Are you digitally "done"?

Here we go again.

A new book.

Here's enough of the first draft to give you the picture.

This time, it's about IT service from a non-ITSM perspective. About how non-ITSM functions in the digital value stream - with differing definitions of done - profoundly influence IT service and therefore the effect of IT investments on people and their business.

Do you work in business analysis, application development, infrastructure engineering, deployment, IT operations, enterprise architecture, information security, project management, quality assurance and testing, and governance, risk and compliance? Do you care about your analogue impact? If you are interested in reflecting on my reflections, I'd love to hear from you!

I'd like to know:

- How much potential value the book has for your discipline (business analysis, application development, etc.)

- Whether chapters 1-6 make sense

- How my 6-page description of your discipline can be improved

Book excerpt follows.

Preface

I was going to call this book Reflections of IT service until Allan Kelly said it was introspective and boring. So, it became Are you digitally “done”? – Do you care about your analogue impact?

The title refers to the Definition of Done concept that is often used in Agile application development. It is a shared understanding of what constitutes a finished product increment or user story, ensuring consistent quality and expectations across the team. However, a shippable software increment has no real value until the users can actually do something meaningful with it. And that is where IT service comes into play. IT service enables the user organization to get optimal return on their investment in the IT systems, fostering a sense of empowerment, support, and respect among its users.

My thinking is that many business analysts, project managers, application developers, and other IT professionals somewhere in the end-to-end digital value stream could benefit from a better understanding of the value of IT service and how they can both benefit from it and influence it for the greater good. IT service and the IT service management (ITSM) function are often regarded as a necessary operational evil that happens after the exciting stuff is completed. One of my goals is to redefine the narrative and to position IT service – alongside the operational work – as part of the organization’s strategic positioning. Because IT service is where people experience the IT systems, the IT organization, and often the organization as a whole, it says something about who you are and how you want to be perceived. So, it’s just as much about marketing as operations.

About this book

Feeling adrift in the vast digital value stream? Doing your best work without meaningful interaction with fellow contributors? Uncertain about how your efforts truly affect people and their businesses? Wondering if they even know you exist? Most importantly, do you still care?

Despite the promises of Lean, Agile, and DevOps, work doesn't flow as seamlessly as it could. Too many sluices and dams. No wind in your sails. You're surrounded by other professionals, but they're just blips on the radar. You're sending basic messages via morse code, but there's no real contact. And the map? It's overboard.

So, you can't align your activities. You're unsure if you're making the right decisions. There's a lack of learning from each other and little collaboration. You might not even be aware of the shared concerns.

This isolation affects the quality of your work and your organization's ability to adapt and innovate. It's holding you back from realizing your full potential.

Alright, you get the picture. Now what?

Your situation is unique, so don't get hit by a seductive but simplistic silver bullet. Instead, embrace principles to navigate these waters. One universal principle: if you stand up, you'll see more. You need to see where you are and how things are connected.

This book aims to help you feel more valuable and valued, engaged and empowered, and meaningful and purposeful. It shows you the bigger picture, sketching the digital value stream from end to end. It reveals how value flows and what the real return on digital investments is. It zeroes in on the elusive concept of service as a key enabler of value co-creation. Defining digitally "done" means making an analogue difference. Ready to make that difference?

The book helps you by:

1. Advocating for the integration of IT service as a foundational element coursing through the whole IT value stream, rather than constraining it to an isolated downstream function

2. Defining the digital value stream with its 8 functions and 4 artefacts, showing the flow of value, and describing each of the digital value stream functions and their interdependency in more detail

3. Exploring the nature of the return on digital investment, and how it is influenced by the IT systems, IT service, the use of the IT systems, and working with digitized information

4. Stipulating the importance of alignment and collaboration between the functions in the digital value stream, possible measures for alignment, and motivation to collaborate

5. Delving into IT service and its management in more detail and illustrating its pivotal role in co-creating value

6. Exploring how IT service is the linchpin that connects IT systems with objective business results and subjective human experience

7. Showing how upstream digital functions can influence IT service by adding IT service-related value in their work, and by helping ITSM and other functions to add IT service-related value, all of which requires a complex mix of knowledge of objectives and performance, desire and ability to collaborate, and values, competences, and tools related to IT service.

