Process

I'm not sure how long a company can be considered a startup, but I feel that XM Radio is finally breaking out of the startup mold. We were founded in 1992, which makes us a true adolescent, even though we didn't launch our first satellite until March 2001. Even now, we have fewer than 1000 employees; we're a small company for the amount of revenue we generate.

As vice president of IT operations, I'm working to ensure that our IT strategy matures along with the company. We need to move from the days of dust and chaos toward a rational software development lifecycle, portfolio management, information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) adoption, and standardization. I want to align IT with the business. But I also want us to deploy IT solutions in a more mature way, rather than charge up the mountain with our hair on fire.

Part of my strategy to promote maturity is to oversee a more methodical IT organization. For instance, we now schedule monthly software releases across IT. We have implemented a software development lifecycle methodology, and more robust processes and tools around release and change management.

Focusing on alignment, my goal is to deploy solutions that help decrease our customer acquisition and retention costs. To do that, we're building a reliable infrastructure for our subscriber management system, which runs on a customer relationship management solution from Siebel (now part of Oracle). That infrastructure will support millions more subscribers than we have now, and using that application, onshore and offshore call center representatives can manage customer data, and activate, upsell, or manipulate customer accounts. To support that, we have a robust and scalable enterprise-wide structure that incorporates load balancing to keep our Web servers communicating smoothly with our back-end databases.

But when I came on board over a year ago, I realized my biggest challenge would be tackling our maturity issue. I interviewed every employee, from the C-level executives down to the folks in the mailroom, and I asked them to do one simple thing: Tell me the five things you like or don't like about IT. I used their responses to develop five pillars, which I then asked everyone in IT to post above their desks:

• Increase customer satisfaction (both external and internal business units)
• Improve service delivery of IT solutions and services
• Drive maturity through methodologies and standards (not necessarily speed of delivery)
• Reduce spending (in an immature environment, a lot of money is spent on quick solutions—that had to change)
• Communicate collaboratively across the business

Unfortunately, you can't just turn a magic knob on a radio dial to make a transition like this work. You have to navigate the cultural change, and that's a huge challenge. The employees—especially those in IT—have to understand that the business lifecycle has changed.

At one time, it was fine for a developer to stay up three days straight to solve a problem. But now we have to work hard not only to change the IT mindset but also to implement tools that promote this change. We have to generate requisition documents, get sign-off from the business side, and schedule a release date. All solutions that IT delivers for the business must now meet a rigid business case with an aggressive return on investment (ROI). Initial business requests must provide sufficient ROI or they are no longer done. We also have to get IT employees to see that it takes planning before you put your fingers to the keyboard to change code. The heroes of an entrepreneurial company have the keyboard mindset, but today's heroes have to meet broader customer requirements around managing enterprise change in a controlled environment.

We're still a fast-moving company with a dynamic, young, energetic workforce, and there are many ways that IT can help. For example, our marketing team wants to support customer care, and that involves driving folks to the Web for personalization, having the Web become the extension of their radio, and delivering personalized premium content. Behind the scenes, there's much that IT can do.

We also do more preplanning now. We have a dedicated system, which didn't exist before, for project work requests. An IT account manager sits down with the folks from the business unit to understand what they need and what financial return the development effort is expected to provide. We've intentionally created a more mature process around the software development lifecycle methodology effort. This helps us ensure that we are not developing redundant functionality. We try to design code for reuse of functionality so that we're working toward a true service-oriented architecture.

Tackling this shift to maturity was even harder than being the new guy. Sitting down with everyone from the CEO to the Unix development engineer was fun. It's still an engaging, roll-up-your-sleeves company, but we don't want people wearing five hats, rolling up their sleeves, and focusing only on tight deadlines. We want our IT team to deliver solutions that address critical business priorities, meet sufficient ROI, and provide maximum value toward our business goals.

It's a challenge to capture that energy and turn it toward our goals, but for IT to be successful, we must adapt to the company's maturity. If I had said five years ago, "Let's implement this software development methodology, slow down the pace, and deliver on a formal project plan," I'd have been shown the door. But our executives have realized that XM has to mature to get to its next level of success. It's my job to ensure that we're pouring the concrete for a solid foundation, and that starts with IT being aligned with its business unit partners and continuing to develop its own maturity.