The Agile and DevOps Band-Aids

I just read a great InfoWorld blog post by Neil Mcallister, “DevOps – IT’s latest paper tiger” http://t.co/l3VMXEfU. Neil contends, “no half-baked movement can solve the broad, complex challenge of bridging the gap divide between application development and operations” groups. I liked his post so much that I thought I would refresh a DevOps-based article I wrote when I was at CA Technologies and post it an updated version here on my Romero Consulting blog.

The subject of “divides between groups” is near-and-dear to me. Though my book, “Eliminating ‘Us and Them’ – Making IT and the Business One,”  is primarily focused on the divide between IT and the business, it also focuses on the divide between “siloed” function-centric workgroups. As I contend in my book, the “us and them” relationships exist at multiple levels in an enterprise and each of those manifestations must be addressed to make IT and the business ‘one.’ That is why so much of my book is devoted to process and process management – the key to breaking down the walls between workgroup silos.

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The “Iron-fist of Failure”

In my last blog post I described the process management lifecycle that enables process success. The first aspect of the process management lifecylcle is to ensure the process is followed. Most process management publications I have read refer to this as “process enforcement.” I wince when I hear those words used together. I don’t believe in enforcing process. I readily acknowledge I am likely in the minority when it comes to this belief. I am constantly asked “How do I force people to follow a process?” Or, “How do I get the authority to force people to follow a process?”

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Process Success Requires Sound Process Management

Process management is the monitoring and continuous improvement of end-to-end process performance. It entails ensuring the process meets enterprise goals and includes ownership and accountability for the process design, supporting systems, resource requirements, budget, and tending to process interfaces. No matter how well a process is designed and implemented, it will wither and die on the vine if it is not carefully and passionately managed.

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Do You Love Your PMO?

I am headed to the annual PMO Symposium this Sunday, so I thought I would revisit a post I wrote more than two years ago by the same title. That post was inspired by an exchange I had with Demian Entrekin of IT Toolbox fame http://it.toolbox.com/people/dentrekin/. I left a comment on one of his blog posts sharing my view that far too many PMOs are little more than paper-pushers and process-police. His reply recounted a conversation he had with the CIO of Forbes who said the PMO can (and should) act as a change agent. “Rather than simply running the PMO as the project police, the folks in the PMO actively look for ways to create more value for the organization as a whole, using IT as a leverage point. This certainly supports your point.”

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Managers, Who Needs Them?

I delivered my process presentation last week at San Francisco State University’s inaugural Business Process Management (BPM) course. My IT governance presentation has been a fixture in their Master’s program for five years now, but it was the first time I spoke on the topic of process and process management. 

I wasn’t sure how my presentation would fit in the new class. The professor shared the syllabus with me and the two textbooks he is using are Integrated Business Processes with ERP Systems and Process Improvement Essentials: CMMI, Six SIGMA, and ISO 9001. They are good books for introducing graduate students to BPM, but I feared their specificity was in stark contrast to my general process discussion. The goal of my process presentation is to help organizations understand why their process efforts continually fail and how process, when it is done right, can produce incredible results by transforming the way work is done in an enterprise. 

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