How Would You Reorganize An Application Service Delivery Model?

 it service management, management  No Responses »
Mar 202010
 

I have been thinking a lot about re-engineering the service delivery model for the application services team that I lead. I have been guiding my team to think about:

“We deliver the platform and work with the business to provide services”.

Our applications team is made up of subgroups aligned by major application services.  Here are the major applications:

  • Business Intelligence
  • Collaboration Tools
  • Document Management
  • Email and Calendaring
  • ERP (Student, Finance, HR, Doc Mgmt)
  • Identity Management
  • Learning Management Applications
  • Microsoft Applications
  • Oracle Database
  • Portal (for students and employees)
  • SQL Server Database

Currently, there are 3 teams in place in our Business Application Services group. Here are the roles in each team:

Support Team

  • Oracle DBA
  • Document Management
  • Business Intelligence
  • Project Management
  • Business Analysis
  • Identity Management

Email and Collaboration Team

  • Email
  • Calendaring
  • Instant Messaging
  • Collaboration Platforms
  • SQL Server DBA
  • Microsoft Applications
  • Enterprise Portal

Developer Team

  • Oracle Developers
  • Lotus Domino Developers
  • Microsoft Developers
  • Java/Web Services Developers

I am interested in hearing from any of you that lead groups with similar responsibilities.  Do you have a suggested structure for me to consider?  Do you split your team based on roles (technology domains)  or by application (vendor) platforms? Do you split operational work from project delivery?  Does your governance structure influence your teams organization?

Any suggestions are very welcome and I hope to learn from some of your experiences.  Thanks in advance.

Webinar Review: A&G The State of EA: Is 2010 the Transformational Year?

 enterprise architecture, it service management, strategic planning  4 Responses »
Jan 192010
 

This is my review of this morning’s Architecture & Governance magazine webinar ”The State of EA: Is 2010 the Transformational Year?”

Presenters:

  • George Paras, Editor-in-Chief, A&G, Managing Director, EAdirections – gparas@EAdirections.com
  • Alex Cullen, Vice President, Research Director, Enterprise Architecture, Forrester Research – acullen@forrester.com

1. What is the current state of EA? Forrester conducted a survey of 416 IT professionals and found the following:

  • Increasing awareness and acceptance of EA – this is change in that there is much more broad support for EA as a discipline in organizations
  • EA teams are part of senior IT management – more focus at a senior level instead of a tactical level in IT (* true in my case moving from a staff EA position to a management EA position)
  • Primary drivers for EA programs 1) better strategic planning 2) consolidation of technology 3) improve business agility4) enable business-IT alignment
  • Infrastructure, Security and Application architectures are the most complete, next Integration and Information architecture are underway and business architecture is the least complete
  • Where to architecture groups spend their time 1/2 time spent on non-project activities – supporting enterprise planning, strategic planning, collaborating with business and governance
  • CIOs look for EA to address their priorities – and guide and staff their EA teams accordingly – strongest technical thinkers, best problem solvers on EA team, business application area as EA lead

2. The Transformation of EA  Read more...

  • IT expectations for architecture vary across 2 dimensions – Project to Strategy (Focus dimension) and Technology to Business (Orientation dimension)
  • Derived a 2 x 2 model – Project/Business = Business solution architecture, Strategy/Business = Business and IT strategy, planning and alignment, Project/Technology = Infrastructure and application platform selection, Technology/Strategy = Technology and infrastructure strategy and roadmapping
  • EA provides the most value when it is strategic and business focused but must overcome expectation barriers that EA is only about technology
  • Business focused EA should mean more business awareness, acceptance and support – more work to be done with lines of business and corporate management
  • Only 13% of corporate management actively supports EA vs 66% of CIO/Head of IT (* Is this a job for the CIO to educate their C-level peers?)
  • The correlation between business engagement and Business Architecture programs for improving support for EA in organizations – almost double the support from the business
  • The correlation holds for Information Architecture programs too – (* think of data and information as the currency that the business runs on)
  • Why the correlation for business and information architecture programs?
    • make EA engage with business leaders about their business
    • address problems at the boundary of business and IT

Delivering Projects by Managing Ops with a Duty Analyst

 it service management, management  2 Responses »
Dec 142009
 

Last week, I presented the accomplishments of my applications team in 2009. I was blown away by the number and the scope of the projects my team delivered to our community. I firmly believe that the separation of our operational duties from our project work enabled us to be so productive. While most people would celebrate the project teams |(and we do!), I want to acknowledge the key enabler of this success – our Duty Analyst role.

I blogged previously about our Duty Analyst role here.

Implementing a duty analyst role minimizes the operational interruptions to our team members working on projects. Providing project members focused time to work on project challenges and meeting milestones becomes easier without operational interruptions.

I am proud to say my team delivered on our operational responsibilities and completed 43 projects in 2009.

Here is the breakdown of projects my team delivered:

  • Projects by Size : Small = 19, Medium = 14, Large = 10
  • Projects by Governance : BCIT Executive = 3, IT Governance Team = 14, Business Applications Committee = 5, Departmental = 11, Operational = 10
  • Projects by Community : Learning and Technology Services = 20, Student Services = 9, Education = 4, Finance = 3, Human Resources = 3, BCIT Executive = 3, BCIT Student Association = 1

We continue to refine the Duty Analyst role as well as our IT Governance and Project Management approaches.  I am excited to see what we can do in 2010 to continue to deliver value.  We will be upgrading our ERP this year and taking a focused approach leveraging the Duty Analyst will make all the difference.

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