Building Operational Excellence: IT People and Process Best Practices (IT Best Practices series)

Rating:
Summary: Good descriptions of goals, little on how to move people
Review: The basic premise of the book is that an efficient organization segments their operations into communicating, but largely distinct entities. These entities are then transformed into centers of excellence (COEs), by defining the tasks of the group, acquiring the appropriate skills by either hiring or training, and implementing the appropriate managerial style. Without question, these goals are the correct ones and will improve the efficiency of any company when implemented.
The problems are of course in the difference between stating the appropriate goals and actually implementing them. Inertia due to entrenched practices or a fear of change is a very powerful force that is difficult to overcome. The authors spend very little time on exactly how one should act to overcome these problems. Without a plan to meet and conquer these difficulties, such goals often never progress beyond the realm of the ideal.
Many different types of COEs are described at the end of the book. Each entry contains a short description of the process, a ranking from one to ten of the level that the process can be automated, a ranking from one to ten of the stability of the process, and highlights concerning staffing, automation technology, best practices, metrics, process integration and futures. These explanations are very helpful in describing the parameters to shoot for when constructing a process.
This book is good as a descriptive listing of ways to improve the efficiency of departments that use IT. Unfortunately, reality is often much more complex than simply stating a plan, and there is very little beyond the statements of the goals.

Rating:
Summary: Highly refined approach to attaining IT Ops capability
Review: The objectives of this book are to achieve an operational posture that is based on mature processes and an organizational structure that is efficient and delivers value to the business.

The authors take a pragmatic approach by making the distinction between best practices from an industry-wide perspective and selective use of best practices to ensure that only those that make sense in the pursuit of your organization are chosen. The three fundamental steps that are addressed by this approach are (1) determine your current operational posture, (2) define quality goals and (3) examine the gaps between where you are and where you want to be. The book is organized to lead you through these three steps in great detail, starting with a definition of best practices (Chapter 1) and laying the foundation by defining tasks and processes and how to move from task- to process-driven methods (Chapter 2). Gap analysis are process refinement are the topics of Chapter 4, which will provide the level of operational maturity to move to the most efficient model proposed in the book called centers of excellence (COE). The collection of COEs are comprised of groupings of core processes that are found in mature IT organizations. By grouping these processes in COEs you can achieve end-to-end service delivery as well as economy of scale. On paper it looks logical, but in practice it is not easy to achieve. In addition if COEs are not carefully structured there can be gaps of responsibility and accountability, which the authors note and provide advice about how to prevent these gaps. Chapter 5 provides a thorough discussion of metrics, while Chapter 6 ties together the concepts in the previous chapters.

The most valuable parts of this book are Chapter 7, which is a complete catalog of core processes ranging from application optimization to workload monitoring (31 processes in all) and Chapter 8, which gives eight COE catalogs. The processes in Chapter 7 are depicted with two scales ranging from 1 to 10 for automation and stability, with the following 8 characteristics: (1) tasks, (2) skills, (3) staffing, (4) automation technology, (5) best practices, (6) metrics, (7) process integration and (8) futures. The COE catalogs are slightly different and are structured as follows: (1) attributes, (2) processes, (3) skills, (4) automation, (5) best practices, (6) metrics, and (7) futures.

While I think this is a 5-star book that makes an important contribution to IT operational excellence, it isn't without a few flaws. I noticed a few minor problems as the book leads you through a typical process-oriented structure to a COE-based one, such as system administration not being placed in one of the COEs. This is a possible editing error in the book. I also thought that the 1 to 10 scales for automation and stability were defined too ambiguously and the scales are too fine grained given the arbitrary definitions assigned. Many of the illustrations were too busy and misleading. However, the material in this book is so well thought out and supported by compelling value propositions that the flaws are easy to overlook. Overall this book represents a major contribution to the small--but growing--body of knowledge about IT operations management.