanced Scorecard  (41 KB XLS)

by Rachel A. Dines, Evelyn Hubbert, October 1, 2009

The Balanced Scorecard is built around four dimensions that have been adjusted for use in information technology: the value perspective, the user orientation perspective, the operational excellence perspective, and the future orientation perspective. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Building The IT Infrastructure And Operations Balanced Scorecard

The Eight Essential Metrics That Infrastructure And Operations Should Be Measuring

by Rachel A. Dines, Evelyn Hubbert, October 1, 2009

"You can't manage what you can't measure" is the stated adage, but when it comes to infrastructure and operations (I&O), what to measure is the first challenge. Many firms don't know which metrics to use, or how to collect the information they need . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Use TEI To Unearth IT Investment "Options"

by Sharyn Leaver, September 21, 2009

As firms look to squeeze value from technology, IT executives' ability to understand, quantify, and communicate the flexibility options of an IT investment becomes vital for business health. Leveraging Forrester's Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) methodology . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Business Case for BI: Now More Critical Than Ever

by Boris Evelson, August 25, 2009

Even as IT reduces or holds budgets steady in many enterprise software sectors, business intelligence (BI) initiatives remain front and center in most enterprise business and IT agendas. As the demand for pervasive and comprehensive BI applications increases, . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Plan Effectiveness Review To Squeeze More Value From ERP Investments

by George Lawrie, August 11, 2009

Most CIOs have inherited mature enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations. As the years pass, the original implementation team disbands, retires, or dies, and the old use cases and best practices start to brown and curl at the edges like the . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Characterizing EA Teams And Their Challenges

by Alex Cullen, Katie Smillie, August 6, 2009

Forrester has seen that the mission and operating model of enterprise architecture teams can be characterized along two dimensions: orientation (technology-oriented or business-oriented) and focus (project-focused or strategy-focused). These two dimensions . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Articulating The Business Value Of Information Security

by Khalid Kark, July 24, 2009

Many CISOs struggle to articulate the value of their security programs and justify the security budget to business and executive management. This problem was acutely evident in the current economic downturn: Many security managers saw their budgets slashed, . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Business Architecture Clarifies The Scope Of Business Change Programs

by Jeff Scott, July 10, 2009

Most IT organizations have experienced projects where, despite good project management and delivery to business requirements, the project failed to deliver the desired business benefits and was deemed a failure. The root cause of these failures is that . . .

For CIOs

Innovation And Agility — Driving IT Success In Economic Hard Times

Firms Invest Beyond Tactical Approaches To Accelerate Out Of The Downturn

by Bobby Cameron, June 2, 2009

To understand how IT organizations are addressing the downturn, Forrester interviewed 46 enterprise IT decision-makers from around the globe. We found three scenarios: Those who have yet to cut their budgets and are keeping their options open; those who . . .

For CIOs

Value-Based Communication Boosts Business' Perception Of IT

Best Practice CIOs Take A Personal Leadership Role In Marketing IT's Value

by Bobby Cameron, May 15, 2009

CIOs list IT-business alignment as a perennial challenge. They fail to achieve the business partnership they seek as the gap persists between business execs' expectations of IT and those execs' sense of IT's ability to deliver. But CIOs themselves are . . .

For CIOs

Programs, Not Projects, Deliver Business Value

by Craig Symons, April 30, 2009

CIOs have been searching for ways to measure, improve, and communicate the business value of IT for years without a lot of success. Many have implemented PMOs, hired certified project managers, and begun CMMI or Six Sigma initiatives, all designed to . . .

For CIOs

Business Satisfaction Survey Tool  (168 KB XLS)

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., April 9, 2009

To help IT executives who want to address business satisfaction through a systematic approach, Forrester has developed a list of questions to guide them through the deployment of a list of business satisfaction questions.

For CIOs

Is IT Qualified To Satisfy The Business?

Use Forrester's Systematic Approach To Understanding Business Satisfaction

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., April 9, 2009

IT executives increasingly implement marketing initiatives to improve the communications with their business customers. But these efforts often focus solely on the brand aspects of the services under the IT's control without understanding the business' . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Sharpen Your Focus By Building An EA Practice Strategic Plan

by Jeff Scott, April 7, 2009

Enterprise architects who focus exclusively on building architecture and ignore building their architecture practice are missing the opportunity to grow their influence and value. The result is often great architecture but little impact. To meet their . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

How To Win Funding For Your Customer Service Project

Use The Discipline Total Economic Impact™ To Boost ROI

by Natalie L. Petouhoff, Ph.D., April 6, 2009

Given the current poor economic climate, customer service professionals need to back up their requests for funding with compelling business justifications. Your initiative will be stacked up against many others competing for the same resources and money. . . .

For CIOs

Driving Business Change, Part 3 — Foundational IT Capabilities

Execution, Capacity, Metrics, Flexibility, And Enterprise Apps

by Marc Cecere, March 20, 2009

To be credible within the organization, IT must execute projects and provide basic services with competence and predictability. Without this, the business will not trust IT to be a partner in business change. This report — the third in a series of four . . .

For CIOs

IT Must "Get" Business Satisfaction

Measuring And Improving Business Satisfaction Requires A Framework

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., March 20, 2009

Today's business execs have high expectations for technology's contribution to their organizations, but they tend to be dissatisfied with IT's delivery. In order to close this gap, IT must be able to understand the components of business satisfaction . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Justifying Application Modernization: Industry Analogies Explain Choices In A Business Context

by Phil Murphy, March 17, 2009

Wary business executives are squeezed by external competition for market share and internal competition for operating and IT budgets. Applications professionals can no longer expect that the justification of the twentieth century — "Trust me, you need . . .