Tag Archives: business-IT convergence

IT Organization Circa 2017 – 5 Year Countdown (Part 2)


countdownIn Part 1 of this post I pointed out why I’d named this blog “IT Organization Circa 2017″ and why I’d picked 2017. I then offered some musings about the nature and shape of the IT Organization Circa 2017.

I set this up by examining the major disruptive forces acting on the IT organization today:

The bottom line is that many IT organizations are at risk of being disintermediated – victims of the inextricable forces mentioned above.

“You cost too much and add too little value!”

is the familiar cry – but one that is more about the IT organization than it is about information technology.

The End of the IT Organization?

My view of the next five years is that in extreme cases, the IT organization as we know it will be gone – supplanted by a constantly shifting landscape of outsource providers, consultants, cloud solutions and “shadow quasi-IT groups” embedded in business units and taking care of local business needs. I can safely predict this because it’s already happened. In fact, when I started my IT career in 1970, working for International Computers Limited, (ICL) one of our major national accounts was British retailer Marks & Spencer. At that time, Marks & Spencer had no computers or IT department, even though they were highly computerized. Founder Michael Marks believed the firm should stick to what it knew – retailing – and hire experts to do the things it needed but did not know how to do. Consistent with that philosophy, ICL ran all Marks and Spencer’s computing. Nowadays, we call that “core competence.” As an aside, contrast that with another great British retailer and food manufacturer, J. Lyons & Co. who in the early 1950s had developed their own computer, the LEO, which eventually became part of my employer, ICL!

Already today, many companies around the globe have slashed the size of their IT organizations – some by 80-90%, taking advantage of global sourcing options and shifting the headache of running an IT shop to one or more outsourcing partners. There has, of course, been some backlash, and a small proportion of these outsourced IT shops bring their work back in house. In some cases, this is part of a long term strategy – pass your IT capabilities over to an outsourcer (or several) for a few years to have them “fix it” then bring those capabilities back in house. But even with the ebb and flow of the outsourcing movement, the trend is clear.  As companies become more networked and try to become more agile, they are less inclined to sustain large internal IT groups.

Similarly, the value proposition for cloud computing and the rapidly growing base of ‘software as a service’ is just too compelling, and the general satisfaction with internal IT capabilities too underwhelming. Why make huge capital investments in core systems, and carry the depreciation, maintenance and operational costs when I can ‘rent’ these and ‘pay by the drink’? Just as application packages have tended to supplant custom software development, software as a service is tending to supplant applications packages. As more computing moves to mobile, costly application packages become relatively inexpensive (or at least, value priced) “apps.” And the key issue with emerging computing models such as cloud and mobile is that they do not necessarily depend upon a permanent, in-house IT department.

The Ebb and Flow of Centralization and Decentralization

Organizational models tend to go through cycles of centralization and decentralization. There is always a tension inherent in finding the proper balance between the efficiency and scale of centralized, shared capability models and the responsiveness and customer-intimacy of decentralized models. This tension is never resolved – it is simply held in some sort of uncomfortable balance until the forces on one side outweigh the forces on the other side. This imbalance is often triggered by changing market conditions or by other disruptive forces such as new technologies.

The Mainframe Era – Centralization Rides High!

We’ve seen this through many cycles of technology shifts and their impact on IT organizational models. Back in the early days of the mainframe computer (early 1960s) virtually all IT professionals either worked for vendors/solution providers or worked in a centralized IT group.  (Back then it was typically called Data Processing.)

The Minicomputer Era – Departmental Computing Catches On!

With the advent of the minicomputer in the mid-1960′s, so-called “department computing” came of age, sometimes with the blessing of central IT groups, but often behind their backs.

Enter the Personal Computer – Departmental Computing Evolves into Decentralization of IT

As minicomputers gave way to personal computers and with IBM‘s launch of the IBM PC in the early 1980′s, the genie was further out of the bottle and the swing to what was euphemistically referred to as “distributed computing” was all but unstoppable. IT was becoming decentralized!

Inevitably, cracks in the distributed computing wall quickly appeared as users tackled issues such as mainframe connectivity and enterprise data management, and wrestled with the practical realities of back-up, security, integrity and privacy.

The Realities and Complexity of Enterprise Computing Surface – Centralization of IT Makes a Comeback – Sort Of!

By the early 1990′s the pendulum had begun to swing back to centralization. It seemed on the face of it that the old guard of the central IT group had returned in force.  But look under the covers, and what you see is not simply a return to the monolithic central IT group.  The new IT operating models had novel features such as:

  • Business-IT governance boards that moved ownership of prioritization and, in the best cases, value realization out to the business.
  • Business relationship managers bridging between the IT organization and business groups.
  • Business and Enterprise Architects focused on Business Operating Models and process management.
  • Sourcing and Vendor Management Groups.
  • Security and Privacy Groups reporting to senior business executives, embracing IT but not limited to it.

In other words, the centralized IT model of the early 1960′s had given way to a hybrid model that sought a more even-handed balance between local and global computing models. With the ascendance of cloud and mobile computing and the rise of global sourcing, I believe we are on our way to a new generation of computing model.

The Emerging IT Operating Model

I think it’s important to think of an IT Operating Model as an enterprise-wide construct – i.e., an IT organization is but one component. Many more IT functions are being distributed and dispersed – witness the so-called rise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Here, functions that were performed by a central IT group are being performed by the business individual.  And this move towards ‘self-service’ and ‘business embedded’ functions will only expand with emerging technology. As such, we can think about IT Operating Model components as comprising centralized, decentralized and hybrid components. These might fall along the following lines:

Centralized Capabilities: Shared IT Services; Value Proposition = Standardization, Operational Excellence

  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Enterprise Shared Infrastructure
  • Enterprise Shared Solutions
  • Security and Privacy
  • Sourcing and Vendor Management

Decentralized Capabilities: Business-dedicated IT Services; Value Proposition = Customer Intimacy, Innovation)

  • Business Architecture
  • Local and Departmental Solutions
  • Business Analytics

Hybrid Capabilities: Networked IT Services, Communities of Practice; Value Proposition = Integration, Shared Learning

  • Business-IT governance/value realization boards
  • Innovation Centers
  • Organizational Development and Change Leadership Centers
  • Business Relationship and Sourcing Management
  • Data Visualization
  • Integration
  • Process Management

Why This Is Good News for the IT Profession

I will explore some of the implications of this shift for the IT profession in a future post, but by and large, given the many ways that I’ve seen IT professionals trapped in the past by their employers, I’d say the changes we are experiencing, while painful, will be beneficial at many levels.

