TABLE OF CONTENTS If you look at the glossy brochures and listen to the sales talk, Service Management tools are indispensable. However, good people, good process descriptions, and good procedures and working instructions are the basis for successful Service Management.
ITIL [193.]
We ve seen best-in-class portfolio management processes implemented on a shoestring software budget, using spreadsheets and document templates. We ve also seen worst-in-class practices implemented with million-dollar portfolio management applications.
Jeff Kaplan [194.]
[193.] (Office of Government Commerce 2000)
[194.] (Kaplan 2005)
Variations on the preceding quotes are de rigueur in most discussions of IT enablement. However, at some point the process architecture is defined and it becomes clear that manual approaches usually won t work in IT organizations of any size. As discussed at the outset of this book, companies then turn to the research organizations, the vendors, or both. However, the vendors are clearly self-interested, and the research organizations receive much of their funding from the vendors and are not articulating a comprehensive vision for how IT enablement tooling must interoperate. Hence, this chapter. Enablement tools and architectures are important and must be given their due.
First, what is an application system ? The definition this book will use is a fixed-form combination of computing processes and data structures that support a specific business purpose. Fixed form means that the system is stable in functionality (relative to its context) unless explicitly changed through a controlled process. A specific business purpose in the context of this book...
