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August 18, 2005

A Management Support System for IT Service Value

Very recently I received an invitation from a colleague, Eugen Oetringer from EDS in the Netherlands, to study (and share commentary on) an IT Strategy Management Process design.

The most prominent feature of the design, in my first viewing, is the solution that it proposes to the practical problem of just-in-time research that is inherent in conducting service delivery while coping with change and diversity in IT operations. In fact, the design's emphasis on the responsibilities for "development" and "production" anchors its concepts in terminology that is inherently compatible with addressing Business clients in terms of specified quality and value. The noted challenge is that specifications are forwarded into operational environments that are often not built or managed to ensure successful communication. The consequence of that challenge is that alignment is forfeited or damaged between development and actual production, the second link (after specification to development) in the enterprise's value delivery chain.

Also at first reading, it seems equally valid to consider the design as a governance model instead of as a strategy management process. But for the sake of retaining appreciation of the scope of the design's importance, it may be more useful to emphasize that a process for managing the execution of strategy will have:
- a model that guides it,
- a performance objective that relies on compliance, and
- technologies that support the practical implementation of the model.

Eugen's design explicitly details those items in the context of accountability to business needs and policies, thus linking it conceptually with governance.

That said, the design's primary objective of describing how to bridge the gap between development and production winds up exploring how knowledge management supports change management in order to align IT with the business. One of the most important points to take away from the design is that "strategy" is a set of knowledge to be managed, and cultural adoption of the strategy is a result of empowering users to leverage the knowledge in order to adapt.

What does the support of this leverage look like? It is strategy lifecycle management. As the author puts it, "The IT Strategy Management Process takes the strategy from the owner, runs it through an approval workflow, publishes it to the target audience, drives for compliance, takes the feedback from the user communities, provides the feedback to the owner and drives the owner to release an updated version in a central repository."

The whitepaper reviewed above is here, and its parent book from the same author, published by Van Haren Publishing, is titled "The IT Strategy Management Process: Supporting IT Services through Effective Knowledge Management".

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at August 18, 2005 7:59 PM

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