erp4it

Meditations on Lean for IT

My ongoing research has taken me squarely into Lean. Have gone through The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking (Womack/Jones)

As with ERP for IT, I am by no means the first to entertain this topic. There's a Wikipedia article that, while very well written, seems a little premature and bordering on original research (no books have been written on Lean IT to my knowledge). CA and Fujitsu have some material as well. All those are fairly recent.

Other material pops up on various Google searches, and since you all can do that I'm not going to devote a lot of time to random linking. Also avoiding commentary on other Lean IT commentary for now.

Instead I'm going to spend a few posts on Lean source material and my own exegetic interpretations of how it might apply across the IT supply chain.

Starting off with a few random/high level observations:

"Lean for IT" is not the same thing as "IT for Lean." There's some confusion on this point. "Lean for IT" to my mind would be the application of Lean principles to the IT value streams. IT of course has a role to play in enabling Lean initiatives for manufacturing, supply chain, etc. But not the same thing.

IT value is difficult to quantify. IT itself is fractal and recursive: the value chain results in value chains. That means that the concept of an IT value stream is also difficult. And that means that IT muda is a challenging concept in the general case.

Many will disagree, citing egregious examples of IT waste. I can cite them too. But the gray areas trouble me. Capacity buffers may not be waste, when demand spkes are fractal. The value of utility is contradictory with the value of warranty - availablity is the antithesis of agility. Are massive core OLTP systems, monuments in the Lean sense? The IT equivalent of batch processing, even if they themselves are real time? A monument is a local optima, factored out from context, in search of silo "efficiency."

But I also don't think any of this is truly unique. How is application development different from product development? Both are uncertain. Very curious what Lean approaches to product development  might have to inform the SDLC. What about availability? Is it a primary value? Depends on perspective. From the business' view, it's a means to an end. From the "IT as a business" perspecive, it's an end in itself.

I've seen a couple attempts at applying the Lean waste types to IT. I'll probably have my own go at that.

All for now,

Char

PS. Reserved lean4it.

New directions: TOC for IT

I feel like being cryptic. 

I just registered toc4it.com, toc4it.net, and toc4it.info. 

Also, this Typepad site may be nearing the end of its run... spending more and more time over on Google. New brand, new look? If I have time.

Web 2.0 Enterprise Architecture tools

I am interested in any Web-based EA tools, especially those with a Web 2.0 collaborative slant. Requirements:

• No per seat charge
• AJAX or equivalent GUI (Flash or equivalent free, mainstream plugin OK)
• Full Wikification (objects, attributes)
• Every object must have its own URI. Tool should operate in a text mode that is URI-centric; focus objects and related collections.
• Support for Archimate or comparably terse metamodel
• Architecture DSL workbench capabilities (ideally MOF-based)
• Models expressable as text reports or graphic artifacts.
• Visio integration
• Google-like universal search
• Effective model concept packaging

Open to SaaS options. Open source would be awesome. 

-Charlie

The CMDB is an Operational Data Store

Longtime readers know that bringing some sense of architectural rigor to ITIL is an ongoing goal of this blog. The CMDB, viewed through an architectural lens, remains an ambiguous and challenged concept. Consider just two recent CMDB discussions: 

- Is a Person a Configuration Item (CI)?  Do People belong in the CMDB?

- How can a CMDB be "federated" to other systems?

In my opinion, these questions show some confusion around data and distributed systems architecture principles. By way of examining them, I'd like to take a look at a concept proposed by Bill Inmon et. al. in 1996: the Operational Data Store. 

Systems dynamics: a challenge to "enterprise" architecture?

Followers of this site and IT Skeptic may have noticed a number of debates concerning industrial theory, business process management, value chains vs. networks, and complex systems.

My analysis to date was based on well accepted principles of enterprise architecture: process, data, and systems analysis. However,  I have come to see all of these approaches as essentially static.

Barbecue is a noun...

For all us Yankees who may need to know a bit more on the subject (and if you don't know why I'm posting this, you're not paying attention...):

Why and how I blog

Some say that blogging has become passe. I don't care; I started doing it because it made sense for me, and still does. 

While I don't make a big deal about it, I'm allowed to state my employer and my position. I won't do that here, but you can dig around a bit on this site and LinkedIn and figure it out. Of course, the opinions stated here are my own and in no way represent those of my employer. In addition to that disclaimer, I write this blog as if my executive leadership were reading it. I want it to reflect well on both myself, and by extension any employer who hires me. It is a professional and collegial channel.

Profound PMBOK/PMI skepticism

Here, courtesy of my good friend and sometime partner in crime Sean Goggins. 

You could substitute ITIL throughout to much the same effect.

-Char

MPC for the large IT organization

So I've started to read Vollman. Definitely considering APICS certification but have a lot more to think about before understanding whether that makes sense. 

Attempting this enterprise requires careful thinking about all of the assumptions. Introductory material is especially important because it sets the context. What is MPC? Vollman Page 1: 

"The MPC [Manufacturing Planning and Control] system is concerned with planning and controlling all aspects of manufacturing, including managing materials, scheduling machines and people, and coordinating suppliers and key customers . . . truly effective MPC systems coordinate supply chains -- joint efforts across company boundaries. Finally, MPC systems design is not a one-time effort; MPC systems need to continuously adapt and respond to changes in the company environment, strategy, customer requirements, particular problems, and new supply chain opportunities." 

