Simon Dorst and Michelle Major-Goldsmith from Kinetic IT have dropped in to give us another update on the progress of the SIAM Professional certification – thanks both! 
The development of SIAM Professional Body-of-Knowledge (BoK) is gathering speed, and we are almost at the stage where we are ready to collate the content created by our volunteers into one coherent publication.
Creative process
So, a little more about how we are working. The approach taken is to run two-week cycles of activity with author teams and reviewers. After each cycle, there is a virtual group meeting, taking stock of the outcome of the previous cycle and settings the objectives for the next one.
These conference calls have been interesting. Those in Australia claimed to already have a beer in hand as we commence, those in the States are drinking their first cup of coffee for the day, and the Europeans are thinking about morning tea. Not to mention discussing the weather in various parts of the world (in different seasons). My favourite comment was how one volunteer was enjoying the English summer … both days of it!
The Professional material will expand on what’s in the SIAM Foundation BoK (download it for free here) and explain it in more depth. We started with an outline scope for the BoK then broke it into the (Foundation) Roadmap stages:
Stage 1 – Discovery and Strategy – analysing the drivers for a SIAM transformation project, and identify expected benefits.
Stage 2 – Plan and Build – creating a detailed SIAM model and a plan for transformation.
Stage 3 – Implement – managing the transition from the current state to the desired future state.
Stage 4 – Run and Improve – managing day to day service delivery and continual improvement activities.
Within each stage there were (sub-)sections, and an author-team was assigned to each section. Initially our 1st Authors led the writing effort, who then ‘handed over’ to the 2nd Authors whose task was to add content, fill gaps and make suggestions on the work so far. Many of our content-teams forego this approach and collaborated, often utilising additional members from their reviewer team to produce extensive material.
After these two content creation cycles, we handed the initiative to groups of Stage Reviewers to assess all content (within a stage) and make numerous comments. Currently the content is back with the 1st (or Primary) Author, to complete each section. In some cases we’ve formed ‘task-groups’ to review & expand on specific topics within the SIAM Professional scope.
It is interesting how this process sometimes throws some surprises at you. Where we thought we kind of knew what was ahead of us and what type of content we were expecting, it turns out that in some areas there was either a lot more or in some cases it took us in a completely different direction.
We’d like to take a sneak peek at some of these ‘surprising’ content areas and hopefully get you excited about what this BoK will have to offer – here’s an update on the contractual content.
Contractual complications
Whilst the Foundation BoK does discuss the contracts needed between the organisation and the Service Integrator, plus the various Service Providers, it provides only a fundamental description of the content of these. However, what we are intending to do with the Professional BoK is to provide some additional guidance on SIAM specific contractual considerations, possible structure and recommended content.
As the team collaborated, we unearthed a proverbial ‘can of worms’ of very specific regulations, governance requirements and legal obligations that are applicable. This is the type of guidance that provides real value for practitioners implementing or running within a SIAM ecosystem. For instance, there is the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, for more information see here) which could have a significant impact on a SIAM ecosystem when providers store and handle data in different countries (or sometimes in the unspecified ‘cloud’). Or TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings – Protection of Employment Regulations, more here) and other regulations around outsourcing resources, which would need to be considered as part of the phasing of the transition to a SIAM environment.
Many of these specifications are country specific, and our approach will be to provide examples and anecdotes to accompany the high-level guidance to help SIAM professionals understand what is relevant for them.
