by William Dupley
In our last blog, we considered the three common problems that organizations encounter when implementing a cloud maturity model. If you recall, a cloud maturity model helps organizations assess and plan their journey to cloud and hybrid IT. However, many businesses run into challenges, stemming from a misunderstanding of what technology they truly need to accomplish their business objectives. These challenges are:
- Enterprises often overestimate the maturity of their IT departments and the models they use.
- Enterprises often overestimate the technological capabilities they need, setting extremely high goals for cloud adoption that aren’t necessarily based on solving business problems.
- Existing maturity models are often too narrow, focusing on a specific category of technology rather than taking a holistic view of the entire IT operating model.
It’s clearest and most effective to rely on outcome-based statements, which help project managers build an action-based implementation plan for new IT.
At the Open Data Center Alliance, we frequently revise our cloud maturity model to serve businesses best. Recognizing the barriers these problems present to organizations seeking hybrid IT transformation, we sought to build the solutions to these problems into our latest version of the cloud maturity model. When revising or working with any model, it’s clearest and most effective to rely on outcome-based statements, which help project managers build an action-based implementation plan for new IT.
In order to address the common desire within organizations to achieve a level of IT maturity that’s unnecessary for business objectives, we shifted the focus of the transformation project. By enforcing a three-month “sprint” approach to implementing new functions, we encouraged organizations using the model to implement new IT functions based on the value they provide to the business. It can be helpful, when using a maturity model assessment, to identify the minimal number of changes an organization needs to make in order to deliver the needed functions.
To promote a more holistic view of the IT operating model, we opted to diversify and expand the breadth of domains that a maturity model assesses. We realized that we were developing a hybrid IT operating model, which touched a much broader range of activities — not just within IT, but within the business as a whole. Below is a graphic of the range of domains we assessed.
As you can see, a hybrid IT model encompasses a huge range of areas in a business, from culture and skills to IT architecture and DevOps. Each of these domains is organized according to the five major areas of the hybrid IT operating model: hybrid delivery, hybrid application workload, hybrid service management, hybrid DevOps, and hybrid infrastructure. For each of these twenty-five domains we included an assessment definition for each level of the maturity model, which helps project managers within organizations determine the precise level of IT maturity for each domain.
Below is a sample of how an organization might assess and represent its maturity level for each of these crucial domains.
The results of this assesssment methodology then provide a project manager with the information needed to create a feasible project plan to facilitate the transformation, as represented below:
As I mentioned in a previous blog, strategic planning is a military term. A successful battle plan is one that identifies all obstacles that might prevent an army from achieving its objectives. Next month, we’ll discuss the barriers that might arise in the process of implementing a hybrid IT transformation project.
Download a copy of the ODCA cloud maturity model usage manual today to review the analysis tools. It will provide you with provide a detailed description of how to use the ODCA Cloud Maturity Model assessment tool to conduct your Hybrid IT maturity assessment!
Start your free IT self-assessment
Did you miss the first three blogs in our Hybrid IT Hacks series? Click below to check them out!
IT Strategy: Does It Still have Value? Part 1
IT Strategy: Does It Still Have Value? Part 2
About the Author
Bill Dupley is a Digital Strategist at FoxNet. He has led IT transformation and strategic planning teams for over 50 companies and governments worldwide and bring extensive experience in IT & Business Strategic Planning, IT process design, and enterprise architecture. Bill has held several positions over his career including the Cloud Chief Technologist for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Canada and Director of Strategy and Business Development for HPE Canada Consulting.
He is a graduate of Ryerson University, a former member of the HPE IT Global SWAT Team, and a member of the Open Data Center Alliance Cloud Maturity Model authorship team. He is dedicated to helping customers equip themselves rapidly for our ever-changing technological world.
