Visualize the IT Operating Model
Demonstrate how IT continuously enables value for the organization.
An IT operating model visualization is needed for every organization to:
- Clearly outline the flow of operations and how different functional areas will work together.
- Define which capabilities are a priority for the organization and how each capability will be sourced.
- Identify key stakeholders, how they are engaged, and how they obtain value from IT.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The landscape of the IT operating model is changing, making it even more critical to define and visualize for the organization.
- Visualizing the IT operating model provides an organization-wide perspective on how value is enabled through information and technology.
- Don’t be fooled into selecting an operating model archetype just because it is trendy; pick the right model for your organization and succeed in reaching the vision.
Impact and Result
Don’t struggle to define and visualize the IT operating model.
- Use the centralized to embedded scale to select the right operating model archetype.
- Define the critical elements of your operating model from capabilities to stakeholder engagement to decisions rights and even value streams.
- Consider opportunities to enhance or improve how the IT organization categorizes and defines different critical groupings like services or products.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.4/10
Overall Impact
$53,562
Average $ Saved
9
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
CHP Management Ltd.
Guided Implementation
10/10
$25,000
5
MSWA
Guided Implementation
10/10
$4,550
5
Ansa McAl
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
5
Ross was knowledgeable and was able to guide me to research that I can use. Thanks for the time and the information that was shared.
Raytheon Systems Limited
Workshop
9/10
$171K
20
The best parts were the facilitation style and expertise from Areez. I'm not sure how he managed to remain so patient and keep us on track and the... Read More
Rahr Corporation
Guided Implementation
10/10
$13,700
10
Benoit was a great help during this process helping outline options, guide through questions and methods, and help me get to the necessary endpoint.
Workshop: Visualize the IT Operating Model
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Establish Context and Prepare for Change Management
The Purpose
- Understand why the IT operating model should be defined and visualized.
- Establish design principles to guide the group through the process and support communication.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Clear understanding of why the IT operating model is needed.
- A vision statement that can guide the group on where they are looking to go.
- Design principles that can support the group through the process and provide a reference for why the new model was designed the way it was.
Activities
Outputs
Document the underlying drivers of the operating model.
Outline the implications of the business context on the operating model.
- Foundational components to the operating model.
Create a vision statement for the future of IT.
- Rationale for change and a change vision.
Establish design principles.
- Customized design principles.
Module 2: Select and Customize the IT Operating Model
The Purpose
- Selection and customization of the right IT operating model archetype, outlining when and where IT is embedded within the organization.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Select an IT operating model archetype that aligns with your organization’s outcomes.
- Customize the model to reflect the accurate future state of your organization.
- Align the operating model to the organizations reference architecture to define any unique groupings.
Activities
Outputs
Select a base operating model archetype.
Augment the list of IT capabilities.
Customize the IT operating model sketch and reflect appropriate centralization.
- Customized IT operating model
Create unique groups by aligning with the business reference architecture and assign products, services, and technology to each group.
- Unique groups within the IT operating model that align to the business reference architecture
Module 3: Define the IT Operating Model Components
The Purpose
Define and visualize how each functional area in the IT operating model adds value and enables the organization in reaching its IT objectives.
Key Benefits Achieved
For each functional area the defined parts will be:
- Capability prioritization
- Purpose statements
- Critical success criteria measures
- Stakeholders and methods to engage collaborators
- Decision-making authority rights
- Value streams
- Approach to sourcing
Activities
Outputs
Functional area purpose statements.
- A placemat for each functional area of the IT operating model that reflects purpose, metrics, stakeholders, decision rights, value streams, and outputs
Critical success criteria.
Stakeholder engagement plan.
Assignment of decision-making authority rights.
Establish the value stream of each functional area.
Articulate the core output(s) of each functional area.
Heatmap the capability map.
- Gap analysis of IT capabilities
Define core collaborators and stakeholders.
- Stakeholder groups defined and critical collaborators
Identify capabilities for outsourcing.
- Defined outsourcing strategy
Module 4: Outline Changes and Plan to Communicate
The Purpose
Identify any changes from the current- to future-state operating model and prepare to communicate the changes to key stakeholders.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Able to articulate the planned changes
- Two different communication decks for executive level and more detailed level
- Next step action plan to support implementation of the IT operating model
Activities
Outputs
Create a change summary.
Establish next-step action and communication plans.
- Change summary and next-step plans
Visualize the IT Operating Model
Demonstrate how IT continuously enables value for the organization.
Analyst Perspective
Don't just define the IT operating model - visualize it.
Defining the IT operating model is a critical component in any IT leader's role. This can be hard; visualizing it in a way so that all can understand it is even more difficult. But it doesn't have to be.
We know that when organizations have a clearly defined and articulated IT operating model, it leads to increased clarity and an ability to deliver on strategic objectives. For many organizations, it is through defining the IT operating model that they discover how the current way of operating is preventing success and the ability to deliver on objectives.
Brittany Lutes
Research Director, CIO Organization Transformation Practice
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
| Your Challenge | Common Obstacles | Info-Tech's Approach |
IT needs an IT operating model defined so that it can:
|
Despite its importance, many IT leaders struggle to define and visualize the IT operating model because:
|
Don't struggle to define and visualize the IT operating model:
|
Info-Tech Insight
The landscape of the IT operating model is changing, making it even more critical to define and visualize it for the organization.
Your challenge
For leaders looking to create and visualize the IT operating model, it can be difficult to properly reflect:
- The different functional areas of IT are and how they work together.
- Where and how IT is embedded into the organization itself - if at all.
- What is a priority to improve or mature to meet organizational objectives and how this delivery of value can be measured and monitored.
- Who is a stakeholder and how that stakeholder needs to be engaged to ensure adequate collaboration.
