Thesis
The Information
Governance and
Agility Trend Paradox
AuthorLars Alexander van Kampen - 10317260
Supervisor
dhr. prof. dr. J. Strikwerda
University
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam Business School Executive Programme in Management Studies – Strategy Track
Publication date 28-01-2015
Version Final
Abstract ... 3
Introduction ... 4
Literature Review ... 5
Information Governance ... 5
IT Governance ... 6
The Business IT Alignment paradigm ... 6
Investment ... 7
Agility trend ... 8
Research question ... 9
Data and Analysis ... 11
Case study design ... 11
Unit of analysis ... 11 Aim ... 11 Time ... 11 Focus Group ... 11 Interview approach ... 12 Interview Questions ... 13 Analysis approach ... 14 Rejected data ... 15 Results ... 16 Proposition 1 results ... 16
Subtheme; Definition of Information ... 16
Subtheme; Definition of Information Governance ... 17
Subtheme; Possibilities, both current and future. ... 19
Proposition 2 results ... 20
Subtheme; Definition of Agility ... 20
Subtheme; state of Agility within the bank. ... 22
Subtheme: the role of architecture in agile practices ... 23
Proposition 3 results ... 24
Case study research question result ... 26
Discussion ... 27
Limitations ... 29
Conclusion ... 31
Abstract
The increased role of information in marketing, sales and the customer value proposition and the increased volatility in consumer preferences require firms to created some form of
information superiority, that is the capability to acquire, record, store, retrieve, interpret information and turn this into product and price differentiation and adjusted customer value propositions (Strikwerda, 2011). This requires governance of said information and the ability to envision products that create value from the underlying attributes. In the meantime
responsiveness to change is key in todays market. Changing demand from customers, changing customer behaviour, regulatory changes, all drivers for an Agile organisation that deliver fast and first time right. At ING the potential, but also the necessity of Information Governance is very much recognised. Meaning, the need for providing specific services based on the data that is collected, is very possible for a bank. Specifically the data resulting from financial transaction processes is deemed as very rich and valuable. The participants share a view on what Agility is, and what the organisation aims to achieve with said agility. There also appears to be some common view on the steps that are needed in order to be truly agile as an organization. For some part this is in technological prerequisites and understanding the positioning of specific roles like architecture or product ownership, however for the most part; the mind-set required for becoming truly agile needs to be hardened with the business side of the organisation. On of the researched proposition reads; The Agility trend leads to more short-term delivery success than traditional, waterfall project approaches. This, although not said in these specific words, is very much acknowledged in all interviews. The
proposition that Agility and Information Governance are conflicting is not apparent in the case study at ING. Whether these are by nature not conflicting, or if simply not all
prerequisites have been met to reach a certain maturity level to effectively compare these phenomena is not clear. It is clear that both topics have ground to cover to reach full maturity. The remarkable finding is that most interviewees currently appear to consider not being in a favourable position to leverage the available data and consume or monetize the subsequent information. Mostly this is related to not having the right governance in place, which is thought to be orchestrated from ‘business’ functions either in front- or mid-office, and at least functionally across different product domains. Also, although great progression is made in improving IT delivery, it appears that other areas require more and fundamental improvement. We are said to be optimising the easiest part of our work.
Introduction
This thesis describes the contemporary literature view on how to structure and organize information in a corporate environment, referred to as ‘Information Governance’, and how this view differs from the paradigm of previous decades on how to implement and operate IT capabilities. The thesis describes the movement of IT organisations towards integrated development activities and agile software development projects, referred to as the ‘Agility trend’. This is a literature study which leads to a limited set of propositions which in turn are further investigated in case study at ING Bank by means of semi-structured interviews amongst a typical sample of IT decision makers. The aim of the case study is to prove the existence of the ‘tension’ or ‘phenomenon’ entailed in the paradox. These phenomena are treated as a given, this thesis does not investigate the origin of said trends. Both IT
governance and Information governance are research and treated as a goal or means to an end, there is no intention to research frameworks or standards or to provide alternatives for
existing frameworks. Furthermore the subsequent case study is limited to a series of interviews performed at ING Bank N.V. Performed at the IT department responsible for global IT for Commercial (wholesale) banking services, located in Amsterdam specifically. The purpose of the investigation is to provide cause for further investigation on the relation between the topics of ‘Information Governance’ and the ‘Agility Trend’ as tensions are expected between these topics.
Literature Review
Information GovernanceResearch shows that top-performing enterprises generate returns on their IT investments up to 40 per cent greater than their competitors (Weill & Ross, 2004).
