Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Executive Summary - Lifecycle Management

Concerns over the negative effects of IT system deployments being unable to meet deadlines have particularly been raised several times by both the management and the users. The process and the manner that new systems are deployed or implemented have been reported in many occasions as very slow and inefficient. Quantifying the effects practically or literally, translates into highly significant losses in terms of service disruptions, loss of productivity, and soaring overhead expenses such as increased employee overtimes. It is also observed that while IT employees’ overtime is at an all-time high, the quality of technical support provided to normal or daily requests is greatly degraded because of the very demanding nature of additional deployment tasks.

Since the need for system distribution, patching, and/or upgrades is a cycle perpetuated by the bank’s business requirements to stay competitive in the market, the strategy by which IT deployment is executed must be superior, or at the minimum, does not cause delay, or can be completed in a very reasonable time. At the same time, the schema should help achieve IT reliability, maximize IT staff performance, and reduce operational costs.

A general principle being considered to help achieve these goals is to apply a certain level of automation in order to simplify all tasks and be able to do similar tasks simultaneously with fewer interactions and interruptions - an independent solution that will complement and maximize the capabilities of Active Directory.

This report hopes to explain very clearly the different factors that determine the success or failure of IT deployment specifically in the production environment of East West Bank; and also to provide insights and recommendations as to how future projects can be better executed.

Note: This report received praises for its depth, details, and the way it was presented. However, the purchase of the KBOx was not approved due to other ongoing projects.

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