September 2010
The Corporate Shepherd - Why software is still stuck in the stone age.
I was struck recently with how similar our working lives are to those of our ancestors, however rather than shepherding sheep we now spend our working lives shepherding process. We feel the need to constantly watch over our flock of actions lists, requests for service, emails informing of us delays or uncompleted tasks, requests for approvals, the list goes on.
What is so unreliable about the way that we work or organise ourselves that means we can't trust the process?
Process bottlenecks, fragmented decision making processes, uncontrolled demand, horizontal gaps in the organisation, silo mentalities and managing budgets not as a process but as a series of events/crises all mean the best tools and technologies we can buy fail to help us take control of our software problem.
If we organised our payroll and expense process in the same way as we manage our software we would probably find ourselves short staffed very quickly, but therein lies the answer.
In the payroll and expense process for example, I've got a contract that tells me what I am going to get, I've got agreed limits and guidelines on what I can expense. I don't go outside of this because I know my boss won't sign this off. There is also an SLA that I understand and it says if I get the request in on time, I'll get paid at the end of the month. In practice this isn't too difficult as I've got an online portal that I use to put the request in, this automatically routes to my boss or his delegate, if he's on holiday, for approval and then the workflow system integrates down to the point of delivery and it ends up in my pay check. I never worry about it, it is 100% reliable, I can even check online to see the status of the approval. Back in head office, finance run a series of variance reports, budgets are checked against plan, and if necessary a policy change comes out.
In the IT world we call these systems, automated service catalogues, or to give the process its new ITIL title 'service portfolio management'. These systems exist today and have matured to the point that they have inbuilt workflows, integration into systems like Microsoft SCCM and Active Directory for seamless delivery and CMS for entitlement, SLAs for managing service delivery, and cross charging to manage demand. They even look like and are as easy to use as www.amazon.com.
You can also have them up and running very quickly, evidence from successful implementations suggests that a quick start approach, involving prototyping a few core services and then evolving the idea collaboratively with the business, is probably better in the long run than lots of upfront deliberation and discussion.
At the end of the day though users love them and so do businesses, users get a high quality reliable service and business get an instant productivity gain, followed by economy of scale through centralisation. More importantly IT is no longer free at the point of delivery, you can now manage demand and your IT spend like never before.