Mirroring the IT organization on the business structure is considered good practice because it provides ‘short lines’ to the business partner and allows for managing priorities of the entire value chain and a strong partnering relationship between a firm's IT and business unit
management influence a firm's ability to deploy IT for strategic objectives (Bharadwaj, 2000). Traditionally information technology has been a very dynamic industry, technologies come and go and development is becoming ever more rapid, while at the same time the
requirements of the business are becoming more and more stringent. As Porter and Millar wrote in 1985; the information revolution is sweeping through our economy. No company can escape its effects. Dramatic reductions in the cost of obtaining, processing and transmitting information are changing the way we do business. (Porter & Millar, 1985). This very closely aligns to the observation that information is a capital asset, a carrier of value, for which it is essential that information is widely accessible and that it can also be used for purposes other than those for which recorded (Strikwerda, 2014). Customers expect 24-hour access to all their data, being bank balances, profile information or outstanding contracts, and have the means to access that data from any location at any moment. The increased role of information in marketing, sales and the customer value proposition and the increased volatility in
consumer preferences require firms to created some form of information superiority, that is the capability to acquire, record, store, retrieve, interpret information and turn this into product and price differentiation and adjusted customer value propositions, with greater ease or effectiveness than the competitor is capable of doing (Strikwerda, 2011). But how can an organization provide e.g. a product manager, account manager or even a customer, with access to stored information on that customer, when the supporting technology is spread across different departments and hierarchical lines? Or as Weill and Ross (Weill & Ross, 2004) put it, “Worse, the business unit employees developed local services that compromised the integrity of enterprise data and undermined customer service for those customers served by more than one business unit.” We are seeing a shift of the focus of information access from a data-centered to a user-centered paradigm. By a user-centered paradigm, we refer to
information access that is driven not by the structure of the databases in the system, but rather by views of the databases needed to satisfy an information need as perceived by the user. This paradigm relies on dynamic views that may be independent of the structure of the accessed databases. (Waters & Shepherd, 1994). The ‘user’ Walters and Shepherd are referring to is a user that is attributed a business responsibility, not a consumer. This usage, and the
modelling of the underlying technology is an activity guided by IT Governance. IT Governance
Defining IT Governance is no easy task though, a shared definition is lacking within the field of IT governance (Simonsson & Johnson, 2006). In their working paper ‘Defining IT
governance, a consolidation of literature’, Simonsson & Johnson (2006) try to provide various definitions of IT governance, but none of these definitions recognize Information and the use of said information for creating business value. Both Information and Technology are
mentioned as one organizational area to govern. Therefore their attempt at a final definition results in a rather narrow one. No Information is taken into account, which could either imply the assumption that information, in any sense, is owned and governed outside the scope of the technology domain, however the exclusion could also imply a lack of consideration for information as a resource yielded from digital technology platforms but only as a product from said technology practice. Unfortunately it appears that the latter is the case and therewith the definition is incomplete from a contemporary perspective. The working paper does do a great job comparing 60 articles on IT Governance yet only reflects the commonality, which as a consequence is more than each definition in its own right. For example as mentioned earlier by Weill & Ross (2004) “IT governance is the decision rights and accountability framework for encouraging principles while focusing on the management and use of IT to achieve corporate performance goals.“ This definition does not explicitly separate Information from Technology but it does refer to using IT to achieve performance goals, which can therefore be seen as responsibility broader than that of the CIO, but also does not explicitly include
‘information’ as neither resource nor a strategic dimension. Another concept, later on also discussed in the case study, in the positioning of IT, or technology capabilities, towards the ‘business’ organization.
The Business IT Alignment paradigm
This positioning, or business IT alignment, however is an apparently difficult task; The issue of achieving IT-business alignment was first documented in the late 1970s3 and was in the
Top-10 IT management issues from 1980 through 1994, as reported by the Society for Information Management (SIM). Since 1994, it has been issue #1 or #2. These results are consistent with other studies, such as CSC’s survey rankings and The Conference Board’s surveys of CEOs. (Luftman & Kempaiah, 2007). Luftman & Kempaiah continue to list 3 primary reasons for, what they call the elusiveness of Business IT alignment, and continue to propose a model to gauge maturity of said alignment. What the authors however take for granted in this research is the positioning of the IT supplier as an external party, working to deliver solutions for a particular business. It does not include the consideration of IT as an internal source for competitive advantage. Furthermore, the paradigm of ‘Business IT alignment’ as a whole is considered, by some, to be obsolete or at least very difficult to obtain, especially as IT or technical know-how of the senior management is limited and said management is more comfortable to comprehend business models rather than technological engagements. The business environment is constantly changing, and thus there may be no such thing as a ‘state’ of alignment. Strategic choices made by one organization, frequently result in imitation by other organizations.
Investment
Thus, strategic alignment is a process of change over time and continuous adaptation (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993). This however does mean that IT should be a topic integral to the strategic alignment of the organization, not as a supplier to enable the strategy due to the dynamism of the environments. Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) found that managers were more comfortable with their ability to comprehend business positioning choices rather than IT positioning choices1. This is a friendly way of stating managers in general sometimes lack the expertise to understand required or possible IT investment, which of course leads to the risk of either investing in ‘wrong’ initiatives or underinvesting in potential technologies for better business outcomes. While resorting to a follower status is understandable, failure to formulate clear goals for IT can lead to problems elsewhere. For example, if executives are indifferent toward IT, they will likely mismanage or undermanage their IT investments, leading to a vicious cycle that erodes the potential for realizing payoffs from both existing and future IT investment. (Tallon, Kraemer, & Gurbaxani, 2000). The example Tallon et al used leading toward the previous statement on the resulting follower status et cetera, clearly shows a manager considering IT an expense, or cost centre, rather than
1 These references to Henderson and Venkatraman are obtained through Chan & Reich (Chan
an enabler of business value or increased efficiency. This unfortunately is not uncommon, as they state; this sense of indifference often leads to a situation in which IT spending is viewed as an expense to be minimized rather than an investment to be managed. (Tallon, Kraemer, & Gurbaxani, 2000). Or in other words, a lack of understanding leads to managing IT cost efficiency rather than cost effectiveness. Another issue is that many CIO’s and IT-professionals make investment decisions in IT based on the concept of Total Costs of Ownership (TOC), assuming that information is a cost, whereas economists such as Arrow acknowledge that information is part of the capital based of the firm (Arrow, 1996). The transaction of the information is considered to be easy, yet the challenge lies in determining the subsequent monetary value.
Hence that a typology of information capital or IT-investments is being used:
Table 1 Kaplan & Norton. 2004. Strategy Maps p. 251, based on Applegate.