 

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When Everything Becomes a Service – Does ITIL Help or Hurt?


services-13For many years I’ve had an interest in the disciplines of Product Management and Service Management. These disciplines have been generally lacking in IT shops, though that is changing. Frameworks such as ITIL and standards such as ISO/IEC 20000 are helping sensitize IT professionals to Service Management, and methods such as Agile Development and Scrum are sensitizing IT professionals to the role of Product Owner, if not to the disciplines of Product Management.

However, my interest has been strengthened since reading the remarkable book, The Connected Company by Dave Gray with Thomas Vander Wal. Dave and Thomas have awakened me to a fact that I was subliminally aware of, but have reinforced for me why this is happening now. They have also drawn out for me some implications and subtleties I had not considered when thinking about the Service Revolution.

Everything is Becoming a Service

As the authors suggest:

Services cannot be designed and manufactured in isolation, like products. They are co-created with customers and are interdependent with wider service networks and clusters.”

They point out that most companies today have been finely tuned to “produce high volumes of consistent, standard outputs, with great efficiency and low cost.” Even some so-called ‘services’ are in reality “factory-style processes that treat people as if they were products moving through a production line.”

The Customer’s Experience of a Service is Key!

A product is largely experienced as it was manufactured. We may have subjective reactions to the product, but it does not change, other than through built in features. Services, however, change as they are experienced. This means that services cannot be delivered simply through efficient and operationally excellent processes. Services demand a ‘customer intimate’ delivery model that adapts to the ways the service is co-created by the customer and optimizes the customer experience.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Standards and Frameworks Such as ITIL

My esteemed colleague at BRM Institute, Dr. Aleksandr Zhuk, just posted a wonderful short post titled “BRM Role and Service: ITIL Dyad Revisited.” As an officially certified ITIL Expert, ‘he knows what of he speaks’, as they say. Please check out his post – and tell us both what you think, and how these observations resonate with your own experiences.

 

Graphic courtesy of Augustedge

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IT Organization Circa 2017 – 5 Year Countdown (Part 1)


countdown5When I launched this blog on September 21, 2007, my opening post declared:

I’ve named this blog “IT Organization Circa 2017″ in an attempt to position the domain of interest – what will the IT Organization inside businesses, governments and other organized entities look like in 10 years (2017) and how did they get there?”

I went on to explain that I’d picked 2017 as it was 10 years from my first post – a time-frame that seemed to allow a high degree of change, but that I would (statistically, and hopefully) be around to see.

So, with 5 years to go, here are some musings on IT Organization Circa 2017, with thanks to my co-founders at Business Relationship Management Institute, Aaron Barnes and Dr. Aleksandr Zhuk with whom I’ve been noodling on the subject.

To set this up, we need to consider the major disruptive forces acting on the IT organization today:

Let’s take each of these disruptive forces and delve into them.

IT Organizational Disappointment

There’s a general (though not universal) sense of disappointment with IT! We used to hear, “It costs too much and delivers too little value!” Nowadays, we are more likely to hear, “It takes too long!” When the competitive landscape can change almost overnight and when technology creates opportunities to reinvent products, services and business models just as quickly, it usually seems to be the IT organization that’s the bottleneck. Typically,

  1. It takes the IT organization time to examine a need or opportunity.
  2. It often feels to the business executive that the examination of a given need or opportunity is an exercise in bureaucracy – too many hoops and hurdles to go through with few of them, if any, adding value.
  3. If the request does make it through the hurdles before the need has gone away, there’s often a lengthy ‘waiting period’ while resources are freed up – the dreaded so-called ‘backlog’.
  4. Sometimes the original simple request somehow morphs into a major deal, as other business needs are piled on, and legacy issues rear their ugly heads.

To get beyond these clichéd perceptions, some IT organizations are now on their 3rd or 4th ‘transformation’ comprising activities such as retooling, re-skilling, reorganizing, leaning out processes, and adopting standards frameworks such as ITIL and COBIT. While these efforts may well be necessary, many are not cleanly executed, taking 2-3 years to bring benefits, and in the meantime creating more disruption for the business customer.

So, it hurts me to say it, and many of my readers may resent it, but the truth is that more often than not, IT organizations are seen as barriers to business progress with information and IT, rather than the enablers they would like to see.

Cloud Computing

Despite some well-publicized snafus, Cloud Computing is making significant inroads just about everywhere. Sometimes, the shift to the cloud is around very small services – document sharing, or storage of large files such as videos, and so on. Other times, the shift is broad based and significant – moving supply chain or customer relationship management processes to the cloud, for example. Either way, the cloud offers an easy way to try something without a significant capital investment or running through the corporate maze of product and vendor certifications and contracting. And, at least in theory, if not in practice, cloud solutions feel to non-IT people as something they understand and can procure and deploy without IT assistance. In fact, it’s often something they are already using at home with great success. This represents a huge ‘bypass’ to the traditional IT organization.

Many companies today are catching on to “big data” and the power of analytics applied to vast sources of data, such as sentiment analysis of social media or identification of consumer purchasing patterns based upon correlations that had not been previously recognized. Big data often requires massively parallel software running on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers – something that is beyond the limits of most corporate data centers, but achievable through Cloud Computing – creating yet another entry point that can bypass the IT organization.

Add the attractiveness of the Cloud Computing value proposition and perceived ease of doing business to the sense of IT organizational disappointment mentioned about, and you have an interesting recipe for a revolution!

Consumerization of IT

This, with its sister movement towards mobile everything is a powerful disruptive force! People are increasingly able to chose their own devices – smart phones, laptop computers, tablet computers, and so on. These devices come with a vast available library of ‘Apps’ to do just about anything you might need. And if you need something for your business that does not yet exist, there’s a universe of willing, inexpensive developers out there who’d be delighted to develop the App for you and your business!

