The framework
Business IT Nerd uses this framework to translate the business vision into practical advice and technical solutions for your company. The benefit of the framework is to explain the concept and how to interpret the activities which are part of the projects which Business IT Nerd executes. It helps customers to determine the true value of when they hire our consultants.
Strategy
The “strategy phase” of the framework is the most important one. It contains the (long term) vision and strategy of the organization. The SMART business goals are derived from the business strategy. Those are translated into IT related goals. From here, IT projects and activities are executed to realize the right (enterprise and technical) architecture.
If a company does not have a good (business) strategy it fails to deliver the correct projects and activities. The focus is shifted to other, less important, aspects. This costs time and money.
Cool, but what is different compared to DEV(SEC)OPS? This framework applies to the whole organization, DEV(SEC)OPS is only on a project/team level which misses the link to the enterprise related vision and business goals.
Architecture
The enterprise & technical architecture should follow and support the business strategy in all aspects. Architects who work at this phase should be aware of the business goals to help the top management create more and better opportunities to practically implement the architecture.
This phase includes the software (application) architecture, the infrastructure architecture, the governance related aspects, etc.
If this phase is being underestimated the wrong architecture is setup and as a result the wrong IT projects are being executed. The architectural decisions should contribute to the long term vision and business goals.
Infrastructure
At this level the (Scrum or DevSecOps) teams actually implement the projects and activities according to the technical architecture which has been defined.
For them it is important to keep the (long term) vision in mind so they know where to put the most effort. Business managers need to understand the IT staff very well in order to judge what is going on.
If this phase is not properly carried out, the wrong projects or the wrong implementation is executed which results in a loss of true business value. Great ideas which originate from the teams should be evaluated against the existing business strategy.