Agile firms will relatively invest more in transformational applications; but infrastructural agility and stability is created by separating applications from the transaction processing application, in which data is stored independent from the structure of applications. As referred to earlier, this agility is required for dealing with market dynamics, and changes in customer behaviour. This does however also require agile delivery-, or software development methods. Agility trend
Even seemingly minor changes can produce unanticipated effects, as systems become more complex and their components more interdependent. Project management approaches based on the traditional linear development methodologies are mismatched with such dynamic systems. (Augustine, Payne, Sencindiver, & Woodcock, 2005). This means there is a need for a more flexible, or lean approaches to technological developments. Approaches that can cope with changes in the underlying, or related technology, but also changes in organizational
Information Capital Category Description
Transformational Applications Systems and networks that change the prevailing business model of the enterprise Analytic Applications Systems and networks that promote analysis, interpretation, and sharing of information knowledge Transaction Processing
Applications Systems that automate the basic repetitive transactions of the enterprise
Technology Infrastructure The shared technology and managerial expertise required to enable effective delivery and use of Informational Capital applications
strategy. Approaches that allow firms to both deal with operational challenges as well as capture opportunity. Basically approaches that allow for the ambidexterity as described by O’Reilly and Tuschman (2008). Over the last few years agile software development has been gaining wide adoption. Based on the principle set forth in the so called ‘Agile Manifesto’ (Beck, et al., 2001), agility places a particular emphasize on creativity and value by
encouraging interactions over strict documentation and partnerships over negotiation. Agile software development projects are characterized by ‘just enough’ planning and lack of upfront commitment to scope, cost, and schedule. (Cao, Mohan, Ramesh, & Sarkar, 2013). Agile development practices are being recognized for their potential to improve communication and, as a result, reduce coordination and control overhead in software projects. (Sauer, 2010). It should however be made clear that Agile, or Agility itself are not methods. The Agile manifesto describes principles, or preferences to live by; it is neither a methodology nor a method. A popular agile practice is Scrum; a simple framework used to organize teams and get work done more productively with higher quality. It is a “lean” approach to software development that allows teams to choose the amount of work to be done and decide how best to do it. (Sutherland & Schwaber, 2007). However on one hand dealing with dynamic
situations in a lean way might be considered a novelty in the way IT change been managed traditionally, there still of course remains a need for long term vision and target. Yet, it has been claimed that the agile approaches consider architectural design not a very important activity. (Babar, 2009)
Research question
The aim of the study is exploratory. Both concepts, Information Governance and Agility Trend have had limited academic exposure. Yet based on popular literature and professional experience tensions between these contemporary organizational topics are expected. This study therefore explores if these tensions exist in a leading European bank with a large IT organization. Results of this study should provide cause for either more descriptive or
explanatory research; also the results may lead to the definition of how ING Bank copes with the expected ‘tensions’. The aim is not to describe or explain the nature of both phenomena (Information Governance and the Agility Trend), only to define them. Their existence is treated as a given. The effectiveness, and the nature of IT investment is not part of the case study, in order to bring focus to the remaining topics; information governance and the agility trend. The literature study has led to three propositions.
Proposition 1: Large organizations require Information Governance in order to survive.
Proposition 2: The Agile trend leads to more short-term delivery success than traditional, waterfall project approaches.
Proposition 3: The Agility trend creates a paradox between software delivery and the ability to build and sustain Enterprise Information Governance.
The propositions lead to the following research question to be answered in the case study;
Does ING Bank recognize and subsequently cope with tension between the agility trend and Information Governance?
Data and Analysis
Case study designThe case study is be performed at the IT department responsible for global IT for commercial (wholesale) banking services, located in Amsterdam specifically. Therefore it can be
considered a single case study. The study is specifically aimed at IT architecture and management within ING Bank IT. This company and sub department was specifically selected due to the relative ease of access to data and interviewees. Researcher Alex van Kampen is part of the IT management organization of ING Bank which allows for knowledge of and direct contact to different lines of management and IT architecture within the firm. Unit of analysis
A more holistic approach was not considered, due to time constraints and the nature of this initial investigation. The research question and corresponding study are set-up to be
performed and analysed embedded and thus limited to ING Bank. Aim
The aim of the study is exploratory. Both concepts, Information Governance and Agility Trend have had limited academic exposure. Yet based on popular literature and professional experience tensions between these contemporary organizational topics are expected. This study therefore explores if these tensions exist in a leading European bank with a large IT organization. Results of this study should provide cause for either more descriptive or explanatory research; also the results may lead to the definition of a specific framework describing how ING Bank copes with the expected ‘tensions’. The aim is not to describe or explain the nature of both phenomena (Information Governance and the Agility Trend), only to define them. Their existence is treated as a given.
Time
This case study is considered to be a snapshot of the contemporary views on IT by ING bank. All actions are considered to be sequential but all within a single track.
Focus Group
The target demographic for the interviews consists of; IT architects and IT Management within ING Bank. To best approach this demographic, a series of ‘Focus Groups’ were held.
The aim of the focus group sessions is to specify and ‘sharpen’ the interview questions and also to verify whether or not the concepts of ‘Information Governance’ and ‘Agility Trend’ are known within the organization. Participants in the focus group were the Chief Architect ING Commercial Banking, a Manager Enterprise Architecture Lending Services, IT Manager Lending Services IT and an IT Manager Financial Markets. The focus group sessions have not been recorded, transcribed or analysed in a further way. The focus group consisted of three individual sessions; participants have not interacted on this topic. All participants exercise their profession in the Commercial Banking Services organization, which provides IT services to the wholesale banking activities of ING Bank globally. Participants were selected to span multiple product domains, in this case Lending (Structured finance, Financial Institution Lending) and Financial Markets (Money markets, Trading products).
A clear statement between all participants of the focus group was the lack of ownership of data in the Commercial Bank organization and subsequently the lack of governance thereof. A shared statement is that the organization appears to be rather product oriented. We divide the commercial bank organization into transaction services, financial markets and wholesale lending products. Ownership of data across these domains is not organized. The organization is developing a so called data lake, which combines data from all sorts of sources into a big pool, or lake if you will, of data which can be analysed and processed to provide certain insights. This however, was suggested by some during the focus group sessions to merely be a trend and a symptomatic response, not a fundamental solution. Solutions that, from the
ground up, support (semantic) data standardisation, are more likely to be considered advantageous.2 The focus group sessions helped in formulating the interview questions. Topics that were added in the questions are related to the product oriented view of Agile, the tension between an Agile and Information view, the ownership of information and the axes for IT investments. Very fruitful, lively and interesting discussions were had, however as a basis for further thought not for academic research. Therefore no conclusions or further details are shared in this research.
Interview approach
The focus group sessions led to the refinement of interview questions and the creation of the interview protocol. Both the interview protocol and questions are enclosed as ‘additional
2 Companies such as IBM or Nestlé have worked towards a global transaction system for all
of their divisions, across thousands of legal entities. For economic reasons and reasons of competitiveness transaction data needs to organized disembedded from the internal structure (Porter & Wayland, 1992).
information’ on the final page of this document. Twelve interviews were conducted, in 1-hour sessions. Each session started with an unrecorded run through of the interview protocol, the protocol is attached as an appendix. The average recorded interview length is 48 minutes. Of the 11 participants, 8 are IT manager, and 3 Architects. The span of years experience ranges from 4 years to 28, with an average of 19,6 years in IT, seniority spans from CIO to junior manager. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured fashion. The interviews started out in English, but for reasons of efficacy most interviews are in Dutch.
