In my previous post in "Delivering IT Services" I discussed the pressures that impact the average IT Department in the way the delivery IT Services. These pressures come from the Users and the industry. Success is defined by how the It department gets alignment between these two opposing forces.

I would propose an essential tool for doing this is understanding the "IT Value Chain". The "Value Chain" provides a simple framework for translating the "Users" needs in the form of "Business Objectives" to the "Impacts on IT" which is the definition of requirements from IT to meet these objectives. The value change continues to develop more detail by defining the "IT Initiatives" required to deliver to these requirements.

The next important step is to measure these initiatives against a IT Departments capability to deliver these initiatives. This analysis allows you to understand strengths, weakness in developing an implementation plan.

So, the response to this concept is; "Duh, its obvious!!!" Well my only response is I very rarely see organizations practicing this discipline. It is common sense, but it is not easy. Under the pressures of day-to-day service delivery, this practice is a difficult thing to maintain. It can be considered a management overhead to delivering result. The whole area of ITSM and ITIL is designing around building process and practices that operationalize this practice.

Another reason for this not happening is inability of an organization to clearly state its business objectives. Particularly this gap occurs between executive management and middle management. Business objectives often has many layers, goals, strategy and tactics, often there is not linkage between these layers of objectives. As IT Professionals, this is a problem we cannot necessarily solve. We contribute to the solution, but it requires all the management to have discipline to create this linkage. I have seen people succeed in building this linkage through IT projects that build this linkage (eg. ITIL adoption or Business Continuity), and I have seen a similar number fail dismally.

So whats the "net-net"? Its really about "Do you know how what you are doing contributes to the business objectives to the company ?"