Premise

To achieve the desired return on digital investment, all stakeholders in the digital value stream must believe in the benefits of collaboration, make commitments to its execution, and work together collaboratively. IT service is the pivotal bridge that connects technology to business impact and human experience. The value of upstream stakeholders’ work significantly increases when they integrate IT service into their planning and execution.

This premise about stakeholder collaboration and integration of IT service is developed below.

Digital value stream

A value stream for the use of IT encompasses the entire process through which stakeholders derive value from goods and services. It is the combination of an IT value stream and a business value stream that it feeds into, where digitized information is used as a resource. This involves eight key digital functions: business analysis, application development, infrastructure engineering, deployment, and IT operations that together produce IT systems, IT service management that provides IT service, use of IT systems that results in digitized information, and work with digitized information in business processes to produce results that benefit stakeholders.

Achieving return on digital investment

Return on digital investment is realized at the end of the digital value stream, where the use of IT systems and digitized information positively impacts users and their business. The quality of IT systems, IT service provision, use of IT systems, and how the users work with digitized information, all profoundly influence this outcome.

Alignment and collaboration in digital functions

Optimal quality of IT systems and services is achieved through alignment and collaboration across the functions in the digital value stream. However, upstream functions may be unaware of the value of IT service and their potential to influence it.

Impact of IT service

IT service-related value plays a crucial role in enabling user organizations to extract optimal value from IT systems. When executed effectively, this fosters user confidence that their needs are understood and accommodated, helping them feel empowered, engaged, and supported, leading to tangible business results and positive human experiences.

Influencing IT service

Upstream IT functions can impact IT service by adding value in their work and assisting IT service management (ITSM) and other functions in contributing IT service-related value. This requires:

- Understanding: knowledge of desired and actual business impact and human experience.

- Awareness: understanding how they, ITSM, and other functions add IT service-related value.

- Communication: the desire and ability to communicate and collaborate effectively.

- Values, competences, and tools: possessing the necessary values, competences, and tools for their function to contribute IT service-related value.

By addressing these aspects, IT professionals can enhance both business impact and employee experience for individuals, which also indirectly affects business impact. In the end, it’s about not about the objective business impact but about how people subjectively experience it. People may rationalize their decisions by business impact, but it is their emotional state that drives their actions.

Conclusion

Despite having rigorously scrutinized my initial hypothesis throughout the writing process, I remain steadfast in its plausibility. IT service extends beyond the confines of IT service management and its users. It is an element that is profoundly influenced by and should engage the attention of all functions along the digital value stream. While IT systems harbour the potential value, IT service is the cornerstone that empowers users to materialize that potential. Their subjective experience of IT services and the tangible outcomes they achieve, fully validates the return of their digital investments. That’s the case for change.

The elephant in the room, however, is whether the reader has the ability to break through whatever organizational culture and structure, and industry bubble belief system are currently constraining them. As I wrote in Reflections on XLA, people who aspire to enable change have varying degrees of influence. Here is a plausible categorization of roles:

- Directors create budgets and direct managers to execute improvement initiatives.

- Managers task consultants to design and realize improvements.

- Consultants advise managers, and coordinate and execute improvements.

- Workers adopt sensible ideas and refine them to make them work in practice. They pay lip service to the rest.

- Guerrillas have other plans and initiate improvements under corporate radar, with or without implicit managerial approval.

Directors and managers, advised and supported by consultants, can change the operating model (for example, policies, processes, roles, competences, teams, tools, contracts), while workers and guerrillas can only make changes within the constraints of the operating model.

So, your change approach will be modulated by your role and influence. You may not be able to break down silos (not that this is always a good move) but maybe you can reduce silo-thinking. In other words, there’s always something to work on. Unless you feel so constrained that you decide to move on. In which case, you could use our hypothesis in your search criteria.