Interview Questions
1. Please share your name and professional role in the organization. 2. How long have you been active in your current profession? 3. How long have you been active in IT?
# Question Relevance
1 In the context of ING Commercial Banking: What is information? Information
2 Do you consider 'Information' to be an asset? Information
3 How can this information be a source for competitive advantage? Information
4 Who owns that information? Information
5 What do you consider the role of the CEO with regards to information? Information Governance 6 What do you consider the role of the CIO with regards to information? Information Governance 7 How is information ownership arranged within ING Commercial Banking? Information Governance
8 How should ING govern information? Information
Governance 5 Can you share some examples of Information Governance within ING? Information Governance 6 How does information governance relate to IT governance? Information Governance
7 What do you consider business IT alignment? Architecture
8 What is the role of the IT architect in governing information? Architecture 9 What is the role of the business partner in governing information? Architecture
11 Do you engage in Agile IT practices? Agility 12 Do you, or does your department engage in 'Integrated Software
Development'-practices? Agility
13 What are the benefits of Agile practices? Agility
14 What are drawbacks of Agile practices? Agility
15 How do you align Agile practices with Architecture? Agility
16 How do you align information governance with agile practices? Agility 17 Statement: Is it true that Agile practices have a strong product focus which limits the
support of information governance? Statement
18 Statement: Agile practices and Information Governance can not be combined. Statement 19 Statement: ING does not employ information governance practices Statement 20 Statement: Adequate information management can yield a significant competitive
advantage? Statement
21 Statement: In coming years we will see a shift from CIO towards CTO Statement Analysis approach
All interviews are transcribed, literally. All transcripts have been entered in spreadsheets to be able to distinguish statements between the interviewer and interview. Also, this provides possibilities for easy reference to and from statements in specific cells. The three propositions have been identified as main themes, interview statements are assigned to at least one theme. Sometimes statements are considered ‘out of scope’. For clarification purposes some
considerations are captured in a remarks column. For reasons of efficacy each statement was automatically marked with a reference number and an ID. The reference number refers to the theme, subtheme and row number of the statement. The ID refers to the interview number, the role in the organization of the interviewee and the row number in the transcript of the
interview. This allows for easy reference and allows for quoting or paraphrasing interviewees and provides a direct reference to what was said for further contextual analysis.
During analyses, it was made clear that Proposition 1 is too generic a theme and further granularity was needed. This lead to the creation of three subthemes;
• Definition of Information
• Definition of Information Governance
• Description of Possibilities both current and future
During analysis of proposition 2, also three subthemes arose, being; • Definition of Agility
• State of Agility within the bank
• Role of architecture in Agile practices.
No specific subthemes were identified for the data at hand to support proposition 3. The remarks captured per theme, and subtheme if applicable, were then codified. An overview of all codes is included in the appendix of this document
Rejected data
Out of 11 interviews, 1 interview was excluded from analysis because the interview was rescheduled several times, eventually until after initial data analysis started on the other interviews. The preliminary results interfered with the authenticity of the line of questioning.
Results
Proposition 1 results
The proposition reads; Large Organizations require Information Governance in order to survive. During analysis it was made clear that analysing the results in an overall theme would do no justice to the results due to the vastness of the topics. Therefore proposition 1 is divided into three subthemes. Being; the definition of information; the definition of
information governance and the possibilities of information now and in the future. Subtheme; Definition of Information
In the interviews information is defined as being data put to a specific context or supportive of a specific function, in general. Meaning that the physically stored attributes are to be considered ‘data’, the subsequent valued derived from said attributes is considered
‘information’. This can be data prerequisite for doing business, such as market averages of default rates for publicly traded companies to support trading activities in the dealing room or stored events such as transactions performed by an individual and a counterparty, either both as customer of the bank or either one as creditor or debtor party. This professional view on the definition of information bears similarity to the description of discursive information as analysed in ‘Competing on Information’ by Strikwerda (Strikwerda, 2011). As also
demonstrated by Strikwerda, the sheer definition of information itself can be a research topic alone. For reasons of efficacy, information is interpreted as the value derived from data to support business activity in the broad sense, as stated by respondent 1; “Information, is the
abstraction of the stuff we store in systems; the data. Information is the oil or gold of our company, it's what flows through it. It is representing another abstraction, that is the money that we store for our customers. It is an abstraction of the customers themselves and what they do.”(Interview 001, L2 9 R). Interestingly enough the respondent uses the term
‘abstraction’ twice in defining information, whereas respondent 9 is explicit in stating that the value of information is limited if the stored attributes are ‘abstracted’ or ‘normalized’. The respondent argues that all available attributes should be captured and a selection of ‘data’ to create ‘information’ should only be made if need be at a specific moment; “There is increased
intelligence to read various types of information. And with that, I can; depending on the question, determine the goal, it's own context, with which I will retrieve said information. Because data is still relevant at the moment I want something. At a certain moment in time I
would like to retrieve the 'risk rating' or be able to predict a certain outcome. So I will continue to rationalise information, but only when I need to. The system and data itself are always an impoverishment” (Interview 009, EA 58 R). Although apparently conflicting in the
use of semantics, conceptually the definitions are considered similar, whereas respondent 9 includes technology to envision an approach to yield value from the attributes stored and due to the possibilities of today argues for an increased breadth of the stored attributes, which in term is in no way conflicted by the statements of respondent 1 or any other. In fact all
participants agree on the use of ‘information’ to an organization and consider information an ‘asset’. But if the attributes we store are data until we yield value from them, who determines what attributes to store, and who envisions what value could be derived from said
information? In other words, how do we govern the information? Subtheme; Definition of Information Governance
Data and Asset ownership
In discussing information governance, it was apparent that the topic as a specific concept is new and unfamiliar. However probing the context makes clear that very specific and
professional views exist, a prime example is the following response; “Well, ehm; see, I'm in
doubt, we probably have examples of Information Governance within the bank, but my view is not as wide as that of the CIO's and CTO's which you have spoken to already, but if I bring this back to my own area; we have just started a project called Financial Markets Data Target Operating Model, which suggests something regarding governance of market
data.”(005 L4 92 R). The remark exemplifies not so much a lack of information governance,
rather a lack of familiarity with the topic and state of related activities in the bank by the respondent. Most respondents state that data ownership is arranged, but as part of the application ownership, or so called asset ownership (Asset owner is data owner,
(001_L2_17_R, 005_L4_46_R, 008_EA_54_R). These assets are often managed in a value chain or product perspective. “It's complicated, because the information is in systems owned
by the business line Financial Markets, and a little of Commercial Banking. The customer information, probably, also within Financial Markets, because FM has own customer due diligence departments. (006 EA 50 R). Although some information, e.g. generic customer
information, is available bank wide to ensure a consistent user experience, some respondents state this is only high level information. In order to more broadly yield benefit from the data and to envision methods of monetizing said data some central ownership is envisioned by most respondents.
