Bryan Dean who appears to be a BSM Researcher over at the HP “Making BSM a Reality” blog posted an excellent article on some of the reasons they’ve found for BSM/ITSM projects being less than effective. I think Bryan’s hit the nail on the head here!
In summary, Bryan pointed out that …
The research showed that most CIO’s simply had a different perception – when compared to their IT operations managers- of their IT organization’s fundamental service delivery maturity and capability. This seemingly benign situation often proved to be a powerful success inhibitor.
When pressed further, CIO’s believed that the IT service management basics of process and technology were already successfully completed, and the CIO’s had mentally moved on to other priorities such as rolling out new applications, IT financial management, or project and portfolio management.
We probed deeper in the research, diligently questioning the IT operations managers on why they didn’t dispel the CIO’s inaccurate perception. In order to secure the substantial budget, these Ops managers had fallen into the trap of over-promising the initial service management project’s end-state, ROI and time to value. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they had been helped along by the process consultants and software management vendors!)
These Ops managers saw it as “a personal failure” to re-approach the CIO and ask for additional budget to continue improving the IT fundamentals. Worse yet, they had to continually reinforce the benefits from the original investment so the CIO didn’t think they had wasted the money.
What this points to in my mind, and aligns to what I’ve seen from almost 20 yrs in IT, is that the traditional IT organizational structure and investment models are broken. The general lack of accountability, responsibility and open, honest and blunt speaking up and down the chain is what leads to situations that Bryan’s research apparently uncovered in some significant amount. Not involving both the C-level and business unit executives in developing a sound strategy, business case for BSM/ITSM and road map with frequently reported progress (ala the 10-Q report for BSM/ITSM) is the recipe for unmet expectations, value or return on investment/effort.
In my opinion, the correct path starts with developing an overarching BSM Program firmly rooted around the development of the BSM Strategy. Call me crazy but maybe we need “The Office of Business Service Management” in the next generation IT organization that’s under the CEO staffed by both IT and Business folks in some matrix organization magic. The key will be that the performance reviews and incentive compensation would be owned by this group and not IT or the Business side.
The “Office of BSM” will own the overall BSM Program. They’ll focus heavily on the BSM Strategy and what the heck BSM means to your company and business, the expected value (and measuring it), ROI/ROE (and proving it), competitive differentiations, etc. but also how you’ll incorporate BSM into the entire company. This includes how you’ll operationalize BSM, how you’ll think about future initiatives through the BSM Strategy “glasses” and how you’ll iteratively work through the BSM Roadmap on your path of continuous improvement.
I’ll talk more on this later. It’s a key component that must be thought of for long term BSM success and must be a key component of the overall BSM Value Proposition in companies that choose to adopt BSM.
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