Define the boundary between service provider and customer

First of all, you should know exactly: how much do I really want to give away. Should the service provider do everything himself and I just want a service that works like a mail account or I would like an individual development and have to provide the service provider with permanent requirements and control it.

In the case of the mail account, it is a managed service. You use the service and have no insight or very little how it works and this is usually hardly relevant to you. This case is easy to coordinate and good for areas in which you do not want to build up knowledge internally.

Especially if your project has less budget for your IT because your own core competencies are in other areas, you can benefit from managed services. Disadvantages, however, are the loss of knowledge and the dependency on the provider. It is therefore important to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages.

Flexible work packages and acceptance criteria

Let us now take the second case that you are carrying out a large complex project such as an app development and need three service providers for this. This app is important and should also be further developed internally by you.

In this case, you should therefore provide your service providers with concepts and specifications. To do this, create a concept and cut it into small tasks that have clear acceptance criteria. This is important because this is the only way you can retain sovereignty over knowledge.

After you have neatly divided the tasks, the service providers can pull these for themselves. Clear acceptance criteria are important for the delegation. The job is tough but the effort is worth it and the project is very easy to control. With the help of a Project management software you can clearly map and monitor the tasks.

Conclusion

As soon as a project becomes more complex, you have to bind project management closely to you as the end customer and make the project controllable. This is achieved by clearly breaking down a concept into tasks with clear acceptance criteria. The effort is initially high, but it pays off in the course of the project and prevents the loss of knowledge or excessive dependence on a service provider.

Image source: Business photo created by freepik – de.freepik.com

Der Beitrag Tips for managing B2B service providers erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

What does the term “shadow IT” mean exactly?

Shadow IT is the unauthorized use of off-duty secondary systems that are used by employees in addition to or even instead of the company’s internal IT solutions. Employees can quickly be dazzled by the simple handling or a pretty design. At the same time, they forget to consider the associated risks. What the workforce is often not aware of: Unofficial apps for managing projects, sharing data or even systems for creating notes also fall under the term shadow IT.

Reasons for the emergence of shadow IT

But how does shadow IT even come about? What reasons induce employees at home and in the office to use unofficial IT resources?

Convenience

It is not uncommon for shadow IT to emerge due to the coziness and the desire for comfort among the workforce. New systems or differing IT resources at home and at work are a thorn in the side of many employees. After all, they usually mean a lot of work. Since humans are naturally inclined to be comfortable, many employees put the use of company-external IT systems into perspective with the familiar handling or the alleged time savings.

High complexity of the company tools

Especially if the company has recently implemented the use of new IT resources, many employees find themselves trapped in the complexity of the new systems. In order to avoid the annoying and often tedious internalization of new IT solutions, they often simply use their own programs.

mobile devices

But mobile devices such as tablets or the classic smartphone also drive employees to fall back on familiar material at work and to use the integrated IT systems for the purposes of the company.

Shadow IT also possible in the home office

In addition, it often happens that employees find the IT in the company so cumbersome and as a result also use their own IT at home. This can happen, for example, in the form of using Lotus Notes in the company instead of MS Office. The consequence of this: employees send documents to their private PC, process them with MS Office and then send them back to the company PC or use WhatsApp for communication during working hours.

Risks of a shadow IT

Often employees, both in the home office and at the workplace, completely ignore the potential dangers of this approach or are not even aware of their wrong actions.

Difficult data management

If every employee manages their work and the associated data and information in a different IT resource, the IT department, whose task is to link all data sets, easily loses track. It is difficult to combine and analyze data from different systems. This can ultimately result in incomplete data management, which can also result in the loss or worthlessness of important information.

Loss of control of the IT department

Finally, IT processes can no longer be traced at all on the basis of difficult or incomplete data management. This can result in a total loss of control for the IT department. As a result, processes and systems in the company slow down or become impracticable.

safety

However, general IT security can also be exposed to a high risk through the use of shadow IT. External IT resources often have unknown danger spots that the employee is not aware of. This makes it much easier for hackers and cyber criminals to enter the company and steal important data.

Risks of a malware attack

In addition, online-based IT resources in particular harbor the risk of malware attacks. Malware can be smuggled into company-internal processes with a simple update of such a web service.

