The “IT Value Chain”
I have just finished the book Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler’s Children and I have become particularly intrigued around the idea of seeing enterprise-supporting IT as a “value chain.” I think the reason this concept and all it’s implications (and “supporting processes,” if you read the book) resonates with me is because of the normative emphasis to me as an EA to “align IT to the business.” Or in the least, to structure the conversations around allowing the CIO, leadership, and even IT managers to “align IT to the business.”
No doubt is there a need to do simply that – to connect the switches, servers, code artifacts, application components, web services, integration logic, and data centers to products, services, processes, portfolios, and other business-accessible logical groupings for the sake of executing planning, building, and running activities. What is so underemphasized by the phrase is that often connecting the technology to the business means becoming more mature as an IT organization first. “Aligning IT to IT…as a business” has taken hold in my mind and has given me pause fairly often throughout the day.
I wonder if I’m alone in this or is it often that EAs would do good to turn architecture in on IT’s own business and in addition to analyzing the business it works with analyze the business it works for?
