Posts Tagged ‘MOF’
Supporting IT and Business Alignment
MOF alignment diagram
IT infrastructure, applications and data storage have become inseparable from the implementation of business process for any modern business, regardless of size. Any company that wishes to improve their business processes must work with whoever supports their IT infrastructure very closely. As a result, there has been an increasing emphasis in the IT world to be more responsive to their customers. Several “frameworks” have emerged in recent years to help IT organizations do just that. A framework is a set of policies and business practices that forms the basis for the business processes of the IT organization. These standard frameworks can then be extended or modified to suit the needs of each specific company. Collectively these frameworks are referred to as the field of IT service management, or ITSM.
While our SLRSM methodology is not an IT framework it needs to accommodate the client’s IT organization and any ITSM framework or business practices it is using. To accomplish several ITSM frameworks were reviewed as to how they would interact with our methodology. They were COBIT 4.1, Val IT, ISO 20000, ITIL version 3 and the Microsoft Operations Framework version 4. We will be writing a white paper providing a comparison of these frameworks from a pragmatic, mid-size manufacturer’s perspective sometime in the future. For this post we will limit our perspective how the SLRSM methodology should map to them.
Cobit alignment diagram
The most obvious touch point is the alignment of IT and business requirements. That alignment is core to all of the frameworks. We have included several examples of diagrams shown in documents provided as part of each framework. In each framework, business alignment and collaboration are emphasized repeatedly as foundational elements. This illustrates that the IT world has become much more sensitive to their customers in recent years. That wasn’t always the case. For years, IT organizations isolated themselves from their customers. While CIOs and senior IT management were certainly sensitive to their business counterparts, the IT organizations as a whole did not have a culture which focused everyone on their customers. I remember first hand a number of resignations which occurred after I asked some developers to spend more time with their customers and understand their business issues (not StrAIT Advisors and a long time ago). Some of these islands of isolation still exist. Unfortunately, that will probably be true for some time to come.
So how does the SLRSM methodology address this alignment issue? The keys are in the team formation and the phase reviews. First, the team must be formed to include both manufacturing and IT staff. The simulator and collaborative tools used to execute the project force a structured approach to identifying and quantifying opportunities for business process waste reduction. The phase review process forces that team to articulate details about the identified opportunities and how to address them to the senior management sponsors of the project.
ITIL alignment diagram
As the SLRSM methodology winds down and the “torch” is passed to the client’s continuous improvement team (which should be most of the same people) that alignment is also continued. As a result, the alignment of IT to the client’s core business issues becomes a greater, ongoing part of the company’s culture. It’s important to remember that the client’s continuous improvement process includes both business groups and IT groups, each using the appropriate business processes. For example, the business operations group may find that a Six Sigma DMAIC methodology is best suited for them and the IT groups may find that business process built around ITIL works best for them. Both of those approaches require communication and collaboration with the other.
The relationship and collaboration between IT and the client’s core business groups is a key requirement for any project to be successful regardless of what project methodology is used. It’s our intent to encourage and enable that aspect of our client’s culture.
I hope that you found this post useful. Until next time…
