We are back with some exciting news to share!
Hello from Michelle Major-Goldsmith and Simon Dorst writing from ‘the architect’s desk’.
We are here with some more exciting SIAM news that we wanted to share with the community. Having released the 2nd edition of the SIAM Bodies of Knowledge in 2020 we were delighted to see that this year alone they have been downloaded over 15,000 times, demonstrating that the pursuit of practical SIAM advice is very much in evidence.
Service Integration and Management, or SIAM, has been around for some time now and it can enable significant business benefits for complex service environments. The SIAM Bodies of Knowledge have provided a best practice description of the workings of a SIAM model, yet in our experience, many organisations still struggle to understand what SIAM is or what is needed to operate a successful SIAM environment.
Like any best practice, SIAM is ‘common sense, written down’, but common sense isn’t always common and sometimes it is hard to know where to start with it, to understand what exists, to be clear on what is working -or not- and how to improve from there.
This is where assessments come in, and in the SIAM theory it does discuss undertaking a ‘current state’ assessment as part of the Discovery & Strategy stage of the SIAM roadmap, in other words at the very beginning. Of course, an assessment could take many forms: observation, analysis, interview and more and the BoK doesn’t specify what this assessment contains. Up until now, assessments that are available in the market are focussed on aspects relevant for a SIAM environment (like process maturity) but don’t consider the SIAM ecosystem as a whole.
We did say ‘up until now’ as we can now announce the SIAM Health Assessment.
A health assessment? ….. tell me more
Now before we tell you a little about it, we want to be very clear about what this is and what it isn’t. The primary objective was to provide a starting point for improvements, and as such we wanted to avoid any semblance with an end point, like a benchmark or audit where you are basically measuring to see if you have achieved a particular score.
So, we arrived at a health analogy. After all, a health check or assessment establishes your current condition, perhaps pain points and remedies regardless of the actual state of your health. The SIAM Health Assessment is predominantly meant to provide organisations with a scan of the current condition and as it’s concerned with SIAM, specifically the health of service integration within an organisation.
The SIAM Health Assessment can be used:
• 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.
What will the assessment look like?
The assessment is based on the 4 practices described in the SIAM Bodies of Knowledge (People, Process, Measurement & Technology). A practice is defined as the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it. SIAM practices differentiate it from other management frameworks and thus seemed to be a good place to start our assessment. The practices support governance, management, integration, assurance, and coordination across the layers.
For the assessment we’ve also added the area of Governance & Strategy. Whilst this is not one of the practices in the SIAM Foundation BoK, a SIAM ecosystem relies on the establishment of a governance framework and SIAM strategy. Governance and strategy are needed throughout the roadmap, as without it there is no direction for the ecosystem (and in particular the service integrator and customer retained capabilities).
Whilst the SIAM Health Assessment objects to provide a ‘health check’ (or scan) of the current condition of SIAM in an organisation, primarily as a starting point for improvements (and NOT an end-point for benchmarking, baselining or comparison to results of either past performance or of other organisations), convention still dictates that the results of an assessment are presented in quantified form.
For this we have still used numbers, progressive levels to help create an understanding of where an organisation is from a service integration point of view. What is very different though is that we were keen not to use the term ‘maturity’. Often when undertaking an assessment organisation focus more on the outcome (i.e. the level achieved) or even a comparison (to the level other organisations have achieved or some arbitrary benchmark) without analysing what the assessment means for their specific environment and how they can improve.
The assessment is also different from others in that it is pragmatic. We wanted to keep it simple and relevant so we are not particularly interested in the higher levels (4 and 5), since improvements at these higher levels -which is the objective of the assessment- are more specific to the organisation and their business goals and drivers, and thus hard to define in a global assessment. The assessment provides some guidance (to those organisations that reach level 3), but basically, they would need the expertise of a someone with plenty of SIAM experience to help them to develop their environment further.
Instead the assessment introduces ‘half-levels’ in between the ‘common’ levels from 1 to 3, which still gives us 5 levels to assess, but provides more granularity in the ‘lower’ levels and thus more opportunity to provide more detailed guidance for improvement.
These levels are described in some detail in the actual assessment, but a simpledefinition would be:
1 Initial – Each to their own
1½ Evident – Exception is the rule
2 Repeatable – Some of it, some of the time
2½ Developing – Most of it, most of the time
3 Controlled – All of it, all of the time
Another difference with the SIAM Health Assessment is that it doesn’t rely on simple yes or no answer options. These are of course great in determining the absolute presence of something, but they don’t allow for the in-betweens. The in-between is important as things are not always black and white. As we are keen to consider context within the assessment, different types of questions, grading and rich logic allow us to delve further, gather more information and generate more complete answers.
This also means that when the environment is still in its early days the assessment doesn’t require you to answer unnecessary questions around elements which are unlikely to exist or be relevant. More on the questions will be explained in our next blog in which we explain the structure and approach of the assessment.
How will the assessment be made available?
As we have done with the SIAM Bodies of Knowledge, we are keen to provide valuable and free access to resources to the community. We will be offering a multi-layered assessment with a distinction between the layer 1 self-assessment and the layer 2 consultant-led one
What next?
So, we hope that gives you some insight into what is coming. We are launching a SIAM specific assessment with some real differences. It doesn’t seek a maturity level nirvana and instead is meant to assist an organisation considering how their SIAM environment is supporting their needs for cohesion and integration. It’s about understanding current capability and preparedness for improvement.
It is about pragmatism, focusing on the capabilities from basic to the good, rather than a theoretic perfect level. And it will be contextual, with the analysis moving past the yes and no, the black and white and into the real world ‘grey’ in-between. It will help an organisation consider what they currently have and to developed capabilities to improve.
So, watch this space for our next blog where will talk more about the assessment and be sure to follow us on Twitter.
About the authors
Managers, Service Management – Kinetic IT. With a combined experience of over 50 years in service management, Michelle and Simon are well known in the industry. They are Lead Architects for the Scopism Service Integration and Management Professional Body of Knowledge (BoK) and founder members of the SIAM Foundation BoK architect team, as well as Subject Matter Experts for both EXIN and BCS in developing the accreditation around this.
The team was awarded Thought Leaders of the Year at the Professional Service Management Awards by the itSMF UK (in 2017). Both have been an active committee member of various service management groups and forums for many years, including the itSMF in WA. They shared the award of ITSM Thought Leader of the Year in 2018 and were both the Service Management Champion of the Year (Michelle in 2017, Simon in 2018) from itSMF Australia. Michelle was also awarded HDIs Top 25 Thought Leaders in Technical Support and Service Management for 2020. They are both passionate about service management and keen to share their knowledge.
