The IT discipline has evolved in an unanticipated pace during the last decade, and it is still evolving, forcing both development and operations teams to adapt to this new digital age that is centered around delivering value faster, cheaper and better.
For years, IT operations focused on stability, compliance and maturity, relying on different tactics to achieve these objectives, such as:
- The manifesto—IT service management practices (ITSM)
- The structure—The classic multitiered support model
- The toolset—A centralized ITSM tool
Although those have served their purpose for many years, the new digital era requires adopting, adjusting and sometimes giving away some of these tactics in order to catch up with the new era’s demands and requirements.
IT Service Management Practices
To help organizations navigate the new digital era, ITSM best practices have evolved and new versions of both the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and COBIT were released in 2019. Both frameworks recognize the new need for IT organizations to move from the old way of working (service delivery) into the new models where services (value) are co-created from collaboration between stakeholders across enterprises. The new versions have modernized frameworks, principles and practices, allowing for more agility and flexibility in addition to emphasizing the importance of improving operations teams’ soft skills and communication competencies.
Support Model
For decades, the multitiered support model was the typical model adopted in IT operations to tackle customer issues and concerns in a structured approach. This classic approach was sufficient until IT entered the digital era, where customers interact with technology directly through digital channels (e.g., mobile phones, chatbots, interactive voice response (IVR), smart watches), leading to piled queues of incidents and inquiries causing customer dissatisfaction. These challenges accelerated the emergence of the “swarming” model that allows engineers from different levels to collaborate and work on the same item simultaneously to improve both resolution times and customer experience.
The Toolset
The centralized ITSM tool is still vital in the digital era, but the overall evolution in IT systems architecture is moving to the spectrum of systems of records, which is defined as an information storage and retrieval system. Technology advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and microservices are pushing for modern, flexible and modular architectures that can speed up, optimize and automate IT operations central activities, especially in high-velocity IT organizations.
A New Mindset
The IT discipline is evolving in an unprecedented pace that requires IT operations to adapt and adopt new tools, practices, technologies and, most importantly, new skills and mindset.
Editor’s note: For further insights on this topic, read Abdelelah Alzaghloul’s recent Journal article, “Modern IT Operations: Ninja, Samurai or Ronin?” ISACA Journal, volume 4, 2021.
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