I agree with this except for one bit. The way it raises EA to some sort of super peak. ITIL works very well when you organise it using business services as a concept. This doesn't mean that EA is right at the top it means that structural and governance alignment is right at the top and EA, Solution architecture and ITIL and then unified within that.
IMO EA should be more driven by the operational concerns than the operational concerns should be driven by EA. Steve 2009/3/30 Gervas Douglas <[email protected]>: > <<Tony Baer presented his research on the connection between SOA and ITIL to > the SOA Consortium. The inspiration for Tony's research was a concern over > the growing numbers of governance silos that were becoming apparent. After > being briefed by a vendor who announced an SOA life cycle management > platform Tony immediately recognized the overlap across numerous other > tools. Tony concluded that there was significant similarities between an SOA > Service life cycle and the ITIL Service Management Lifecycle and considered > how exchange of information between different groups at specific points in > the life cycle could help integrate the silos. > > Tony focused on run-time SOA governance, because he said that is where you > see all the issues. He gave an example for the interaction between > development and IT operations where the development group monitors and > manages SOA at runtime and IT operations monitors and manages the underlying > infrastructure. When an SLA issue arises with the SOA service, development > analyzes the problem as the monitoring system automatically submits a > trouble ticket to the service desk. IT operations then applies incident, > problem, and change management processes (all defined in ITIL) if the > problem is attributed to infrastructure. > > Todd Biske was on the call, and talked about the role of a Service Manager. > Tony enthusiastically embraced the concept as a way of assigning clear > responsibility for life cycle management of each service. > > I was very interested to hear what Tony and others on the call would have to > say about ITIL and SOA because I believe that governance is key to SOA > success. One of the most oft touted benefits of SOA is that it creates > business alignment. However, there is nothing in the SOA concepts and > precepts, including loose coupling, layers of abstraction through composite > services, reuse, that actually delivers IT and business alignment. > Governance does that. > > While Tony focused on run time governance, I feel that the governance > process must start at the very beginning. In fact, ITIL has some excellent > processes for determine which IT projects to invest in, and track the value > of IT investments to the business. ITIL also includes the definition of > roles and responsibilities. IMHO this is crucial to SOA governance. A single > service may be used by different parts of the organization. Policies > governing that service may be defined by different people in the > organization. While it all hits the fan at run time, defining this much > earlier in the process using ITIL processes and best practices, will make > run time much more manageable. Once you know who is responsible for what > (which I'm afraid is a far more complex issue than just having a service > manager for each service) then the technology is available to send alerts to > the right person at the right level, or to trigger an automated process to > remediate the problem. > > Another big issue, not currently part of ITIL but which can be part of the > Enterprise Architecture framework, is a data architecture for defining the > policies and procedures for repository integration. It is clear that > multiple repositories will remain. There is the LDAP repository for security > information, the CMDB defined in ITIL for configuration management, the SOA > registry/repository, and the runtime repository, and probably other home > grown metadata repositories. Each of these repositories is the authoritative > source for some information, and probably also duplicates information in > other repositories. The problem with redundant data is when it is out of > synch. Integration technologies and techniques make it possible to automate > the synchronization of information across repositories. But unfortunately > different parts of the organization own the different repositories and do > not usually work together to ensure consistency. > > IMHO what is needed is not a handoff of information during runtime, but an > overall methodology, including processes, roles and responsibilities, best > practices, metrics, and governors, to ensure the business maximizes the > value of IT investments, and IT can manage the software and infrastructure > in a cost effective and agile manner. ITIL also has frameworks for defining > who gets value of out of services, which can help identify how service > development is paid for. > > I view ITIL as a good overall framework for finding best practices on > managing IT assets to maximize business value. This is what will create IT > and business alignment. Organizations generally choose a subset of ITIL that > will work within their organization. These ITIL processes should be full > integrated with enterprise architecture processes. SOA should be considered > a subset of the overall enterprise architecture and not a separate new > effort. In other words, rather than an interaction between ITIL processes > and SOA processes, I am suggesting a full integration of portfolio > management, enterprise architecture and SOA within the organization, through > an overall governance framework. In fact,I would go as far as to say that > governance silos are a recipe for failure, and think this is what we are > seeing with the current state of SOA.>> > > You can read this blog at: > > http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/bethgb/2009/03/can_itil_help_fix_soa.php > > Gervas >
