Chapter 1: The Three Pillars of IT Delivery - Problem Resolution, Service Requests, and Projects

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Introduction

Although some information technology organizations operate as separate business entities, running on their own profit-and-loss statements, and although a small percentage of companies have outsourced their information technology (IT) operations to third-party service providers, the vast majority of today's enterprises maintain their own, internal information technology shops. In a world where IT plays an enabling role in almost every aspect of business activity, it should come as no surprise that both the investments and the expectations for the positive impact of information services within these enterprises are on the rise. For IT organizations, the challenge, as always, is how to satisfy the customer, given real-world resource constraints, the actual limitations of available information technologies, and most importantly, the business process and organizational barriers to change and innovation posed by the enterprise itself.

For the IT organization, the true measure of success is easily stated: the consistent and economical delivery of day-to-day services and project work. But how is this to be achieved? The purpose of this chapter is to provide a starting point for the discovery and maturation of an IT organization that excels at delivery. To begin, the author frames a practical model for depicting the so-called internal economy of the IT organization. The chapter then proceeds through a systematic consideration of how an information technology team should define, manage, and measure its deliverables in terms that are meaningful to the enterprise. Throughout, the approach focuses as much on a rigorous application of effective communication and shaping customer expectations as it does on the actual delivery of positive results. In the end, customer satisfaction may be realized, at least in part, through the use of the practices detailed in the text, combined with the associated and necessary internal and external partnering to deliver on time and within budget. A more detailed exploration of these methods and tools are found in subsequent chapters of this book.

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