Integrated Information Management: Product-based approach

The old pattern of a project-based information management, has shown some weaknesses, especially when it comes to outsourcing. Thinking about new approaches, Prof. Dr. W. Brenner from the Institute Of Information Management at the University of St. Gallen has written in 2006 together with R. Zarnekow and U. Pilgram the book "Integrated Information Management. Applying Successful Industrial Concepts in IT", which takes a look at the state of the art and the future of information management.

During the master's course "Information Management" I and my dear group colleagues had to deal with this book, with the special focus on the product-based approach (which is in fact, a more precise model of the Framework of Zarnekow, Brenner and Pilgram).

Briefly explained, Integrated Information Management is an approach which looks at the complete value chain of a company. There is, in contrast to the purely on IT focused "Plan - Run - Build"-Pattern, a more generic pattern, derived from well known patterns and concepts of the manufacturing industry. This is the heart of the model and consists of the steps "Source - Make - Deliver". On top of this the "Govern"-Task is responsible for the alignment between corporate strategy, IT-strategy and the operational level. This implies, that everything starts with IT-Governance, otherwise no integrated information management can be established. This core-pattern can be repeated for every process step / business unit along the value-chain.

The product-based approach is, as already mentioned, a more concrete way to implement the integrated information management. First we have to shed some light on the role, which the IT Service Provider plays in such a environment. Traditionally he has been a project partner and has done project management. Now ithe IT department is transformed to a service provider, which negotiates on based on products. This shifts the focus away from technical language and implementations to business speaking respectively to business support. This implies several changes, which you can see in the presentation.
And as usual, change has its own challenges. We have outlined them too on the presentation.

You can download the file here:

IM_Productbased.pdf