SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

September 4, 2024

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Contents

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Acknowledgments

The SIAM Health Assessment has been created by Scopism in collaboration with Kinetic IT

Scopism would like to thank the following people and organizations for their contributions to the SIAM Health Assessment:

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

1. Introduction to the SIAM Health Assessment

1.1. What is SIAM? 

Service integration and management (SIAM) is a management methodology that can be applied in an environment that includes services sourced from a number of service providers. 

SIAM has a different level of focus from traditional multi-sourced ecosystems with one customer and multiple suppliers. It provides governance, management, integration, assurance and coordinationto ensure that the customer organization gets maximum value from its service providers. 

SIAM introduces the concept of a service integrator, which is a single, logical entity held accountable for the end to end delivery of services and the business value that the customer receives. More detail can be found in the SIAM Foundation Body of Knowledge (which is freely available from Scopism).

1.2. The Purpose of the Health Assessment

The SIAM Health Assessment provides a scan of the current condition of an organization’s adoption of SIAM principles. Just as a medical assessment aims to get a general assessment of a patient’s health, the SIAM health assessment aims also to identify the condition of service integration within an organization. It is meant to provide guidance around improvement opportunities, rather than being a benchmark or validation of an organization having achieved a certain level of maturity. The results from the health assessment serve as the catalyst for improvement of the SIAM environment, based on the recommendations in this report.

Examples of when the SIAM Health Assessment may be performed include: 

• when considering the benefits of SIAM and wanting to undertake a current state assessment to determine what exists,
• following the implementation of a SIAM model, to determine the next iteration or improvement,
• during the operation of a SIAM ecosystem, especially when issues become apparent. Here it can help to diagnose these shortcomings and offer suggestions for improvement. 

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

1.3. Assessment Approach and Scope

The SIAM Health Assessment reviews an organization across five areas, which are aligned to the SIAM practices:

• People
• Process
• Technology
• Measurement, and
• Governance & Strategy^{*
  *}This area of assessment is in addition to the SIAM Practices, as the establishment and administration of these is critical for a SIAM environment.

Each area is then divided into topics for which the level is assessed, through a number of questions. These levels are:

The levels within the scope of the SIAM Health Assessment provide the organization with a snapshot for comparison with future assessments. In addition, to improve the condition of the SIAM model in an organization and achieve the next level, guidance is provided within the assessment (and also available in the SIAM Bodies of Knowledge).

Organizations that meet all criteria are assessed at level 3 (which is the highest level of this assessment) and will be provided with generic guidance to improve beyond, mostly focused on further optimization and business integration.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

2. SIAM Health Assessment Findings

From a SIAM perspective, ‘practices’ meet this definition when organizations are applying them within a SIAM model. On that basis, they are the foundation of the SIAM Health Assessment, to review topics and levels as they are present.

Within SIAM there are four types of practice:

1. Measurement practices
2. People practices
3. Process practices
4. Technology practices

The SIAM Health Assessment also includes ‘Governance & Strategy’, as the establishment and organization of these is critical for a SIAM environment.

In each of these areas, selected topics will be assessed, against the levels defined. These topics focus on the requirements of service integration, rather than generic organizational capabilities (but note that these generic capabilities still need to be present, efficient and effective in a SIAM environment).

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

For each topic, a description of the achieved level is given, as well as guidance on how to achieve the next adjacent level. This guidance references specific sections from the SIAM publications (which are freely available through Scopism):

• F-BoK = SIAM Foundation Body of Knowledge, 2^nd edition
• PG = SIAM Process Guides, 2^nd edition
• P-BoK = SIAM Professional Body of Knowledge, 2^nd edition.

2.1. Radar chart outcome

The outcome of the SIAM Health Assessment can be graphically represented in a ‘radar chart’, which displays the level of each topic, as well as an average of the practice areas:

It easily shows potential pain points and improvement opportunities (in topics that are assessed at a lower level). Subsequent sections of this report will detail these findings.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

2.2. Governance & Strategy

Whilst this is not one of the practices in the SIAM Bodies of Knowledge, a SIAM ecosystem relies on the establishment of an effective central Governance & Strategy function within the customer’s retained capabilities. This ensures that the SIAM model meets the requirements of the business, has clear ownership and remains relevant.

The SIAM strategy should be closely aligned with the goals of the business and how it expects organizational capabilities to support them. The detailed design of these component elements may be delivered elsewhere within the ecosystem, but ownership should be retained within the customer’s Governance & Strategy function.

Underneath are the findings per topic:

SIAM strategy

A SIAM strategy provides cohesive direction and a high-level plan to lead an organization and its people through the transition to, operation and improvement of a SIAM model. A SIAM strategy must support an organization’s vision, which is reflected via its corresponding business and/or digital/IT strategy.

