Business Service Model for IT

IT exists for one purpose: to provide the tools necessary to enable Business Activities. Like we saw in the CLAP Framework, Business Capabilities are made up of a number of discrete Business Activities. But it is in the delivery of the Business Capabilties as a Service that IT provides value to the Enterprise.

The model for a Business Service is clearly defined by the ITIL framework. In short, it is composed of People, Process and Technology. Certainly, the framework also describes the meta-data, which includes the Service Owner, the Service Consumer and the Service Provider.

Once the functional and non-functional requirements of the Business Capabilities are mapped out, the application and its underlying infrastructure become straightforward to build out. As I have posted about previously, the Project Management Life Cycle can be easily applied to deliver these capabilities to the Enterprise. Of course, more than one capability can be provided by a single service. Often many services get grouped together to form a broader service.

There is also another relationship hidden in a simple model like this one. The degree to which a process is repeatable (and can therefore be automated) has implications to the People part of the equation. The more highly repeatable and automated a process is, the lower the required skill-set for the labour, which should in turn lower the cost of the Service to the Enterprise.

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Humour as a Value-Add ?

My bio picture

My team is finally getting an opportunity to present our Technology Architecture Roadmaps to the Leadership Team. Aside from the presentations (have I mentioned how little I enjoy presenting slide decks - give me a whiteboard, please !), we are also putting together some leave-behind material for them to ponder.

Part of the material includes a brief bio of the presenters, who we are, our backgrounds, and a description of what our value-add is to the company. Oddly, my boss didn't find it at all amusing when I described my role as "Comedic Relief" !

So when I actually think about what my value-add is, I envision a brief discussion of my experience, my qualifications, and my contributions to the success (or failure, I suppose) of the companies I have worked for. But why isn't my sense of humour a value-add ? Isn't humour a way of getting people to relate with you, to encourage interaction and collaboration ?

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, I dunno. What do you think ?

 

 

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