Architecting the IT Organization: Clarifying the Contributions of Enterprise Architecture, IT Governance, and ITSM to the IT Value Chain

by Debbie Carraway, Piet Niederhausen and Beth Schaefer Thursday, October 10, 2019

A Value Chain Perspective on IT

To compare the contributions of EA, IT governance, and ITSM, it helps to have a shared context to place them in. The Open Group's IT4IT Reference Architecture1  represents how an IT organization creates value, proposing a value chain with four value streams:2 

  • Strategy to Portfolio: Assess strategic demands and decide what IT will offer in its portfolio.
  • Requirement to Deploy: Design and implement offerings in the IT portfolio.
  • Request to Fulfill: Enable customers to use offerings in the IT portfolio.
  • Detect to Correct: Operate, monitor, support, and manage IT resources on an ongoing basis.

Within this model, EA, IT governance, and ITSM are practice areas that enable the IT organization to deliver value. They do so alongside other supporting activities such as management of finances, vendors, human resources, and compliance.

EA, IT governance, and ITSM all have potential to contribute to several parts of the IT value chain. Fully fledged EA, IT governance, and ITSM all seek to help an IT organization engage stakeholders and make the best IT portfolio decisions based on strategy (Strategy to Portfolio). And they all seek to guide the design of IT products and services (Requirement to Deploy). Of the three, ITSM is the broadest, also seeking to help the IT organization manage fulfillment and operation of services (Request to Fulfill and Detect to Correct). Figure 1 summarizes where EA, IT governance, and ITSM potentially contribute to the IT value chain:

graphic summary of where EA, IT governance, and ITSM potentially contribute to the IT value chain
Figure 1. EA, IT governance, and ITSM contributions to the IT value chain

Given this potential, it is incumbent on each IT organization to clarify the current and intended scope of EA, IT governance, and ITSM, as discussed below.

The Scopes of EA, IT Governance, and ITSM Are Variable

The current scopes of EA, IT governance, and ITSM vary significantly by institution. Each practice area has a broad potential scope based on industry definitions, and those definitions have changed over time. Within each institution, practitioners adapt to local needs. Table 1 shows our general observations of these scopes at higher education institutions.

Table 1. Defining and scoping EA, IT governance, and ITSM

Practice Area Range of Scope
Enterprise Architecture seeks to put in place processes and reference architectures to ensure that IT efforts maximize long-term architectural value to the institution. The scope of IT efforts that EA works on can be limited to architecting technology solutions or can extend to IT's strategies, projects, services, and internal processes (as well as those of business units in the institution).
IT Governance seeks to put in place processes to prioritize and decide among possible IT investments, aligning investments with a range of goals including business outcomes, compliance, and risk management. The scope of IT investments that IT governance works on can be limited to reviewing individual IT projects or can extend to IT's goals, strategies, roadmaps, and portfolios of projects and services.
IT Service Management seeks to put in place processes by which information technology plans, manages, and operates services to maximize value to customers. The scope of IT processes that ITSM works on can range from operational drivers, such as improving support, problem resolution, and change control, to processes that define strategy, prioritize investments, and ensure good service design.

EA, IT Governance, and ITSM Evolve in Each Organization

As each practice area grows in an organization over time, its scope can change to support more parts of the IT value chain. Over time, the IT organization also often goes from initially adopting some concepts from each practice area to formalizing a dedicated team around one or more practice areas. Often all these changes take place without an encompassing long-term roadmap. As an example, in a large central IT organization, the evolving "story" of EA, IT governance, and ITSM in relation to the IT value chain might look something like figure 2.

graphic summary of the evolution of EA, IT governance, and ITSM in relation to the IT value chain
Figure 2. An example history of EA, IT governance, and ITSM in an IT organization

Notes

  1. Open Group, IT4IT Reference Architecture, version 2.1.

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  2. Although the IT4IT framework builds on service management concepts, we consider these concepts to be helpful regardless of whether ITSM is established in your IT organization.

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