Service Design

I have talked about Service Design in terms of Enterprise Architecture strategies but take a look of another video from Design Consultancy firm Continuum. I like the emphasis of connecting everything together so one message, and your set of core values is communicated through multiple touch points.

   

One of my senior leaders in the organization calls the same concept using the analogy of building ramps to connect to the highway which we nurture to build relationships with the customer, our end user or FAMILY!!

 Thoughts,

 Sam Kurien

The New IT PlayBook

Technology departments in non-tech companies have always prided themselves in traditionally staying one step behind on the curve caution of adopting new disruptive technologies or the hottest and the latest trends. This is part because of sound reasons like management questioning dollar spending and partly because of integration of legacy systems and thought patterns of looking at that change is not worth at this time.

This has resulted in practices where native apps are supported extensively, infrastructure perimeters are protected instead of sensitive data. And avoiding in looking into efficiency that pertain to cloud offerings and empowering employees that bring personal devices that conglomerate into the IT infrastructure. But the new IT playbook is about being more agile, more mobile, more lighter and less expensive. The new playbook dictates that if technology component does not follow this model will result in them being cost center's and support centers rather than strategic player in the mission of the organization. I love cloud services but the traditional caution model keeps me in check, though advocates challenge the benefits of SaaS and cloud enabled services I am a fan of a hybrid model. I haven't seen this heavily advocated but the idea is having high availability critical systems in the cloud (with security layers in place) and having redundancy within your data center and create a vice-versa fail over tier's. Agreed, its a little expensive but this firms up the infrastructure layer and strengthens the business application layers greatly. Costing however can be worked out if technology leverages the input of collective thinking between departments, areas of services (in my context ...ministry)and analyses what works and what does not in a evaluative matrix that circles back to the vision, mission and objectives of the enterprise. 

The hybrid model I propose incorporates the Cloud based services and the traditional in-house software and infrastructure layers. This model is not for the faint of heart as it increases measurement processes and accountability at all levels. Forces to evaluate to think out of the box with the resources we have and making cost count.

Eventually over a period of time the cost in this model comes down and benefits go up. My CEO recently talked about the fourth quadrant in his presentation today where the objective for the management is pushing the entire organization not just to high productivity but engaging individuals into core values of the organization which inherently moves a business, workplace or ministry to Greatness. And in turn gives the people involved thee impetus to be GREAT!!

 Thoughts,

 Sam Kurien

One of the Best Videos I have seen on Scrum...enjoy!

I like the flexibility of Agile development methods, the idea of great tool is to spend less time with it and produce great results that match with business objectives, mission and Strategy.

Thoughts,

Sam KurienPublish Post

CIO Metrics

CIO's today wrestle with more than just technology and the market demands that today's CIO's  be more than the technologist and the evangelist they are called to be. In fact they are more like CEO's in the sense they need to have keen interest in the business needs, future strategies and be an active part of ensuring that critical information churned out by techology support delivers timely info to the ground workers, people in field and empower the management/stakeholders of the organization. This is true for this role in Profit as well as Non-profit worlds.

The most important things that the mordern CIO must do is quickly identify business customers (internal and external)  to make sure the priorities are classifed and fit first within the IT operational plan and the strategic plan of the organization. Working with IT steering and governance committees,  trimming lists of the systems involved and streamlining applications and ensuring qaulity and efficiency are the outputs with a good reporting plan in place.

The second order of business would to standardize communications so key customers, stakeholders and field gets monthly and quarterly updates in regular fashion along with the insights of how the information can be used and what they really mean.

Thirdly defining a portfolio management process for evaluating and prioritizing projects across the enterprise that will have to meet organziational goals, objectives and be part of the strategic vision of the leadership. Key areas that fall into this broad area are that effect mainly the customer relationship management, communication management, events management and project management. 

Along with the primary three I know infrastructure managment (99.99% up time), application success, data and events all take considerable time in the life of the CIO's role, the success of the CIO then will be judged in the ability to manage expectations, supply & demand and be the chief neogtiatior of/for customer satisfaction while continually focussing on th big picture of projects in the bigger vision and calling of the orgnaization.

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Key Components of Enterprise Portfolio Management

When organizations grow in business complexity in terms of products and services they offer, the senior management is always concerned with if resources are being effectively used and if the stakeholders (internal as well as external) are getting the right returns on their investments. Hence in the market lots of software products that do multi-portfolio management of projects and programs. Most of the products out their aim at managing the project life cycles but a true EPM will take into consideration the entire top-down planning approach to include strategic planning, investment analysis, capacity planning and tune it with the components of Demand & Change management in lieu of projects that are being executed. They also thus take into account resource management and pop in the dashboard metrics related to them with the monies or finances being allocated and thus incorporating or integrating components of Financial management.

Strategic Planning in management of enterprise portfolios entails about how mission and objectives align with the strategies and tactics employed in execution of projects. A true EPM will thus allow to manage trade-offs before taking or executing that strategic path, allow for accurate assessment of allocation of funding and staffing and most importantly employ strategy that covers the entire business continuum plans.

