Ass.6 in MIS2

Definition

Critical Success Factors - Focusing attention on the things that are important in the things you do. So many important matters can compete for your attention in business that it's often difficult to see the "wood for the trees". What's more, it can be extremely difficult to get everyone in the team pulling in the same direction and focusing on the true essentials. That's where Critical Success Factors (CSFs) can help. CSFs are the essential areas of activity that must be performed well if you are to achieve the mission, objectives or goals for your business or project. By identifying your Critical Success Factors, you can create a common point of reference to help you direct and measure the success of your business or project.

As a common point of reference, CSFs help everyone in the team to know exactly what's most important. And this helps people perform their own work in the right context and so pull together towards the same overall aims. The idea of CSFs was first presented by D. Ronald Daniel in the 1960s. It was then built on and popularized a decade later by John F. Rockart, of MIT's Sloan School of Management, and has since been used extensively to help businesses implement their strategies and projects. Inevitably, the CSF concept has evolved, and you may have seen it implemented in different ways. This article provides a simple definition and approach based on Rockart's original ideas.

Rockart defined CSFs as:

"The limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organization. They are the few key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, the organization's efforts for the period will be less than desired."

He also concluded that CSFs are "areas of activity that should receive constant and careful attention from management."

Critical Success Factors are strongly related to the mission and strategic goals of your business or project. Whereas the mission and goals focus on the aims and what is to be achieved, Critical Success Factors focus on the most important areas and get to the very heart of both what is to be achieved and how you will achieve it.

An Example:

CSFs are best understood by example. Consider a produce store "Farm Fresh Produce", whose mission is:

"To become the number one produce store in Main Street by selling the highest quality, freshest farm produce, from farm to customer in under 24 hours on 75% of our range and with 98% customer satisfaction."

Summary Steps:

In reality, identifying your CSFs is a very iterative process. Your mission, strategic goals and CSFs are intrinsically linked and each will be refined as you develop them.

Here are the summary steps that, used iteratively, will help you identify the CSFs for your business or project:

Step One: Establish your businesses or project's mission and strategic goals (click here for help doing this.)

Step Two: For each strategic goal, ask yourself "what area of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?" The answers to the question are your candidate CSFs.

Step Three: Evaluate the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Criticial Success Factors.

As you identify and evaluate candidate CSFs, you may uncover some new strategic objectives or more detailed objectives. So you may need to define your mission, objectives and CSFs iteratively.

Step Four: Identify how you will monitor and measure each of the CSFs.

Step Five: Communicate your CSFs along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.

Step Six: Keep monitoring and reevaluating your CSFs to ensure you keep moving towards your aims. Indeed, whilst CSFs are sometimes less tangible than measurable goals, it is useful to identify as specifically as possible how you can measure or monitor each one.

Critical Success Factor Method: Establishing a Foundation for Enterprise Security Management

Every organization has a mission that describes why it exists (its purpose) and where it intends to go (its direction). The mission reflects the organization's unique values and vision. Achieving the mission takes the participation and skill of the entire organization. The goals and objectives of every staff member must be aimed toward the mission. However, achieving goals and objectives is not enough. The organization must perform well in key areas on a consistent basis to achieve the mission. These key areas—unique to the organization and the industry in which it competes—can be defined as the organization's critical success factors.

The critical success factor method is a means for identifying these important elements of success. It was originally developed to align information technology planning with the strategic direction of an organization. However, in research and fieldwork undertaken by members of the Survivable Enterprise Management (SEM) team at the Software Engineering Institute, it has shown promise in helping organizations guide, direct, and prioritize their activities for developing security strategies and managing security across their enterprises. This report describes the critical success factor method and presents the SEM team's theories and experience in applying it to enterprise security management.

Understanding Critical Success Factor Analysis
Overview of CSF Analysis
CSF analysis is:
• A method developed at MIT’s Sloan school by John Rockart to guide businesses in creating and measuring success
• Widely used for technology and architectural planning in enterprise I/T
• A top-down methodology that is especially suitable for designing systems as opposed to applications
• A reductionist method for going from an abstract vision to concrete requirements
What Is a Critical Success Factor?
• A key area where satisfactory performance is required for the organization to achieve its goals
• A means of identifying the tasks and requirements needed for success
• At the lowest level, CSFs become concrete requirements
• A means to prioritize requirements
The CSF Method
• Start with a vision: mission statement
• Develop 5-6 high level goals
• Develop hierarchy of goals and their success factors
o Leads to concrete requirements at the lowest level of decomposition (a single, implementable idea)
o Along the way, identify the problems being solved and the assumptions being made
• Cross-reference usage scenarios and problems with requirements
Results of the Analysis
• Mission statement
• Hierarchy of goals and CSFs
• Lists of requirements, problems, and assumptions
• Analysis matrices
o Problems vs. Requirements matrix
o Usage scenarios vs. Requirements matrix
• Solid usage scenarios
Relationship to Usage Scenarios
• Usage scenarios or “use cases” provide a means of determining:
o Are the requirements aligned and self-consistent?
o Are the needs of the user being met as well as those of the enterprise?
o Are the requirements complete?
CSF analysis:
• Produces results that express the needs of the enterprise clearly and (hopefully) completely
• Allows us to measure success and prioritize goals in a sensible way
• When used together with traditional usage scenarios, ensures that the needs of both the user and the enterprise are being met


Reference:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/04tr010.cfm
www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/2/04/UCSFA.ppt