GDPR

Last but not least, it should also be mentioned that major problems can arise, especially with regard to the recently introduced new EU GDPR. With the new regulation, companies are legally bound to maintain the security of customer data. Through the unofficial use of shadow IT, employees also release data outside of the company in the worst case, which consequently leads to  Compliance violations against the EU GDPR.

Conclusion

However, there is no general and easily transferable solution for eliminating shadow IT in the company. Instead, companies should ensure that their employees are given the best possible support in the process of learning new technologies. It is also advisable to provide employees with tools that are as understandable as possible, instead of relying on complex systems. In relation to this, it is also advisable to involve the workforce in the selection of suitable IT systems and thereby ensure the practicality of the new technologies. For this, it is important that the IT department and workforce are in constant contact and exchange with one another, so that there is no need to use unauthorized IT programs in the first place.
[werbung]

[fotolia]

Der Beitrag Shadow IT in companies – what does that mean? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Reading tip: Spotify model in traditional companies

Spotify model – how does it look in practice?

If you open current magazines, you will find the following headline: “ ING – a bank on speed “. ING DIBA is aiming for an agile change based on the Spotify model with the help of a major restructuring.

Furthermore, squads, tribes and chapters from the Spotify model can also be found in the IT of Deutsche Telekom. Telekom currently has around 15 squads, which are distributed over four tribes. Quote from an agile coach at Telekom is to: “We have adapted the Spotify model for ourselves. The challenge here is that the structure has not grown organically, as with Spotify. Rather, it was set up and we, as agile coaches, have to make sure that it works. ”

A final example is the company Rewe, which with the Spin-off Rewe Digital (e.g. Rewe delivery service) meanwhile also looking for chapters, tribes and squadleads. The 150 employees are divided into squads and tribes, which work according to the Scrum method.

Spotify model – how does it work?

But how does this model work, which large corporations use as a role model? I would like to explain the basic building blocks for this. The model is divided into squads. These are loose groups that have a specific purpose and work in an agile manner. Each squad has an elected squad leader who represents the interests of the team.

Different squads are combined into a tribe, which has a tribelead. Chapters are planned to enable a professional exchange. A chapter can be seen like a user group. This deals with a specific topic, e.g. databases, and defines standards and technologies in the company. There are also guilds for certain special cases.

On the website of the Spotify model there are of course numerous other principles and best practices. However, this first explanation is enough for my assessment to say something about the agility of the model. I would only like to mention the guilds, which are something like user groups for the exchange of knowledge.

Spotify model – what are the advantages?

The big advantage of this model is the scaling. The fact that you create autonomous squads means that you can easily scale various topics. Examples are:

• Rewards can be allocated to the squads and they divide it up
• A salary budget can be allocated to the squad, which the squad can distribute itself
• The squad can determine the squad lead itself
• Each squad can have a different working method (classic, Scrum, Kanban)
• Squads can use Goals or OKRS to be controlled

You notice that the squads can be controlled in a very agile way and that you can save a lot of management effort. I can imagine that a company with 100 employees could consist of 2-3 board members and 10-12 squads. This extremely flat hierarchy promises efficiency and speed.

Spotify model – how do I cut my squads?

The important thing is that you can cut your squads quickly and well. Many companies are obviously having a hard time doing this. Spotify itself has made the division according to functions on the website. Further possibilities would be divisions according to:

• Industries (service providers)
• Customers (e.g. IT service providers)
• Products (product house)
• Functions (IT house)
• Divisions (e.g. group)

Spotify model – what’s my experience?

I’m lucky that my company is currently implementing this model in a department and that I was significantly involved in the change. I would therefore like to tell from my first experiences how agile this model is in my opinion. The department has 28 employees.

First of all, I have to say that we have aligned our squads according to customers and not products or functions, and that each squad deals with 1-3 customers in a targeted manner. We have 5 squads and 3 chapters across the board, which exchange ideas about technologies. Due to the small size, we only have one tribe and no guilds. We also try to implement the values of Scrum.

