Essay Sample on Tactical Decision: The Main Cause of IT Outsourcing Projects

Tactical decision main cause of IT outsourced is the project. IT outsourcing projects involve both strategic and tactical decision because tactical team provides short and medium-term support and value-add services. Tactical outsourcing involves hiring firms to carry out specific development function as part of the company's strategic IT processes. The company retain oversight of the projects and has more control over the IT projects (Consoli, 2016). Without adequate oversight, the tactical team may fail but without the tactical team, the whole project may also fail. While most organizations make IT decisions in the early phases of their projects, they fail to develop outsourcing strategies before beginning their projects. The tactical IT professionals are the one who implements the outsourcing decisions and measure the outcome of the IT outsourcing decisions (Narayanan, Balasubramanian & Swaminathan, 2010). Tactical decisions are mainly medium-term decision as they span between six months and one year. They are usually characterized by the limitation of the overarching strategic decisions. For example, the IT outsourcing decisions are usually planned and aimed at achieving strategic-level decisions.

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The tactical IT outsourcing decision creates medium-term schedules and plans to help the organization utilize the configuration of the established strategic-level decisions. These tactical decisions identify the medium-term schedules for outsourced IT services and plans. they medium-term policies are important in the IT project as they help in ensuring production efficiency and by extension also includes the distribution and operations related to the IT projects. The IT manager who makes the medium-term decision must be engaged in the strategic decision to enable them to interpolate their decision between the short term and long-term strategic decisions. This way, the company can easily maintain a specific level of services and products quality. Most IT decisions fails especially the outsourced IT services because the strategic managers make their decision without consulting the tactical decision leaders.

Unless the tactical level and strategic level decision are captured simultaneously in the configuration and network design problems, the projects are bound to fail. The people in charge of implementing the outsourced IT projects are instrumental in overseeing the success of the projects. Failure to include them in the planning and decision will lead to incompatibility. Additional, failure to make a tactical decision and involving the tactical team in IT decision making could lead to IT projects cost overruns, poor network infrastructures, and poor usage and allocation of resources. All these inefficiencies affect the end user's perception and overall demand with the related service level of cost.

Some of the key tactical decision in IT outsourcing include IT equipment l sourcing and procurement of all the auxiliary materials, IT inventory planning and warehouse management, distribution and scheduling of IT assets. Therefore, the medium-term transportation contracts, as well as the logistical contracts which may be outsourced, must be planned with the tactical team who oversee implementation to avoid project failure (Drzewiecki, 2016). Including the tactical teams in making production and material requirement planning (MRP) decision can help in achieving IT outsourcing goals because the team will guide the selection of sourcing, shipping and delivery methods for IT assets.

The tactical team makes an important contribution to outsourcing and sourcing decision as they can easily identify and own the process. The can develop criteria for partner selection, choose the most accessible IT solution providers in the region. Material requirement planning and outsourcing help in achieving optimal advantages (Jain & Khurana, 2015). The most effective method is the use of outsourcing models that the strategic team is not aware off since these are medium-term decisions whether the chosen model is time and material model, software vendor IT supports model, dedicated development team, or managed it services model. integrating the tactical team can help the strategic team actualize their it outsourcing goal.

Finally, the tactical team will provide onsite, over the phone support as well as timely security and disaster recovery. The most problem in the IT project implementation requires the support of the tactical team and not the strategic team alone. Therefore, the tactical team must be included to provide timely support as well as backup support services to the outsourced IT services depending on the business dynamics.

References

Consoli, A. (2016). Achieving distributed decision-making using BDI and Coo^2 for future Distributed Tactical Decision Aids. Intelligent Decision Technologies, 10(4), 453-471. Doi: 10.3233/idt-160271

Drzewiecki, J. (2016). Opportunities, Threats and Variability Of Business Models Of Polish Businesses Adapting Outsourcing - Research Results. Modern Management Review, 21(11). Doi: 10.7862/rz.2016.mmr.43

Jain, D., & Khurana, R. (2015). Impact of pricing and outsourcing models on Indian information technology service outsourcing. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 22(4), 610-623. Doi: 10.1108/bij-01-2014-0011

Narayanan, S., Balasubramanian, S., & Swaminathan, J. (2010). Managing Outsourced Software Projects: An Analysis of Project Performance and Customer Satisfaction. SSRN Electronic Journal, 22(1). Doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1548244