- How the functional areas deliver value to their stakeholders.
- IT's products, technology, and services clearly.
- The decision rights of each functional area to ensure the strategy remains prioritized and aligned to.
- IT's sourcing approach to engaging with and using third-party vendors.
52%
Percentage of CIOs who considered the overhaul of the IT operating model to be a top priority.
Source: Deloitte, "Global Tech Leadership Survey," 2023
Common obstacles
Defining and visualizing the IT operating model is difficult because:
- The industry lacks a consistent and clear framework around what an IT operating model is and what it should include.
- Ownership ambiguity for IT capabilities is increasing as different business lines embed technology-focused roles into their functional areas.
- Trending operating models get defined and marketed as the perfect fit for every organization but rarely can deliver on the promised value.
- Both the business and talent workforce are changing what they work on and how they work on it, leading to a change in how employees engage with their work.
- IT often removes itself from how end-customers receive value from the organization when this is no longer realistic and needs to be measured.
Define the IT operating model before it gets defined for you
40%
The percentage of CIOs focused on increasing the operational efficiency of IT.
Source: Foundry, "The State of the CIO," 2023
82 %
The percentage of finance leaders embedding data and computer capabilities into their own department.
Source: KPMG, "The Data Imperative," 2021
The Technology Value Trinity
All three elements of the Technology Value Trinity work in harmony to delivery business value and achieve strategic needs. As one changes, the others need to change as well.
How do these three elements relate?
- Digital and IT strategy tells you what you need to achieve to be successful.
- I&T operating model aligns resources, processes, measures, stakeholders, value streams, and decision rights to enable the delivery of your strategy and priorities. This is done by strategically structuring IT capabilities in a way that enables the organization's vision and considers the context in which the model will operate.
- I&T governance is the confirmation of IT's goals and strategy, which ensures the alignment of IT and business strategy and is the mechanism by which you continuously prioritize work to ensure that what is delivered is in line with the strategy.
Too often strategy, operating models, and governance are considered separate practices - strategies are defined without clarity on how to support them. A significant change to your strategy necessitates a change to your operating model, which in turn necessitates a change to your governance and organizational structure.
What is an operating model?
If the strategy is what, the operating model is how.
An IT operating model is a visual representation of the way your IT organization will function using a clear and coherent blueprint. This visualization demonstrates how capabilities are organized and aligned to deliver on the business mission, strategic objectives, and technological objectives.
Additionally, it should clearly show the flow of work so that key stakeholders can understand where inputs flow in and outputs flow out of the IT organization. Investing time in the front-end to get the operating model right is critical. This will give you a framework to rationalize future organizational changes, allowing you to be more iterative and your model to change as the business changes.
Info-Tech Insight
Picking the right IT operating model should not be a choice made lightly. It is foundational to how IT will depict and deliver on strategy and create value for the organization.
Blueprint benefits
By completing this blueprint you will:
- Have a customized IT operating model aligned to industry-standard capabilities that are supportive of both current and future ways of operating.
- Highlight the primary IT priorities that will be required to enable organization successes.
- Define the products, services, and technologies that underly the value stream components of the organization's reference architecture.
- Clarify the operational decision rights of each functional area.
- Outline key collaborators within the organization that should be engaged.
- Identify the right mix and approach to leveraging third-party sources.
- Have metrics to measure the functional performance of the operating model and report the positive impact to organization leadership and stakeholders.
- Remove the barrier between IT and end-customers by defining if there are key engagements where IT is delivering direct or indirect value.
When leaders provide an operating model, it leads to:
- Improved speed to deliver or move through a transformation.
- Ability to take informed risks and avoid unnecessary uncertainty.
- Definition of stakeholders and which products they consume.
- Clarity on organization priorities.
- Leaders who are empowered to make decisions over their functional area(s).
- Decisions that are understood and transparent.
- Clear roles and responsibilities.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020
Insight summary
Overarching insight
Visualizing the IT operating model provides an organization-wide perspective on how value is enabled through information and technology.
Phase 1 insight
Design principles are not something to casually define to check as complete. They strategically support the selection and customization of the right IT operating model for your organization. Moreover, they help communicate why this operating model was the right one for your organization.
Phase 2 insight
Don't be fooled into selecting the trending operating model archetype. If the selected model will not align with the organizational drivers and expectations, it will be costly for the organization and IT's reputation.
Phase 3 insight
Stop only seeing internal stakeholders as the customer. Operating models tied to the business reference architecture value streams that consider the end-customers' perspective will recognize greater value for the organization.
Phase 4 insight
Succeed in making the changes to the IT operating model by embedding activities on how the change will be successfully adopted and implemented. Don't assume the new operating model will succeed without change management activities.
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
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Guided Implementation 1: Establish context & prepare for organizational change management
- Call 1: Scope the initiative and determine the drivers for the change.
Guided Implementation 2: Select & customize the IT operating model
- Call 1: Create the vision statement and implications of the organizational context.
- Call 2: Establish unique design principles.
Guided Implementation 3: Define the IT operating model components
- Call 1: Select and customize the IT operating model.
Guided Implementation 4: Outline changes & plan to communicate
- Call 1: Visualize the functional areas of the model.
- Call 2: Define the capability priorities and sourcing approach.
- Call 3: Outline the summary of changes and create a next-step action plan.
Contributors
- Rob Akershoek, IT4IT & DevOps Architect Consultant & Chair of The Open Group It4IT Forum
- Gary Burke, Founder & Managing Director, RFH Transformational Change, UK
- Benjamin Laker, Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK
- Eric Hanson, CIO Starkey Hearing Group
- Craig McBeath, CIO City of Bloomington
- Alan McMillan, CIO Pride Industries
- Tony Moore, CIO Prairie View University
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