Mike Wyatt's Weblog

Custom painting vs. Lithograph

Identity Management projects have been characterized by my college Susan Patterson as custom works of art. Though there are some common elements, many of the implementation are unique works with little repeatability. I mentioned earlier in the Boiling the Ocean entry that one way projects get into trouble is by having too much complexity in a project phase. Often during the sales cycle, when customer ask, "Does your product do X?," our answer is "Yes, it can but that will be a customization."

Just because a given product can do something is a very different question than "Should we do X with your product?" I suggest that it is the vendor's responsibility to educate the customer on best practices and lessons learned from previous deployments. I also suggest that the vendor needs to guide the customer to a solution that may not meet every specified requirement in the RFP, will be deployable, supportable, upgradeable and provide true ROI. "

While every company is different and some amount of tailoring of a solution such as an Identity Management implementation, will be required, the question is a matter of degree. If the customizations are so extensive as to replace core components or the underlying product or fundamentally change the standard troubleshooting processes or upgrade processes, the value of those customizations needs careful scrutiny. "

Over the next 12-18 months, the Identity Management market will need to move to repeatable packaged solution offerings in order to provide the ongoing quality of care customers want and need. Supporting one-off solutions is not good for any of the parties involved. This is a lesson learned by many companies implementing ERP and CRM solutions. The more customization, the more complexity, the more support burden, etc. Ultimately highly customized solutions lower the return on investment of the solution. "

Posted at 07:01AM Oct 19, 2006 by Michael Wyatt in Identity Management  |