ITSM has nothing to do with Architecture, or does it?

When thinking of IT Service Management, it is common to immediately think of service desk, incident, problem, change, service level management and other common practices from the ITSM stable.

In fact, a few of us may have heard people state that ITSM has nothing to do with architecture.

Very often, little attention is given to some of the other crucial practices that help CIOs converge the traditional IT infrastructure and operations aspects of ITSM with business strategy.

Whilst there is no doubt as to the criticality of infrastructure and operations, many CIOs who have come from that background will choose to double down on their chosen fields of expertise, whilst missing some of the management practices that link directly with business strategy and objectives. Portfolio, organisational change, supplier, relationship, risk, and the focus of this blog, architecture management.

The Link to Strategy

It could be argued that all the practices within the ITIL 4 framework link to business strategy, and that is true, especially when viewed through the lens of the ITIL 4 Service Value System.

But there are practices, like architecture management, that provide an almost direct link to organisational strategy and objectives.

ITIL 4 describes the purpose of the architecture management practice as explaining the different elements that form an organisation, and how those elements interrelate to enable the organisation to achieve its current and future objectives. It provides the principles, standards and tools that allow an organisation to manage complex change in a structured and agile way.

The ITIL 4 guidance goes on to describe the various layers of architecture management:

• Business architecture
• Product and services architecture
• Information systems architecture
• Technology architecture
• Environmental architecture

Who Owns the Outer Layer?

When CIOs do focus on architecture management, it is common that the attention is set upon the middle layers of product, services, information systems and technology.

The CIO who has scaled the career structure through infrastructure and operations could have an unintentional bias towards those middle layers, and yet the opportunities for strategic convergence lie within the management of business architecture.

So the question is, who is focused on the outer layers, such as business architecture?

Again, if we turn to ITIL 4, we see business architecture described as a formalised description of how an organisation uses its resources for realising its strategy and objectives.

Given this intent, how many infrastructure and operations leaders have taken it upon themselves to seek a connection between the management of business architecture and the management of other ITSM practices?

We would wager that the answer is not many. Yet there is gold to be found within that connection.