35 Posts Found

• What is the immediate, short-term goal of your website?
• What specific action do you want visitors to take?
• What are your specific objectives for the long term?
• Who do you want to visit your site?
• What solutions or benefits can you offer to these visitors?
• What data should your site provide to achieve your primary goal?
• What information can you provide to encourage them to act right now?
• What questions

… [ Read more ]

Author: Jay Conrad Levinson | Source: The Two Worlds of Marketing | Subjects: IT Questions, Website Questions

1. Whom am I trying to persuade?
2. What am I trying to persuade this person to do?
3. What information does this person need so he or she is persuaded to take this action?

Authors: Anthony Garcia, Joshua Hay | Source: An Outsider’s Perspective on Your Web Site | Subjects: IT Questions, Website Questions

• How often do IT projects fail to deliver what was expected?
• Are end users surveyed about the quality of the IT service and, if so, what were their responses?
• Is IT regarded as an enabler or as an inhibitor of change?
• Are sufficient IT resources, infrastructure and competencies available to meet strategic objectives?
• What has been the average overrun of IT operational budgets? How often and by

… [ Read more ]

Author: Rick Sidorowicz | Source: Performance Improvement – A Classic Checklist | Subject: IT Questions

• How does this proposed project help the organization achieve its objectives? Why should we invest in this? An IT project should either add value or reduce risk.
• Is the project’s objective measurable? If it isn’t, how will you know that the project is done and/or successful?
• Who was involved with creating the proposed solution? Did the project team involve the right people to truly create

… [ Read more ]

Author: George Spafford | Source: Learning to Ask IT the Right Questions | Subject: IT Questions

• Organizing model. Should the company adopt a centralized, decentralized or hybrid approach?
• Investment. What should the company invest in, and how much should it invest?
• Architecture. Should the company emphasize stability or flexibility? To what degree? Should applications be externally purchased or internally developed? Should there be a single, comprehensive ERP application, or multiple applications?
• Standards. Which components of technology should the organization standardize, and which

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Deepak K. Goyal, Richard M. Melnicoff, Sandy G. Shearer | Source: Is There a Smarter Way to Approach IT Governance? | Subject: IT Questions

Questions to Ask to Uncover IT Issues

• How often do IT projects fail to deliver what they promised?
• Are end users satisfied with the quality of the IT service?
• Are sufficient IT resources, infrastructure and competencies available to meet strategic objectives?
• What has been the average overrun of IT operational budgets? How often and how much do IT projects go over budget?
• How much of the IT effort

… [ Read more ]

Source: Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Edition | Subject: IT Questions

The following is a series of questions you should ask partners before you link your systems, whether through supply-chains, customer-relationship management, or as a member of an exchange. The sensitivity level of the data to be shared will dictate the appropriate depth of inquiry:

• Are the devices–servers, routers, and firewalls–your company will use to collaborate dedicated to our company, or are they also used

… [ Read more ]

Author: James Kalyvas | Source: Judicious Partnering | Subject: IT Questions

• Is it growing faster than revenues?
• Does it increasingly support older applications that require continual work to adapt to business changes rather than applications that accommodate business changes faster and at lower cost?
• Is there a mechanism to determine how IT spending aligns with the business’s value-adding processes?
• Is there conflict over IT budgets absent an analytical business case-bound decision process?
• Is there a process in place

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Gary A. Curtis, Richard M. Melnicoff, Tor Mesoy | Source: Value Discovery: A Better Way to Prioritize IT Investments | Subject: IT Questions

• What is our purpose? Does our organization have a clear mission or charter, and is it being followed?
• Who are our customers? Segmentation analysis is vital in distinguishing, for example, customers who use IT systems outside the office most of the time from customers who don’t travel at all.
• What do different customers want and need to be more effective in their jobs? How can

… [ Read more ]

Author: George Tillmann | Source: In Search of Overhead Heroes | Subject: IT Questions

Companies can ask these basic questions to determine whether IT capabilities are contributing to–or hindering–their growth.

1. Is your total IT spending below or above the average for your industry?
   (Clearly below, 1 point; average, 2 points; clearly above, 3 points)
2. What share of your IT budget is spent on new capabilities?
   (0-10%, 1 point; 11-35%, 3 points; above 35%, 4 points)
3. Who decides the size

… [ Read more ]

Subject: IT Questions

• Have the firm’s competitors invested in m-business technology? If so, where and how?
• Have companies in complementary industries invested in m-business technology? If so, where and how?
• How large or significant are m-business opportunities and threats in the firm’s arena?
• To what extent does mobile technology support or threaten the firm’s existing business model?
• What degree of business transformation is required to implement a wireless solution within

… [ Read more ]

Authors: David Reibstein, Tony O’Driscoll, Venkatesh Shankar | Source: Rational Exuberance: The Wireless Industry’s Killer “B” | Subject: IT Questions

• How and how well are enterprise and IT objectives aligned with each other?
• How is the value delivered by IT being measured? Are the assumptions reasonable and are intangible benefits verified?
• What strategic initiatives has executive management taken to manage IT’s criticality relative to maintenance and growth of the enterprise, and are they appropriate?
• Is the enterprise clear on its position relative to technology: pioneer, early

… [ Read more ]

Author: Rick Sidorowicz | Source: Performance Improvement – A Classic Checklist | Subject: IT Questions

For every asset that supports business critical service, Visible Ops recommends the following questions be answered:

• What does it do?
• What is the hardware platform?
• What is the operating system platform?
• What applications are installed?
• Who is responsible for this asset’s uptime?
• What service(s) does it support?
• Who is authorized to make changes?
• What does this box do for the business?
• What will happen when this box stops working completely?
• What will happen

… [ Read more ]

Author: Tori Harris | Source: Starting a Visible Ops-Based Change Management Program | Subject: IT Questions

• Is IT a regular item on the board’s agenda and, if so, is it addressed in a structured manner?
• Does the board articulate and communicate the business objectives for IT alignment?
• Does the board review, and possibly approve, the IT strategy?
• Does the board have a clear view on the total IT investment portfolio from a risk and return perspective? Does the board receive regular progress

… [ Read more ]

Source: CEO’s Guide to IT Value and Risk | Subject: IT Questions

• Is your company’s infrastructure helping or hindering your company’s …
  M&A options and plans?
  New-product and speed-to-market strategies?
  Efforts to implement new technologies that deliver a more unified, holistic view of your customers?
  Depending on your company’s business strategy in the coming years, a response of “hindering” to any of these questions might put your organization on the defensive when faced with competition from

… [ Read more ]

Author: Jeff Hughes | Source: Overcoming IT Ambivalence | Subject: IT Questions