FEATURE: IT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
on, with 27% spent on IT enhancement
and only 16% dedicated to supporting
new business innovations – many of
which are at high risk of failure. From
the businesses perspective, they are not
getting much return from the IT budget
and it is easy to see why confidence in
IT capability is low.
People in the business don’t care if
IT builds, buys or leases technology.
They’re interested only in the business
outcomes that technology enables.
Cloud technologies and managed
services enable IT to spend less
time managing technical aspects
and more time focusing on business
capabilities, outcomes, performance
and differentiation.
Getting outsourcing right takes time
and is not a quick fix; rather it is a
cornerstone of the long-term IT
maturity strategy. It is a critical step
to rationalising the IT infrastructure in
order to regain control over spiralling
complexity and establishing a greater
degree of flexibility.
Attribute #3: Structured for
business fusion
IT organisations cannot achieve a high
level of maturity while IT exists apart
from business units; it is constantly
broadsided by unseen shifts in business
strategy and last-minute awareness of
new technology requirements.
The IT department needs to progress
beyond alignment or integration
and aim for structural fusion with the
business it serves.
A siloed structure isolates IT people
from the business context and creates
confusion around strategies and priorities.
In order to serve and support the
business, IT people need to be out in the
business; not just engaging with other
functions via meetings, but by being truly
embedded in the other functions.
Over time, IT professionals embedded
in the business context become
highly-focused business technology
specialists, and business people
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become more aware of the technical
issues to be considered. are more appropriate for the pace
of the digital age.
Attribute #4: Value people
over technology ITIL support processes can become
something of a sticking point for IT
departments. With so much of IT’s
time and resources dedicated to
handling system failures, the focus
on support processes can become
obsessive and counterproductive.
IT is traditionally technology focused,
but, technology can be replaced more
easily than people. Business continuity
relies on a stable workforce.
This ongoing ‘brain drain’ compromises
the IT department’s body of knowledge
and drives up recruitment and training
costs – funds that ought to be directed
towards new technology projects to
support new business capabilities.
High staff turnover kills process
adherence, which in turn undermines
the stability of processes and the
capabilities they support. New staff
don’t arrive preloaded with your
organisations processes, culture and
governance rules. By default, they
import foreign work habits and attitudes
that may conflict with the established
processes and culture.
Despite the growing field of AI, there are
still many areas where people cannot be
replaced by machines – of which social
interaction, problem solving, wisdom and
instinct are just a few.
Increasing IT maturity involves taking
technical people out of their comfort
zones. Staff require training, support,
coaching and mentoring to help them
overcome anxiety and grow on the path
to higher IT maturity.
Attribute #5 Evolve core
competencies
In general, most IT organisations
formally manage support processes
as part of their process portfolio.
But to achieve a higher level of IT
maturity, IT departments must
manage a broader array of processes
that support more rapid innovation
capabilities. This includes agile
development and vendor management
processes that enable IT departments
to source and develop new solutions
much faster – within timescales that
Consequently, the relatively simple
template processes described by
ITIL are frequently over-engineered
to fit all possible circumstances,
driving complexity to a level where
the processes become painfully slow,
fragile and difficult to automate. It is
better to streamline processes (and
the supporting technology) to handle
mainstream demand quickly – and
put exception mechanisms in place
to handle unique instances that
require custom responses.
Likewise, when the business
needs something new from the
IT department, complex and rigid
processes often stand in the way of
progress. An agile approach can help
achieve the pace required to get new
services to the business and new
innovations to the market within the
right timescale.
The intention is to deliver early
value, not late perfection. This agile
process is cyclical, not linear, and
relies on new cloud and virtualisation
paradigms to accelerate the rapid
production of prototype solutions
which can be tested by the business.
High-performing organisations
integrate business strategy and
IT development process to ensure
engagement between business and
IT leaders at the earliest opportunity.
Attribute #6: Empower
end users
As more and more millennials enter
the workforce the average end user
profile is becoming more tech-savvy.
This growing technical capability and
willingness to self-support means it
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