Overcoming the Inhibitors to Alignment

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Overcoming the Inhibitors to Alignment

• Rich Bentley
• ITSM Director, Compuware

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Are We Aligned Yet?
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Why is Alignment Important?
Growth
Return

• 6 higher EBITD
• 4 higher return on equity
• 8 higher return on assets
• 14 higher return on investments

36
Aligned organizations
Industry group
12
7
4
Revenue Growth (annual)
EPS Growth (annual)
Source BTM Institute, June 2007
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Why is Alignment Important?
More aligned CIOs said they had used IT to
create a competitive advantage for the company
than unaligned CIOs. CIO Magazine
The convergence of the business and technology
sides of an organization into an integrated,
whole-brained enterprise provides the
connections among innovation, resilience and
agility. BTM Institute
IT organizations that meet the business
alignment challenge recognize their value is
intrinsically linked to business success and
agility. - Gartner
Misalignment with the business strategy
typically results in a reactive stance for IT,
where IT is seen as a cost center and not as a
strategic business partner. David Nickels,
University of Memphis
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Key Points

• Alignment perspectives
• Alignment inhibitors
• Business-Driven Service Delivery
• Visibility of true service quality
• Unification across management tools
• Prioritization according to business impact
• Efficient problem resolution
• Continual service improvement
• Evaluating alignment maturity

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Service Delivery Perspective of Alignment
IT Management
Business
IT Operations
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Alignment InhibitorsAccording to Research

• IT/Business lack close relationships
• IT does not prioritize well
• IT fails to meet its commitments
• IT does not understand the business
• Senior executives dont support IT
• IT management lacks leadership

Source Association for Information Systems,
December 2000
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The Real Inhibitors
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Business-Driven Service Delivery
Service Level Expectations
Business Service Management
Business
Service-level Reporting
Business Service Views
Application Infrastructure Metrics
Other Service Metrics
End-user Experience
Application Analytics
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Business-Driven Service Delivery
Service Level Expectations
Business Service Management
Business
Service-level Reporting
Business Service Views
Application Infrastructure Metrics
Other Service Metrics
End-user Experience
Application Analytics
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Business Service ManagementWhat is a Business
Service?

• Business Services are
• Revenue generating or impacting
• Business critical
• Supported by IT infrastructure
• Comprised of one or more business processes
• Provided by internal or external service
  organization

Above the water line Services the business units
need, expressed in business terms
Below the water line Technical means and
mechanisms for achieving those services
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Business Service ManagementExample Business
Service
1 BusinessService

• Key steps that result in revenue to the business
• Each step is dependent on IT services
• Top-down service decomposition
• Which IT systems does it depend upon?
• Can revenue from the service be quantified?
• Example metrics
• How many loan applications?
• Success / failure ratio?
• What is the service status?

Loan Request
4 End-user TransactionsExperiences
Assess Risk
Preset Terms
Enter Request
Loan Accept.
20 Client and Server Interactions
DB Query
HTTP Get
HTTP Get
SOAP Request
200 Data Packets
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Business Service ManagementTurning Data into
Information

• Real-time, business-oriented service views
• Maps critical business processes to IT
  infrastructure
• Correlates data from any source through adaptors,
  standard technologies (web services, enterprise
  messaging..) and scripts
• Leverages Six Sigma techniques and ITIL for
  continuous improvement

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Business-Driven Service Delivery
Service Level Expectations
Business Service Management
Business
Service-level Reporting
Business Service Views
Application Infrastructure Metrics
Other Service Metrics
End-user Experience
Application Analytics
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Business-Relevant Metrics
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Two Facts to Consider
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Business-Relevant MetricsEnd User Experience is
Key
App server
Web server
Mainframe
Firewall
Clients
Web
Clients
Web server
App server
Database
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End User Experience Monitoring

• True end user performance response times and
  availability for business-critical apps
• Characterize by time activity at client,
  network and server tiers
• Compare to expected transaction behavior and
  service levels
• Understand user impact
• Two approaches
• 24x7 monitoring of all actual user transactions
• Synthetic monitoring for proactive problem
  identification

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Business-Driven Service Delivery
Service Level Expectations
Business Service Management
Business
Service-level Reporting
Business Service Views
Application Infrastructure Metrics
Other Service Metrics
End-user Experience
Application Analytics
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Problem Resolution is Hard
On average, how many people in the IT
organization are involved in identifying and
resolving performance issues?
What are the reasons for involving multiple team
members?
Dont know 1
Just one person 4
Isolating the source
85
Ten or more people 24
Determining scope severity
63
Assigning responsibility
60
Resolving the problem once source identified
Two to five people 57
60
Six to nine people 14
Lack of understanding of interdependencies
44
Source Forrester study commissioned by Compuware
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Keys to Efficient Resolution

• Proactive discovery of issues
• Fast isolation of fault domain
• Drill-down from service level to technology
  component level
• Detailed, multi-tier analysis troubleshooting
  tools
• J2EE and .NET
• Database, middleware, Citrix
• Application, client, network, server
• Collaboration between apps and ops
• Guided troubleshooting process
• What if analysis to understand impact of
  alternative changes

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Business-Driven Service Delivery Benefits
True picture of service delivery
Leverage existing management investment
Aligned with business impact and strategy
Efficient resolution enables strategic focus
Continual service improvement
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Next StepsAssessing Alignment Maturity
Competency/ Value Measure
Communications
Partnership
Level 4
Extended to external partners
IT-business co-adaptive
Informal, pervasive
Value
Cost effective, some partner value Dashboard
managed
Level 3
IT enables/drives business strategy
Bonding, unified
Service
Good understanding Emerging relaxed
Some cost effectiveness Dashboard established
Level 2
IT seen as an asset Process driver
Proactive
IT emerging as an asset Process enabler
Level 1
Limited business/ IT understanding
Functional cost efficiency
Reactive
Some technical measurements
Level 0
Business/IT lack understanding
Conflict IT a cost of doing business
Chaotic
Source Association for Information Systems,
December 2000
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Next StepsWhere do you go from here?
Business Service Management
Service-level Management
End-user Experience
Application Analytics
Infrastructure Metrics
Level 0 Chaotic
Level 1 Reactive
Level 2 Proactive
Level 4 Value
Level 3 Service
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SummaryOvercoming the Inhibitors
Establish a foundation for dialog
Develop shared expectations
Adopt business-relevant metrics
Detect and resolve problems proactively
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The business doesn't care about 99.9 percent
uptime unless you're talking about the uptime of
a business process or an end-to-end capability."
- Peter Weill Director, Center for Information
Systems Research MIT Sloan School of Management