This trend is not going away – to the contrary is is the beginning of a new sense of empowerment – everyone is their own IT department. It’s probably wrong to call this a “slippery slope” which implies a falling down at some point, but it certainly marks a shift in the relationship between business people and their technology – a shift in which the IT professional may have moved from a faceless body in the corporate IT department to a slick, service-oriented professional in the local phone store. (Reality note here – my daughter’s phone stopped working last week and she revealed to me her loathing of having to visit the phone store! She said, “The phone store has become the modern day equivalent of the automobile dealership!”)

Global Sourcing

While not a panacea, and while many companies experience a painful transition to various flavors of outsourcing, most companies have tried it at some level, and plan to do more of it! For all its challenges, a well-executed global sourcing arrangement (or set of arrangements) can help an IT organization flex with changing business demand – both in terms of capacity (the ability to handle more or fewer projects as demand dictates) and capability – the ability to take on work for which the inhouse resources may not have the necessary skills or experience.

Who Is Engaging these Alternate Sources?

Increasingly, these alternate sources (namely, Cloud Computing, Global Sourcing, Consumer IT, Apps) are being engaged directly by the business with minimal to no reference to the IT organization.

So, What’s Does the IT Organization Look Like Circa 2017

I’ll leave you all to ponder on these disruptive forces for a week or so, and then I’ll provide my take on the future of the IT organization. Meanwhile, comments appreciated and encouraged!

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Strong Business-IT Relationships Begin with Strong Communications


communication

(This post first appeared on the Business Relationship Management Institute blog.  Please visit the BRMI website for more information about this new resource.)

We learn a great deal about managing business-IT relationships  from our work and the people we work with. If our eyes and ears are open, we can also learn a lot from our personal lives. I’ve just returned from a short scuba diving vacation where one of the fundamental disciplines of Business Relationship Management was reinforced for me.

Looking for a New Service Provider – The Power of First Impressions

Every year around this time my wife and I head for Cozumel, Mexico. For me, this is all about 1 week’s scuba diving – a hobby (passion?) I’ve had for many years, and one of my favorite ways to relax and refresh. This was the 10th year of diving on the Cozumel reef system — the second largest reef system in the world.

I never tire of Cozumel, but last year, a diver I met told me about the amazing cenotes — large underwater caverns linked by tunnels that travel for miles inland. These are found on the Yucatán Peninsula, a 30-minute ferry ride from the island of Cozumel to the mainland. A unique characteristic of some cenotes is that although they are filled with fresh water, they are above sea level. This means that if you enter them and are able to access depths below sea level, the fresh water changes to sea water. Where the fresh and salt water meet is a phenomenon known as a halocline. A halocline creates some very strange phenomena for a diver — a sudden change in temperature and buoyancy, and stunning visual effects.  (For a great little YouTube video of the effects, see here.)

Anyway, I needed to find a highly qualified and licensed guide to take me to a cenote. Although I’m an experienced diver, I am not cave certified, so I did not want to go with just any bozo with a wetsuit and an ad in the yellow pages. Thanks to the wonderful world we live in, it did not take long to find a cenote guide who was highly recommended on sites such as TripAdvisor. I was pretty confident I’d found a suitable guide based on this research, but when I emailed him, my confidence factor began to increase.

The Greatest Danger With Communication is the Illusion That It’s Taken Place!

I credit Dan Appleton, a data modeling guru I had the pleasure to share a speaking platform many years ago with the wonderful quote in the headline above. One reason why my confidence in the dive guide increased was the quality of his initial communication. He laid out the options clearly. He explained everything by raising, then answering some key questions. For example, “Mr. Merlyn, if you are new to the cenotes, I recommend we go to Taj Mahaal or Chac Mool. Why do I recommend those? Because…”  He went on, “I recommend you take the 7am ferry. I know that’s very early to be getting up while on vacation, so why do I recommend such an early start? Because…”  And so it went. My follow-up questions were always responded to within 8 hours, and always with great clarity. I booked him.

As the trip approached, he communicated again, going back over the logistics, arrangements, and what I should expect. He even told me about the other diver that would be joining us. Every arrangement was validated and all opportunities for misunderstanding were reduced or eliminated. He said he’d meet me off the ferry — and not only did he do so on time, but he also recognized and approached me from among the several hundred other ferry passengers. (He’d seen an old photo of me from my scuba dive certification which he’d insisted on seeing before he’d confirm the reservation.)

After the trip, I went back to TripAdvisor to write my own review, and found myself re-reading the 60 or so reviews he already had out there — and nearly every one of them commented on his superb communications.

When your life is in someone’s hands, you need a very high level of trust and confidence. As a business executive, when your IT investment and competitive differentiation are in your Business Relationship Manager’s hands, you also need a very high level of trust and confidence. How you communicate with your business partner is key to building and sustaining that trust over time.

[For those interested, the other diver on this trip, Bruno, shot a video you can find here. Alex Mata, the dive guide is the guy with 2 air tanks, always leading the way. The diver you can see is me. Bruno was behind me, wielding the video camera and huge array of lights! We enter the halocline about 2:51 minutes into the video, though 3:57 and you can see the strange visual effects — quite disorienting! Fortunately, his superb pre-dive briefing had warned us to expect that he'd become all but invisible at the halocline, and instructed us to each swim to a different side of him so as to have some forward visibility. From 4:08 on you can see some nice shell fossils, stalactites and stalagmites.]

 

 

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Digital Business and the Fate of the IT Organization


Social-MediaInformationWeek just published an excellent article titled “Goodbye IT, Hello Digital Business.” The article presents a compelling case for “Digital Business” as a lens into what the more information and IT-savvy companies are doing. It presents some good case studies from Digital Business leaders in the retail industry. It also presents some interesting statistics on emerging platforms for building customer ties, on the main opportunities for today’s CIOs and how IT teams are interacting directly with customers.

Are IT Organizations Asleep at the Digital Switch?

I found the statistics InformationWeek presented as both believable based on my consulting experience, and disturbing! The numbers reinforce the facts that:

  • The majority of IT organizational focus and energy continues to be consumed by legacy solutions, keeping the metaphorical “lights on and trains running on time.”
  • The IT organization typically does not play a major role in business innovation.
  • The IT organization is slow to enter the world of mobile computing.
  • Many IT staff don’t have the customer-facing skills and business knowledge to play in the emerging Digital Business space.

The statistics indicate a move in the right direction – no surprise there.  But the shift is slow – rewarding the early movers with the advantage of a differentiated experience for their customers and for their employees – especially for those IT staff that are involved in these frontier applications. The early movers, through business experimentation and studying success stories are building their digital capabilities.

