Performance Driven IT Management: Five Practical Steps to Business Success

“Despite spending more than $600 billion on information technology over the past decade, the Federal Government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT” according to the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management published by the White House in late 2010. “Too often, Federal IT projects run over budget, behind schedule, or fail to deliver promised functionality.” This book argues that the Federal Government needs a new approach. Introducing a novel five-step process called Performance-Driven Management (PDM), author Ira Sachs explains in detail how to reduce risk on large IT programs and projects. This book walks through the five steps of the PDM process: conducting a high-level strategic review of what an organization does, who it serves, what it wants to do, and how it is going to do it; implementing performance measures to gauge success for the organization; completing comprehensive business cases for projects and using them to mitigate risk and manage projects throughout the project life cycle; performing benefits realization on completed projects; and establishing these best practices to achieve successful results in the future. This is an essential tool for all IT and business managers in government, and contractors doing business with the government, and it has much useful and actionable information for anyone who is interested in increasing the impact and reducing the risk of large IT and organizational change projects.