Jan Mennens

Business Architect KBC ICT Services

Some history

• When looking a bit high level to the order of things, in order to professionalize our IT organisations– We first introduced some tools to support IT work

• We saw that it didn’t work well without some basic structuring and agreements

– We introduced processes and process management• Giving the necessary structure, based on best practices

frameworks– When trying to get more mature in this (and rolling

out to other countries) people come more and more into the picture

Toolfocus

Process focus

People focus

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 …

Introduction of tools in the organisation

• Most organisations started more than a decade ago with the introduction of IT supporting tools– On the side of service management: the basics for

problem management (before it was split into incident and problem management) and change management

– On the side of development mainly development tools (COBOL, APS) Later on

Introduction of process management in organisations

The classical consultancy triangle is fake

• The classical consultancy triangle suggests an equal division of people processes and tools.

• The classical consultancy paradigm asks for balance between the tree corners

• Basically there is nothing wrong with this presentation

• But it always gives the impression that when tools are OK and processes are OK, 2/3th of the problem is solved

• Certainly in an IT oriented organisation

• NOT

• Often the first question I get:– Do you have a tool?

– Do you have process description?

• And only after a lot of struggle to

Proposal of a new consultancy triangle

• People are basis

• Process and tool help to accomplish our goal: delivering a service to a customer

• The 1/3+1/3+1/3 presentation is still misleading

Service

Technology

People

Processes

• And although this image tells more where it is all about, it is certainly not political correct

• Although the amount of work spent in technology and processes seem to be equal

• The difficulty isn’t

Service

Technology

People

Processes

• Tools come more and more out of the box– Standardisation is not the

only driving factor– Customisation kills the

recurrent cost• Processes seem to do so

also– ITIL V3, CMM(i), LDAP,

TMAP, Prince2, OGC, ...– But they still need to be

tailored to the organisation or to the organisation’s architecture at hand

Service

TechnologyPeopleProcesses

• And yet

Processes are build on people

Solutions?

• Some practical ideas we already tried at KBC

• Add a number of people centric measures– Knowledge management

– Coaching on the job

– Core teams

– Shift of responsibility

– Structuring and presenting information in the language of the user

Knowledge management

• Goal: increase attention for ‘métier’ related aspects of people in the organisation

• Knowledge management as a counterweight for the process culture– People are important

– People are responsible

– And consequently a shift to responsibility of the standing organisation

Coaching on the job

• A recent survey of our Systems test process showed that only coaching (either from central coaches, but preferably from local coaches) gives the one and only

Core teams

• Goal: Increase involvement of the organisation using tools and processes

Shift of responsibility

• In ‘early days’ of process management: process management is introduced as a separate (matrix) organisation– Good for visibility (organisation shows this is

important)

– Good to define who is responsible for the process

– Pitfall: process manager is responsible for the execution of the process• Isitso?

Shift of responsibility

• Recently in KBC ICT it is more and more the division manager or even general manager who will need to explain how one or another process will be improved in the organisation

• Process manager evolves to– Creator of the process– Guardian of the similarity of the process over the different

organisational entities– SPOC– Some general reporting on the process in case of (process)

exceptions• Standing organisation does the reporting on the process!

Structuring and presenting information in the language of the user

• Evolve from elaborate process descriptions to guidelines (policies and standards) complemented with easy to find work instructions.– The process is used in trainings to clarify the

complete picture

Some numbers

• In KBC ICT Services there are nn VTE process managers plus almost double the number of application managers to support

Wrapping up

• Is it a logical step in the evolution?

• Not only!– Roll-out standardised processes to countries

where process management is still some years behind: the success of process roll out depends entirely on the presence of the right people