Accelerating the Shift

Exploiting Digital Business is not just about innovation, agile channels, mobile computing and social media – it has profound implications for the IT organization and its context – the IT Operating Model. I’ve posted before about how IT Operating Models must change for what I called Enterprise 2.0 – aka, Digital Business.  (See here and here.)

Some companies are accelerating the shift through IT Transformation programs – reorganizing, rethinking IT processes and value streams, re-skilling the IT organization and, in some cases, radical outsourcing initiatives. Other are using ‘skunkworks’ approaches to learn and build credibility through early business experiments. Some have the most progressive and promising Digital Business initiatives happening in the shadows – outside the purview of their IT organizations. I find that to be a dreadful indictment of the IT leadership! If that is not a wake-up call for a new CIO, I don’t know what is!

Digital Business is Literally Business-IT Convergence

I’ve posted before on the concept of Business-IT Convergence. In many respects, Digital Business is all about the convergence of IT with the business – business products and services become digital, and IT capabilities – historically located in an IT organization – converge with business capabilities. Some IT professionals and leaders will see this as very threatening. Others will see it as the solution to many perennial problems associated with the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ of the business-IT relationship.

What do you think? How is Digital Business impacting your work life?

Image source courtesy of Devicix

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Announcing the Business Relationship Management Institute!


BRMII’m excited to announce that I’ve joined forces with a couple of colleagues to begin a new venture – The Business Relationship Management Institute (BRMI). BRMI is a not-for-profit association for Business Relationship Management Professionals, providing professional training and certification, and facilitating exchange of knowledge and leading practices. My role as Principal with The Merlyn Group, my consulting firm and provider of the Symcordia® Knowledge Management and Collaboration platform, and my role as co-founder of Formicio in Europe will continue (yes, I’ve been a busy lad in my semi-retirement!)

Empowering the Emerging Business Relationship Management Role

Regular readers will be aware that Business Relationship Management (BRM) has been a recurring topic in this blog. It’s a topic I’ve been passionate about since the early 1990′s when a 3-year, longitudinal multi-company research study I was leading at Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation surfaced the emerging BRM role as a key business-IT alignment mechanism. Those early beginnings culminate (or, at least kick off a new chapter) in the formation of the BRMI this week. Founded as a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit corporation, this represents an opportunity to connect even more deeply with the BRM community, and, corny as it may sound, ‘give back’ to that community and to the IT profession in the twilight years of my career.

How Did the Business Relationship Management Institute Come About?

It is said that the best stories narrate themselves. Founding Business Relationship Management Institute is just such a story. The three BRMI co-founders embarked on the journey to establish the Institute, years before we met each other.

I have been involved in the BRM profession since 1995, when I collaborated with professors from Oxford and Cranfield Universities in the United Kingdom and Nanyang University in Singapore to develop and teach a BRM program for a global oil company. I’ve continued to develop and lead training and development programs for BRMs and consult extensively on this subject via The Merlyn Group.

In 2010, Aaron Barnes, a senior BRM, who built and was leading a successful team of BRMs at a major big box retailer, felt the need for a forum for professional BRMs to share knowledge and develop their competencies. In January, 2011, Aaron formed the Professional Business Relationship Managers (PBRM) group on LinkedIn thus establishing a foundation for what would eventually evolve into the first official BRMI global community.

In late 2011, just as Aaron invited me to co-moderate the rapidly growing LinkedIn group, Dr. Aleksandr Zhuk, an expert technologist, professor, with years of experience in teaching online, and a fellow member of PBRM LinkedIn group, also saw the desperate need for a widely available BRM training and certification. Connecting the dots, Aleksandr conceived of a global professional organization to provide training, certification and serve all other needs of the rapidly growing BRM community. Business Relationship Management Institute was born.

In January 2013, Aaron invited Aleksandr to join us as co-moderator of PBRM group and all three of us met, for the first time, to exchange ideas on how to best serve the BRM community. As soon as Aleksandr brought up the idea of Business Relationship Management Institute, we recognized that each of us has already been working toward making it real. The time has come to join our forces to realize our shared vision for BRMI—a not-for-profit organization dedicated to serving the needs and protecting the interests of the global BRM community.

BRMI Logo

BRMI tri-petal, is a registered trademark of Business Relationship Management Institute.  The tri-petal symbolizes a well-balanced unity among the business relationship manager, the service provider, and the business partner.

Our Position on the BRM Role

In 2011, ITIL® and ISO/IEC 20000 standard for IT Service Management formalized the existence of a dedicated Business Relationship Manager (BRM) role and corresponding process, recognizing the need for BRM as a new best practice and IT Service Management standard requirement. According to ITIL®:

The role of the business relationship manager (BRM) was established to execute certain customer-facing activities in various processes, such as service level management. However, as the role matured it became clear that there was a discernible process to support the role…The purpose of the business relationship management process is two-fold:

  • Establish and maintain a business relationship between the service provider and the customer based on understanding the customer and their business needs.
  • Identify customer needs and ensure that the service provider is also able to meet these needs as business needs change over time and between circumstances.

ISO/IEC 20000 standard for IT Service Management adds that:

For each customer, the service provider shall have a designated individual [BRM] who is responsible for managing the customer relationship and customer satisfaction.”2 According to ISO/IEC 20000-2:2012, to be effective, “The BRM process should ensure that mechanisms are established to manage the relationship between the service provider and customer(s).”

At BRMI, we fully recognize the importance of structured well-tuned processes and agree with ITIL® definition of the two key functions fulfilled by the BRM. We also believe that ISO/IEC 20000 standard’s requirement for having a dedicated BRM for each business customer provides a solid guideline for establishing a well-balanced effective relationship between a business customer and a service provider with the BRM acting as advocate for the customer.

Yet, many years of our collective experience in the field also suggest that effective business relationship management is as much, if not more, about strategic-level leadership as it is about effective processes. Being a successful BRM means much more than periodically interfacing with business stakeholders and IT process owners by means of a process—regardless of how well-tuned this process might be.  An effective business relationship manager is, by definition, a master of building working strategic-level relationships, one who possesses all the interpersonal and business skills this entails.  Effective BRMs carry real strategic weight in their organizations. Therefore, the BRMs who deliver maximum business value hold senior management positions placed in well-balanced alignment with senior business and IT executives.

At BRMI, we also believe that, like anything else in the age of turbulent changes, the BRM role is not static—it evolves. Therefore, the BRM role is best approached through a maturity perspective—both the maturity of business demand for IT services and products, with regard to its ability to turn IT investments into realized business value, and the maturity of IT service provider and its ability to fulfill evolving business needs. Maturity of business demand and IT supply affect the BRM role and its ability to deliver results.

We will be exploring these viewpoints, and many other aspects of the BRM role through the BRMI blog. We’ll also develop an evolving “blog roll” of sites we believe should be in every BRMs reading list. We hope you will all join with us on the BRMI site in this global conversation about the emerging and evolving role of the Business Relationship Manager!

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Driving Business-IT Convergence – The Evolving Role of the Business Relationship Manager (Part 2 of 2)


cloudIn Part 1 of this 2-part series I defined the BRM role – with the caveat that it is by no means standardized.  In fact, as far as IT Service Management standards such as ITIL® and ISO/IEC 20000 are formalizing the existence of the Business Relationship Manager (BRM) role and corresponding process as a new best practice, they are selling the role short in terms of its potential strategic impact to business.  I went on to describe the typical BRM in terms of their purposes, goals, responsibilities and accountabilities.  To the title of this post, I introduced the shift from business-IT Alignment to Convergence and why this is so important as every aspect of business strategy and operations is increasingly dependent upon information and IT.   Today, the BRM operates at the leading edge of the convergence movement – a movement being accelerated by the ‘consumerization of IT‘, digitization of everything, and by the “Internet of Things.”

In part 2 of this 2-part series, I’d like to discuss needed BRM competencies, how the BRM role changes over time with increasing maturity (of both the BRM and her business partner) and how the way that the BRM engages with the business partner shifts the nature of the relationship from one of order taker to that of strategic partner.

Typical Competencies Required of the BRM

Drives Value Realization

This might be the most important competency for a BRM.  It includes knowing how to surface, clarify and promote the best value-delivering opportunities for IT investments and assets, and how to ensure that these actually deliver on their promised value – delivered in ways that are felt and seen.  This requires skills in Program Management (with implied Project Management skills), Portfolio Management, influence, persuasion, communication, finance and organizational change.

Understands Business Environment

Driving value realization also requires a great understanding of the business, its ecosystem and its competitive landscape.  Successful BRMs have a keen sense of the top strategic business and IT issues – both short and long term, and how these issues relate to initiatives in their industry.  In short, they understand the “business of the business.”  They are viewed by business leaders as a proactive partner in finding the right solutions to business needs and not as a mere “order takers” for IT services.

Aligns IT with the Business

First, let me say that some readers will fume at the subheading.  “IT and the Business are one and the same!” they shout.  While this may reflect a laudable perspective (and one that will gradually materialize as IT-business convergence takes place) it is rarely, if ever, the case today.  Unless your business is information technology, then “business” is where profits are generated, and IT organizations work in support of that.

With that digression out of the way, alignment can be a tricky concept, and in some respects sounds inconsistent with my argument for business-IT convergence.  But alignment represents the necessary table stakes – business leaders and IT leaders need to be ‘on the same page’ in terms of mission, vision, values and goals for both IT and the business – and how these relate to each other.  Mismatches in any of these can spell disaster to the ability to build and sustain value-producing business-IT relationships, let alone converge business and IT capabilities.

Successful BRMs work closely with business leaders to predict demand for IT services and to manage that demand.  They take the lead in highlighting competing objectives.  They are effective at managing the flow of demand through negotiations and seek to iron out demand/supply disconnects between IT and business leaders.  Most important, they constantly seek ways to foster convergence – empowering business leaders – teaching them to fish, as it were, rather than always fish for them!

Manages Relationships

Any role with the word “relationship” in the title has to imply a high level of competence at creating, sustaining and developing strong relationships among stakeholders – especially between business units and the IT groups that support them.  Relationship skills do not come naturally, and are not easily developed in some people.  Effective BRMs are able to build and maintain relationships with senior IT and business leaders.  They are seen as a value-added participant in strategic business-level discussions (i.e., worthy of a “seat at the table”).  Successful BRMs are not shy in speaking up when the demand for IT services outpaces supply ability or capacity.

Manages Organizational Change

Another tough set of skills and behaviors to master!  This requires deep understanding of the organizational levers for making change (people, process, and technology) and how IT and business strategies translate into practical plans of action for change.

The successful facilitator of change engages in discussion with IT and business leaders on the intended and unintended consequences of change, and is willing to confront senior executive sponsors if they are not “walking the talk” and proactively leading the change themselves.  They understand the total cost – both technical and human – of end-to-end implementation.  They can surface the hidden costs and potential obstacles that could derail the change.

They have the ability to identify key stakeholders at the outset of a project, to assign decision-making roles, and ultimately hold leaders accountable for results.  They think and act in terms of outcomes, not deliverables.

Manages Projects and Programs

Successful BRMs typically have several years of project and, ideally, program management experience under their belts.  They have demonstrated competency in project management fundamentals and in the complexities of program management. They demonstrate the ability to get things done through others, even though they may lack ultimate authority.

Effective Communication

Successful BRMs are recognized for their ability to listen, speak, write and communicate clearly and effectively. They demonstrate the ability to negotiate win-win, or at least buy-in, in situations where there are opposing viewpoints.  They are effective at influencing those that they hold no real power over.  They have the ability to recognize and surface disconnects between IT and business leaders and are able to resolve problems through difficult confrontations.

Financial Savvy

Successful BRMs have good knowledge of finance and accounting – they know their ROIs from their NPVs and know how to build a business case that is compelling.  They understand Portfolio Management and have at least basic knowledge of Options theory.  They understand the financial drivers of the business and the drivers of the industry within which the company operates.

The BRM Maturity Journey

BRM Maturity - The Merlyn Group

The graphic above shows how the quality of the Business Partner experience grows and the BRMs maturity increases.

Ad Hoc Relationship

At the lowest maturity level, the BRM role has typically not been formalized.  As such it is being handled in an ad hoc way – the ‘squeaky wheel’ Business Partner gets the most attention.  Or, in some cases, the least demanding Business Partner, regardless of their potential to use IT for high value purposes get the most attention.

