Software and ICT companies fail due less to technological factors than socioorganizational factors, among which the most common is unrealistic goals and objectives. The socioorganizational factors are present in companies and organizations of all sizes. Organizations need to know whether their goals and strategies are working and whether the strategies are effectively providing a reasonable return on investment for the effort that is being applied, i.e. to understand how valuable they are for the organization. In addition, organizations need to recognize what the risks are in achieving those goals and evaluate their probability. And, when goals are set properly then they have directive and energizing functions, they tend to utilize available resources better and serve as activators of cognitive processes and knowledge sharing cycles.
In this dissertation the GQM+Strategies approach was used. The approach was designed to help organizations to align goal-driven measurement schemes, i.e. GQM, with organizational goal hierarchy. The extensions developed in this dissertation (i.e., the solution proposed here) evolve the GQM+Strategies approach by providing an organization with capabilities to: (1) apply the work of value-based software engineering to directly address the return on investment (ROI) of their goals and strategies via evaluation of the costs and benefits of the goals and strategies chosen, (2) calculate a set of earned value metrics that allows organizations to effectively monitor the implementation of the organizational goals and strategies, (3) identify the risks associated with not achieving various sub-goals in a grid by analyzing goal risk exposures and acceptable risk levels, and (4) assess the threats of risky goals on other goals in the grid via evaluation of goal dependencies using the formal goal-strategies-goals models.
The GQM+Strategies approach was piloted in four different organizations involving more than 60 participants. The feedback from the participants was used to identify the research questions posed in this dissertation. The research approach (solution development process) adopted the design science framework and utilized analytical and empirical paradigms in different phases of the solution development. The analytical paradigms were used for solution development and evaluation, while empirical paradigms where used for evaluating certain aspects of the solution.
Vladimir Mandic (University of Oulu): Measurement-based value alignment and reasoning about organizational goals and strategies : Studies with the ICT industry
http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9789514299087/isbn9789514299087.pdf
Cloud Software Finland is a four year (2010-2014) Tivit-program, which focuses on developing the different areas of cloud services. The program is funded by Tekes.
www.cloudsoftwareprogram.org