Being somewhat 'ITIL' at the current time, I had an opportunity to attend the NY Local Interest Group (LIG) meeting of the itSMF (IT Service Management Forum) and I am glad I did. It was well attended and the discussion was quite interesting; my thanks to the LIG team and in particular to David Cannon, who was the speaker for the event.
There was a couple of comments made during the meeting that I'm still mulling over and want to get down here while I have it still relatively clear in my head. One was that 'we are beginning to see IT getting more involved in driving the design of business process'.
While this seemingly makes sense, especially for businesses that are heavily underpinned by technology, I'm not sure IT is driving the bus in most organizations.
[Based on recent events in the financial industry, perhaps this is too bad....although when the discussion turned to health care and treating patients as IT 'devices' it made me a little nervous. Horrible visions of medical specialists arguing over the proper diagnosis while I lay bleeding to death...]
But what really got me thinking was not so much who's driving the bus but who is identifying and realizing the value of whatever solution is put into play? THAT was the most interesting part of the discussion, and I suspect is where the rub is...it just seems like the business often abdicates this responsibility to IT (or an outsourcer, or to some other poor bastard).
It was generally agreed that the business must remain accountable for defining the value add to the business of a technology-based solution. Where IT represents ongoing services in support of external business customers, it is critically important that the ongoing service costs are included in the equation. ITIL V3 talks at length about this subject.
After all, at the end of the day, the customer that really matters is the external customer.
As either IT or the Business (or both) get mired in 'the system' or 'the process' or 'the technology' often the external customer gets lost. (Of course you could argue that extreme focus on the customer --- to the exclusion of adequate controls -- can also get you in hot water, but that's another discussion)
This is why I continue to evangelize the Customer Expectation Management Method. You'd better keep your eye on the road, regardless of who's driving the bus.
Finally, I asked whether there was any indication of a standards-based assessment process that both the business and IT could use to evaluate processes on an ongoing basis. Sadly it did not appear that there was.
For me, it seems that ISO 15504 might fit that bill reasonably well. Certainly having both the business and IT follow the same approach to process assessment and improvement, regardless of the underlying 'guidance' being used, seems to make sense to me.
I think it matters less who is driving the bus at any particular moment than whether or not everyone is on the same road, and if you're in the front seat asleep don't blame the driver when you hit a tree.