by Jenny Boronyak | Sep 10, 2014 | Agile, Uncategorized |
When the term “agile” comes up in a conversation these days, the mind often jumps to agile software development. But there’s so much more to being agile than delivering software products iteratively and incrementally. If our planning or change strategies aren’t agile, we can forget about being able to deliver the maximum amount of business value possible to our customers. Our entire organization must be agile in order to be able to “keep our finger on the pulse” and rapidly adapt to meet today’s demands. On top of being agile, the most successful organizations out there are also lean mean machines, capable of effectively managing the portfolio to avoid surprises and respond to threats quickly and efficiently. In our webinar last month, The Path to Business Agility, Enfocus Solutions’ CEO John Parker discussed the four components that make up a lean agile business: Enterprise Agile Delivery The agile organization must have the ability to deliver products and services iteratively and incrementally based on discovered and validated customer needs. Agile software delivery is usually the first place organizations start when adopting agile. Many organizations have yet to move onto implementing agile in other areas of the organization, and limit their focus to the responsibilities of the agile team. In reality, the agile team only makes up one part of Enterprise Agile Delivery, and Enterprise Agile Delivery only makes up one of four fundamentals that must be addressed for the organization to be considered agile. In the Lean Business Agility Framework, Enterprise Agile Delivery is achieved via three key elements: Agile Teams (Scrum or Kanban)—Support day-to-day work of self-organized teams (using...
by Jenny Boronyak | May 2, 2014 | ITIL and Service Design, Uncategorized |
When we attended Knowledge14 in San Francisco earlier this week, one thing we noticed is how amazingly far organizations have gotten in adopting IT Service Management (ITSM). But while it does seem organizations have caught onto the fact that moving towards ITSM provides a lot of value, many have still not yet adopted or placed enough emphasis on the ITIL practices of Service Strategy and Service Design. This is a huge mistake, as ITIL offers valuable guidelines to service providers on the best ways to design and maintain services for the business. Image from ITIL Service Design One of those guidelines is to create a Service Design Package (SDP). It seems that many new service providers either neglect the SDP or create one that’s lacking in all the necessary elements. However, creating an SDP ensures your services are designed well, and according to the authors of ITIL Service Design “the better and more careful the design, the better the solution taken into live operation,” so creating a SDP is not a step you want to skip The Service Design Package (SDP) follows a service through its lifecycle from initial proposal to retirement. It contains all the information required to manage an IT service. The SDP specifies the requirements from the viewpoint of the client (not IT) and defines how these are actually fulfilled from a technical and organizational point of view. When created properly, SDPs bring a lot of value to the business. A SDP… Improves the quality of services Improves decision-making Makes implementation of new or changed services easier Improves alignment of services to the business Makes service...
by John Parker | Mar 19, 2014 | Business Analysis, ITIL and Service Design, Project Management, Uncategorized |
Lately, Marketing has been purchasing a significant amount more of marketing-related technology and services using their own capital and expense budgets. Some of this purchasing is being done outside the control of the internal IT organization and some is being done in conjunction with IT. Gartner has made the bold prediction that by 2017, the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. Let’s look at some of the facts from the Gartner 2013 US Marketing Spend Survey: The average percentage of revenue spent on marketing is 10.4 % Digital Marketing represents 1/3 of Total Marketing Spend Up to Half of all Digital Marketing is Outsourced Search Marketing topped the CMO’s list of Outsourced Activities Over 40% claim that the keys to Marketing success are 1) Corporate Web Site, 2)Social Marketing, and 3)Digital Advertising Now, let’s look at some trends of why marketing is spending more and more on technology. First, we are living in the age of the customer. Customers now have real-time information about pricing, product features and competitors. As a result, they hold the advantages, and one of the few competitive advantages remaining for businesses is to concentrate on the knowledge of and engagement with customers. Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research analyst stated in a recent report that companies must not only be customer focused, they must be customer obsessed, focusing their strategy, energy, and budget on processes that enhance knowledge of engagement with customers. Implementing a customer based strategy falls under marketing for most companies. For the last 10 years, many organizations focused on Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Now the focus is on marketing...
by John Parker | Feb 3, 2014 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
By proactively identifying and eliminating or remedying poorly performing application assets, Application Portfolio Rationalization helps companies to: Reduce costs, Target efforts to the areas of highest return, and Maximize the business value of their application portfolios. Globalization and changing business requirements impose significant challenges on technology leaders who are under constant pressure to both innovate and reduce costs. These demands to do more with less have been exacerbated by business leaders hearing about prospective savings from use of the Cloud without understanding the impact of transition. Many organizations are electing to combine their initiatives for application rationalization and migration to the cloud. IT leaders are forced to accelerate the rollout of new systems and technologies to support the business without compromising the performance of existing applications. They must address key issues, such as balancing cost, complexity, and capacity, and also deliver business value by applying continuous improvement methodologies. Application portfolio rationalization helps organizations turn these challenges into benefits in terms of reduced costs and more value delivered to the business. Application portfolio rationalization is an important and continuous exercise for evaluating and controlling IT costs. Application portfolio rationalization involves focusing on the application portfolio looking for redundant applications, one-off technologies, applications with few users, and applications with a high cost/user ratio. With a complete understanding of the current environment, the next step is to consider what should be done to move from current to the ideal. Gartner Group research confirms that a focused application rationalization effort will typically result in substantial cost savings while improving support for the lines of business. These savings are too large to ignore. Additional...
by George Casey | Nov 5, 2013 | ITIL and Service Design, Uncategorized |
The “Geek Gap” between managers, known as “suits,” and technicians or engineers, known as “geeks,” was growing apparent in 2006 when authors Bill Pfleging and Minda Zetlin wrote The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don’t Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive. The authors found that the faulty communication caused by the Geek Gap was costing businesses billions of dollars each year in failed IT projects. They reported that in 2003, the Geek Gap resulted in the loss of $55 billion in the U.S. alone, and they predicted that as business became more technology based, the Geek Gap would continue to grow. Now, fast forward a decade, this prediction has held true, and businesses continue to look for ways to bridge the gap between executives and technicians. In their book, Pfleging and Zetl explain that the conflicts arise from the very different viewpoints, agendas, and ideas of how accomplishments are measured. They say suits have numerous pet peeves against geeks. They believe geeks: Don’t understand – or want to understand – anything about the businesses they work in Love technology for its own sake, not considering what new gadgetry might cost Expect that suits understand as much as they do about technology Can never seem to meet deadlines or stay within budgets Think rules shouldn’t apply to them Are bad with people Adding to this, there are several pet peeves geeks have about suits. They believe suits: Refuse to learn anything about technology Don’t understand technology but insist on making technological pronouncements Don’t value technology Only care about money Resist innovation Value image...
