SAME

In my previous post I mentioned that I was looking for more information on how to manage IT in a model that is a little less complex....

I have been poring over the SAME document created by Jan Van Bon and Wim Hoving, and I have to say I think it's excellent.

This model seems to capture the realities of managing IT in a simple and easy to understand fashion, though I haven't put this into practice I can see the potential for forming a logical structure around the complex IT organisations and running decisions through the model to see where they fit best.

One of the only negatives I would mention about this piece is the comment that "Information support" is merely a supporting activity akin to HR or Finance, and though I agree with this, I think that provision needs to be made in the model for businesses where IT is the product, where delivery of information is the profit center.

This is only a taster of the full SAME model - I assume this and more will be covered in the full version.

In an ITSkeptic comment recently Jan said:

there's plenty more where this came from. It just hasn't all been published yet, and some of the published material is copyrighted so I can't simply provide it publicly. Most of it is all over the books my team produced with a huge team of experts, in the ITSM Library, a series of books previously published for the itSMF. I'm currently writing 'the ultimate book' on this subject, and a team of authors is writing a series of books on detailed topics, all in the same (SAME) architecture. These titles will be published by Van Haren Publishing, independently from any formal body.

There's one publicly available article I wrote for CEPIS/UPGRADE, titled "This is NOT Governance".
More relevant articles can be found on my company's website, but since that is all in Dutch, apart from one other article on the Process Management Matrix (PMM): here is a shortcut to an English translation of that article. It will tell you how to avoid one of the most common pitfalls when introducing process management ("failing to remove the responsibility from the previously responsible line manager, when introducing new process managers").

I look forward to the "ultimate book" on this subject.

Read more...

How Complex does this need to be?

So.... ITIL has 5 main books covering 27ish "processes", CobiT has 34 processes some of which overlap providing a governance structure of what should be being done, with ITIL explaining (somewhat) how. ISO 20000 details more standards that completely overlap with ITIL and CobiT. LINK

None of these three really cover project management, and nowhere that I can see is there a real prescription for how to manage IT technology or Organisational structure.

It is somewhat of a theme on this blog that this stuff can't be this difficult... is running an IT department really this complex?

What are we really trying to achieve?

All the frameworks call it different stuff but basically we do the following:

1. Plan our future
   
2. Design stuff to get us there
3. Build what was designed
4. Support what was built
5. Report on our success and improve. (I may consider this part of support but it matters little)

Now when I read through all of the 34 processes that are detailed in CobiT I actually agree that they are all valuable, so this post isn't really a comment that CobiT or ITIL are wrong.

Maybe it does have to be this complex, maybe this complexity is real, and what we need is more professionalism in the field of IT management to control all these moving parts.

I would be interested in hearing any opinions and in the mean time I will be out there looking for the dummies guide to building a world class IT organisation, let me know if you have written one.



Read more...