Organization

• Identify overall organization with chart and job descriptions;

• Identify key departmental and ‘power users’ of system resources;

• Identify senior IT managers and determine respective job functions;

• Determine size, skill level and organizational distribution of IT staff;

• Identify linkages between staff and business, operations counterparts;

• Identify location of IT departments;

• Analyze product/service support structure and identify key personnel;

• Identify succession planning for key department personnel.

 

Training

• Ongoing Professional Development within IT organization;

• User facility training and continuing development;

• Application based training and development;

• Enhancement request preparation and presentation training and development.

 

Infrastructure

• Compile hardware inventory;

• Document and analyze network infrastructure and topology;

• Document and analyze telecommunications/communications infrastructure and topology;

• Document business transaction topology including EDI and Web Services;

• Document and analyze data center(s) infrastructure and support;

• Document external data links to computing resources;

• Document Internet based access, infrastructure and control;

• Identify customer support/contact/integration by means of Internet web interfaces.

 

Too many companies fail to upgrade their current resources. 

• How many of you still have a copy machine? 

• How many continue to print and mail invoices to customers? 

• How many still receive bank statements on paper?

• How many printers do you have in your office(s)?

 

Do you realize just how inefficient and costly these obsolete things truly are?  Do you realize that these are, for the most part, unnecessary expenses?  All these are easily replaceable with more current electronic technologies that are faster, more efficient and will save you thousand$ of recurring dollars every month!

 

Systems

• Compile manifest of operating systems, databases, languages  and development platforms;

• Compile manifest of deployed application systems, determine level of integration and supporting entity;

• Review and analyze excerpts of internally developed code and assess compliance to best practices in documentation, procedures, testing and deployment;

• Evaluate company's web site for customer experience, interface design, usability and performance;

• Conduct surveys and/or interviews with internal and external users of IT services to determine level of satisfaction.

 

Project Control – Development and Change

• Concept Definition and Budgeting;

• Change control methodology

• Project Initiation,

• Feasibility,

• Design,

• Development & Implementation,

• Operations & Maintenance,

• Post Implementation Review;

• Resource allocation and prioritization.

 

Budget

• Review budget and authorization for expenditure (AFE) process;

• Review and analyze current budget allocations;

• Compare budget to current consumption;

• Review consulting and/or outsourcing contracts;

• Identify any excess capacity, redundant resources and their potential uses;

• Review IT projects and milestone progress reports for ongoing projects.

 

---

 

Business Relationships

 

Business Partners

• Identify Business Partner agreements and tenure;

• Identify any fiduciary responsibilities between Business Partners;

• Identify records organization, retention and disposal procedures;

• Identify transaction and data interchange between Business Partners; including EDI and B-2-B transational activities.

• Determine effective use of IT resources in ongoing business transaction processing.

 

Vendors

• Identify Vendors and agreements;

• Identify transaction and data interchange between Vendors;

• Identify communications, web services, EDI and other critical business procurement activities;

• Determine the effective use of IT resources in ongoing business transaction processing.

 

---

 

Initiatives and Planning

 

Corporate Business Growth and Development Plans

• Identify short term growth demands on IT resources (6 to 12 months);

• Identify mid-term growth demands on IT resources (13  to 36 months);

• Identify long term growth demands on IT resources (36 to 60 months).

 

Planned systems

• Review development projects currently underway; 

• Determine timeliness, viability, staffing and cost of each;

• Review development and implementation plans, project control and implementation planning;

• Review pending proposals to ensure requirements and specifications are well documented.

 

Existing Systems

• Review capacity planning and support for hardware and software systems;

• Identify future migration and strategic plans for hardware, operating systems and other infrastructure;

• Identify growth and expansion plans for infrastructure.

 

Budget

• Review and compare proposed budget with analysis of current budget;

• Review current and planned capital budget requirements;

• Evaluate opportunities for cost savings such as data center, server, project consolidation;

• Ensure the inclusion of required future support and service contracts.

 

---

 

Risk Profile

 

Business Continuity

• Review data backup/recover practices;

• Determine whether practices are well documented, implemented and tested;

• Review disaster recovery plan and identify potential vulnerabilities or omissions;

• Examine relationships with third-party vendors to identify potential sources of risk in case of catastrophe.

 

Data Security

• Analyze data security measures and determine vulnerabilities:

• Network security measures;

• Database security measures;

• Platform security measures;

• Application security measures;

• Employee permissions, password policies;

• Physical access to critical assets.

• Analyze change management policies and procedures.

 

Personnel

• Determine key resources which must be retained;

• Determine vulnerabilities to attack by displaced personnel;

• What is the overall Health & Wellness of your Staff?

 

Regulatory and Compliance

• Identify applicable regulatory oversight as applicable to the business;

• Determine broad measure of compliance with applicable regulatory statutes (E.g. Sarbanes-Oxley)

---