• Focus: Every squad has a customer
• Openness: Every squad is open to its customers
• Courage: every squad has direct contact with the customer and has the courage to stand up for their ideas
• Respect: We respect our customers and the customer’s success
• Commitment: Our customer is the focus

By the way, you can read a very extensive example of how I implemented a Spotify model.

Reading tip: Spotify model in traditional companies

Spotify model – how agile is it?

I have to say that this model is very suitable for us and that we have achieved an improvement in customer satisfaction, especially in the DevOps and Scrum way of working. The employees also rave about the numerous possibilities offered by the self-organization of the squads. That’s why I think this model is a really good alternative and I believe that companies should definitely take an example from it. We have had consistently good experiences and the model is easy to understand. Spotify’s best practices also give great advice and it’s not a commercial framework.

Reading tip: Agility in service companies

Spotify model – what criticism is there?

The first criticism is that the model is a bit older and the world has changed in the meantime. Furthermore, experts believe that the Spotify model only solves the problems of Spotify and therefore cannot be transferred, and thirdly, the Spotify model has even been changed in the meantime. Of course you will never be able to simply copy a model, but certain impulses or ideas can be taken from the model and implemented in your own organization.

Spotify model – how can I measure culture?

I can also give you the tip that you as a manager must above all pay attention to compliance with the squad spirit and the values, since motivation and solidarity in the squad are absolutely crucial for performance. There is also the Spotify Squad Healthcheck . You check the satisfaction of the individual squads on the basis of various criteria.

Tip: Download the template like here and adjust them!

What is the advantage of this model? You can check the culture of your department very quickly. I would like to give an example of this. To do this, you ask your team about various criteria.

In the columns you can see the main differences between the different squads. Squad 2 is happy with pretty much everything. Squad 3 has many problems, but there is a positive trend on almost all points.

In the Rows we can recognize systemic patterns. Every squad has fun at work (and the trend is even higher!). Motivation doesn’t seem to be a problem. However, the processes cause problems. Over time, this will certainly reduce the fun factor at work.

in the Overall picture you can see that many arrows are pointing up. This means that the improvement process (the most important process of all) is working.

Conclusion

I think that the idea of the Spotify model is a basis for bringing agility into a classic organization. Now that you’ve established the squads, you can implement the majority of agile best practices across the organization. So I see the idea of the model as a basis for scaling agility.

Image source cover image: Designed by Rawpixel.com

Der Beitrag What is the Spotify model and how agile is it? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

With the proliferation and understanding of Agility as well as the steadily increasing Implementation of agile strategies , many IT companies have already recognized the importance and benefits of an IT product organization. But also for those companies that are just about to introduce such an IT product organization or a agile product culture think about it, there are still many benefits. Based on the best practices of other companies, a standard scheme for the optimal implementation of an IT product organization has emerged in recent years.

If you would like to learn more about agile products and agility in companies, then read on the following articles from me:

• Transformation into an agile company
• IT organizational models
• Work 4.0, digital leadership and agile organizations

What does “IT production organization” actually mean?

Well and good the theory you might be thinking now! But what is the term actually all about? Before this article shows ways of a possible integration, I would like to give you an understanding of the value of an IT product organization.

The importance of an IT production organization

Many companies have departments that focus on product management. Often, however, these are only slightly or not at all linked to the IT department. While the latter is kept flexible through the implementation of agile methods such as Scrum and is mainly viewed as a support department, it usually has little influence on the product culture within the organization. Many companies even completely forego the management of a product culture and instead rely on project management for these issues.

As a result, companies often assume that they are customer-oriented, but, realistically, implement this in a much more limited way than possible and necessary for the success of the company. The reasons for such behavior range from top-down objectives to areas such as cost reduction through data-based decisions regarding value creation or market development.

Although many IT companies recognize the profitability of agile methods and allow them to be promoted and expanded within the company’s IT department, the distance between this department and product management often results in a weakening of these measures in the area of IT production organization. Instead, specially employed product managers are given the task of customer management. They try to analyze and derive customer requirements in the form of resource management. As a result, the development of products depends solely on the availability of resources. Accordingly, it is less oriented towards the customer himself.

How is an IT production organization defined?

