Immediately, I’m joyful to announce the publication of the Forrester Reference IT Functionality Map. This can be a complete assertion of the key capabilities used to outline and ship IT and digital techniques, each individually and at a portfolio stage.
From the report abstract: Giant digital and IT organizations characterize advanced ecosystems of processes, individuals, and platforms. They purchase know-how and implement partnerships, composing and configuring options into worthwhile buyer and end-user experiences, and help these experiences as purposes, merchandise, and providers for years or a long time. The IT capabilities for this supply should be adaptive, as know-how continues to evolve. Use this technology-, industry-, and maturity-agnostic IT functionality map to evaluate your digital and IT group and any important deficits, gaps, or redundancies in your skills to ship worth in your stakeholders.
Why a framework, and why now?
When corporations attain a sure dimension, and their IT techniques have grown accordingly, they have a tendency to achieve a watershed second once they notice that they will now not handle their IT property with emails and spreadsheets and Publish-it notes. On the bigger scale, they could assign an enterprise architect to attempt to make sense of the house; I held that position for a big financial institution, wrote a e book in regards to the matter, and finally discovered myself serving to to begin up the IT4IT commonplace that’s now a product of The Open Group (a extra systems-level view of the subject that doesn’t at present embody a functionality mannequin, per se).
At Forrester, we continuously entertain shopper inquiries on this matter as nicely, and I’ve continued to evolve my considering on this matter by means of protecting enterprise service administration, DevOps, product-centric transformation, and enterprise structure over the previous seven years. Clearly, the general house has developed as IT working fashions have modified, and I felt that an up to date view was known as for.
So with out additional ado, right here it’s. That is the “Degree 2” model, with 20 capabilities grouped into seven main areas. We go to a Degree 3, with about 75 subcapabilities (3–5 for every Degree 2).
(Click on for a bigger view)
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Inputs into the diagram embody main IT frameworks and the work of assorted authors. At one level, we had a spreadsheet with a whole bunch of entries, which we then boiled down by means of a number of iterations and conversations about what’s essential and what’s altering. As famous within the report, “These capabilities evolve slowly over time as IT administration approaches change and transcend the churn of the year-to-year know-how market and utility and repair lifecycles.” But they do change. Merchandise and platforms have entered {industry} considering broadly and now should be acknowledged.
This represents a kickoff of a serious analysis stream for me on IT administration architectures, which my long-term followers and associates will acknowledge as an curiosity of mine for about 20 years now. There are three main taxonomies: capabilities (this work), an ontology, and a reference techniques structure we’re tentatively calling the IT management airplane. The latter is the place we are going to hyperlink in precise markets for this house, together with evaluative analysis equivalent to our Forrester Wave™ work on subjects like enterprise service administration, strategic portfolio administration, enterprise structure, DevOps, and observability. Lastly, all of this work will inform analyses of subjects equivalent to vendor M&A, market convergences, the influence of generative AI, and broader subjects like technical debt and the rise of more and more broad IT administration platforms.
I couldn’t have finished this report with out intensive collaboration, so huge shout out to: Frederic Giron, Bobby Cameron, Sam Higgins, Joseph Blankenship, Andrew Hewitt, Aaron Katz, Margo Visitacion, Julie Mohr, Fiona Mark, David Mooter, Stephanie Balaouras, Carlos Casanova, Brent Ellis, Matthew Guarini, Melissa Chhay, and Kara Hartig
There will probably be far more to return on this matter. Please drop me a line in case you are !
Forrester shoppers solely: I will probably be presenting a webinar on June 4 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT.
