Pharms measure in metrics

Pharmaceutical companies are the driving force behind a new IT strategy called 'value management', according to Giga Information Group.

Giga analyst, Chip Gliedman, told Silicon.com that pharmaceuticals were first to adopt metrics - a method of defining the level of success in a project - for their IT strategy and that other IT directors would be wise to follow suit. "Every IT project should define a metric by which it can be valued," he said. "It gives them credit when a product goes well, and establishes blame when it does not."

Gliedman estimated that only around 10 per cent of companies currently use this tactic. Most are pharmaceutical companies, which invest in multiple small research projects and use metrics to work out which investments should be continued.

One end-user, Gale Aguilar, president and COO of Mitem, said in the real world, metrics were often worthless. "It gets political," he told Silicon.com. "An IT project might have three years to realise its defined goals, but if the financial director has just one year to prove himself, the project falls down."

Gliedman acknowledged this was an issue. "Senior executives need greater responsibility," he said.