There is clear and undeniable
evidence to support this premise – especially if you compare how things were
perhaps 15 years or more ago, in an age when many of the IT frameworks and
structures we still employ today were drawn up. A list of what’s different now
is telling:
IT as
commodity. It was always going to happen at some point, but now IT
is more commoditised and available than it ever has been.
There
are more Users of IT – and these Users are more sophisticated.
Everyone is now an expert. Everyone has a PC or laptop at home – often more
powerful than the one they use at work. People blog, build websites, edit
photographs. Children are now more articulate on a computer than they will ever
be on paper.
There
is a greater range of solutions available, faster, and more flexible than before.
What do you want? What kind of application do you need? The chances are that
you can get it – fast – on some kind of pay-as-you-go deal. You can be
up-and-running more quickly than ever.
The
Cloud. And it’s not just in the area of business applications. In
the virtual world we have created, you can get hosting, storage, disaster
recovery – and take them for granted, not worry about them. The kinds of
business models being pursued by technology providers today means you can get
virtually everything you need with minimal IT expertise – in theory you only
need to know about your business.
The
growth of comprehensive Systems’ Integrators. The big technology
companies are becoming broad SIs; all things to all men. Traditional hardware
firms now offer consultancy and applications; consulting firms now offer
hosting; network providers offer hardware. Everyone does everything, and these
are the domains where unique IT specialisms are concentrating.
The Intellectual
Property of IT is now diluted. Because of all of these factors, IT
professionals (working within Business organisations vs. technology service
providers or the SIs, above) now own less IP in relation to their function than
ever before. They are losing the primacy of their expertise, their unique
selling point. It’s a transition we saw way back when step changes in
programming languages happened – but now it’s in all disciplines, and is
happening more quickly.
IT becoming
more integrated into business functions. And perhaps one of the most
obvious symptoms of the entire transition is the migration of functions (such
as Business Intelligence) and skills (for example in the area of Financial
Management systems’ configuration) out of the domain of IT and into ‘business
teams’.
Is any of that wrong in some way?
Undoubtedly not – and even if it were, there’s little we can do about it!
Should the majority of these shifts to using new models of IT service provision
bring benefits to our businesses? Yes, they should – though undoubtedly they
bring some fresh risks too.
But above all, it demands
that business-domiciled IT functions align themselves against this new world.
And to be as effective and flexible as our customers need us to be, this
alignment may need to be radical considering where we are starting from.
The traditional in-house IT
function is becoming rapidly out-dated. But let’s go even further. Is it
actually needed anymore?! If you can outsource the entire gamut of IT services,
from hosting through to DR, from networks to applications, do you really need
an IT team at all? To some extent it depends on appetite, but some ownership of
IT will surely need to remain – and that ownership must have enough specialist
knowledge to get the best from your technology suppliers. And we need to avoid
the ‘baby and the bathwater’ scenario i.e. we throw away the really valuable
stuff – perhaps elements of competitive advantage – just to pursue some kind of
minimalist ideal.
But how do we get there? How do
we re-envision and re-engineer our in-house IT capability? How do we
re-establish our credibility and contribution in a hostile environment? We have
some ideas. We think we might need to adopt Agile development processes. We
know we should be more innovative. Some elements of our service are too
expensive, or too weak and of poor quality. We think we could outsource some of
that operational “stuff”, but have never taken the leap. And we know, for
certain, that we need to be seen by our business colleagues as a partner, and
not the Necessary Evil.
The answer is to redesign the
IT Business Model.
There are some fundamental
questions worth asking. In your business environment, what is IT ‘for’? What
value does it bring? Where does it contribute? Where is it an enabler – and
where a blocker? How important is technology; leading edge or not? What about mobile?
Is ‘good enough’, good enough, or do you have to be world class?... And a large
proportion of these questions will not be answered by IT folk, but by people in
the business, our customers.
Beneath these philosophical questions,
there is a wealth of detail to be uncovered and discovered. Luckily, frameworks
– and consultants! – abound to help you. Frameworks that talk about the journey
from Strategy to Operation, Direction to Execution; about how you build things,
support them, retire them; about suppliers and outsourcing… Breaking what IT
does down into its component parts – like a Lego house to its bricks – you will
arrive at, who knows, maybe 30 to70 elements. There will be a focus on
Customers, Administration (how you ‘run’ IT – and it should be like a business!),
Information Management, Services, Support, business solutions and so on.
1 – So, settle on a framework
and, if you need it, someone to help you through it. All of the big SIs and
Consultancies will have an offering in this space.
2 – Spend some time planning the
activity and prepping the people who are going to contribute – some of the
Leads in your IT function, but more importantly the key players in your
business.
3 – Work through the framework,
starting at the business engagement end. For each ‘brick’, most likely you will
need to recognise a) where you are (and you could be nowhere in that you just
don’t do ‘X’ right now!), b) where you need to be, and c) the challenges and
prerequisites of getting from one to the other.
4 – Once you have assessed all
the components in the framework, you will have a series individually coherent
but potentially disjointed models. The final activity will be to take these and
align them, and ensure they are complimentary. This will give you a new overall
operating model at which to aim.
5 – Then comes the planning
process i.e. identifying what you need to do and when you need to do it in
order to make your new model a reality. And validate again the benefit of doing
so. The plan and benefits case is what you need to sell.
But let’s be realistic here; this
process is complex and can take a long time to do well. If you are looking at
reviewing a traditional in-house IT function that covers all the bases, then
expect steps 1-5 to take three to six months. Implementation – if it involves
new outsourcing contracts, root and branch surgery of your organisation – could
take two years to put in place and be effective. For many, this timescale – and
the cost of the endeavour – will be too great, or at least off-putting. If you
have a pressing need to go faster in some areas, then I would suggest you still
execute steps 1 and 2 for the totality, but then have an iteration of the
remainder by ‘area’ e.g. Operations, Business Engagement, IT Administration,
Service Support etc. This will give you the advantage of seeing some results
earlier, but overall will probably take longer and may cost more. It may also
prove to be a more flexible approach. But whichever approach you choose, you
have to start with the big business-related questions up-front; these will give
you your boundaries within which to work. If you start by looking at the
support processes in isolation, you may optimise what you currently do – but
this will make little difference if what you are doing is profoundly inappropriate.
It’s a journey that will take funding,
time and commitment, but at the end of it you will find yourself with a
different pile of Lego bricks than before – and therefore a different house.
And hopefully one much more in tune with what your business actually needs. If
you fail to undertake the journey, then you may find that two things happen:
the first is that someone in the business might ‘do it to you’, and the second
is that there is a continuous and subtle leak of IT responsibility and
expertise away from your function which will lead to less effective, disjointed
and uncontrolled solutions provision to the business – and that will be a
bigger problem to solve!
-*-
About the author / copyright
Ian Gouge is widely experienced
in business-driven Information Technology, culminating in significant
achievements majoring on organisational and process change, and with a proven
track record in turning around / re-engineering IT functions. He possesses in-depth
experience of change, transformation, IT delivery, customer and supplier
engagement, and broad International exposure. Also the author of management
books on the topics of IT strategy and project management, the impact on IT of
e-business, and the IT organisation.
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