Type 1: Drifting Along
Time to harness the winds of change?
Hot air balloons are wonderful for sightseeing, but not as useful if you have a particular destination and a specific arrival time in mind.
Perhaps your IT IA group favors a slow, meandering approach — executing the same audit plan year after year, coming up with similar findings audit after audit.
That may be fine for some companies. It may be aligned with your ambitions. It may be suitable for your team. And if that’s the case, feel free to close this book. It’s not for you.
But if you want to get someplace fast, if you wish to travel efficiently, and if you hope to move ahead of the pack, well, you’ll need more than hot air to get you there. Consider this book your travel guide.
Is your IT IA organization “type 1” by choice or by default?5
Type 2: Getting Aloft
Before taxiing down the runway, make sure your IT IA group is airworthy. Here are some issues you should consider addressing.
New Products & Service Lines
Your company has plenty going on. Mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. New products. Expanded markets.
And your IT IA group may be pretty busy too. Unfortunately, it’s probably “busy” as in “busy work,” rather than meaningful, strategic work.
IT IA is typically not invited to join in the fun stuff: new product rollouts and new business streams. And that’s a wasteful underutilization of IT IA’s talents. The group can and should tackle a much broader set of business issues that generate revenue, not just addressing tasks intended to save money.
How can IT IA add value? Consider the example of the latest toy craze: web-linked, “huggable plush pets.” The technology risks related to these playthings are considerable: Child privacy. Server demand. Da ...