An optimal IT product organization is primarily based on the wishes of the customers. She focuses on constantly being able to understand what the customer’s requirements are. But also which new products he would like or which he would accept. With the inclusion of these parameters, everything in an IT product organization revolves around the product itself. Aspects such as customer benefit or user experience contribute significantly to the success of the company.

Basically, an IT product organization is divided into two important roles:

• the Chief Information Officer and
• the Chief Technical Officer / Vice President Product Development / VP Engineering

The Chief Information Officer acts as the head of the IT organization. The Chief Technical Officer / Vice President Product Development / VP Engineering, on the other hand, is responsible for the actual product development organization.

The IT product organization thus differs significantly from the traditional product organization. The latter typically implements three roles in the areas of product development, product management and design, and marketing.

Build IT product organization

For the optimal and efficient structure of an IT product organization, companies should consider the following steps:

1. Structure the distribution of tasks

Companies should first of all bring order and structure to the distribution of tasks within the company. This is heavily based on the introduction of new organizational models that are committed to more effective execution of processes with regard to customer requirements.

2. Introduce roles and their descriptions

In the course of this, roles such as Chief Information Officer and Chief Technical Officer / Vice President Product Development / VP Engineering should be introduced and their tasks and duties should be worked out in detail. With this role structure, competencies can be better used and clear delimitations can be implemented.

3. Define areas of responsibility

With regard to the various roles, however, the areas of responsibility should also be precisely determined and defined. If each of your employees knows for which area within the It product organization they are responsible and which authority they have, internal efficiency can be significantly increased.

4th Link the T department with product management and culture

Ultimately, companies must ensure that the wall between the IT department and the product organization is permeable, transparent and communicative, so that an agile product culture based on customer requirements can also arise across departments.

Conclusion

By implementing an IT product organization, a company can generally increase its agility. At the same time, however, it can also respond much more efficiently to customer requirements. Defining roles and their areas of responsibility can also help motivate the workforce. dThis is due to the fact that tasks and objectives are clearly defined.

Even if the implementation of an IT product organization sounds comparatively simple, there are many pitfalls. IT companies should therefore focus on the following areas in particular:

• Cooperation with the customer: Only those who work with and close to the customer can really understand their wishes, requirements and the benefits derived from a product.
• The budget for the procurement of information should be spent sensibly in order not to ignore the actual customer requirements and not to draw wrong conclusions.
• Roles and their tasks cannot be transferred to every employee. Select from your workforce those whose character and competencies match the respective roles and who have an understanding of customer requirements and a desire to solve problems.

Der Beitrag Build IT product organization – this is how it works! erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Decentralized IT organization

In the decentralized IT, there is clear management and assignment of orders to IT. In short, each unit has its own IT (see figure). The advantage is that these are close to the line and therefore often have a higher orientation to the department. However, the department is then disciplinary responsible for IT, which reduces the importance of this. There is also the risk of redundancy and silo thinking.

Central IT organization

The central IT is an IT department for the entire company. In this way, the departments transmit requirements to the IT. IT has its own staff and resources. She also implements her own strategy and plans the overall architecture. As a rule, there is no silo thinking and IT comes from a single source. Cross-divisional solutions could also be found. However, greater effort is required for coordination in order to prevent IT blindness and solutions that are too general, i.e. not perfectly tailored to the specialist area, but rather compromise solutions. In this model, however, IT is also very “powerful” in the company.

Hybrid IT organization

As central as necessary and as decentralized as possible partially applies to the hybrid IT organizational form. IT admins are deployed for each area to adapt the IT to the department. This means that at least the IT can be designed more individually without being directly decentralized. The advantages are the proximity to the line and the fact that the admins can talk to the IT technically on an equal footing, which is often more difficult for the department if there are no IT switchers employed there. The dangers are of course political effects such as power struggles and renewed silo thinking.

IT organization project

In this approach, IT is retained as the implementer and each department has individual IT admins. However, there is also an IT office which, as a cross-sectional department, plans IT in the company together with the specialist departments. IT is independent, but has the IT office as the “advocate” for the departments. In this way, silo thinking can be avoided, but the IT office will tend to establish itself as a place of power struggles, as it has to represent the departments. Opportunities in this model are definitely cross-departmental solutions and synergies.

