1 ISYS90048 Managing ICT Infrastructure Assignment A01 Frequently Asked Questions What is expected in assignment A01? The objectives of this assignment are to evaluate the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. You should choose a published ICT governance framework, such as COBIT, or ITIL and evaluate the structure and content of this ICT Infrastructure plan against that framework. Specifically you need to address the following questions:  What ICT governance framework have you chosen against which to analyse this ICT Infrastructure plan? Justify your choice.  What is your evaluation of the report against the criteria and guidelines from your chosen ICT governance framework? You should not simply be critical, but consider whether each component of the ICT framework is relevant to the goal and context of the report  What are the specific outcomes of your evaluation of the report?  What recommendations do you consider relevant to the revision of this report on issues related to the acquisition and ongoing management of ICT Infrastructure that could be further pursued by City of Albany within the stated objectives and scope of this digital services strategy report? You should review the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. As part of this review you should focus on the ICT infrastructure being proposed in the plan. Your report should also address the Intended Learning Outcomes for the assignment: 2, 3 and 4. You should undertake an analysis of the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017 against principles and guidelines that you have derived from an ICT governance framework. A template has been provided for this assignment that sets out the following steps: 1. State any relevant background and assumptions that you are making in writing this report. 2. Choose an ICT governance framework against which you are going to evaluate the Town of City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. 3. Choose relevant criteria from that ICT governance framework. For example you may choose the 5 basic principles of COBIT 5, or you may choose criteria that are based on some of the processes in the Align, Plan, Organise (APO) section of COBIT 5. 4. Find and cite relevant evidence from the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. This evidence may be direct, in the form of quotes from the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017, or it may be implied by the contents of the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. 5. Develop findings that state specifically whether the cited evidence does or does not conform to the respective criteria in your analysis. To be precise, you may use the terms “Conforms”, “Does Not Conform” and “Partially Conforms” as the finding in each row of your analysis table. You also need to provide a short paragraph that justifies how you2 have reached this finding, based on your consideration of the evidence against the respective criteria. 6. Develop key findings that summarise the outcomes of your analysis. These key findings are typically deeper, and collect together issues that you have identified in your specific findings in your analysis table. Each of these key findings should be justified, based on the specific findings in your analysis table. 7. Develop recommendations on how the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017 should be revised to meet the criteria that you have selected from your chosen ICT governance plan. Each of these recommendations should be formally stated as “It is recommended that … “, and should contain a single action. Each recommendation should be justified, based on the outcomes of your analysis, criteria from the ITC governance framework, and references to published literature. Frequently Asked Questions What is required in Section 3.1 of the A01 template under the point “The choice of the framework requires a short justification”? You should justify your choice of ICT governance framework, in a half page, or so. This justification should be within the context of the requirements of assignment A01. Could you please clarify Section 3 of the report template? Section 3.1 requires you to justify your choice of governance framework in a paragraph or 2. Section 3.2 requires an analysis of the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2015-2017, against criteria that you have chosen from the ICT governance framework. This analysis forms the basis of your recommendations for the revision of this City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. How extensive does the analysis of the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017 need to be? Your analysis should demonstrate your depth of understanding of the subject material, not the breadth of coverage of issues in the report. You do not need to provide a comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. As a guide your analysis table may be 2-3 pages in length. For example, it may deal with criteria that are derived from some of the process in the APO section of COBIT 5, not all of the processes in the APO section. How do I find appropriate criteria for my analysis table? COBIT and ITIL have sets of principles that may be used for these criteria. Each of the processes in the APO section of COBIT 5 has a description that implies criteria that may be used as the basis of your analysis. Each of your criteria should be stated a as a condition that the City of Albany CT Strategic Plan 2012- 2017 should meet. Therefore state each criterion in the form “City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012- 2017 should …”3 What is the structure of the analysis table in section 3.2? Each row of the analysis table should contain a single criterion. You should indicate how each criterion has been derived, by using a reference to the ICT governance framework. A row may contain one or more pieces of direct or implied evidence from the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017. You indicate the source of this evidence by references to the City of Albany ICT Strategic Plan 2012-2017 – page numbers would be sufficient. The finding in each row should assess the evidence in that row against the criterion in that row. Your finding should be stated formally, as discussed above, and be specific to this evidence and this criterion in each of the table. What if there is no evidence against which to assess a criterion? State that there is no evidence in the Evidence column, and then state the finding “Does Not Conform” in the Findings column. How many criteria should I include in the analysis table? The number of criteria you use will depend on your interpretation of the relevant parts of the ICT governance framework. The guideline above of 2-3 pages for the analysis table is a more relevant indication of the extent of this analysis. How many recommendations should I include in the report? Typically one would expect 4-8 recommendations in this report. Do I need to include references? Yes. You must include all references to external sources that have been cited in the report. These references must be in Harvard style. What is the expected word count for the assignment? There is no word limit, and no expected word count. As a guide, a suggested length is around 10 pages. How does this assignment differ from assignment A01 in the subject ISYS90038 IS Strategy & Governance? Both assignments have similar structures because they involve the evaluation of a given plan. However, assignment A01 in the subject ISYS90048 deals with ICT infrastructure, whereas assignment A01 in the subject ISYS90038 is focussed on ICT strategy.4 If I have chosen ITIL as my ICT governance framework, how do I derive criteria from that framework? You may use the 5 stages of the processes from ITIL, and select criteria that are derived from the description of these stages. For example: Service Strategy Process Objective: To decide on a strategy to serve customers. Starting from an assessment of customer needs and the market place, the Service Strategy process determines which services the IT organization is to offer and what capabilities need to be developed. Its ultimate goal is to make the IT organization think and act in a strategic manner. This Process Objective yields the following criterion: The City of Albany should seek to determine which services the IT organization is to offer and what capabilities need to be developed, based on an assessment of customer needs and the market place. You can the derive criteria from other process stages, and from other relevant parts of ITIL. The method by which you choose criteria and the range of topics/processes you use from ITIL is up to you, as part of the challenge of designing your analysis and assignment report. How many processes do I need to refer to? It depends upon the level of detail and focus of your analysis. As a guide between six and fifteen processes should be sufficient. .