"There persists today a great chasm between the "business" and our industry, Information Technology (IT)"
~ Howie Lyke - Author and Leading IT Consultant
Despite all the attention given to returns on IT investments, little progress has been made in linking all the elements of IT to what the business is trying to do. Managing IT investments, and demonstrating IT's value to the business are more challenging than ever, and most businesses seem to be losing ground.
In a previous article, The Challenge to CIOs, "Clearly Demonstrate Your Value!" we outlined the key challenges surrounding IT executives. We underscored the importance for CIOs to understand how IT investments truly contribute to the business and what it wants to accomplish. In this article we describe a three-dimensional framework that links business, services and information technology to achieve desired business outcomes.
This framework establishes a formal mechanism to link what the business wants to accomplish with the ability of IT to create, enable and support opportunities to achieve those outcomes. It provides CIOs with an end-to-end view that connects the fundamental elements of business, services and IT. This leads to business and IT services that are better, simpler, faster, more reliable, and more secure, and drive business growth.
Basic Approach
Our goal is to describe not only what needs to be done to build these linkages and why, but more importantly, how, with intelligent, practical plans of action. With this goal in mind our basic approach is three-fold:
- Understand the business and its customers - Our first step is to understand the business' desired outcomes, its environment, its key processes and its customers and their desired outcomes.
- Articulate the services - With a view of the business and its customers, the next step is to describe types of services provided, their delivery mechanisms and key components.
- Develop the underlying IT infrastructure - Our final step is to develop IT architectures, processes and organization to maximize business and service capabilities.
Mozart Unification Framework™
The Mozart Unification Framework™ is a systematic way to bring discipline and structure to the classic "business-IT disconnect" problem. It is a three dimensional framework to align behaviors, processes and technologies along value streams to connect key elements of IT, services and business to desired outcomes, in essence to "connect the dots".
Business Charter Dimension
In the Business Charter Dimension, we identify, quantify and understand the business and desired outcomes like business growth and cost reduction. These drive services and information technology, It answers the question, "How does the business define and create value for itself?" The creation of business value is the key driver for both Service Execution and information Technology Dimensions.
The Business Charter Dimension begins with an examination of the external environment, i.e., customers, markets, trends, and regulatory environment, to establish a context for the business. Next, the business itself is decomposed into its constituent parts such as mission, business model, key business objectives, strategies, plans, opportunities and threats. These elements form the basis for the underlying business processes (how the work will get done), technology environment (the tools that will be used), and business organization (who will do the work).
Service Execution Dimension
In the Service Execution Dimension, we examine the services that must be delivered to support desired business outcomes including:
- Services to customers (i.e., products and services);
- Internal enabling and supporting services (i.e., IT services); as well as
- Services that must be delivered into the business (i.e., services provided to the business by its partners and suppliers).
It is the key linkage between the business, its customers, and information technology.
The Service Execution Dimension revolves around key management processes that create, develop and enhance customer relationships in order to maximize customer and business value. In this regard, the Service Execution Dimension is concerned with understanding customer value and identifying the correlations between that customer, its business and the desired outcomes. Another important aspect of the Service Execution Dimension is information. It is concerned with the optimal utilization of information to maximize customer and business value.
The Service Execution Dimension defines the services provided by the enterprise to its customers as well as the services required by IT to support the business. Both service delivery channels are required to ensure the proper linkage between IT, the business, and its customers.
Information Technology Dimension
Finally, the Information Technology Dimension focuses on building and managing IT infrastructures that enable people to support and drive the business. Focusing on architecting, implementing and managing IT resources, the goal is to optimize the ability of the business to use information to create business value.
Supporting the optimal utilization of information, the Information Technology Dimension of the Mozart Unification Frameworkä is concerned with the underlying IT infrastructure. It ensures that all aspects of the IT infrastructure are assessed, built and managed in a comprehensive and logical manner. The Information Technology Dimension ensures that technologies, policies, processes, organizational structures and people are well planned, well deployed, integrated and systematically evaluated for improvement.
The 4th Facet: Best Practices.
Each dimension is further divided into domains that address the key elements of organization, process and technology. The constituent parts of each element are governed by best practices, standards and methods (i.e., Six Sigma, TQM, ITIL, IEEE, and ISO, among others).
With the rigorous application of best practices, you can bring into play and leverage the disciplines that form the cornerstone of the business, service and IT infrastructures. By disciplines we mean well defined and well managed organization structures, technology architectures, and most important, processes like change management, production acceptance and performance management. In essence, the Mozart Unification Framework™ is a comprehensive and integrated way to build and manage disciplines across the three dimensions through best practices.
Moreover, the Mozart Unification Framework™ does not depend on specific standards and methods. Being flexible and adaptable, it can accommodate different types of best practices, allowing it to evolve over time and adapt to changes in business, customers, services and technology. The Mozart Unification Framework™ provides a systematic approach to assess, build and manage the linkages between business, services and information technology. It's a way to manage behaviors, processes and technologies to achieve desired business outcomes. This article provided an overview. In the next articles we will break down the three dimensions describing their domains and key elements. We will also describe how the Mozart Unification Framework™ addresses the challenges surrounding IT executives and enables them to drive the business. |
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