Agenda
Roll Call (by timezone - East to West)
Scribe Shout-out - It's easy to scribe: How To Scribe Itana Notes
Agenda Bash
Strategy Management - Piet Niederhausen, UW; Louis King, Yale
Itana Org Updates
Working Group Updates
EA Maturity Model
IoT Whitepaper
API Working Group
Book club update
Steering Committee Update
Jim Phelps, facilitator
Discussion
Piet Niederhausen discussed the University of Washington Strategy Management efforts:
IT Strategy unit is built upon existing central IT and leveraging existing units such as ITSM
Central IT goal is to be a strategic partner with the business rather than being in the IT commodity business
Development of strategy practice at UW
It is a Team effort
University strategy documents gather dust usually
What is needed is a strategy management practice that is a living thing
IT enables communication in many ways
Dialogue with business leadership, IT teams, and other institutions
Related practices such a project portfolio, service portfolio often act in silos and the strategy practice is meant to bring these areas into better alignment
The goal is to converge these practice areas
Strategy management is the engine-that keeps other practices going
Portfolio of things
Portfolio of change
ie Buildings, technology
Strategy maturity depends on organizational competencies
Strategy effort started with outreach and organization within central IT
3 levels of strategy:
Central IT, IT Service Catalog, IT Enabled Business Services
Used Strategy on a page (SoaP) format to gather material from business units.
Trying to get better business responses rather than we survived an upgrade or make things better. Dana: Linking UW Strategy, IT or Business? Business defining services? )
Question from Dana Miller: Is the UW strategy effort working with the business to define services?
A: Not yet. The central IT group is working to get their act together first and create alignment with the business.
Question from Dana Miller not asked: Did the UW use the enterprise strategy document as a place to start the effort?
The question still is what is the focus of the central IT organization
Jim Phelps would like engagement with the business partners but not totally there
Jenni Laughlin has an opportunity to do business architecture from the business side. Scaffolding practices need to be curated. Working through decision practices with a portfolio view. Capital Projects-Change portfolio.
Bob Dein asked if strategy management is incorporated into client engagement?
A: Not really yet at UW. Work with stakeholders to identify business goals and share it across central IT.
Jim used the platform analogy between IT and the business. Both are involved in change but one has to be built up first before the other one.
Next steps.
Maturity Model reveals they have achieved good communication within central IT.
Louis King of Yale discussed the current state reactionary environment and lack of strategic structure. Strategic conversations are personal conversations at this point.
Result: Missed opportunities.
New leadership structure over the past few years provides opportunity to engage.
Louis continues doing work in Data Governance. Decision rarely rolls to an individual.
Strategy work is developing common frames for the scaffolding. If we all understand the scaffolding then we can have a conversation.
EA group appears to be down to one sad bulldog it appears?
Many strategic plans:
Memory organizations (libraries)
Central IT not really thinking about services across the portfolio. Independent decisions made in silos and rarely strategic and not transparent.
The goal is to imbed strategy into the service organization
Failure of gant chat-like roadmaps
Use of MESAs as 3 year strategy roadmaps for services used a pilot but having some success
Engage all stakeholders
Look at the function the service is delivering
View of the future state
Application Portfolio management
TIME (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate)
½ portfolio didn’t know what to do with
MESAs in place for funding model and have service owner
Still work to assess application inventory
What have been the challenges?
A: Business systems group rolling out WorkDay on July 1st. Hard to enage.
A: In a service organization that is siloed (central IT). The challenge is how dedicated are the leaders reporting to the CIO.
Chat Box
Jim Phelps: Future Topics: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/itana/ITANA+2016-2017+Program
Piet Niederhausen (UWash): Slides at: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1O6zZ3-TXCXOGFf81dMovzGiX_e0egSrDNa4JUU2dpAc/
Jim Phelps: That is an interesting finding: the drivers at a big public R1 are similar to an Ivy League private. Do these issues ring true for you all too?
Jim Phelps: Questions or comments? Either use chat or interupt on the call
Jim Phelps: Louis - Comments from Yale?
Jim Phelps: This is true at UW and what we are trying to reform
Dan Kiskis (Michigan): For heavy ITIL folks, another way to think of the TIME axes are Techinical Value = Warranty and Business Value = Utility
Betsy Draper - Kansas State: Louis, really appreciate the comments about hierarchy and service thinking.
Jim Phelps: To quote David Gift, "There are no good org structures, only org structures that are bad in different ways".
Betsy Draper - Kansas State: A framing question I often through into service discussions is "How does our hierarchy help or hinder our services?"
Betsy Draper - Kansas State: sorry ... throw ... not through
Updates
Book club is starting up on its next book; see the mailing list to join
API working group is actively working; contact Ashish Pandit to join
EA maturity model group is active; see the Groups page to join