How do we understand this challenge in terms of enterprise IT service management? Again, I re-iterate that the scope of the current project is infrastructure: up through the middleware at the furthest.

What does it mean to "manufacture" in a service context? There are two aspects:

Entity lifecycles & ITSM process architecture

Been working with my three-lifecycle model for a while now (also here) and it is holding up in the lab so far. (I have an ITSM laboratory called my day job, as an enterprise ITSM architect for a large US bank.) Can't talk too much about that side of things but the reader can assume I'm not going to keep blogging about dead ends. 

The chevrons show the true processes. What do they have in common? They all are conceptual entities as well, candidates for entity lifecycle analysis. Furthermore it is interesting to consider the average duration of their lifecycles:

Independent and dependent demand, and the pitfalls of forecasting

According to Plossl, one of the initial differentiators of MRP versus previous approaches was in the understanding of demand. 

It may seem obvious that if you have orders for 10 cars, you will likely need 50 wheels and 20 headlights (assuming you are providing spare wheels). But it's less obvious that you might need 250 lugnuts and 3000 type A45 left-threaded fasteners (OK, I made that last one up). 

Assembling an MRP library

I live convenient to the University of Minnesota, a world-class research institution. The MIS program at the Carlson School of Management was top ranked for years, before IT became big money. Carlson is also home to the Juran Center.   

Last week I dropped by the bookstore in Coffman Union (I always find campus visits refreshing)...

MRP for IT

I have been posting about "ERP for IT" for some years now. While I have been generally familiar with the history of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and its origins in MRP (Materials Resource Planning), my background is in the social sciences and software engineering - not operations research or industrial engineering.

The relationship of software development to industrial engineering has been uneasy...

Implementing Metrics for IT Service Management

Got my reviewer's copy of  David Smith's excellent Implementing Metrics for IT Service Management. I learned a lot in reviewing it, and think I contributed a bit, especially in how section 6.5, "Administration of Metrics Data," turned out.

Question for the day: have you started to consider your IT data warehouse as separate and distinct from your CMDB?

Toastmasters Competent Communicator

 

So what does it require? I gave ten speeches:

Project One:  Ice Breaker 12-18-06
Project Two:  Peace of Mind through Mvelopes 3-19-07
Project Three:  High Tech Careers and the Myth of Offshoring 6-4-07
Project Four:  Misty Memories 8-20-07
Project Five:  A Week in Albuquerque 10-15-07
Project Six:  We're Not in Kansas Anymore 2-4-08
Project Seven:  Guns of August 3-3-08
Project Eight:  What Charlie Does for a Living 5-19-08
Project Nine:  The Wealth of Society 7-21-08
Project Ten:  Meditation on the Day's News 9-15-2008

It's been a great experience; not sure where I'm going to take it next.

-ctb

More on service lifecycles

Been racking my brain trying to square the circle. Came up with this picture (click for larger):

• The rounded rectangles are functions
• The chevrons are true event-driven, linear processes
• See here for discussion of portfolio lifecycles
• The interactions between any two or more chevrons are non-deterministic - shows how linear processes and lifecycles interact to form a value network
• But the entire picture is still a value chain
• Any event driven process may have a corresponding "captive" function, e.g. the process of Resolve Incident requires an Incident Management function.
• Most of the processes may be platformed on a supporting function, but also draw on other functions.
• Configuration Management plays some role in virtually every process.
• I have not used the term "capability" as I find it redundant with "function" at a high level. Thoughts?

-charlie

IT alignment 150-cite literature review

A gold mine, if you're curious what the academics are up to regarding "IT-business alignment":

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/journal/v22/n4/fig_tab/2000111t1.html#figure-title

Helge Scheil on ERP4IT

As usual, I'm behind in my reading. Helge Scheil posted this opinion piece to CIO magazine in February, specifically referencing the moniker "ERP4IT." While I always appreciate the publicity, want to make a couple clarifications:

- Not surprising that no vendor has adopted "ERP4IT," as I own the domain name... I consider it a personal brand & probably so do others. (Note that I am not talking about the term "ERP for IT.") I do know that all of the Big Four, in high level management presentations, will claim things like "we are building an ERP solution for your IT capability."

- As far as the ERP baggage goes, see this post - I use the term as a stimulus, a provocation. Reality is that we need a federated architecture, looking something like this. We're not going to do architecture modeling, demand management, source code control, and incident management on a common platform... and yes, we do need SOA functionality (including master data management) on all those systems so they can interoperate.

That said, I think that CA is as well placed as any of its rivals to move forward here; they've made some good progress lately.

Cheers,

Charlie

Catching up on my journals 2

Harvard Business Review July-August 2008: "Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference" by McAfee & Brynjolfsson, is an interesting read, showing that turbulence and performance spread are much greater in high-IT industries, and containing a variety of interesting nuggest & case studies. Good discussion of IT governance and centralized vs. decentralized models. .

Catching up on my journals

Probably my first exposure to the concept of a "professional journal" was M*A*S*H; medical journals figured in a number of the episodes. I remember in particular Hawkeye berating Frank Burns for not keeping up in his reading.

So, I have a pile here on my desk and some time off - let's see what I've been missing. The backlog is big, so I can only review the TOCs in detail for anything that might be relevant. My current interest is in anything resembling ITSM operations research.