IT Infra, Ops Dept Cannot Keep Up With Biz Needs: Gartner

Businesses are increasingly concerned that infrastructure and operations (I&O) cannot respond fast enough to meet their needs. Gartner predicts that, through 2015, only 10 percent of I&O organisations will be able to deliver the speed of change required by the business processes they enable, which is an increase from less than 2 percent in 2013.

“Over the years, I&O has become risk-averse, and with the introduction of new and changed IT services viewed as critical, the risk aversion of I&O has become problematic,” said George Spafford, research director at Gartner. “At the same time, business and IT leadership continue to pressure I&O to ensure high availability and integrity, which lead I&O to implement controls that take additional time to ensure production is protected. These opposed pressures are creating an organisational schizophrenia wherein parts of IT, notably development, want to go faster than I&O can support.”

In order to meet the business’ increasing need for accelerated change, Spafford said it is critical that I&O leaders revise the change management process to make more effective use of change models.

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In the report, “How I&O Can Manage Change at the Pace of the Business”, Spafford provides three additional recommendations to help organisations achieve agility, while balancing speed and risk:

1. Gather a cross functional team to review the change management process

The members should bring the business and IT-related perspectives necessary to identify requirements, what must change and how best to pursue improvement. They need to understand the current needs and future direction of the organisation when it comes to the velocity of business change, management’s risk tolerance and how to strike a proper balance.

2. Apply Gartner’s Pace-Layered Application Strategy to place IT services in tiers, and identify the change models for each tier

This is critical, because I&O (indeed, all of IT) must look to support the rate at which the business changes. The change management improvement team identified in the previous step should develop a table that enables them to identify the potential change models and how they apply at each pace layer.

3. Develop change management processes and models

Both the business and IT will need to work together to revise their change process and models and address constraints relating to people, process, technology and business management. In addition, there needs to be routine scheduled reviews. For each tier, identify the review interval to verify whether the pace of business change is being met. It’s important to start simple, learn and then make informed decisions about how to improve as the needs of the business are continually factored in.