SIAM model

A SIAM model is particular to each organization and should be based on the services in scope and desired outcomes. The SIAM model is described in the SIAM Foundation Body of Knowledge (section 2.2.4.1) and includes the scope of the SIAM environment, service grouping/models, the governance model, roles and responsibilities, process models, the performance management and reporting framework, and the tooling strategy.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Governance model

Effective governance provides assurance that the SIAM ecosystem is properly aligned to the customer organization’s business objectives. The SIAM governance model is based on the governance framework and includes the scope, accountabilities, responsibilities, hierarchy, terms of reference, meeting formats and frequencies, inputs, outputs, and related policies, predominantly for the boards that formalize governance actions.

Audit and compliance

Audit and compliance provide assurance to the customer organization by validating that the service integrator and service providers are adhering to standards, controls, policies, processes, contractual obligations, and legislative and regulatory requirements. It defines standards regulating the practices and methods of the SIAM ecosystem in support of the SIAM strategy.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

2.3. Measurement

Measuring and reporting provides evidence of tangible results of the performance in a SIAM environment.

The service integrator will report on the performance of individual service providers against their obligations; but also needs to report business-focused, end to end information to establish accurate qualitative and quantitative measurements of the services within the SIAM ecosystem as well as the ecosystem itself.

Underneath the findings per topic:

SIAM scope

Reporting the span of control and changes to the SIAM ecosystem, including the management of service providers that are unwilling or unable to adhere to the SIAM model (for example, commodity or cloud service providers with little flexibility in their offerings).

SIAM value

Measurement and reporting of the desired business outcomes and value from the SIAM environment.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

SIAM performance

Measuring the performance of a SIAM environment refers to the ability to monitor a service and user experience of it, not just components or individual service providers, as well as report on the performance of the service integrator in managing the SIAM environment.

Provider reporting

Effective measurement practices support the performance management and reporting framework (F-BoK 2.2.4.1.6) and allow measurement of individual service provider performance as part of the overall SIAM ecosystem.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

2.4. People

Within a SIAM ecosystem and its diverse participants, the elements of culture and communications activities across different organizations need to be coordinated to ensure efficient and effective cross-functional working.

The people practice considers the following elements of a SIAM ecosystem: culture and communications, capability, skills, competency, goals and objectives. 

Underneath the findings per topic:

Culture

A SIAM environment requires a ‘one-team’ culture focused on collaboration and improvement in order to achieve shared goals.

Cross-functional teams

The success of a SIAM model involves building teams that offer the best functional expertise, combined with deep, local knowledge of specific markets and industries. This requires the capability to facilitate people, with different functional experience and from different organizations, to collaborate towards a common goal, predominantly through the structural elements (F-BoK 1.1.6), for example, the forums and working groups.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Roles and responsibilities

Clearly defined roles and responsibilities ensure that a SIAM ecosystem will work effectively. Each SIAM model will have its own specific requirements, and these need to be defined, established, monitored and improved. This includes the roles and responsibilities of each layer, organization, function and structural element.

Capabilities

Capability determines ‘the power or ability to do something’ and in a SIAM environment it includes the people, processes and tooling practices required to understand, develop, manage, measure and improve the required capability, skills and competency to support the ecosystem.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

2.5. Process

With multiple service providers, there needs to be a balance between mandating generic, uniform activities and providing freedom for service providers to apply their own, specialized processes. The role of the service integrator is to develop, maintain and manage process models across all service providers, and manage interaction and collaboration.

Underneath the findings per topic:

Process models

Process models describe the objectives, outcomes, activities, roles and responsibilities required to effectively execute the process activities across the SIAM ecosystem, including defined ownership of each process (in each layer/service provider) and coordination between these roles (FBoK 2.2.4.1.3).

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Process integration

Integration of processes across service providers and layers, including collaboration models and agreements for process delivery.

Process performance & improvement

Monitoring and review of end to end processes and outcomes to improve their efficiency and effectiveness across the SIAM ecosystem.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Supplier and contract management

The definition, interaction and operation of a supplier and a contract management process performed by the service integrator and customer retained capabilities layers respectively. The management of service providers and contracts is a core capability within any SIAM ecosystem (PG 13 and 14).

On/off-boarding (of service providers)

Defined and repeatable approaches for onboarding and offboarding of service providers, as well as their integration into the SIAM model.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

2.6. Technology

Technology is a key enabler in establishing effective workflow, communication, information production and technical support. A tooling strategy will include functional and non-functional requirements, the processes that need to be supported, standards for interfacing to the toolset(s) and methods for dealing with security.

Underneath are the findings per topic:

Tooling strategy

A tooling strategy defines what tools will be used, who will own them and how they will support the flow of data and information between the SIAM layers (F-BoK 2.2.4.1.8).

Common data dictionary

A central repository or tool that provides detailed information about the business or customer organization’s data and defines the standard definitions of data elements, their meanings and allowable values (F-BoK 6.4.2.5).

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Reporting tools

Provisioning of a technology solution that facilitates reporting of the performance of service providers, services and the SIAM environment to support decision making.

Data flows

Data flows map the entire process of data movement from beginning to destination through toolsets, taking into consideration how it changes form during the process.

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

3. Conclusions and Recommendations

SIAM™ Health Assessment Findings

Appendix – Questions & Answers