Management indicators model to evaluate performance of IT organizations

Abstract

There is no arguing nowadays about the importance of IT for the growth and competitive edge of organizations. But if technology is to be a true asset for a company, it must be aligned with the business strategic goals by means of a formalized system of strategic planning, maturity of development process, technology management and corporative quality vision. The accrued benefits can be manifold: the development of training and learning environments for an effective improvement of procedures and product quality, efficient use of assets and resources, opportunity for innovation and technologic advancement, an approach to problem solving in areas critical to the organization among others. Many companies make use of these practices, but find it hard to evaluate how effective they are and what is the final quality of the achieved results at diverse customer levels both in project vision and the continuity of service. One cause of these drawbacks is failure to apply measurement models which provide objective pointers to assess how effective the IT strategies used have actually been considering the strategic business goals. To incorporate models of measures is no easy task because it entails working on several aspects: technical, processes, products and the peculiar culture of each organization. This paper presents a model of indicators to evaluate IT performance using three well known methods: balanced scorecard, GQM and PSM.