25 attendees at The Open Group Amsterdam Summit participated
in a workshop about Information Management on May 13th 2014. A short
version of GamingWorks’ BookStore® business simulation was played, in which the
participants were divided up into three groups: Business, Information
Management and IT. The game simulates a bookstore that is tasked with improving
its revenue and profit by introducing new products and services than depend
heavily on information and related technology. Business, Information Management
and IT have to collaborate effectively and efficiently to translate business
demands into working functionality.
After playing the first iteration of the game, people remarked
on the similarities with real life, for instance “I only heard at the last
minute that I had to develop the application” and “The business wants a cloud
but doesn’t know why”. Somebody made a comment that he wished that his company
had such effective feedback loops as in the game. The ‘CEO’ made a wistful remark
about this fictitious (and closely collaborating) enterprise: “I had the
company that I’d like to work for”.
As usual when playing games, the first iterations are
interspersed with minor issues such as the Information Manager interrupting discussion
with “Why am I not part of this meeting?” and somebody in a project planning
meeting saying “Where’s the project manager?”.
The majority of the participants being architects, several
comments were made about the relevance of architecture: “Don’t think solutions,
think architecture”, “Architecture happens, one way or another – if it’s not top
down it’ll be bottom up”, and “Architecture is about feasibility and change”. Alignment
of Architecture and IM was also mentioned including the question how to
organize architecture across Business, IM and IT and the need for a reference
model. Somebody stated that Architecture should be part of the CIO Office: “You
need someone (EA) with a vision of the whole”. An aside about the CIO Office: “What
will the CIO Office look like when everything is in the cloud?”
One of the interesting topics that was discussed in length
was how Demand and Supply is organised across the whole IT value chain (Business,
Information Management and IT). Is Information Management part of the business
and therefore Demand? Or is Information Management the front end of the IT
function and therefore Supply? Somebody commented that it doesn’t make that
much difference – they’re just part of the whole process. Another valuable
comment was that Demand/Supply is not just a ‘line’ but encompasses activities such
as planning. Maturity was also referenced, in particular its influence on the positioning
of Information Management and IT: “When you’re immature you’re just an order-taker”.
Another valuable point was how positioning has changed – in the beginning IT
was about ‘support’ but we’re moving through ‘aligned’ and ‘integrated’ towards
‘co-creation’.
The final take-away was the finding that in real life the Business
and IT are often so isolated from each other that major improvements can be
made just by getting the two parties to talk to each other more often. This is
why organizations often use BookStore® game ‘in house’ to improve the collaboration
between various departments.
The BookStore® workshop was facilitated by Christian Nissen
and Mark Smalley.
