* Processes can be more important than technology
The new visions for enterprises and the management of IT infrastructures, where business and IT are aligned, have captured the airwaves in our industry. Whether it’s the Adaptive Enterprise, On Demand, or Business Service Management, there’s no doubt that these are not easy undertakings for enterprises. However, the value to the business could be significant enough to justify the effort.
When writing about business-aligned IT in the past, I’ve heard from some readers who have said, “It would just be nice to know what I have out there in the infrastructure. We’re talking about getting a handle on the basics here. ‘On Demand’ is so far out of our reach.”
For very large, sophisticated IT organizations, the transformation should be much easier than for those that are struggling with the basics. But what if you’re one of those companies, large or small, whose IT organization isn’t sophisticated or mature? Is business-aligned IT management out of the question for you? Not necessarily. There are many lessons from this movement that can be learned by all IT shops.
One of the major areas that all IT shops need to first focus on is the development of processes.
Technology can help to facilitate the transformation toward business-aligned IT, but the key is to develop the discipline of processes within and across IT, and extend those out to the business side of the company. There’s no doubt that IT has a wealth of technology at its fingertips, but what has been sorely missing is the development of processes within IT. Unfortunately, the dynamic environment of IT fosters the ad hoc solution to problems. Users call to say they have a problem and the “IT guy” reacts, fixes the problem and then rushes off to handle the next problem. Sometimes the solution is documented or the changes that were made are documented, but in many cases they aren’t. And this cycle goes on and on.
The silo-oriented organization of IT provides unnatural barriers to the development of cross-organizational processes and efficient collaborative efforts. Developing sensible processes across the organization, particularly for problem determination and resolution, could significantly increase the productivity and efficiency of IT. This process should span from the user, to the operational team, to the individual experts within each silo, and potentially to application development, and back again.
The development of processes as a solution is foreign to IT. It’s always been easier to look to technology to solve any problems. However, technology alone won’t work. That’s why there is increasing interest in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which offers a high-level approach to processes. The difficulty comes in trying to fill-in-the-blanks when trying to practically implement the high-level ideas of ITIL. But don’t let that stop you – ITIL can be a reasonable place to start. You can do it yourself, or there are consultants that can help in the development of IT processes.
The important part is starting down the road to process development. Even if you’re not on the road to “On Demand,” the efficiency gains and organizational development that result from the development of processes may be well worth the effort in the long run.
