As I mentioned in my previous post, I was up late on Friday night (or maybe Saturday morning) with my mind racing on quite many thoughts, one of which was about how IT and “the business” are going to be merging in the future.  So, if this merge is in the future how is it supposed to happen?  Should we go with a big bang of merging, or maybe take things slowly through evolution?  Since I’ve got a biology background, I’m going to stick with evolution and here’s my idea on a place to start.

Take the role of Incident Manager out of IT and put it under “the business.”  Now, I don’t mean to say that Incident Management is going to be owned by the business and IT won’t ever do it again (sorry analysts – Incident Management is here to stay).  But I do mean to move some accountability, as well as authority, of Incident Management away from IT and hand it over to the business, on a nice silver platter with extra pudding on the side.  Here’s where I get to answer the question, why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing?

First, this is going to help give a better idea of what kind of impacts Incidents are causing to the business.  After all, when things don’t work, who can better say what can’t be done then the people that are now not able to do their jobs?  This means the Incident Manager should be able to give more accurate prioritization on Incidents.

Second benefit:  You now have no one that can “filter” metrics before they reach the business.  Much like an audit performed by an external company, the Incident Manager would have an opportunity to collect and analyse data without anyone manipulating the numbers to that could skew IT’s performance (this would be a major problem in general and I really hope your IT group/department isn’t experiencing anything like it).

Third benefit:  You’d be getting the business side to take a closer look at IT, and ultimately, start bringing transparency to daily operations.

Fourth benefit:  Improve communication between IT and business leaders.  Since communication seems to be a common issue in general, why not start breaking down departmental silos by taking some of the daily Service Operations people and having them report within the business?  This isn’t to fix broken communication processes, but rather put key players inline with each other.

I could probably give a fifth and sixth reason (maybe even up to ten), but with the average attention span being about 140 characters, I don’t want to take too much of your time.  My overall point is that daily operations for business and IT are going to merge (so I’ve heard since I can’t predict the future), so I’m going to make the case that if we’re going to start somewhere, let’s start with Incident Management.  So long Incident Manager!

Oh wait, that’s me…

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.