Intelligent Decision Making and Risk Analysis for IT Management Processes

Information Technology Processes

IT processes are activities for development and maintenance of applications, supporting infrastructure (e.g., hardware, systems software, and networks), to managing human resources. Luftman, Bullen et al., (2004) described 38 IT processes that cover all aspects or IT management in an organization. These IT processes have been categorized in three main layers. These layers include:

• 1.

  Strategic - focus is on long-term goals, for SME’s that is approximately 3 to 4 years, while for large enterprises it is ≥ 4 years;

• 2.

  Tactical - focus is on yearly activities, for SMEs and large enterprises approximately one year. Focus is also on supporting and feeding into the strategic layer; and

• 3.

  Operational - for SMEs and large enterprises this is the daily to monthly activities. This layer supports and feeds into the tactical layer.

The strategic layer consists of strategic planning that covers business analysis planning, architecture planning and IT strategic planning control. Figure 1 shows sub-processes of the strategic layer.

Figure 1.

Strategic layer sub-processes

The tactical layer consists of management planning, development planning, resource planning, financial planning, and service planning. These five processes can be further divided into 15 sub-processes. For this analysis we will concentrate on the five processes only. Figure 2 shows the sub-processes.

Figure 2.

Tactical layer sub-processes