Published:
April 28 2009, 07:22 PM
|
no comments
by
Pradeep Bhanot
I recently read David Hurwitz’s excellent white paper; http://www.ca.com/files/WhitePapers/case-for-leanit-wp_204130.pdf which taught me the two focuses of the lean approach are to Maximize Value, Minimize Waste. These goals are achieved by analyzing and optimizing Value Streams (the sequence of activities to design, produce and deliver a good or service) to remove non-value added activity, or waste.I have been doing a lot of thinking around Service Portfolio Management (SPM) which caused me conclude the key to minimizing waste in IT is to expend as little effort as possible on activities that don’t add significant value to the business it supports. Steve Romero (a fellow blogger) is often heard telling IT professionals the reason they are too overwhelmed to take on new service requests is because they are spending too much time working on the wrong stuff. When a decision is made to introduce a new service or project IT, needs to kill/divest less important services to free up enough resources to support the new strategic service. PPM software helps, by providing the insight and clarity into the value, alignment and cost of a service to support the investment of divestment of a service or project. So, I have discussed “doing the right things”. Now let’s consider optimizing value chains in a PPM or SPM context, which means running projects and services in a lean manner. In the project management world, the Project Management Office (PMO) is the process owner for the Project Management function. The PMO introduces best practice policies, enforces their use and optimizes process to minimise waste.
In the case of SPM, ITIL provides guides to common IT processes and defines roles and responsibilities for the efficient management of IT services. It also prescribes the establishment of a process owner as a person who is not necessarily someone who is involved in the execution of a process such as incident management, but is responsible for monitoring it with the goal of maximizing efficiencies.
By: Pradeep Bhanot
Pradeep Bhanot markets CA Clarity PPM in Europe. Prior to CA, Pradeep worked at BT, the UK Department of Energy, ECGD, Watson Wyatt, Oracle, and Serena Software. He is ITIL v3 Foundation certified, a PMI member and holds a Computer Science Degree from Greenwich University.
Read More..