The Lead-up to Bosley’s Takeover
Immediately before Bosley took the position of CIO, in August 1999, the ITSB
operations were chaotic, with low levels of stability and little flexibility (Figure 7.2).
Without a strategy, ITSB staff had no sense of direction. ITSB was highly unstable; it
was challenged by the lack of knowledge, competence, interest, and guidance in proactively developing systems and in reacting to errors and faults in production.
Development projects were using complex and incompatible technologies with unclear
internal reporting lines. Performance was low and unpredictable. Existing business
applications were unstable due to the absence of programming and implementation
standards, major deficiencies in design (i.e., data, logic, and presentation), use of
inappropriate and outdated technologies, and low programming competence.
Troubleshooting problems in these applications often opened up a cascade of unpredictable factors that would go unresolved for days or even weeks. The source of the
problems could hide inside systems developed by third parties and running on proprietary hardware unfamiliar to ITSB.
IT development was inflexible because it did not have solid groundings in the form
of robust operating standards and policies and strong relationships with the business
units to fulfill the organization’s changing business application needs. Without standards, policies, methods, and shared understandings, both ITSB and the business units
discouraged proactive IT-based business initiatives. ITSB projects ran according to
individual ITSB staffers’ preferences, which were unacceptable to the business units