Investment models within portfolios then make it simple if employed correctly within EPM to identify the risks associated, calculate the cost, evaluate the value variances, and give clues how best to optimize the project investments, balance innovations to sustain business continuum processes.

This then from a operational point of view helps in portfolio management to plan for capacity where demands of the business and resources are matched to support the key business strategies. A EPM software will thus give you an understanding where the resource are lacking, what is the excess capacity that can be transferred or reserved, and forecast resource capacity within the framework of roles and responsibilities of individuals on various teams at different times on various projects. Capacity planning is closely aligned with metrics that demand management cycles produce like number of work requests, status checks, incident and problem requests, mean time between failures, life cycle reviews etc.

At the granular level of EPM then is the ability to track projects, their scope, time lines and actual costs to the project value to the Enterprise. Tracking of project times against expenses, managing associated risks, and getting quick snapshot views of projects and their progress in lieu of organizational objectives.  The financial management and resource management are tied in closely  and portfolio manager can look in using the EPM software that link organizational financials to project plans and strategic initiatives to the final operational delivery of products, programs and services.  I personally haven't seen a EPM that gives clues or hints to what is the level of strategic alignment in terms of operational delivery of the four P's (programs, projects, plans and people) to overall strategy in a assigned % form even if there are lots of qualitative data involved.

Finally on my wish-list would be plug-ins for EPM's that will allow for high level integration with all office products and project management software's to give operational PM's up to date instructions and get up to date feedback on projects in action which in turn populate the EPM dashboard.

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Fit Analysis- Is it Business ‘Fit’ or Technical ‘Fit’?

Enterprise Architects/IT Teams along with their business counterparts struggle with the idea of how to effectively engage the senior leadership regarding an application system that clearly does not fall in architectural/technology standard or simply the business standard. Recently talking to senior leader in our company his suggestion was – IT seems to have too much time on its hands to do a “What If” analysis. The comment didn’t catch me by surprise as the individual has hard time understanding not just technical but the business side of things too. A simple technique called FIT analysis can help in preparing a presentation for the senior leadership. The objectives mainly revolve around convincing the management about validating the IT road map for an application, make a strategic decision for better IT alignment and better maintenance of your application portfolios.

In Fit Analysis the first step is to always answer the question what is the business requirement or need that is trying to be met or in other words what is the problem we are trying to solve if its initiation of a project. Answering this question is an iterative task and covers more than one point on the vertical axis. The next step is to answer the question how the relevant business requirement fits or meets the technology standards in place, or if the organization is in transition towards a IT alignment roadmap the iterative process is carried out in asking the questions how “technical fit” is the application going to be. The result can be mapped out in a matrix quadrant with x-y axis.The result is four quadrants which are identified as “A” through “D.”

Quadrant A: High Business Fit but Low Technical Fit.

Projects or applications that fall into high business fit and low technical fit Quadrant A have a strong case from the business front but weak support or problerms in implementing on the technical front a good example here is at work we have a mission critical membership application piece written seven years ago, time to update it has long gone past but the lethargy of the management to change it or put substantial effort to revamp it lacks. On the other hand the code base is hard to maintain, is older technology and don’t meet upgrading or current IT standards. Sometimes an application or project may have a high business fit because the application owner or the project initiator has power of say or decision making but in reality the application may have a low business fit with other corporate strategies or a low technology fit that hinders standards alignment.

Quadrant B: Low Business Fit and Low Technical Fit.

Sometimes applications and projects fall into a category where it is a low business fit and a low technical fit. At work we have an application that does not have a monetary value or even a perceived benefit value, yet time and resources are spend sometimes behind these small applications. Support of replacing such systems in an organization is strong but again it hinges on who the application or program owner is. Traditionally the application remains without any measurement of the perceived benefit.

Quadrant C: Low Business Fit and High Technical Fit.

Applications and projects that fall into this quadrant do not have a strong business support but have a strong IT support because of its meeting the IT alignment standards. When this happens it becomes imperative for IT to do more detailed  "what if" analysis of how it affects the business ROI and find substantial reasons as to how it plays into the strategic positioning of the benefits matrix in the organization. The important thing here for enterprise architects is also to show how other functional requirements can be added or scaled to make it more relevant or congruent with being business fit.

Quadrant D: High Business Fit and High Technical Fit.

Applications and projects that are mapped into this quadrant typically have strong support from both the business and technology. This quadrant is the most comfortable quadrant for the EA. The EA does not have to worry convincing the stakeholders for undertaking such projects as most of the times they are mission critical.

Effectiveness of the Tool

This tool is most effective when this exercise is carried out in partnership with stakeholders or application owners most of the time senior leadership. The management is asked to plot or give their take on Business Fit and Technical Fit and rationale or reports they want to generate. The IT architect takes this rationale and along with the CIO  story boards the technical side and comes up with a model of how optimally can this application move towards being business fit and technical fit keeping IT alignment in mind. The plotted data will give how close the points fall to Quadrant D and then decisions are to be made are we going to go for it or not. Or go for it keeping strategic advantage in mind.

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien