A Practical Approach to Service Portfolio Management
CA World 2010
Abstract
Are you still attempting to make improvements in a piece meal fashion because you don’ t think you have the time or the resources to take on something that has the transformational? Attend this session and see how three key best-practice frameworks can be integrated in a practical manner so that you can govern investments across your enterprise and manage them to maximum value.
Project Portfolio Management, IT Service Management and IT Asset Management Lifecycle (ITAM) frameworks exist to provide cost efficiency, improve service delivery and to help you to achieve your organizational goals. Each of these frameworks can improve processes and productivity independently, but when elements are combined they are able to deliver exponentially more value. Presenters will discuss how to align engagement between IT and the business at key points such as corporate planning, request management and resource management, how to simultaneously drive cost efficiency while improving service, all while utilizing an approach that delivers value in 3 to 6 months.
Biography
Paul L. Wheaton, Portfolio Director
Acquity Group, Business and Technology Enablement Practice
Mr. Wheaton has 20 years of experience within the technology industry, including experience managing large professional services practices as well as global business development practices for both professional services firms and software-focused solutions. Prior to joining Acquity Group, Mr. Wheaton served in a variety of managerial roles within Andersen Consulting’ s, BDM Technologies’ and Deloitte &Touche LLP’ s strategic services consulting practices, as well as executive management roles at Platinum Technology, CA (formerly known as Computer Associates) and Five9 Technologies.
Agenda
Objectives for this session
Background and working definitions
Limitations of taking the usual silo’ d approach
Practical way to get started
Questions and Answers
Session Objectives
To describe the most common best practice frameworks (i.e., ITIL, IT Asset Management and Project Portfolio Management) and the value that can be gained by each
To discuss the limitations of implementing these frameworks in an independent fashion
To describe an incremental method to align engagement between IT and the business at key points such as corporate planning, demand management, resource management, etc.
Today’ s Business Environment is Demanding
How often do you hear?
What does it mean to manage for business value?
It means that you :
Understand how high-value business services are defined and measured
Align IT services and resources to core business services
Measure those IT services -both from quality of service and cost perspectives -in comparable manners to the business service
Communicate cost and performance regularly with business counterparts, using business terms that they understand
Challenges often faced:
Difficult to understand demand when it’ s neither visible nor aligned
Multiple ways to request IT services
Not all demand is captured, or at least captured in a consistent fashion
Demand for IT services unlikely to be correlated to accompanying business service
Information related to cost, quality, and business purpose is often:
Fragmented across the enterprise
Partially complete
Even if the legacy systems and/or processes contained the data, it’ s unlikely that it’ s organized in terms that your business counterparts understand
So what do people usually try?
Service Operation and Transition as a starting point
ITAM helps, too
ITAM manages the financial aspects of IT assets which:
Provides the ability to manage contracts, including software license compliance. hardware maintenance contracts and 3rd party vendor contracts
Enables IT to understand where IT Assets are located, the status of that Asset and how they are being utilized over time
Controls and can enable the reduction of asset shrinkage
Enables the mitigation and reduction of Regulatory and Financial Risk through standardization, proper documentation, loss detection
ITAM helps, too
PPM is crucial
Project Portfolio Management is a continuous process by which:
Management prioritizes demand
Plans and allocates resources to preferred investment initiatives
Manages portfolio governance-orientated collaboration with stakeholders
Delivers expected results from the investment
Provides reporting to stakeholders for decision-making and the communication of investment status
PPM is crucial but has its limits
It really needs to fit together in a broader context
ITIL v3 Service Portfolio Definition
The complete set of Services that are managed by a Service Provider. The Service Portfolio is used to manage the entire Lifecycle of all Services
The Service Portfolio includes three Categories:
Service Pipeline (proposed or in Development)
Service Catalogue (Live or available for Deployment) and
Retired Services
So what is Service Portfolio Management?
Gartner defines IT Service Portfolio Management as:
Documenting the service portfolio of standardized IT services
Decomposing those service “offerings” into an actionable¬†service catalog of specific service request items including pricing and service level objectives
Automating the fulfillment of service requests and approvals
Reporting on service request actuals vs. forecasts, service delivery, service level performance and service financial management
Service Portfolio as a Context for Communication
So what does this start to look like?
Our context revisited
How do you look at Business Value?
Examining Services from a Value Perspective
Business and IT Services
So what does this offer?
This approach allows you to:
Manage the related cost and performance detail in business value context
Communicate back to the business with terms that they understand
Align investment decisions directly to business contributions