itLEPO
The IT Leadership Potential (itLEPO) -research project, managed by the Information Systems Science Department of the Turku School of Economics, will construct a tool to evaluate and develop the capability and agility of IT service management for IT and business managers and service providers.
Many Finnish corporations see information technology as primarily a cost factor. Utilization of IT to gain competitive advantage is seen to be difficult and risky by the management of these organizations. Even advanced methods of IT governance have little effect, if the general management has no confidence in the capability of the IT service management to execute agreed decisions with haste and confidence.
IT services have long been viewed as a support function, for which it is sufficient to maintain a routine service level. This has naturally been reflected upon the quality and agility of IT service management. The itLEPO development tool will give a means to identify underutilized IT potential. On the one hand, it offers the possibility to analyze the development need of IT service management capability and agility; on the other, it defines the strategic and operative basis why IT service management and agility should be developed.
The itSYKE project, a parallel project by the Helsinki University of Technology, is related to itLEPO. The itSYKE probes the agility and capability of IT service management as a mutual dialogue of networks, that is, via cooperation and communication in the social dimension.
The itLEPO and itSYKE joint project, financed by nine organizations and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), was launched on May 1. 2007, and has a time window of 20 months. The total budget for the project is EUR 640 000.