Our approach builds on our experience in working with many different IT organizations and provides a holistic view of how IT should function. These concepts apply regardless of the size of the IT organization or whether it is in a private or public setting.
The Approach
The Vision
We believe that every IT organization should have a vision statement that clearly and precisely describes its vision within the larger organizational context. This vision should include the fundamental values by which IT will operate and should be understood by every member of the IT team. All activities within IT should be checked and evaluated against this vision to help in the prioritization of initiatives.
The Value Chain
Every IT department needs to define its value chain. These are the processes that ultimately contribute in generating value for the organization. The IT value chain is the most important aspect of all of IT and should be continually refined and optimized. This value chain can be equated to a production floor where resources are transformed to deliver an output of a product or service.
The value chain consists of delivery and operations, which are tightly joined through continuous integration and deployment of new functionality. The objective is to minimize delivery times from development to operations and to increase overall high-quality output.
Supporting Functions
All other functions within IT are considered supporting activities. The objective of these supporting activities is to refine and optimize the value chain processes so that delivery times can be reduced and output increased without compromising quality.
IT Strategy
The IT strategy has an internal and an external component. The external component defines the strategy IT is to apply in supporting new business directions and therefore is closely tied to the corporate business strategy. The internal component focuses on the direction IT should take to further improve the operational production process. Such optimizations could include the implementation of automatic test and deployment tools.
Enterprise Architecture
Every IT organization is unique and therefore requires an organizational structure that can support the production value chain. The IT organization must be designed in such a way that proper governance processes are in place. Some of these vital functions are security and network and change management. The objective is to streamline the value chain and ensure high-quality output.
IT Organization
Every IT organization is unique and therefore requires an organizational structure that can support the production value chain. Therefore, the IT organization must be designed in such a way that proper governance processes are in place. Some of these vital functions are security, network and change management. The objective is to streamline the value chain and ensure high quality output.