Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children

Description

How would you feel if you visited your financial planner’s office and saw past-due credit card notices on their desk? Would you trust an auto mechanic whose car backfires and produces black smoke? A dentist with bad teeth? A banker in shabby clothes? An interior designer whose offices are a shambles?

This is the position of the IT capability in many large organizations. The designated custodian of critical business processes and data does not manage its own processes and data reliably. A response in the form of Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology is emerging from major companies, research firms, and vendors; they are labeling these offerings "ERP for IT," “IT Resource Planning,” and related terms.

This groundbreaking, practitioner-authored book provides an independent examination of and response to these developments. An analysis of the large scale IT capability, with specific attention to business processes, structured data, and enabling systems, it is essentially a comprehensive systems architecture, not for the business capabilities IT supports, but for IT itself.

Features
The book presents on-the-ground coverage of enabling IT governance in architectural detail, which you can use to define a strategy and start executing. It fills the gap between high-level guidance on IT governance, and detailed discussions about specific vendor technologies. It is a next-step book that answers the question: OK, we need to improve the way we run IT – now what? It does this through:

A unique value chain approach to integrating the COBIT, ITIL, and CMM frameworks into a coherent, unified whole

A field-tested, detailed conceptual information model with definitions and usage scenarios, mapped to both the process and system architectures

Analysis of current system types in the IT governance and enablement domains: integration opportunities, challenges, and evolutionary trends

Patterns for integrating the process, data, and systems views to support specific problems of IT management.

Specific attention throughout to issues of building a business case and real-world implementation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise.

He has held consultant and architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in metadata, configuration management, IT governance, enterprise application integration, and ERP systems. He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. Charlie is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, ACM, and Data Management Association (DAMA). He presents frequently both locally and nationally to professional associations and conferences.

He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog.

 

Part I: The IT Value Chain
Chapter 1: Introduction: Shoes for the Cobbler’s Child
1.1 The achievements of information technology
1.2 The problems
1.3 The proposed solutions
1.4 The business case
1.5 Making it real
1.6 Chapter conclusion
1.7 Further reading

Chapter 2: The IT Value Chain: a process foundation
2.1 Frameworks, frameworks everywhere
2.2 A value chain framework
2.3 Relationship between primary and supporting processes
2.4 Primary IT Activities
2.5 Supporting IT Activities
2.6 Major framework issues
2.7 The functional viewpoints
2.8 Non-functional requirements
2.9 Process maturity
2.10 The business case
2.11 Making it real
2.12 Chapter conclusion
2.13 Further reading

Part II: Supporting the IT value chain
Chapter 3: A supporting data architecture
3.1 Metrics: Gateway from Process to Data
3.2 A Conceptual Data Model
3.3 IT process entities
3.4 Configuration Item & subtypes
3.5 Process and workflow – a data perspective
3.6 General IT data architecture issues
3.7 The business case
3.8 Making it real
3.9 Chapter conclusion
3.10 Further reading

Chapter 4: A supporting systems architecture
4.1 Systems & families
4.2 Cohesion and coupling
4.3 Systems for planning and controlling
4.4 Systems for solutions delivery
4.5 Cross-boundary build/run systems
4.6 Systems for service support
4.7 Information-centric systems
4.8 General issues
4.9 The ideal architecture
4.10 The business case
4.11 Making it real
4.12 Chapter conclusion
4.13 Further reading

Chapter 5: Patterns for IT Enablement
5.1 Why apply patterns?
5.2 Core Value Chain Patterns
5.3 Configuration Management Patterns
5.4 Supporting IT Process Patterns
5.5 Chapter conclusion
5.6 Further reading

Part III: Conclusion
Chapter 6: Epilog
6.1 Human constraints of IT enablement
6.2 The next generation IT: MDA, SOA, BPM, portals, utility computing
6.3 In closing

Appendix A: Architecture methodology used in this book
Appendix B: Some thoughts on the professionalization of enterprise IT
Appendix C: IT Professional Organizations
Appendix D Glossary
Index