Architecture
Where and how this central ownership should be defined was not made clear from these interviews. Some respondents state that the enterprise architects play a role in governing information; “Yeah, in the end I think they (architects) should give us the examples or epics if
you like of how they see information add value to their business model. I think we can come up with examples or proposals, but in the end they should drive that or at least own it.” (001
L2 76 R), others state that this ownership should be centrally defined at ‘Business’ level, meaning not in the IT organization. The architect should then be provided with the information strategy as input for the IT architecture and the application landscape. This architecture should then be prepared for the information need now and in the future; “We
don't know exactly what we want, but we need to ensure that we support the future” (002 L3
84 R), which very much resembles statements on information superiority Alberts et al : “Information superiority means you are a step ahead, better prepared, more potent, and more in control than your competitor.” (D. Alberts, 1999). The discussion on whether or not ‘architecture’ should play a role in information governance, or should interpret the
information vision as input for the application landscape appears to be somewhat clouded by a discussion on the exact role of an architect in the first place. Within the bank, and during the interviews, multiple ‘architectural roles’ were mentioned; Enterprise Architects, Domain Architects, Solution Architects, Blueprint Architects and Software Architects to name a few. This makes clear that for defining the exact role of ‘architecture’ in information governance, one first needs to define architecture. One respondent even went as far as stating ; "You can
see architects struggle with their own role, that will probably have a fundamental cause; people who know what to do don't have all day to spend on self reflection” (007 L3 102 R).
Others have more explicit expectation of the architect and strictly split the architectural function in business and IT architecture, "I think there is a business architect, being much
closer to business. I have the idea that the architects we deal with, focus on connectivity and technology, ensure the IT strategy fits within the bank strategy. A business architect should focus much more on how to uncover these kinds of requirements and input this into a model which IT could then execute or build" (005 L4 62 R).
Role of the CIO
With the emphasize on the business architect, and the information ownership within a product line, or at least on ‘business side’. The role of the CIO can be questioned, if only because of
the terminology. CIO of course stands for Chief Information Officer, yet the former
statements imply that the IT department is responsible for adequately providing technology and the application landscape in which data is captured and made available, yet the definition of information and the vision on added value is responsibility bestowed on ‘business side’; I
think people talk a lot more about applications and the data. To be honest. So I think the Chief Information Officer is acting to manage the architecture. That is more the application architecture than the information architecture”(001 L2 76 R). Some respondents state that,
even though these ‘lines’ between Business and IT are blurring, still IT should be considered more of an enabler; “IT can deliver anything”(002 L3 72 R). But what should IT deliver than? Is information governance a necessity and what can we do?
Subtheme; Possibilities, both current and future.
This research will not cover any specific ING data capabilities, but something that was referred to in every interview was the media attention received after announcements were made by one of the executive members of the Dutch retail bank about attempts at leveraging available data(3,4,5,6). Although most participants agreed that the exact initiative was not understood by reporting media, it made very clear that privacy is a very sensitive topic. "I
think the point is, how do big companies, like ING, deal with one of the biggest risks; being the privacy risk? This is something that has most societal attention. If we find a good solution for it, and we can convince our customer that the information is always safe and is not
misused, than I foresee a huge increase in number of services and products being offered based on data analysis" (010 L2 40 R), and
"I think that is where Hagenaars messed up; we should not commercialise data, we should
leverage it"(008 EA 34 R). This privacy challenge does not even specifically apply to
individuals, but could also apply to business. Analysing transaction data could provide all sorts of information into daily operations of a company. "The biggest difference between
Wholesale and Retail banking is the number of clients in wholesale banking is far less, but the amounts involved in the monetary transactions are many times higher. Do not underestimate
3 ING geeft adverteerde inzicht in klantgedrag, FD (Bökkerink & Lalkens, 2014) 4 ING wil data klanten benutten voor commercie, Elsevier (Deira, 2014).
5 Wat is de prijs die ING betaalt voor het delen van jouw betaalgegevens?, NRC (Kampen,
2014)
that the transferral of funds provides a lot of insight into strategy and overall wellbeing of a company. This is a very sensitive topic" (010 L2 44 R). A probably less sensitive topic, but
with equal potential is the use of data in the daily operations of the bank processes, for example performing predictive analytics in capacity models to support enough bandwidth is available during peak hours or certain monitoring is in place to ensure that staff is needed for the supervision of monitoring only. "... and we just starting automating. So we've talked
before about the control room with empty seats. Why couldn't we come very far. You'll get to a very different situation, you don't need the 100 people to do the work, the systems will do the work, but you need the 100 people to supervise the systems. Something I can imagine"
(007 L3 30 R). This does however of course place a different emphasize on the talent to perform this supervision, or enable the data analytics in the first place. If corporations not to explicitly organize data ownership, formulate information vision, re-educate staff and deal with major privacy issues, is that all worth it? According to some; yes it is. "If you want to be
of sustained added value, you need to ensure that you control, understand, analyse, interpret, the behavioural aspect of the data as giving it away to Google" (008 EA 48 R).
Concluding, most participants recognize the potential, but also the necessity of Information Governance. Meaning, the need for providing specific services based on the data that is collected, is very possible for a bank. Specifically the data resulting from financial transaction processes is deemed as very rich and valuable. Therewith the proposition stating information governance is needed for survival is not explicitly mentioned in these words, but the overall jest of the responses is very much in line with this thinking.
Proposition 2 results
The proposition reads; The Agile trend leads to more short-term delivery success than
traditional, waterfall project approaches. During analysis it was made clear that analysing the results in an overall theme would do no justice to the results due to the vastness of the topics. Therefore proposition 1 is divided into three subthemes. Being; the definition of Agility; the state of agility within the bank, and the role of architecture in agile practices.
