My book is now in stock on Amazon. (If Amazon is out, try ordering from Morgan Kaufman/Elsevier directly...)
Here is a detailed overview of its contents:
Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children
How would you feel if you visited your financial planner’s office and saw past-due credit card notices on their desk? Would you trust an auto mechanic whose car backfires and produces black smoke? A dentist with bad teeth? An interior designer whose offices are a shambles? This is the position of the IT capability in many large organizations. The designated custodian of critical business processes and data does not manage its own processes and data reliably.
Numerous responses are emerging, from frameworks such as ITIL and COBIT, to disciplines such as portfolio management and enterprise architecture, and the emerging concept of “Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology.”
This practitioner-authored book provides an independent response to these developments. An analysis of the large scale IT capability, with specific attention to business processes, structured data, and enabling systems, it is essentially a comprehensive system architecture, not for the business capabilities IT supports, but for IT itself.
Features
Are you trying to sort out how to make ITIL and COBIT work, and make sense of the dozens of vendors clamoring to help?
Are you puzzled over how the broad ITIL vision for Change Management fits into the reality of your current processes? And how it relates to Enterprise Architecture and Portfolio Management?
Is the concept of configuration management and the CMDB giving off more heat than light for you? How can you make it real?
Have you found yourself wondering whether you really need an IT portfolio management tool, an enterprise architecture repository, a metadata repository, a service management tool, and a configuration management database (CMDB)? And if you have them, are you wondering if they should be related somehow?
Treating industry frameworks (ITIL, CMM, and COBIT) and portfolio management literature as statements of requirements, the book outlines a detailed enterprise architecture and design patterns for achieving IT management goals. Included are:
• A unique value chain approach to integrating the major IT industry process frameworks into a coherent, unified whole
• A field-tested, detailed conceptual information model with definitions and usage scenarios, mapped to both the process and system architectures
• Analysis of current system types in the IT governance and enablement domains: integration opportunities, challenges, and evolutionary trends
• Patterns for integrating the process, data, and systems views to support specific problems of IT management.
• Specific attention throughout to issues of building a business case and real-world implementation. Various case studies.
Among the specific topics addressed are:
• Practical, critical perspectives on ITIL from a systems analysis and design point of view.
• Interrelationships between IT portfolio planning, architecture, solutions development, and IT operations. Clarification of business/IT service entry points.
• The relationship between application development and hosting (infrastructure) organizations
• Configuration management: challenges, misconceptions, myths, and realities. Differences between software configuration management, enterprise configuration management, and element configuration management. Iterative and incremental approach to enterprise configuration management
• Business intelligence, performance management, and metrics for the IT capability itself
• Normalized conceptual model of IT information. Detailed semantic clarification of the vague concept of “IT Service” and its permutations and implications. Relationship between Service and Application, and Service Offering versus Service Instance.
• Application as critical control point and portfolio entry. Application portfolio management: process, data structures, and systems.
• Dependency management: benefits and challenges. Consideration of dependencies as captured in enterprise architecture and metadata tools, versus CMDB.
• The various classes of systems used internally by large scale IT organizations: portfolio, project, application lifecycle/release, service management, provisioning, element management, architecture, security, and more. A critical look at “discovery” tools.
• The longstanding IT concept of “repository” and its relationship to the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
• Process roles and responsibilities. Closed-loop, self-reinforcing processes for IT data management.
• The “IT Enablement Capability” pattern, a proposed functional organization specializing in supporting all automation requirements for internal IT systems.
About the Author
Charles T. Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise.
He has held consultant and architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in ERP systems, technical architecture, data architecture, metadata, configuration management, IT governance, and enterprise application integration.
He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. Charlie is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, and ACM. He presents frequently to professional associations and conferences. He is ITIL Foundation Certified.
Charlie lives with his family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog.
Reviews
“In most companies IT has “evolved”—perhaps it’s time to consider “intelligent design.” This is the value of Charlie’s book. Charlie describes a process-based approach coupled with data modeling and metadata concepts, which translate in turn to distributed system architectures: a type of three-legged stool for the purpose of putting more intent into ITSM infrastructure design. I consider him one of the foremost thinkers in the area. He has certainly opened my eyes to the wonders of it all.”
