Performance Driven IT Management (PDM)

"Despite spending more than $600 billion on information technology over the past decade, the Federal Government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT," according to the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management published by the White House in late 2010. "Too often, Federal IT projects run over budget, behind schedule, or fail to deliver promised functionality." Ira Sachs, a Senior Technical Director at HPTi, argues that the Federal Government needs a new approach. Introducing a novel five-step process called Performance-Driven Management (PDM), author Ira Sachs explains in detail how to reduce risk on large IT programs and projects. This book walks through the five steps of the PDM process:

• Conduct a high-level strategic review of what an organization does, who it serves, what it wants to do, and what improvements are needed
• Implement performance measures to gauge success for the organization
• Complete comprehensive business cases for projects and use them to mitigate risk and guide projects throughout the project life cycle
• Perform benefits realization on completed projects
• Close the loop by feeding back knowledge and results into the strategic planning process to achieve additional results in the future

This is an essential tool for all IT and business managers in government and contractors doing business with the government. It has useful and actionable information for anyone who is interested in increasing the impact and reducing the risk of large IT and organizational change projects.

About the Author

Performance Driven IT Management is Mr. Sachs' first book, providing the benefit of his extensive career experience to readers worldwide.

Ira Sachs has extensive experience in enterprise and business architecture, information systems development, capital planning, strategic planning, business and software process analysis and reengineering, financial systems, and program management. He leads High Performance Technologies, Inc.'s (HPTi, Reston, VA) Enterprise Architecture (EA) competency, assisting clients in planning and integrating enterprise-wide IT.

Mr. Sachs is a recognized expert in EA, performance management, capital planning, and IT strategy; he speaks about these topics at conferences nationally and internationally. Mr. Sachs was a key contributor to the development of IEEE Std 1016-2009, Systems Design--Software Design Descriptions, IEEE-Std-1471-2000(now also ISO/IEC 42010:2007), Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems. He provided technical review on the Federal Segment Architecture Methodology (FSAM). Additionally, Mr. Sachs was a section author for "CPIC Overview - The Definitive Guide to Completing the OMB Exhibit 300" (2008).

Prior to HPTi, he was the architect for the U.S. Department of Education, leading the architecting and implementation of integrated information systems and associated capital and transition planning efforts. Mr. Sachs has also assessed large, mission-critical information systems for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and made recommendations to Congress for improving these systems, architectures, and supporting management processes.

Mr. Sachs was born in Baltimore, MD. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, and a M.B.A. in Finance from Loyola University Maryland. He is married, has four sons, and lives in Derwood, MD."

Media Links

• Ira Sachs'article in Bloomberg Government: Build Government IT Projects Around a Business Case
• Ira Sachs' interview with Morris Jones on NewsChannel 8's Capital Insider: Funds for federal technology: How the Money Should be Managed
• Ira Sachs' blog on MeriTalk: : Time for a Value Driven Approach to IT Investments

Book Now Available

Ira Sachs' book, Performance Driven IT Management, is available at Amazon

Praise for Performance Driven IT Management

Ira Sachs has written an intelligent book in which he assembles all of the best practices in information technology management, and organizes them toward the aim of improving business performance. Emphasizing the constant link to business performance is particularly challenging in the federal government where program outcomes are hard to identify mainly because varied stakeholders, e.g., Congress, the president, program recipients, taxpayers, intermediary organizations, each has a legitimate performance perspective. However, PDM is sufficiently detailed to help the IT manager through this thicket of competing interests without getting stuck. -- Dick Burk (Former Chief Architect and Manager of the Federal Enterprise Architecture)

This book defines a five step approach that takes a program from strategy to implementation. The author has done a great job of explaining a very complex process in five, simple steps. -- Sal Hundal (Chair of the Business and Enterprise Architecture Committee of the Northern Virginia Technology Council)