Jiri’s Notepad

Steve Jones is trying to crack the old chestnut - how to get supportable systems:

So what I’d recommend is that architects be made to learn the existing estate and be measured on the total cost of ownership for their area, their bonus should come from them delivering on the promises that they made at the start of the project. A project managers bonus should be split 20% go live and 80% 12 month TCO to make sure they focus on the bigger picture.

I totally agree that architects and operational architecture are key to deliver supportable systems. I agree that there needs to be incentives to make this happen and my view is that these are better used on a business unit or organisational rather than individual level. Operational acceptance is the key to make the transition to support successful.

Measurement based on TCO (in a way Steve suggests) is a great idea, aiming in the right direction, but its practical implementation is going to be tricky. Motivating project manager / architects is looking at what can be done at one side of project/live service interface. Based on my experience there needs to be certain accountability on both sides of the equation. Live service needs to be motivated to do this too. Without that, the measurement process could easily break because of several factors.

• There is a big gap in how live services and projects define boundaries of the scope they deliver. Project scope typically goes along the line of business problem / objective I am supposed to achieve, domain to address (e.g. customer management) application to be implemented SAP or specific servers, network, storage etc to deploy. Modern live services see (or should see) the scope of what they deliver broader. They deliver a utility service that supports an assortment of projects and after the handover do not neccessarily maintain the information on which project uses which infrastructure in a break-down allowing measurement. Whereas it is relatively easy to measure TCO for a service, it will be more difficult to measure ex-post how much of it should be attributed to each project
• Secondly, measurement of TCO on a yearly basis creates feedback loop, which is too long. This would create problem for staff hired on a temporary basis including architects and project managers. Even for permanent staff, shorter-term feedback would be more efficient than in a years time.

Rather than focusing on individual incentives, we used an approach that extended the scope of ‘handover’ into an operational acceptance, focusing on getting things right in a first place. Based on that experience, I’d say there are few elements required:

Go-live is a project milestones but the project is not closed down until operational acceptance, an operational equivalent of UAT. This presumes a person (Receiving Manager) with an accountability for ensuring that accepted system is fit for operations, acting on behalf of live service support organisation. It is in an interest of live services to get the solution working and supportable and this person is here to protect their interests.

Now how does architecture fit into this, you may ask. Operational (governance) architecture and requirements is the starting point for the acceptance process. There needs to be some kind of agreement on SLAs between project, customer and operational organisation. These need to be mapped into support processes and technical support capabilities. As this involves some complex permutation of people / process / technology aspects, architects are key to validation and fine-tuning the SLAs.

I think that Steve is right in his view that financial incentives can be powerful tool helping achievement of the objectives. I would say that they will work better on organisational rather individual level. Business units and organisations are, in general, better equipped to negotiate structural changes outlined above than individual PMs:

If support is provisioned in-house, TCO-measurement would give a good basis for performance management on a business unit level. In the outsourcing case, well negotiated service charges provide even stronger incentives to get the support.