— Ken Wendle, FISM, ITSM Solution Lead, Hewlett Packard, Co-founder and Past President, itSMF, USA
“Betz tells us that the cobbler has been ignoring his children, but in fact the average Fortune 500 executive probably believes that IT management is already a science: i.e., the emperor has no clothes! In a succinct yet detailed fashion, Betz clothes & shods the royal progeny with a clear and concise approach to IT management that leverages the enterprise resource planning and value chain integration notions. How do enterprise and business process modeling, performance metrics, SOA and BPMN, business planning and the COBIT & ITIL frameworks contribute to better, cheaper and faster IT systems and change that matches the business' pace? Betz shows how to leverage what's available, and run IT like a business. This book is destined to sit on the shelf of every IT professional who is tired of patching software and fighting fires, and prefers to offer a businesslike service to the business he serves.”
— Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group, Inc.
“ For decades, the management of Information Technology has been driven by more art than science. Charlie's broad view of the IT Value Chain and his use of design patterns for IT processes gives the reader clear examples of how to get started with their own journey toward IT excellence. His clear passion for the subject matter makes for an easy read.”
— Dennis Gaughan, Research Director, AMR Research
“Charles Betz’s new book is a welcomed look at IT governance. By breaking down the different functional areas of IT, he has created a roadmap to the highest levels of maturity. Serious technology professionals will find this resource extremely valuable in planning, executing, and reviewing their infrastructure environment. Making Shoes for the Cobbler’s Children is critical reading for anyone who envisions a new world of technology governance.”
– R. Todd Stephens, Ph.D., BellSouth Corporation
“Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children will help you implement a successful IT governance program by giving you a firm foundation in current IT governance essentials. Betz's practical patterns, models, and processes will jumpstart your IT governance planning and analysis initiatives, leading to increased business confidence in IT's overall effectiveness and ability to deliver.”
–Karen Lopez, Principal Consultant, InfoAdvisors, Inc.
“Charles Betz' work is innovative and paradigm-shifting, but more importantly he is the first person to get below the hype of running 'IT Like a Business' and provide actionable ideas for managing information technology business processes more effectively and efficiently. This is a must read for anyone charged with enterprise architecting, IT planning, and IT governance and management in general.”
— David Buckholtz, Vice-President, Enterprise Architecture; Sony Pictures Entertainment
Table of Contents
Foreword by Ken Wendle, Past President, ITSMF USA
Preface
Part I: The IT Value Chain
1 Introduction: Shoes for the Cobbler’s Child
1.1 The achievements of information technology
1.2 The problems
1.3 The proposed solutions
1.4 Making it real
1.5 The business case
1.6 Chapter conclusion
1.7 Further reading
2 The IT Value Chain: a process foundation
2.1 Frameworks, frameworks everywhere
2.2 A value chain framework
2.3 Primary IT Activities
2.4 Supporting IT Activities
2.5 Primary and supporting processes
2.6 Service entry points & configuration management
2.7 The functional viewpoints
2.8 Non-functional requirements
2.9 Process maturity
2.10 The business case
2.11 Making it real
2.12 Chapter conclusion
2.13 Further reading
Part II: Supporting the IT Value Chain
3 A supporting data architecture
3.1 The Problem
3.2 A Conceptual Data Model
3.3 Configuration Item & subtypes
3.4 Supporting entities
3.5 Process and workflow – a data perspective
3.6 General IT data architecture issues
3.7 The business case
3.8 Making it real
3.9 Chapter conclusion
3.10 Further reading
4 A supporting systems architecture
4.1 Systems & families
4.2 Cohesion and coupling
4.3 Systems for planning and controlling
4.4 Systems for solutions delivery
4.5 Cross-boundary build/run systems
4.6 Systems for service support
4.7 Information-centric systems
4.8 Context and interlinkages
4.9 The ideal architecture
4.10 The evolution of true “ERP for IT”
4.11 Data maturity
4.12 The business case
4.13 Making it real
4.14 Chapter conclusion
4.15 Further reading
5 Patterns of IT enablement
5.1 Why apply patterns?
5.2 IT organization
5.3 Demand Management
5.4 Enterprise Architecture
5.5 Financial management
5.6 Solutions development
5.7 Configuration Management
5.8 Service Support
5.9 System Maturity
5.10 Things to consider
5.11 Chapter conclusion
5.12 Further reading
Section III: Conclusion
6 Final thoughts
6.1 Human constraints of IT enablement
6.2 The next generation IT: MDA, SOA, BPM, portals, autonomics
6.3 Lack of transparency
6.4 Moving forward: avenues to IT governance success
6.5 On the horizon
6.6 Business case redux
6.7 In closing
Paperback: 424 pages, 141 illustrations
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier (November 3, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0123705932
Volume discounts available, contact: NASpecialSales@elsevier.com