Order Taker Relationship

I see this most frequently. Typically, IT supply has been badly broken and the business-IT relationship is hostile, so the BRM role is introduced to “patch things up!”  The BRM, in her ignorance, believes the best way to improve the relationship is to say “yes” to any and all business demands.  This is nearly always a losing proposition.  IT can’t meet the demand, and if they did, there’s little to no business value to be gained.

Advisor

This is a more constructive and productive relationship, where the Business Partner sees the BRM as an advisor.  By this time, there has usually been some formalization of the BRM role and its rules of engagement.  There’s also been some level of training for the BRM – or at least some thought put into the selection of people for the role.

Strategic Partner

The ‘Holy Grail’ of BRM implementations.  This should be the clear ambition – one that is understood and shared by the BRM and her Business Partner – with the recognition that you aren’t a Strategic Partner because you say you are, or because you want to be.  You reach that elevated position because you’ve earned it – and because your Business Partner sees you that way.

IT Matures as the BRM Role Matures

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the BRM role does not act in isolation.  It is inextricably linked to IT supply.  If IT supply is broken, the BRM role will be limited, and might not even make it to Order Taker.  This, from my experience, is a common situation.  Things are bad, so the BRM role is introduced.  Unless supply improves, the BRM is doomed to failure – and may actually make things worse.  Promises are made and expectations set that cannot be kept.  On top of lousy supply, the BRM is seen by the business partner as ‘overhead’ – yet more evidence that the IT team is clueless, always adding cost without demonstrating value!

To reach the Holy Grail of Strategic Partner, IT supply has to be excellent – both with steady state services (networks, email, help desk, etc.) and with solution delivery (projects and programs).  The “strategic” BRM needs IT supply to work flawlessly.  IT supply needs the BRM to suppress low value demand while stimulating demand that delivers real business value.  That way, everyone is happy and a virtuous cycle is sustained.

Image courtesy of TradeArabia

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Driving Business-IT Convergence – The Evolving Role of the Business Relationship Manager (Part 1 of 2)


WhitePaperCoverI’m seeing a surge of interest in the emerging role of the Business Relationship Manager (BRM) as a key position that sits between a shared services organization (most frequently IT) and its business partner.  This is an internal role that should not be confused with the similarly titled externally-facing role common in banks and financial services organizations. I have referenced the BRM role many times over the last 6 years, and covered the topic at some length in January (see ITIL and the Business Relationship Manager: Avoiding the Performance Trap and Design Thinking and Emerging IT Roles.)  Recently, I’ve been getting an inbox full of questions about the role, so I decided to satisfy that interest with a new 2-part post looking at how the role is evolving.

Defining the BRM Role

The BRM role is by no means ‘standardized’, even as the IT Service Management movement tries to place it in its standards as a rather tactical position, mostly focused on steady-state IT services.  High quality steady-state services are certainly an important aspect for any IT organization – table stakes, if you will, for getting a “seat at the business table”.  (Please excuse the double table metaphor!)  But once the business partner experiences the BRM as negotiator for and arbiter of services, service levels and the like, they are unlikely to invite that BRM to the next strategy offsite to help figure out how the business strategy should address increasing business digitization, for example!

We see common variations in BRM:

  • Seniority – and the level of business executive with whom the BRM partners.
  • Scope – and the number of business unit executives and managers the BRM works with.
  • Purpose – especially in the balance of the BRM focus between supply and demand.
  • Title (e.g., Business Partner Director, Account Manager, Client Relationship Manager, IT Business Partner, Business IT Partner, etc.)
  • ‘Supply side’ focus (i.e, many BRMs represent the IT organization, some represent HR, Finance, and so on.  A small number represent multiple “shared services”.)
  • ‘Demand side’ focus (e.g., Line of Business, geographic region, major business process, corporate functions, etc.)
  • Size of the BRMs team – from sole practitioner to leader of a team of 8 or 9.

The Typical BRM

While typical, as with averages, can be misleading, the most common model for the BRM includes:

  • The BRM sits at the intersection of IT and its business partner – representing the business partner(s) to IT and IT to the business partner(s).
  • The BRM stimulates, surfaces and shapes business demand for IT projects, services, capabilities and investments in order to maximize their business value.  This means taking a proactive role in educating the business partner, suppressing demand for low value activities while stimulating demand for high value activities.
  • Ideally, the BRM is a member of both business and IT leadership teams, contributing to both business and strategy and planning, identifying how information and IT can support and advance business objectives, and helping translate demand into supply.
  • The BRM partners with appropriate supply resources to ensure supply-demand alignment.
  • The BRM helps create project and program charters.
  • The BRM oversees initiatives and helps manage business process change to ensure that the value predicted by a business case is actually realized.
  • The BRM monitors business partner satisfaction and facilitates continuous improvement in the business partner experience with IT (or HR, etc.)
  • To accomplish all the above, the BRM typically manages a small team comprising “junior BRMs”, business analysts and other specialized resources required to ensure an effective business-IT relationship.

If that sounds like a lot of responsibility, it is!  In fact, at their best, IT BRMs are thought of as “mini-CIOs” and are often on a succession path to the CIO position.

BRM Responsibilities

Common responsibilities include:

  • Active member of both the business partner and IT leadership teams.
  • Joint accountability (with the business partner) for business case development and value realization.
  • Accountable for development and execution of the business partner IT investment portfolio.
  • Partnering with the IT Solution Delivery Organizations to manage expectations and ensure efficient and effective delivery of all IT services.
  • Accountable for business partner awareness of systems security requirements and responsibilities.
  • Orchestrating key roles on behalf of their business partner (e.g., Project Manager, Enterprise Architect, Business Analyst).
  • The BRM acts as a broker for needed resources and capabilities (e.g., Vendor Management, Service Management, Organization Development).

From Alignment to Convergence

I’ve posted on this important concept before – with all due credit to Professor James Cash, Harvard Business School, with whom I helped design and deliver a relationship manager development program some years back.  He first helped me to the insight that alignment was no longer sufficient – CIOs needed to recognize that business and IT were converging as every aspect of business strategy and operations was increasingly dependent upon information and IT.  Today, it is largely the BRM who operates at the leading edge of the convergence movement – a movement being accelerated by the ‘consumerization of IT’.

