Process 1: Identify Changes Needed

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Figure 3 illustrates the three activities involved in identifying any changes that might be needed in an organization’s IT roles and responsibilities.

Figure 3. Activities for identifying changes needed

Activities:Identify Changes Needed

Many factors can drive a change in the roles and responsibilities in IT. Changes may occur in the staffing, skills, and training required for certain tasks or in the frequency or methods of accomplishing tasks. New markets, technology, or policies can all influence responsibilities. 

The primary activities in identifying whether such changes are needed are:

  • Review IT portfolio.
  • Determine work to be done.
  • List responsibilities.

Table 11. Activities and Considerations for Identifying Changes Needed

Activities

Considerations

Review IT portfolio

Key questions:

  • What is the most important goal for each accountability in your organization?
  • What does reaching this goal look like?
  • How can these goals be met?
  • What changes are coming up that will affect IT?

Inputs:

  • IT portfolio
  • IT strategy
  • Policy
  • Reliability requirements

Outputs:

  • Organization goals
    • Vision for each accountability
    • Goals for each accountability
    • Proposed team/organization model

Best practices:

  • Identify anything that would affect the current responsibilities.  Look at project teams needed.
  • Look for technology additions, significant changes, or retirements.
  • Look for processes added, deleted, or significantly changed.
  • Look for monitoring and maintenance tasks added, deleted, or changed due to automation.
  • Look for increase in customer service demand, possibly created by new user groups.
  • For more details on planning and strategy, which may affect staffing, see the Business/IT Alignment SMF.

Determine work to be done

Key questions:

  • What are the required staffing levels for the services offered?
  • Have there been recent changes in business demand or technology that would change the work that needs to be done? Are you anticipating changes?

Inputs:

  • Change list

Outputs:

  • Updated responsibility list

Best practices:

  • Be sure to update the list of responsibilities when technology is added or replaced.
  • Changes spike customer service usage while the users adjust to the new system. Automation reduces staffing needs overall but creates some new operations responsibilities.

List responsibilities

Key questions:

  • What work must be done to plan, deliver, operate, and manage IT?

Inputs:

  • Job descriptions
  • Task lists
  • SLAs and OLAs
  • MOF SMFs

Outputs:

  • List of responsibilities in your IT organization

Best practice:

  • Look at multiple sources of information to be sure you have good coverage.
  • Look at all phases and SMFs in MOF to ensure good coverage of responsibilities. Each MOF SMF includes a list of typical responsibilities.

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