Subtheme; Definition of Agility
A point worth making to understand the context in which these remarks have been made; is that all participants are part of the Commercial Banking Services organization, delivering and supporting IT services for ING Wholesale banking worldwide. The managers and architects are all part of the organisation in Amsterdam, which has gone through a reorganisation in July of 2014 in which ‘Agility’ was the major driver. All IT teams have been shuffled to boast
both ‘Dev Engineers’ (developers) and ‘Ops Engineers’ (IT operations staff), the formed teams are therefore referred to as DevOps teams, and the method opted to manage the daily and project work is Scrum. During the interviews and in this analysis, you will see
terminology crossing over between Agile and Scrum. Where Agility is referred to as ‘the mind-set’ and Scrum the method. Being Agile is considered being able to respond to change, "What do I consider Agility within IT? Being able to respond to changes in demand. If we
look at IT solely, than it is a changing demand of our business partners, if we look at agility from an ING perspective, then it is changes in demand of the market and the way we organise ourselves, the way we organise our service delivery and our IT deliver. This allows for us to regularly divert course, provide regular feedback to end users about 'the new delivery', which allows the users to state 'sorry, I expected something different I want to move in another direction'. That is agility to me; responding to changing demand" (003 L4 82 R), this
statement is repeated across the range of interviews (Label; Responding to change in demand, 002 L3 89 R, 004 L4 160 R2, 005 L4 118 R, 008 EA 122 R; 010 L2 74 R). Being able to respond to this change requires short cycle deliveries, which in turn requires making work manageable to short sprints. The short delivery cycles are required to be able to incorporate feedback early on in a delivery, whereas traditional delivery methods open themselves up for feedback after product development. The definition then becomes; Being Agile means being able to respond to change in demand, by allowing feedback to be incorporated due to short delivery cycles. All participants agree on the value of ‘Agility’ and the subsequent actions taken to prepare the organization for said agility. Not all rituals and specifics are considered effective, but the interviewees are very positive as to the benefit of ‘Agility’, especially for short-term delivery effectiveness, ability to respond to change and change effectiveness in general. Specifically flexibility and responding to change are considered absolutely required to keep up with the market change and dynamism in consumer behaviour; it is believed that the efforts performed to implement Agile within the IT departments of ING are up to par with this requirement. Although origins of ‘Agility’ might lie within IT delivery, or software delivery specifically, most respondents agree that agility however should not be limited to IT only. When asked if Agility is IT only respondent 6, an Enterprise Architect states; “Initially
yes, but in the meantime it affects ways of working up until business” (006 EA 176 R),
respondent adds to this “Not necessarily, I think it is used in IT context but I have examples of
where we have built the software and we are waiting to migrate in a big bang and we do migrations in small steps as well. So then the question is; is that IT or is that not IT? I think migrations are not necessarily IT, it involves us, but it can be done by people outside of IT. So
then the answer is ‘No’, it is not strictly limited to IT. I think you can do in your private personal life also a lot of Agile in an Agile way, but becomes lean or the boundary is blurred between agile and lean” (001 L2 106 R). The views on what agility aims to be and how
Scrum supports is appear to be harmonised across the interviews, but how is the bank doing in that regard? Is the bank as Agile as it wants to be, or are there challenges to be overcome?
Subtheme; state of Agility within the bank.
"Currently we are in a Hybrid state, in which we have the ambition to adjust governance and
control to be actually be Agile but we are not there yet" (004 L4 166 R). As stated earlier the
efforts performed at implementing Agility within the bank are considered adequate, that does not mean that respondents consider being fully Agile yet. Room for growth is said to be in the implementation of the fundamentals of Scrum. These fundamentals include certain practices for organizing responsibility within a team to deliver specific functionality or perform certain specific activities. These fundamentals however also extend to the way of working which tasks, or better ‘user stories’ are provided to the team. All these fundamentals should lead to autonomous DevOps teams that either deliver new functionality, perform maintenance on existing systems or a combination of both. "We tend to pick up 'user stories' that are not quite
clear yet. The so-called definition of ready, people do not question 'is this ready' to start? "I have a business request, I do not fully understand the question, but I will do it anyway'; that way we run into surprises halfway during a sprint. Are people willing to organise a
retrospective asking themselves 'What happened that we missed our deadline?', this mind set of the self organising team, we are getting there, but we are not yet fully self organising" (003
L4 86 R). Some state the ‘front office’ or ‘business’ side of the organisation is not up to speed yet, either due to mind set “Business needs to learn to think in small steps. "We want
this!", They are currently used to demand things that take six months, they're not past that yet
(006 EA 178 R) or because "We need to on-board our stakeholders. Our business partners.
Our Business partners still think in roadmaps, which are fine for High Level, but they also think in Value Chain planning. Because of that you create a paradox of stating 'team
determine the content of your 2 week sprint, as long as you put this specific functionality in in March'. That thinking in turn creates a need for backward planning, which is what you don't want " (004 L4 168 R). Other cause appears to be broader organizationally and irrespective of
either business or IT, in order to be able to support the autonomous teams, each team is provided with a product owner. The product owner is tasked with gathering so called user
stories and deliver these, prioritised, to the individual DevOps teams. However this does require the product owner to be mandated on behalf of several stakeholders. The existence of this mandate currently is challenged; "A product owner, at the moment, does not have the
mandate within Commercial Banking Services to take all decisions. The Product owner still has to go back to the respective value chain and ask 'This is my decision, is that allowed?'"
(004_L4_190_R). Others state to be fully agile; some technological prerequisites have to be met first. Being responsive to change of course requires really short lead times and limited time to market, this puts strain on IT to remove wasteful activities which do not add to creating value. Some specific efforts are being taken to specifically target repetitive manual activities for example in deploying new versions of software on a target location.
Traditionally this is a type of activity that requires days or weeks of planning before new versions are deployed. It is argued that it makes sense to divert capacity away from creating functionality in the short term and ensure these complexities or critical path events are
removed or shortened which allows to be able to deliver much faster in the long run; which in turns allows for much faster turnaround times in software delivery, which allows for an increased number of deliveries, allowing for more feedback loops. However, incurring these frequent feedback loops, how does the organisation ensure these feedback loops work towards a shared target state, or long term vision, how does architecture support this way of working?
