Operational and financial performance of the IT Department
The IT Department’s new role as a privileged economic partner of the Business, and the adoption of a Business Centric posture, require a review of its operational and financial model.
How to adapt the operating model and boost performance to generate more value?
Adding value to an IT department means improving its performance by regularly upgrading its technological product offering and adapting its organization, processes, governance, skills and practices.
From an operational and financial stand point, IT Department should set a continuous improvement approach.
To keep pace with market trends and changing business challenges, the IT Department needs to adapt and move from a project-based approach to a product-based operational model.
With a product-mode operating model, IT department resources are specialized by technological asset (“its products”) all along their lifecycle. The organization is rethought to enable autonomous, mixed teams (Business/IT) to continuously improve their products to meet user needs as closely as possible, in agile mode. These teams are fully invested in the success of the products they manage.
In addition to the fact that the IT Department must begin by defining its technological products, the design and implementation of the operational model involve addressing the following areas:
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Rethinking product organization
The IT Department needs to create multi-disciplinary, mixed (IT/business) and autonomous teams, fully responsible of the continuous improvement of the products and associated projects. This reorganization is supported by the implementation of Agile at scale, and the creation of new roles.
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Changing the IT Department culture
To be effective, the new operational model also require changes on culture, informal organization and human relations within the IT Department: Business Centric values and posture (motivation to improve the product and add value), Agile culture, management style…
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Adapt processes and mode of governance
The product mode will have an impact on the main operational processes of the IT Department (request management, incident management, project portfolio management and related comitology).
From a budget perspective, Business Units and IT will have to define budget allocation between strategic initiatives and continuous improvement around products. IT will implement a capability-based approach for resources allocation and a prioritization process, integrating the agile reallocation of these resources according to the value generated.
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Review methods and tools to increase agility
This transformation also involves implementing appropriate working methods to facilitate the implementation of the operational model: agile processes, BizDevOps, DevSecOps, Security & Resilience by design, design thinking, collaborative tools…
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Implement product value-driven measures
Activity monitoring in a product-based organization requires a shift from an approach driven by costs and deadlines to a product value centric approach
A new system for measuring performance and prioritizing needs has to be created, based on methods such as OKR or the cost of delay of the SAFe methodology framework…
How we can help
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Define your Target Operating Model
Design your Target Operating Model (TOM) in line with your business and IT stakes
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Support the implementation of your Target Operating Model
Define detailed organizations, support cultural change and implement frameworks and working methods (Agile practices, DevOPS, SecDevOPS, API OPS, FinOPS, MLOps …)
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Adapt your operational processes
Adapt your key processes (requests, incidents, project portfolio, etc) to the new operating model.
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Rethink your IT financial management
Adapt your budget process and billing rules to the product mode. Improve the performance of support processes (procurement, supplier management, Software Asset Management, etc).