How Italian Enterprises Are Reacting to Technological Emerging Trends
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School of Industrial and Information Engineering Master of Science in Management Engineering IT Governance: how Italian enterprises are reacting to technological emerging trends Supervisor: Prof. Corso Mariano Co-supervisor: Eng. Piva Alessandro, Eng. Dozio Luca Master graduation thesis by: Manzotti Nicolò [837370] Natalucci Marina [837028] Academic year 2015-2016 I II III Abstract English version The purpose of this document is to describe how companies and their IT functions should react to remain competitive in a market scenario that is continuously evolving due to exponential technological growth. This research is based on a literature review that aims at identifying the main impacting technological trends and at determining what can be consequently done in terms of IT management, under both an organizational and technical point of view. Moreover, an empirical research on the Italian market has been conducted, together with the Enterprise Application Governance Observatory of Politecnico di Milano School of Management, with the objective to understand how companies are coping with this situation, which trends they consider for their application portfolio evolution, and whether they are renovating working methodologies and technological architectures to address Digital Transformation. Main keywords: IT Governance; Information Systems; Information and Communication Technology; Enterprise Architecture; Application portfolio evolution; technological trends; agile development; adaptive enterprise. Versione in italiano L’obiettivo di questo documento è descrivere come le aziende e le loro funzioni IT dovrebbero reagire al fine di mantenersi competitive in uno scenario di mercato in continua evoluzione a causa di una crescita tecnologica esponenziale. La ricerca è basata su un’analisi della letteratura volta ad identificare i trend tecnologici più significativi e a determinare cosa può essere messo in campo di conseguenza in termini di IT management, da un punto di vista sia tecnico sia organizzativo. Inoltre, è stata svolta una ricerca empirica, all’interno dell’Osservatorio Enterprise Application Governance della School of Management del Politecnico di Milano, per comprendere come le aziende Italiane stanno affrontando questa situazione, quali trend considerano nell’evoluzione del loro portafoglio applicativo, e se stanno rinnovando metodologie di lavoro e architetture tecnologiche per accogliere la Digital Transformation. Principali parole chiave: IT Governance; Sistemi Informativi; Tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione; Enterprise Architecture; evoluzione del portafoglio applicativo; trend tecnologici; sviluppo agile; adaptive enterprise. IV V Table of Contents Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction, research objectives and methodology ........................................................................... 1 Literature review....................................................................................................................................... 2 Research findings, discussion ................................................................................................................. 7 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................ 11 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 13 2. Research objectives and methodology .......................................................................................... 15 2.2. Enterprise Application Governance Observatory ............................................................... 15 2.3. Methodological flow ................................................................................................................. 16 2.4. Preliminary objectives .............................................................................................................. 16 2.5. Literature review ....................................................................................................................... 16 2.6. Research objectives ................................................................................................................... 17 2.7. Data collection .......................................................................................................................... 17 2.8. Results analysis .......................................................................................................................... 19 2.9. Case studies ................................................................................................................................ 20 3. IT trends and the Digital Transformation Journey ..................................................................... 21 3.1. Technological progress: IT-enabled business trends ........................................................... 22 3.2. Digital transformation: from First to Fourth platform ....................................................... 30 4. Managing enterprise evolution: the adaptive enterprise ............................................................. 32 4.2. IT and business divergences: the shadow IT ........................................................................ 33 4.3. Enterprise Architecture management .................................................................................... 36 4.3.1. Organizational unit for Enterprise Architecture .......................................................... 47 5. IT governance: how to evolve the IT function ............................................................................ 53 5.2. Bimodal IT: a new way to deliver IT services....................................................................... 56 5.2.1. Bimodal organization ....................................................................................................... 57 5.3. IT portfolio management ........................................................................................................ 59 VI 5.4. Managing modern IT projects ................................................................................................. 65 5.4.1. Heavyweight lifecycle models .......................................................................................... 69 5.4.2. Agile methods .................................................................................................................... 73 5.4.3. Why moving to agile? ....................................................................................................... 82 5.5. Information Systems Architecture .......................................................................................... 85 5.5.1. Software development and architecture elements ........................................................ 86 5.5.2. Software architecture evolution ...................................................................................... 92 5.5.3. What’s best in 2016 ........................................................................................................... 95 5.6. The need for high level organizational changes .................................................................. 100 6. Findings from the survey ............................................................................................................... 101 6.2. Sample description .................................................................................................................. 101 6.2.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 101 6.2.2. General description ......................................................................................................... 101 6.2.3. IT function description .................................................................................................. 102 6.2.4. Clustering ......................................................................................................................... 109 6.2.5. Clusters analysis ............................................................................................................... 110 6.3. Technological trends influencing application portfolio management ............................. 112 6.4. Technological trends: current state evaluation .................................................................... 116 6.5. Role and processes of IT function ........................................................................................ 118 6.6. Evolution of Information Systems architecture ................................................................. 121 6.7. Role of IT function and Enterprise Architecture: state-of-the-art evaluation ............... 124 7. Case studies ...................................................................................................................................... 131 7.2. Company 1 ............................................................................................................................... 131 7.3. Company 2 ............................................................................................................................... 133 7.4. Company 3 ..............................................................................................................................