IT organizational forms – selection process

In order to decide on a model, you should only consider the importance of IT for the company’s business model. Of course, almost nothing works in a digital world without IT, but it still doesn’t always play the decisive role. Let’s think of cat food, which is primarily controlled by production and logistics and supported by IT. It is different with Apple, which is a software company.
Reading tip: What is an IT organization
Example 1: High importance for day-to-day business and low for strategy
A strongly software-oriented production or a company that provides products or services with the help of software could be used here. A decentralized or hybrid IT organization is worthwhile here.
Example 2: Great importance for day-to-day business and strategy
This is usually an IT company such as a software house with a software product. IT is the central point here. A central or hybrid IT organization is recommended here.
Example 3: Low importance for day-to-day business and low for strategy
This can be a logistics or food factory, for example, which manufactures products and supports IT with small, less noticeable functions. A decentralized or hybrid IT organization is recommended here.
Example 4: Low importance for day-to-day business and high importance for strategy
If this should occur, it could be an IT consulting company with knowledge products, i.e. advice. Project IT organization and central IT can be particularly worthwhile here.
Reading tip: IT organization 2020
[yop_poll id=”36″]
[werbung]
Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

[fotolia]

Der Beitrag IT organizational forms – central and decentralized at the same time? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Classic IT organizational model

A classic IT organizational model is often equated with ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). This is constantly being expanded and redefined. The idea of ITIL is the continuous improvement of the service. IT sees itself as a service provider. ITIL basically consists of four processes:

• Incident Management
• Problem management
• Change management
• Release management

Incident Management corrects the disruption of a service and prevents a service from being impaired. This is usually covered by a help desk with first, second and third level support. The aim of problem management is to find the cause of incidents and to remedy them sustainably or to address them proactively before they even occur. Change management makes changes to the existing IT and implements new functions. Release management is responsible for ensuring that these changes are also integrated into the system. Of course there is a lot more to say about ITIL and I will only give a small overview. For more, you should visit an ITIL training course or take a look at YouTube.

Agile IT organizational model

In the agile organization, Scrum is often preferred in IT. However, Scrum was only designed for one team. So this paragraph does not explain Scrum, but the scaling of Scrum. For this I would like to explain a best practice, i.e. Scrum of Scrums. If you want to learn about other models as well, then read my article on Scaling Scrum.
Reading tip: Scaling Scrum
The idea is that you form numerous Scrum Teams in your IT that have a Scrum Master. Each Scrum Master forms another Scrum of Scrums Team with another Scrum Master as the Scrum Master. Depending on the number of teams, this has different levels. The level after Scrum of Scums would then be Scrum of Scrums of Scrums. You can also introduce roles such as a Chief Scrum Master for this purpose.

Of course, there is also the possibility of scaling this via the product owner, such as in the LeSS framework. To do this, you can appoint a Chief Product Owner, who heads a board of product owners who make holistic decisions about the limits of the individual software components. It’s actually up to you, because how you cut the teams’ tasks is decided. You can cut these according to skills (e.g. frontend / backend) or the individual software components (product A and product B).
Reading tip: What is an IT organization

Bimodal IT organizational model

In the end, you could also establish bimodal IT. Agile change is taking place especially in large organizations and this inevitably results in bimodal IT. This means that some areas are highly agile and other areas are less agile to classic.
Gartner has also examined this approach and believes that such bimdodal IT can even bring significant advantages. ITIL-driven IT can be used for stable areas and more agile IT for other, more complex areas. According to Gartner, both areas exist side by side. I have already explained his exact idea in another article.
Reading tip: BiModal IT

Conclusion

No matter how you organize your IT, there are numerous models and these three are certainly not the only ones. Most companies will probably have bimodal IT, as each area of a company is very individual. Thus, there are faster and more complex areas that are more agile and stable areas for, for example, accounting or operations, which is more easily mapped with ITIL. I have never experienced a direct separation as Gartner describes it and such a separation is also heavily criticized. It seems like always: the best of both worlds leads to the greatest success.
Reading tip: IT organization 2020
[yop_poll id=”37″]
[werbung]
Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

[fotolia]

Der Beitrag IT organization models – classic, bimodal or agile? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

The drivers: organization, teams and individuals

But why should IT change so? I see three drivers for this: people, teams and organizations. In the following I would like to explain these new framework conditions for IT. The new IT requirements can then be derived from these.

organization

Organizations were traditionally organized up to now, with a focus on controllability and control. Due to increasing complexity, this has changed to project orientation and agile methods. Networking and a flat hierarchy shape the organizations and thus also change the demands on IT.