Subtheme: the role of architecture in agile practices
Apart from the technological prerequisite; Architecture also plays a role, traditionally software delivery starts with defining, or receiving, architecture vision however if you increase the number of feedback loops the expectation of the added value and purpose of a piece of software might change either tactically and sometimes strategically. "I think the
architecture is in some ways, or in many ways a design view of the future. I think even in agile projects you do have a view on the endpoint; it’s not that you’re clueless. But I think the architects like the IT folks (sic) need to be aware of the fact that you might want to deviate from a straight line of where you are today and what is the architectural end point. I don’t know if they do, but they could work in the same way with epics and sprints and maybe make it a bit longer than 2 weeks. But I think their way of working can be the same. And if you deviate from the straight line you need to refactor once in a while, and that is also true for the architecture" (001 L2 110 R). Some even state the role of the architect, depending of course
architects then work with a representative of a team or teams to ensure the feature and user stories the team is working on supports the roadmap, only on a quarterly basis. This means the architect should only define the target state, not the roadmap towards that state and means that the actual target is only defined and revisited once a year. "You need stuff that makes
sense and that provides direction to the organisation. That means a lot of one-pagers, often just architecture diagrams which you then discuss with the team, that one-pager is actually sufficient to ensure stuff moves in the right direction and to keep it there" (006 EA 206 R).
This means the role of the architect in the team is limited. However, again, that very much depends on the definition of ‘architecture’ and the description of ‘architect’. Closer to the team, certain architects are referred to as either domain architects for a certain product, or blue print architects to support specific teams on a certain product. There appears to be some ambiguity towards the role of the architect towards the teams, either in the team as a ‘master builder’ or outside the team to provide input to the product owners, however that will not be solved by this investigation. Something that is clear is that architecture should be good, and only is good if it adds value, and can only add value if it actually is implemented. "For me,
there is only one criterion; architecture is only good if it adds value. Architecture itself is only a piece of PowerPoint; which is great if you sell ink, but in itself adds no value. The
architecture can only add value if it becomes realised. ...As architects we can conceive, deliver and do the most beautiful things. But it has no impact on reality. The only way to change reality is by means of our projects or scrum teams. The architecture is only valuable at the moment the projects and the scrum teams support it and realise it" (008_EA_142_R).
Concluding, the participants share a view what Agility is and what the organisation aims to achieve with said agility. There also appears to be some common view on the steps that are need in order to be truly agile as an organization. For some part this is in technological prerequisites and understanding the positioning of specific roles like architecture or product ownership, however for the most part; the mind-set required for becoming truly agile needs to be hardened with the Business side of the organisation. The proposition reads; The Agile trend leads to more short-term delivery success than traditional, waterfall project approaches, this although not said in these specific words, but is very much acknowledged in all
interviews.
Proposition 3 results
The proposition reads; The Agility trend creates a paradox between software delivery and the ability to build and sustain Enterprise Information Governance. Upon starting the
investigation an expectation was shared that agility and information governance do not match. Information governance was expected to require long term, high level and somewhat abstract perspectives, and this does not match the agile teams. Although proposition 1 does describe the need for this central view, challenges are found in the governance of the information rather than the output of the teams. IT is expected to deliver specific functionality, and is said to be able to deliver anything fast, if the prerequisites of agility are met. In that sense it would be either likely to state that effective information governance and subsequent information superiority is dependent on a competent and potent IT department providing the systems to perform required analysis. The IT department can only be effective if, the delivery includes frequent feedback loops, which can only be the case if technological barriers are brought down and teams meet prerequisites to be truly autonomous. To be truly autonomous it is said that the product owner needs to have the mandate and oversight to be able to provide coherent user stories and features, which when related to information governance puts pressure on the organisation to standardise on definitions, probably more than done so far. Which implies that ownership of definitions should be cross company, and therewith cross product, meaning that the ownership of definitions or, the ownership of information should be centrally managed; “I
think implicitly we have our information modelled into our objects and then have objects managed in logical building blocks where you know contract and counterpart and account are all examples of that and payment and limits and whatever you have, but that object model is not explicit for the group, but once it is I think it could govern the logical application architecture. I’m not sure if it will, but I think it should. and then that model, if you make it, starts driving questions of ‘okay, but what do you mean with a limit, or a counter party or an account’ and that in turn is something is one of the key observations of Roel Louwhoff when he came in and he said; ‘one thing I notice is that there is so many different definitions of one and the same thing, that I would expect to be only one definition’, and I think; him coming from outside also from another industry giving that insight is quite interesting in relation to the topic of information management" (001_L2_118_R). However, with that; it is stated that
the challenge does not lie in the underlying technology or way of working, but is rather organizational or political of sorts.
Concluding, the proposition that Agility and Information Governance are conflicting is not apparent in the case study at ING. Whether these are by nature not conflicting, or if simply not all prerequisites have been met to reach a certain maturity level to effectively compare these phenomena is not clear. It is clear that both topics have ground to cover to reach full
maturity. But even so, IT delivery and Information Governance are not the only topics, growth is needed in. "Something that I am struggling with, is Agile and Scrum work best for
pure IT work, but if you look back at where we are, than that is where we had the least of our problems. If you look at projects, and let me take Trade as an example, you 'on-board' a country, but IT was the least work of it, ensuring all stakeholders are involved, updating aligning business operations, the analysis and the alignment are way harder, so basically, if I'm being a bit of a critic, we are optimising the easiest part of our work" (007 L3 144 R).
Case study research question result
The overall response to the research question is covered in greater detail in the previous results chapters. The research question reads; ‘Does ING Bank recognize and subsequently cope with tension between the agility trend and Information Governance?’ The answer is, ‘no’. Both topics are considered to cope with their respective challenges, and both are considered to have considerate growth potential in terms of maturity, conflicts or tensions between these topics however are not considered. Some however suggest that, although ‘Agility’ is not considered an ‘IT only’-activity, some gains in maturity can be made in the non-IT departments. The, ‘business support’ departments, such as the back office or product management departments have not made the same transformation as IT has. Clear thoughts on governance for ‘information’ are not formulated yet, although some consensus appears to exist on the consideration that a technological push is possible, yet final ownership should reside on ‘business side’ either with ‘front office’ or ‘mid-office/operations’. The long-term perspective of information governance and the short-term success focus of agile activities, such as DevOps-teams who work according to Scrum-methodology principles are not considered contradictory. This means proposition 3 is not recognised. A challenge in this respect is to be found in the role and positioning of the information and IT architect. Towards a scrum team, any information requirement, or other long-term perspective in that respect, is considered input to be managed by either the product owner or the blueprint architect towards the ‘other’ architects, such as enterprise or information architects.
