* A parable from Ian Glazier on planning long-term identity projects
Ian Glazier, from Trusted Network Technologies (TNT) recently spoke at a meeting of the International Information Integrity Institute (I4). It was mostly about compliance issues, particularly Sarbanes-Oxley, but Ian came away with yet another parable for those planning long-term identity projects and, especially, provisioning projects. As he tells it:
“When it comes to major identity management projects, they often get presented to the enterprise like a decree from the Kremlin: ‘Good news, Comrades! We have a five year plan for achieving compliance through user provisioning. We shall be victorious.’ The reality is that it may take five years, but there’s no way you’ll sell upper management going that route. Successful projects use guerrilla tactics; find a small target, plan thoroughly, achieve the goal, move on to the next one. You can make the big five year plan work by stringing small victories together to achieve the end goal.”
It’s the same old song (“find a small target, plan thoroughly, achieve the goal, move on to the next one”), just tied to a different tune:
* July 2, 2003 – “Taking baby steps toward provisioning” – “You can envision it as taking a big project (provisioning) and breaking it down into smaller, more quickly doable projects.”
* December 5, 2001 – “The secret to success” – “The secret here is to turn out a simple, but useful application fairly quickly and then steadily increase its functionality so that people are (seemingly) always learning about something new the ‘simple little app’ can do.”
Evidently, while I can’t get the song out of my head there are still lots of people out there who also haven’t. Thankfully, though, there are those of you who, like Mr. Glazer, have bought off on the message and are trying to spread it wide. The job’s not done, though, so you have to keep spreading the word.
If you’ve got a good story, a good parable or simply a winning strategy for breaking up large projects into attainable small steps – tell me about it. Not everyone likes the same music, not everyone can use the same argument. Perhaps yours is the one that will resonate with someone else’s upper management.
