PR 58 The IT Factory — Craft or Utility?

To Build And Govern A Federated and Diverse IT Services Empire You Need Roman Roads In this Episode of Practitioner Radio George and I review key manufacturing terms and concepts and apply them to IT Service Management concepts. In principle it is important to understand that the nature of service delivery can vary widely from custom developed Engineer To Order all the way to standardized Make To Stock service offerings.

In fact most IT Service organizations will have to manage a service portfolio with offerings across the full range. The challenge comes when most services we deliver are custom and very little has been standardized. While it is certainly possible to operate in this fashion (and many if not most IT shops do) it is not advisable since this service delivery model bears the consequences of high variability, complexity, risk, cost and low throughput.

What made the Roman Empire great is that it knew how to Govern a diverse set of regionally unique provinces (service providers), by leveraging the strength of their native differences and creativity while establishing standards and roman roads when required to hold the complex empire together for hundreds of years. Internal IT organizations do not have to choose to be either a Craft or Utility focused provider. Rather they have to agree and define which services will be custom developed and which ones will become standardized Roman Roads spanning the political, geographic boundaries and silos of the IT Enterprise Value System.

Show Notes:

Troy's and George's Thoughts What Are Yours?

“All roads lead to Rome.” ~Jean de La Fontaine

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