Teaser for Part 2

I’ll pick up in Part 2 of this 2-part series with examples of needed BRM competencies, a discussion of how the BRM role changes over time with increasing maturity (of both the BRM and her business partner) and how the way that the BRM engages with the business partner shifts the relationship from one of order taker to that of strategic partner.

Graphic courtesy of Acre Resources Limited

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ITIL and the Business Relationship Manager: Avoiding the Performance Trap!


order-taker

I have good news, and I have bad news!

The Good News…

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 2011 edition and the ISO/IEC 20000 standard for IT Service Management formalized the existence of the Business Relationship Manager (BRM) role and corresponding Business Relationship Management process as a new best practice and international IT Service Management standard requirement.  This is good – for professional BRMs around the world, for the IT profession in general, and for improving the business return on IT investments, as technology becomes ever more deeply embedded in business processes.

The Bad News…

(And I know I will get hate mail and lose readership for saying this, but…) As defined by ITIL, the BRM role comes off as somewhat tactical – not something to get business leaders salivating over their new partnership with IT, nor hungry to innovate business products and services!  Let me be clear – the ITIL vision of BRM is necessary – but from my experience, it is insufficient to drive real business value beyond a certain point.  It will help an IT organization with poor service quality get better.  But it will not help an IT organization with good service quality to excite and delight their customers with the new business capabilities that are enabled by information and information technology!

Business Relationship Manager Role

I’ve posted extensively on this role in the past – the BRM is a bridge between the IT organization and its business clients (just as a good CIO is a bridge between the IT organization and corporate leadership).  As such, it both represents the business clients to IT, and IT to the business clients.  This role has surfaced over the last 10 years or so and Gartner predicts that the fraction of IT personnel dedicated to Relationship Management and Change Leadership functions will reach as much as 15% by the end of 2013 and grow up to 20% by 2016.  LinkedIn hosts two groups dedicated to the BRM role.  One group – IT Business Relationship Management - currently boasts over 1,800 members.  The other group, Professional Business Relationship Managers currently has over 2,600 members!  (In the interests of full disclosure, I co-manage the latter group.)

I’ve conducted a significant amount of consulting, assessment and training in the BRM space, including designing and leading BRM training and development programs for global companies with over 100 BRMs (as well as for those with fewer than 5 BRMs).  From that experience, and from my ongoing activity on the LinkedIn groups, I’ve seen two distinct ‘flavors’ of BRM – “Tactical” and “Strategic.”

BRM and Business-IT Maturity

To help understand “tactical” and “strategic” BRMs and how they’ve come to be, I’ll use my Business-IT Maturity Model (BITMM).  I’ve posted at length about the BITMM.  In its simplest form (see graphic below) the model represents both business demand maturity (highlighted in red to the left of the learning curve) and IT supply maturity (highlighted in blue to the right of the curve. These never move completely in tandem – sometimes demand is slightly ahead of supply, other times it is slightly behind.  If demand and supply get too far out of whack, there’s usually a change of CIO (or a turnover of the IT organization to an outsourcer!)

Slide1

The number of maturity levels is arbritary, but for simplicity let’s use three – business efficiency, business effectiveness and business transformation.  Where a company is at any point in time is a function of factors such as:

  • the industry it’s in
  • current business leadership
  • competitive and regulatory forces
  • quality of IT leadership
  • quality of service delivery

For example, the financial services industry tends to be highly information-intense, so is generally demonstrated higher business demand and IT supply maturity than say, manufacturing companies, which have traditionally been less dependent on information.  All that is changing, of course, as businesses and governments everywhere become increasingly digitized.

The ITIL Connection

Improving service delivery quality is where ITIL focuses.  According to its current owners (The APM Group Limited) ITIL is “the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world.”  Originally developed under the auspices of the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC), ITIL is becoming a popular approach to service management.  Often loosely, and occasionally rigorously followed, ITIL documents processes and practices for service management.  This focus on service management is crucially important in moving IT supply maturity up from low Level 1 to mid-Level 2.

The Tactical BRM

The graphic below crudely cuts the BITMM in half.  The lower half is what I refer to as the “tactical” BRM space – focused on business efficiency and effectiveness.  The conceptual dividing line between these spaces is important.  Around the mid-point of Level 2 maturity, the learning curve changes direction.  This is also a common “sticking point” (see my earlier posts on “sticking points”) where IT organizations often become trapped and their efforts at performance improvement taper off.  In some cases, they actually fall back in performance.

Slide2

So, in the pursuit of service management quality, the BRM has an important role, establishing a strong business relationship with the customer by understanding their business and customer outcomes.   But the focus is service management, as opposed to the strategic possibilities for IT capability to enable new or improved business products and services.  Service management applies most to ‘steady state’ IT services – not to transformational projects and programs on behalf of business units.

The Strategic BRM

The upper half of the BITMM is the “strategic” BRM space – focused on business effectiveness and transformation.  While an IT organization must be careful not to slip back on IT service quality and customer satisfaction, simply delivering ever-improving services will not transform IT into a respected, value-producing business partner. Sooner or later, IT service management efforts reach a point of diminishing returns. Something quite different is then needed to further improve the business return on IT assets and investments.  While the “Tactial BRM” tends to focus on IT supply management processes and activities, the “Strategic BRM” focuses on business demand management – stimulating, surfacing and shaping demand for services, activities and initiatives with the highest potential business value.  The “Strategic BRM” works closely with her business partner to ensure that IT investments and capabilities yield real business value.

Leverage the Standard Frameworks – But Don’t Get Stuck

The message here is that it’s ok to leverage standards and frameworks such as ITIL, COBIT and TOGAF – but essential to do so with intelligence!  They have their place – and a context for which they were intended – that often being UK government entities.  Nothing wrong with that, but it tends to be a context of control – not innovation.  Control can help you get from low Level 1 to mid-Level 2 – but not to Level 3.  What kind of IT capability does your business need – controlling or innovating?

Thoughts on a postcard, please!

Graphic courtesy of giffconstable.com

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Design Thinking and Emerging IT Roles


designthinking

This is the third and final part in a multi-part post inspired by Robert Pirsig’s masterwork, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  In Part 1 (titled “Reflections on ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ 38 Years Later “) I discussed the implications for IT professionals of Pirsig’s musings on ‘classic’ versus ‘romantic’ worldviews, and his struggle to resolve these.