Discussion
Both topics, Information Governance, and Agility, are described, defined and compared in the case study, however both topics can be considered research topics in their own right. Specific research into either one of the topics could yield very fascinating results. The literature view of the topic in this research could be considered high level, however all propositions and topics were answered and covered in the interviews. The interviews did cover all topics, however because the topics are considerably different in nature, this lead to a somewhat unnatural divide in the interviews, in terms of flow but also in terms of knowledge level. All interviews were asked to provide input based on experience, not based on guessing, and with an average of 19.6 years of IT experience the overall seniority of the group can be considered high, but the topic of ‘information governance’ was a concept relatively unknown. Due to recent developments in the Commercial Bank Organisation, ‘agility’ is a very known topic, and overall consensus exists on what the organisation strives to achieve, e.g. flexibility and responsiveness. The method chosen to review the interviews appears to be very effective. As all codes, labels, and interviews are interlinked it became very easy to link a specific code to an the underlying statement in the specific interview. The research does not provide enough content to support, or create new theories. Earlier statements of tension between scrum teams and architecture are not upheld, but in this case appear to be the result of the positioning of architecture in this specific organisation as opposed to the nature of the architecture function itself. In future research, it would be advised to separate the topics and focus on each
individually. During the research, several considerations came up that the research does want to share with you. Please note, these hold no academic value, but can be considered
interesting and might be considered to initiate further research; Personal considerations
• If information governance, and subsequent management are fully in place a company becomes an IT company as products become the combination of specific attributes. • Managing information should focus on managing consumer experience first, yet does
require harmonised (semantic) data definitions, which in turn is dissimilar from single entity system approaches.
• Defining architecture and application landscapes should be part of the managerial responsibility, as opposed to think-tank type organisations providing teams with abstract input.
• The CIO role is changing into a Chief Application Landscape Role. Information moves towards the business partners. However, business partners should perform the information and visionary task, which when considering it to be information
capabilities could be considered an extension of the existing CIO role, therewith including IT in the overall executive team.
• Because existing IT departments focus on delivering technology as opposed to envisioning information models, IT does not exist and should be referred to as Technology.
Limitations
Some very obvious and clear limitations to this research arise. Firstly all focus group and interview activities are to be performed within 1 single organisation. This might lead to groupthink in the focus groups and all sorts of bias in the interviews. Also the amount of interviewees is rather limited and within that limitation from a rather narrow professional field. These are all IT employees, with a remarkable side-note, most managers suggested that the architecture function could shift more towards business, yet most architects provided the most technical of answers. This is to be compensated by the original literature study and by the modest aim of the research to only prove the existence of the expected phenomena within 1 organisation. To ensure rigor of the case study this research design and further analysis will be challenged to meet the criteria as set by Tracy (2010) in the ‘Eight “Big-Tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research.
Worthy topic
This is relevant, because both trends are very current. It can be stated that both topics deserve richer academic attention respectively. Both topics are recognised within the bank.
Rich rigor
The amount of data gathered and the time in the field are adequate. The breadth of the
interviewees can be argued, as they only represent the IT field of roughly half of the business of the bank. However the span of seniority and amount of interviews should provide a broad dataset. Mainly rigor should be found in the underlying analysis framework.
Sincerity
The research Limitations are mentioned in this topics and in the discussions. Transparency in the research method is provided as much as possible.
Credibility
All underlying materials are available and labels are specifically identifiable to the interviews. Interview names have been removed for privacy purposes; this was proposed at the start of every interview before recording commenced.
Resonance
The resonance of the study might be limited, although many of the results, especially with regards to management’s view of architecture are very relevant in the existing organisation and will be followed up upon.
Significant Contribution – As stated in the discussion, no additional theory has been provided, in that sense the scientific contribution is limited.
Ethical
All research was executed within the ethical and moral boundaries of the researcher. No specific challenges were faced. For purposes of discretion names, and function specifics might be removed from interview content, mainly to shield respondents from being confronted with statements void of their original context.
Meaningful coherence
The case study covered all propositions as put forth by the literature review. Although the third proposition is not recognised within the bank, but as described this might be due to underlying challenges in organizational maturity.
Conclusion
This chapter provides very brief answers to the underlying propositions and research question. For more in depth review of the results please review the results chapter.
The research was based on three propositions following the literature review.
Proposition 1: Large organizations require Information Governance in order to survive. What is information? Information is value created from storing a set of attributes as data in computer systems. The value is added when the data is put to particular use. Subtheme: What is information governance? Information governance is the governance and vision of
information models best organized centrally in an organization across different products lines. Subtheme: What are possibilities of information governance? Effective use of information provides near endless possibilities in the creation of analytical and predictive products towards customers, but also to optimize daily operations.
Proposition 2: The Agile trend leads to more short-term delivery success than traditional, waterfall project approaches. Subtheme: What is agility? Agility is considered being able to responsive to change, due to short cyclical activities with an emphasize on incorporating feedback loops. Subtheme: What is the state of agility within the bank? Shared understanding of what agility is, yet some challenges are to be uncovered both technological and in meeting prerequisites. Main challenge is the on boarding of business partners in the agile mind-set. Subtheme: What is the role of Architecture in agile practices? The role of the architects is changing. Traditional approach does not necessarily align with the scrum teams. What the exact role should be is to be defined.
Proposition 3: The Agility trend creates a paradox between software delivery and the ability to build and sustain Enterprise Information Governance. Although quite a few challenges remain to reach maturity in both areas, the existence of the paradox is not recognised within the bank.
The propositions lead to the following research question to be answered in the case study; Does ING Bank recognize and subsequently cope with tension between the agility trend and Information Governance? These tensions are not recognized and therefore there is no need to deal with them.
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