A world without IT4IT: Why manage a business?

IT departments are in great demand today. Businesses in the digital world have become dependent on IT to be competitive. Traditional IT departments, like IT4IT on the other hand, have their roots in skills such as development or operations and are not equipped to deal with a business and technology environment that is attempting to fast adapt to a continuously changing marketplace. As a result, many IT departments today may be on the point of collapse.

IT departments used to be in charge of technology adoption in support of the business. When a new technology, such as departmental servers, was developed, it took a long time for enterprises to adopt it, and even longer for them to become reliant on it. However, once a company adopted the technology, it became subject to business rules—expectations and parameters for reliability, maintenance, and upgrades that kept the technology updated and allowed the business it supported to be competitive.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as IT became increasingly established in enterprises, IT systems grew in size and complexity as technology companies raced to stay up with market forces. IT’s purpose at major enterprises, in particular, became to maintain large infrastructures, which required small armies of IT employees to maintain.

A variety of factors have come together to change that. Most businesses now conduct their business operations digitally, which Constellation Research analyst Andy Mulholland refers to as “Front Office Digital Business.” Technology-as-a-service models have changed how technologies and applications are delivered and supported, with support and upgrades provided by outsourced vendors rather than in-house staff. An IT department may not even be required with Cloud models. With the swipe of a credit card, entrepreneurs can launch a firm and have all of the technology they require at their fingertips, hosted remotely on the Cloud.

IT4IT: The Gap Between IT and Business

Although the distance between IT and business is narrowing, there is still a divide in how IT is managed. Most IT departments nowadays are structured in a way that keeps them connected to their technological roots. This is due, in part, to the fact that IT departments are still led by technologists and engineers whose core skills are in the challenge (and excitement) of developing new technologies. Not every skilled engineer makes a successful businessperson, yet in most businesses, employees who are good at their jobs are typically promoted to management, whether or not they are ready. The Peter Principle is an issue that affects many businesses, not just IT.

What has happened is that traditionally, IT departments have not been run as businesses. Despite IT’s involvement in how the rest of the organization is conducted, good business models for how IT should be run have been patchy or slow to evolve. Although some standards have been developed as guides for how different parts of IT should be run (for example, COBIT for governance, ITIL for service management, and TOGAF®, an Open Group standard, for architecture), no overarching standard has been developed that encompasses how to holistically manage all of IT, from systems administration to development to management through governance, and, of course, staffing. Despite its advancements, information technology has yet to become a well-oiled business machine.

Want to know more about TOGAF? Visit our course now.

Today’s business—and technological—climate is not the same as it was when companies required three years to replace their software. In today’s world, everything happens almost instantly. Cloud computing, Big Data, social media, smartphones, and the Internet of Things are transforming the IT world. Every day, new technical talents and approaches emerge. Although Java and C remain the most popular programming languages, new languages such as Pig and Hive develop daily, as do new development methodologies such as Scrum, Agile, and DevOps.

The Risks of IT Business as Usual

With these different pressures affecting IT, departments will either need to change and adopt a more effective IT management strategy, or they will face some approaching chaos that will delay their businesses.

Companies will be unable to mobilize fast for the digital age unless they have an effective IT management approach. Even a basic inability to use data can lead to problems such as investing in a product prototype that customers aren’t interested in. These are errors that most businesses cannot afford to make these days.

Having a broader understanding of what IT performs assists the department to make better decisions. How can you know what will match your organization’s business goals with technology and development trends shifting so quickly? You want to capitalize on trends or technologies that are beneficial to the organization while ignoring those that are not.

One of the basic concepts of DevOps, for example, is to match the development phase with the release and operation of the software. To assess whether or not this technique will work for your company, you must first understand its operational model. Having a sense of that also allows IT to decide whether it is worthwhile to invest in training, hiring employees trained in those procedures, or purchasing new technologies that will allow you to adopt the model.

Companies that lack that management perspective may be vulnerable to the vagaries of technical advancement as well as current IT fads. If you don’t know what’s valuable to your company, you risk pursuing every new craze that appears. There’s nothing worse for an IT guy than showing up to the management meeting every month and saying you’re trying yet another fresh way to solve an issue that never seems to get solved. People in business will not respond to it, and they will wonder if you know what you’re doing. IT must be decisive and make sound decisions.

These difficulties affect not only the IT department but also company operations. Inefficient IT departments will not know whether to invest in the right technology, and they may miss out on working with new technologies that could help the company. Without a framework to design how technology integrates into the business, you could wind up with outstanding IT bows and arrows but be machine-gunned when you walk out into the competitive world.

The other side of the issue is cost and efficiency—if the entire IT department isn’t functioning well, you’ll end up spending too much money on problems, which will divert funds away from other elements of the business that can keep the organization competitive. Failure to manage IT can result in competitive loss across multiple aspects of a business.

A Brand-New Business Model

To assist prevent the implications of not running IT more like a business, industry experts such as Accenture, Achmea, AT&T, HP IT, ING Bank, Munich RE, PwC, Royal Dutch Shell, and the University of South Florida recently created a collaboration to explore how to better run IT as a company. With billions of dollars invested in IT each year, these organizations knew that to compete, their expenditures had to be done prudently and show measurable outcomes.

The Open Group IT4IT™ Forum, which issued a Snapshot of its proposed Reference Architecture for running IT more like a business in November, is the outcome of their efforts. The Reference Architecture is intended to act as an IT operational model, addressing the “missing link” that earlier IT-function-specific models failed to address. The paradigm enables IT to attain the same business, discipline, predictability, and efficiency levels as other business activities.

The Snapshot comprises a four-phase Value Chain for IT, which serves as an operational model for an IT business as well as a description of how value may be added at each stage of the IT process. The Snapshot contains technical models for IT tools that businesses can use, whether for systems monitoring, release monitoring, or IT point solutions, in addition to suggested best practices for delivery. Giving IT tools advice will allow them to become more interoperable, allowing them to communicate information at the appropriate place and right time. Also, it will enable greater control of information flow across various sectors of the business via the IT shop, saving IT departments the time and effort of aggregating tools or cobbling together their own tools and solutions. The Reference Architecture also includes staffing guideline models.

Why is IT4IT important now? Digitalization cannot be slowed, especially in an era of cloud computing, big data, and the inevitable Internet of Things. An IT4IT Reference Architecture provides more than simply best practices for IT; it places IT within the framework of a business model that allows IT to be a contributing component of an enterprise, giving a path for digital enterprises to compete and thrive in the years ahead.

Discover more about IT4IT. Just visit us here.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com