HOUSING ASSOCIATION ORGANISES TECHNOLOGY FOR BETTER EFFECT
April 2011

Irwell Valley Housing Association is a progressive housing provider serving the needs of over 20,000 residents across the Greater Manchester area. As part of an on-going Best Value review, the organisation decided to evaluate how technology is used to improve efficiency and deliver superior customer excellence to residents. Waterstons were engaged to provide an objective assessment of how technology projects are defined and executed and to measure the effectiveness of the IT support and service functions. The project was split into two phases.

Phase one analysed the status quo, focussing on how technology was aligned to the business strategy, the IT Governance procedures and the framework for managing the Enterprise IT Architecture. This phase also included a review of the IT department hierarchy and how technology projects were delivered.  Interviews were conducted with the various business departments to understand how business change was managed and users from across the organisation provided feedback on customer service and support performance of the IT department.
Phase two involved analysing the gathered information, feeding this back to the strategic stakeholders and working through areas where improvements could be made.

The primary recommendation of the review report  was the creation of an IT Steering Group. Waterstons suggested that this team be made up of key business and technical stakeholders from across the organisation, with overall responsibility for the on-going definition and execution of Irwell Valley’s IT Strategy and the IT Service provision. This team would aim to provide a convergence of governance between the business and technical functions and facilitate clear communication for technical related activities across the departments.

Additionally, a new organisational structure for the IT department was proposed involving separating the IT Service team from the delivery of strategic technical projects and the management of the IT Enterprise Architecture, allowing individuals within the teams to focus on specific roles and responsibilities. This would also provide greater clarity for the IT Steering Group when measuring the success of the IT Strategy.

Finally a more robust Project Management Methodology based on PRINCE2 methodology was recommended in order to provide a more formal framework for the management and governance of IT Projects.