IT Value Realization Program for Northrop Grumman

Posted Thu, 10/23/2008 - 19:47 by admin

I co-led this two-year program that improved IT's strategic level of engagement with the business sectors, while at the same time reducing overall IT costs by $100 million (nearly 10%).

Situation:

In 2005, the Management Board of Northrop Grumman Corporation sponsored a company-wide program, “Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE)”, to maximize cross-sector strengths, create shareholder value and become “the world’s premier defense enterprise.”   The Management Board asked the Internal Information Systems (IIS) organization to be a driving force because it was the one group with enterprise-wide visibility and enough critical mass to identify and capitalize on opportunities.
 

Challenges:

 In tackling this situation, we identified four challenges critical to success:
  • IT environment complex and costly – because the IT environment was still the product of numerous major acquisitions and not well-integrated
  • IT portfolio not aligned with business drivers; investments often poorly optimized due to business silos
  • Despite good reputations of many Internal IS (IIS) leaders, business units often expected IIS personnel to be “order takers”, rather than a strategic partners
  • IIS tended to rely inordinately on its “A” players to get things done, often burning them out and failing to cultivate new leaders from its “B” and “C” strings
     

Approach:

  As we engaged Northrop Grumman, we focused on a key question:
“How does IIS raise its contribution to business value and create “game-changing” competitive advantages, thereby becoming a strategic partner to the business sectors?”

We focused efforts on improving capabilities essential to being strategic and managing business demand, while consolidating and optimizing operational performance. My team:

  • Identified the eight biggest IT value realization (ITVR) challenges
  • Facilitated a strategic planning session where focus groups recommended actions to address each ITVR challenge
  • Organized 40-50 recommendations into logical groupings which became projects in the ITVR Program depicted in the seminal graphic known as the “ITVR House”
  • Created the ITVR Vision and Roadmap for how the ITVR Program would unfold, what success would look like and how to measure it
  • Gained approval from the CIO Council and then Management Board to move forward
  • Went into a 2-month transition phase to begin ramp-up
  • Executed a two year journey to deliver results
     

Results:

 Over the course of 2+ years, the ITVR Program dramatically raised the day-to-day role if IIS leaders in contributing to business strategic planning, business development and productivity improvements. IIS leadership set and achieved the goal of eliminating $100M (9%) from its annual budgets.
 

My Role:

 I served as Interim Program Director, reporting to the Northrop Grumman IIS CTO. I was responsible for overall program business impact, communications to client executives and guiding project managers who managed the work streams. I also led account management and P&L from the consulting perspective.