Teams

While teams and departments were stable for a long time and often little networked or worked across departmental boundaries, networked teams and constantly changing roles can now be found more and more frequently in companies. IT is therefore required to provide flexible hardware and software for this permanent change and to support cross-functional teams.

Employee

While employees have usually been with a company for a long time and also on one job, things are different now. Frequent company and role changes are state-of-the-art. This can already be felt today. For this reason, IT is required to provide flexible workplaces that can cope with these constant changes.

The IT organization 2020 – infrastructure and applications

People, teams and organizations are becoming more flexible and are demanding new tools from IT that support these processes. This is noticeable in applications and infrastructure, which I would like to explain in more detail below.
While IT development often developed the backend and frontend separately and infrastructures should run stably and efficiently, the weighting is now changing. The IT should meet the new flexibility requirements of employees. So I find the term IT platform more and more. By the way, I mention the word ubiquitous in the graphic. The adjective ubiquitous comes from Latin, where ubique means “everywhere” (Source: New word ).
Urbach and Ahlemann write on the topic of the IT platform: New platform strategies are required to support any end device for ubiquitous access to information. The user expects from the knowledge workplace of the future that the company’s central applications and services can be used with all end devices used – regardless of the hardware manufacturer and the operating system used.
For this reason the authors propose a flexible platform. Thus, different modules are to be created on the platform, which enable the work from any end device and whereby the change of the end device does not have a negative effect on the work. So Urbach and Ahlemann recommend that The development platforms guarantee the security of the systems regardless of the underlying hardware and should offer universal functionality for access to the backend systems. As current examples of such platforms, the authors name: Xamarin1, PhoneGap2, Kony3 or 5App4,

Conclusion: more agile, faster and more flexible – IT Organization 2020

In conclusion, the IT organization will be faster, more agile and more flexible in 2020. Thus, agile teams and DevOps methods will establish themselves. According to a study by Cobalt blue Therefore, by 2020 40% of all employees will work agile and 25% of them in so-called DevOps teams. This means that 40% of all applications are developed in an agile manner and then also have to be supported in DevOps mode. By then, 50% of all applications should also be built on cloud infrastructures and designed according to the latest best practices. It is therefore evident that the changes in the illustration by Urbach and Ahlemann (2016) could occur and that agile methods will probably be more and more necessary in the IT organization in 2020.

• Reading tip: IT organizational models
• Reading tip: IT organizational forms

[werbung]
Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

[fotolia]

Der Beitrag IT organization 2020 – what is really changing? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

• Reading tip: IT organizational models
• Reading tip: IT organizational forms

Background of the approach

The term process digitization is on everyone’s lips and every step in the digital transformation should be supported by a tool or, ideally, automated directly. For this reason I think it makes sense to take a specific process and assign a tool to each step. I would like to show this on a typical project that is received by an SME.
Reading tip: What is an IT organization

IT organization example

This section gives an example of an IT organization for a typical SME. In this case, even an input from a customer project. In the following figure I have broken down the process into individual steps and assigned a tool to each and given a concrete example.

Lead generation or presales are often necessary before a project. A CRM tool like MS Dynamics can help here. Then it continues with the incoming order, which can be supported with an ERP tool. It continues with the creation of an offer for the customer, which can be supported by templates from, for example, Sharepoint. It is clear to me that these two steps can also swap depending on the definition. The offer can also be made before the order is received. In this case I assume that Presales writes a kind of preliminary offer and the actual offer process is only initiated as soon as the customer says: Yes, I want to buy.
Then the project is started with the help of templates from MS Office and the implementation is supported by Jira or Trello, among others. SAP can be used for billing. Every step can be supported concretely by a tool and the task of a CIO is to design this tool chain and to connect it to one another so that it is synchronized. For example, the data of the Sharepoint could be integrated directly into the MS Office templates using macros.
Reading tip: IT organization 2020