In Part 2, (titled “Zen, Motorcycle Maintenance, Design Thinking and Information Technology”) I teed up my observation that this classic-romantic balanced approach is embodied in the “design thinking” movement, popularized by Tim Brown and Ideo and exemplified by companies as diverse as Apple, Proctor & Gamble, Herman Miller and GE.  I discussed why Design Thinking is becoming increasingly important to the IT profession.  Among the reasons for the rising importance of Design Thinking in IT:

  1. Thanks to the likes of SAP, Oracle, et al, and the growing base of cloud-based ‘applications as a service,’ most of the opportunities to improve or automate transactional business processes have been exploited.  Today, businesses are increasingly searching for product, service and business model innovation.
  2. As we accelerate the move from custom development to personal apps, reuse, and “mash-ups,” much more emphasis is placed on synthesis rather than analysis – leveraging widgets and components rather than coding solutions from scratch.

I will pick up in this final part where I closed Part 2, with a discussion of three roles that are key to instilling Design Thinking in an IT organization.

Key Roles for Design Thinking in IT

Achieving the classic-romantic balance in discovery and solutioning involves many IT roles, but there are three roles that I believe are key:

Roles – Not Necessarily Jobs!

Before we examine these roles and how they work together, I want to emphasize I am talking about roles, as opposed to jobs.   The distinction is important in that the notion of organizing around roles imparts flexibility and variety for a workforce, whereas jobs tend to constrain people in boundaries defined in job descriptions.  An individual typically will hold only one job, but may fill multiple roles.  For example, my job is Principal in a consulting firm.  In some engagements, I am the Engagement Lead.  In others, I might be a Subject Matter Expert.  In still others, I am the Client Relationship Officer.  Beyond engagements, I might be a Research Program Leader or a Research Associate.

Also, these roles are typically instantiated with all sorts of labels – rarely the label I’m using here.  For example, I’ve worked with Business Relationship Managers (BRM’s) who were called Business Partner Director, Account Manager, Client Relationship Manager, IT Business Partner, Business IT Partner, IT Demand and Account Manager, Client Engagement Director, and so on!  And the specific missions, visions and implementations of the BRM role has been as varied as their titles!

Nevertheless, let’s drill into these roles and how they relate to each other and to moving IT to more of a Design Thinking philosophy.

Business Relationship Manager

I’ve posted extensively on this role in the past – it’s the role that sits between the IT organization and its business clients.  As such, it both represents the business clients to IT, and IT to the business clients.  This role has surfaced over the last 10 years or so.  I don’t know what percentage of IT organizations have this role today, but as an indication, LinkedIn hosts 2 groups dedicated to the role.  One group – IT Business Relationship Management - currently boasts over 1,800 members.  The other group, Professional Business Relationship Managers currently has over 2,600 members!  (In the interests of full disclosure, I co-manage the latter group.)

As the bridge between the business and the IT organization(s), the BRM plays a key role in moving above and beyond the traditional “requirements analysis” to an approach to discovery and solutioning that is more:

  • collaborative
  • abductive
  • experimental
  • integrative
  • outside-in
  • human-centric
  • innovation-biased approach

As such, the BRM has to understand Design Thinking, and ensure that the qualities listed above are brought to the table and play together effectively and efficiently.  The BRM herself does not have to be expert in these qualities, but must be an effective “broker” ensuring that people with the needed competencies and incentives are at the table.  These competencies will often be found in the other two emerging roles – those of Enterprise Architect and Product Manager.

Enterprise Architect

As with BRM’s, Enterprise Architects (EA’s) come in all sorts of flavors with a variety of titles.  The major distinction I would make is with what are generally called IT Architects.  Enterprise Architects are clearly focused on the business, business models, major business processes, business-IT platforms and the ecosystem within which the business operates.  IT Architects, by contrast, are focused on the technologies, their standards and how they inter-operate.

Wikipedia defines Enterprise architecture (EA) as:

… the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.

Practitioners of EA call themselves enterprise architects. An enterprise architect is a person responsible for performing this complex analysis of business structure and processes and is often called upon to draw conclusions from the information collected. By producing this understanding, architects are attempting to address the goals of Enterprise Architecture: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Agility, and Durability.

As with BRM’s, the EA role has been growing in prominence over the last 10 years or so.  Typically, it is complementary to the more technical roles of IT Architect, Information Architect, and so on.  Also, as with BRM’s there is little that is ‘standardized’ about the EA role, and by many measures it is something of a stretch to use the term “profession” when talking about EA’s, in spite of the efforts of bodies such as The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF®), and my old friend, John Zachman and his Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architectures.

Again, as with BRM’s, LinkedIn is home to an Enterprise Architecture Network, with an astounding 85,000+ members!  As an example of the passion exhibited by this group, a recent comment that stated, “EA is often left in IT because it can only handle tame problems” garnered 572 comments!

At its best, the EA helps bring to the business-IT discovery and solutioning table some of the competencies from my bulleted list above.

Product Manager

The third role in the triad that can help IT organizations introduce more Design Thinking into their activities is that of Product Manager.  This role is far more scarce in IT organizations than either BRM or EA.  It is, however, universal in product companies, including information technology product companies.  Wikipedia defines Product Management as:

…an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.

The role consists of product development and product marketing, which are different (yet complementary) efforts, with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins. The product manager is often responsible for analyzing market conditions and defining features or functions of a product. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company.

While involved with the entire product lifecycle, the product management’s main focus is on driving new product development. According to the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), superior and differentiated new products — ones that deliver unique benefits and superior value to the customer — is the number one driver of success and product profitability.

Of particular note, Wikipedia goes on to note that:

Product management often serves an inter-disciplinary role, bridging gaps within the company between teams of different expertise, most notably between engineering-oriented teams and commercially oriented teams. For example, product managers often translate business objectives set for a product by Marketing or Sales into engineering requirements. Conversely they may work to explain the capabilities and limitations of the finished product back to Marketing and Sales. (Emphasis added.)

The Design Thinking Triumvirate

So, the keys to getting more Design Thinking into Business-IT solutions lies in the triumvirate of Business Relationship Manager, Enterprise Architect and Product Manager, with the BRM as the broker and orchestrator of these roles.  There are, of course, other roles played – e.g., business analyst, project manager, program manager, and so on, but I wanted here to focus on those roles which are less common but in the ascendancy.

Graphic courtesy of Green Hat Group

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