Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children »

Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise. Previously, he was the head of Enterprise Repository Services for the specialty electronics retailer Best Buy. He has held architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in metadata, configuration management, and IT governance. He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. He is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, ACM, and Data Management Association (DAMA). He presents frequently both locally and nationally to professional associations and conferences.

How would you feel if you visited your financial planner’s office and saw past-due credit card notices on their desk? Would you trust an auto mechanic whose car backfires and produces black smoke? A dentist with bad teeth? A banker in shabby clothes? An interior designer whose offices are a shambles?

This is the position of the IT capability in many large organizations. The designated custodian of critical business processes and data does not manage its own processes and data reliably. A response in the form of Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology is emerging from major companies, research firms, and vendors; they are labeling these offerings "ERP for IT," “IT Resource Planning,” and related terms.

This groundbreaking, practitioner-authored book provides an independent examination of and response to these developments. An analysis of the large scale IT capability, with specific attention to business processes, structured data, and enabling systems, it is essentially a comprehensive systems architecture, not for the business capabilities IT supports, but for IT itself.

Features The book presents on-the-ground coverage of enabling IT governance in architectural detail, which you can use to define a strategy and start executing. It fills the gap between high-level guidance on IT governance, and detailed discussions about specific vendor technologies. It is a next-step book that answers the question: OK, we need to improve the way we run IT-now what? It does this through:

* A unique value chain approach to integrating the COBIT, ITIL, and CMM frameworks into a coherent, unified whole
* A field-tested, detailed conceptual information model with definitions and usage scenarios, mapped to both the process and system architectures
* Analysis of current system types in the IT governance and enablement domains: integration opportunities, challenges, and evolutionary trends
* Patterns for integrating the process, data, and systems views to support specific problems of IT management.
* Specific attention throughout to issues of building a business case and real-world implementation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise.

He has held consultant and architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in metadata, configuration management, IT governance, enterprise application integration, and ERP systems. He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. Charlie is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, ACM, and Data Management Association (DAMA). He presents frequently both locally and nationally to professional associations and conferences.

He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog.

Part I: The IT Value Chain Chapter 1: Introduction: Shoes for the Cobbler’s Child Chapter 2: The IT Value Chain: a process foundation

Part II: Supporting the IT value chain Chapter 3: A supporting data architecture Chapter 4: A supporting systems architecture Chapter 5: Patterns for IT Enablement

Part III: Conclusion Chapter 6: Epilog

Appendix A: Architecture methodology used in this book

Appendix B: Some thoughts on the professionalization of enterprise IT

Appendix C: IT Professional Organizations