Conclusion: building an IT organization

This example shows a typical process digitization and the support of each step by a tool. I often find this approach in SMEs and also make sure that these tools are linked and implemented on the job. I’m really getting on with this approach. Of course there are many more and you can certainly make it more agile, but it’s a good approach. For more information, read my article on agile service providers.
Reading tip: Agile IT service providers
[werbung]
Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

[fotolia]

Der Beitrag IT organization example – process digitization erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

composition

If you take a closer look at the organization of information technology, you can divide it into the following main groups, which are related to IT in different ways. Your influence on and your requirements for information technology result in different areas of responsibility, the fulfillment of which is the main task of every IT organization and thus justifies the splitting of the categories.

Areas of responsibility

Figure 1 describes the relationship between IT itself on the one hand and the overall organization and its customers on the other. In addition, external partners can also play a role here, who can also influence the IT organization. Between every type of relationship between the company and third parties there is the striving for an optimal negotiation process and an intact value chain. This endeavor is usually fulfilled on the basis of efficient IT management, the success of which becomes visible when all sub-areas of the IT organization, despite their interactions, are harmonized and / or prioritized with one another. In order to make this possible, it is important to know the functions and tasks of the individual categories, the relationship between which is shown in Figure 2.

IT controlling represents the focus of the individual core areas and is used to analyze company-relevant key figures from which future changes and processes can then be focused and planned with the help of the IT strategy. These two categories ultimately result in the positions enabling and alignment, which are intended to show that the IT organization does not have a specific goal of its own, but opens up various business opportunities for entrepreneurial management through the right application. Embedded in it are four specific IT functions that are directly related to the IT users. The IT service management serves to serve the wishes and requirements of the customer in the best possible way.
The opposite is the IT resource management, which is responsible for business issues. With the help of this category, relevant resources such as hardware or software, the workforce and information processing can be controlled.
IT governance, risk and compliance management deals with risk factors by trying to identify and counteract them at an early stage, as well as compliance with legal aspects.
Because IT portfolio management can only be used and support the company in evaluating performance ideas if compliance with the law is guaranteed.
All four areas are connected with each other and influence each other, so that an equally balanced strategic focus on all areas is extremely important for the success of an IT organization. This is expressed by the term Enterprise Architecture Management. The whole concept is finally framed by the cybersecurity category, the function of which is to meet security and data protection requirements.

Instruments

In order to implement IT in their own company and to continuously optimize it later, many companies use various software solutions. Well-known programs for IT administration include ARIS and ALFABET from FIRMA Software AG, ADOit from BOC or Mega Suite from the manufacturer of the same name, as well as Troux Technologie’s Troux Enterprise Suite and rimacon omniSuite from rimacon.

Implementation in practice

When implementing their IT organization, companies often use so-called best practice examples. These are particularly characterized by their adaptability and flexible transmission method. Many companies therefore take on the experience of other companies when dealing with IT management and optimize it for their own purposes. This has the advantage that the error rate is often significantly lower, the implementation time is significantly reduced and employees can be trained more quickly.
Well-known best practice examples for IT organization are ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and COBIT (Control Objectives for IT), which are made publicly available at regular intervals as sample versions by central organizations and are constantly optimized in line with the times.

I OFFER GUEST ARTICLES AND INFLUENCER MARKETING!

You have your own, interesting thoughts around the theme world of the blog and would like to share them in a guest article on my blog? – But gladly! You can thereby address customers and professionals. I also offer Influencer Marketing to support your brand! But for all this you will need these 2 tools so I am referring you.

1. Paraphrase Tool
2. Plagiarism Checker

These tools will work to detect and remove your Plagarism.

Gendernote: I have used the masculine form for ease of reading. Therefore, unless an explicit distinction is made, it always refers to women, diverse as well as men, and people of all origins and nations. Read more

Spelling: I translated my German Blog to English – so you can also read my Recommendations. Please be sorry if this English is not so good.

Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

[fotolia]

Der Beitrag What is an IT organization – definition erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.