Digital Information Design (DID) – A Practitioner Guide E-Book

Brian Johnson

• Herausgeber: Van Haren Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 323

Beschreibung

We DID IT; so can you. DID is Digital Information Design. IT is of course the ubiquitous Information Technology that is so simple, so easy to design and change that it (sorry, IT) never goes wrong and all you need to do is to teach a few people a bit about coding, implementing and a best practice. More seriously, if all of IT projects were successful, Digital Information Design would be a waste of time. However, the failure rate of IT outsourcing deals is around 40%, and hiring a sourcing consultant increases the odds of failure. IT-enabled enterprises thus need to know themselves how to govern the IT function. DID is the only best practice that recognizes that to do just that. You need more than best practice; and inevitably more than one best practice as well as people who understand that there is no such thing as simple easy to design IT that never changes. Therefore, to support your work, Digital Information Design (DID) guidance has been developed as a good practice to get it actually governed and done! People working in IT rarely have proficient domain experience like working as a user/customer in the line of business that is employing their IT services to perform what once were manual activities. Vice versa, people working in the line of business are rarely well-versed in designing complex IT systems and processes, but times have changed. The DID framework aids in bringing together the right mix of IT and domain expertise, thereby helping to connect both views of the same, albeit complex, IT-enabled world. DID recognizes complexity, demands inclusivity of all stakeholders in design and provides a simple yet useful model to identify key resources. And it recognizes that you cannot do everything using a single governing concept. If you want to come to grips with designing business services that can be relied upon, try using DID. This book is about the design and functioning of enterprise-wide business information management using intelligent customer principles, with particular regard to digitization. The DID framework is used to describe, position and provide tools for the design of the intelligent customer function focusing on the enterprise information assets. This framework has been set up to effectively shape business information management within an enterprise, with the aim of ensuring a better use of information and technology in the enterprise. DID Practitioner guide is part of the DID library and specifically deals with the ability of an enterprise to manage and control data services from a practical viewpoint. The principles are written so that they can be used in various disciplines of supporting services and the primary processes of both for-profit or not for-profit enterprises.

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Digital Information Design (DID®)A Practitioner Guide

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Title:

Digital Information Design (DID®) – A Practitioner Guide

Subtitle:

Improving business performance through better use of information and technology

Series:

Best Practice

Authors:

Brian Johnson, Léon-Paul de Rouw and Chris Verhoef

Reviewers:

Marco Dumont (Asessie)

Maarten Hillenaar (Centric)

Jan Ploeg (jPAD)

Maaike van Putten (Bright Boost)

Contributing editor:

Jasper Maas (Fontys University of Applied Sciences)

Text editor:

Steve Newton (Galatea)

Publisher:

Van Haren Publishing, ’s-Hertogenbosch-NL, www.vanharen.net

ISBN Hard copy:

978 94 018 0994 8

ISBN eBook (pdf):

978 94 018 0995 6

ISBN ePUB:

978 94 018 0996 2

Edition:

First edition, first impression, June 2023

Lay-out and design:

Coco Bookmedia, Amersfoort-NL

Copyright:

© Van Haren Publishing, 2023

For further information on Van Haren Publishing, e-mail to: [email protected].

Copyright:

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by print, photo print, microfilm or any other means without written permission by the publisher.

Although this publication has been composed with much care, neither author, nor editor, nor publisher can accept any liability for damage caused by possible errors and/or incompleteness in this publication.

Trademark notices

ASL®, BiSL® and DID® are registered trademarks of Van Haren Publishing.

COBIT® is a registered trademark of ISACA.

GatewayTM is a registered trademark of OGC.

ITIL®, P3O® and PRINCE2® are registered trademarks of AXELOS Limited.

TOGAF® is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

CONTENTS

1 BUSINESS INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

1.1 Information management

1.2 Business services are IT-driven

1.3 Digital Information Design framework for BIM

1.4 Management of business services

1.5 Coordinating BIM: ‘the intelligent customer’

1.6 Who should read this book?

1.7 Using the book

2 DIGITAL INFORMATION DESIGN (DID)

2.1 The Digital Information Design model

2.1.1 The DID framework

2.1.2 Drivers: business model

Need & Value

Mission & Capability

2.1.3 Domains: operating model

2.1.4 Perspectives: enterprise architecture

2.2 The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle and DID

2.3 Using the model to support analysis

2.4 Draw DID framework yourself

2.5 An example of how to use the DID framework

Part 1: Organizing business information management

3 PRACTITIONER GUIDANCE FOR STRUCTURING BIM

3.1 The need for information management

3.2 Information flow and information lifecycle

3.2.1 Information flows between demand and supply

3.2.2 From business vision to operation

3.3 The business model as starting point

3.4 Success of BIM and the role of practitioners

4 MANAGING BUSINESS INFORMATION

4.1 Stakeholders rule

4.1.1 Executive management (the Board)

4.1.2 The business/line of business (LoB)

4.1.3 Users

4.1.4 Service providers

4.2 Making BIM possible

4.2.1 Managing information and data

4.2.2 Identification of business requirements

4.2.3 Guidance about the intelligent customer capabilities

4.2.4 Requirements for IT

4.3 A generic BIM decision framework

4.3.1 Business management

4.3.2 BIM Coordination (BIMC)

4.3.3 IT department (or directorate)

4.3.4 Users

4.3.5 External forces

4.4 BIM planning and control

4.5 Information service capabilities

5 BIMC AND ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENT

5.1 BIMC supports the business

5.2 BIMC and domain dependencies

5.2.1 Domain: Governance

5.2.2 Domain: Strategy

5.2.3 Domain: Improvement

5.2.4 Domain: Operation

5.3 BIMC and customers

5.3.1 Insight into the needs, behavior and motivation of the user

5.3.2 Creating insight into the products and services package

5.3.3 Segmenting and filling in the environment

5.4 BIMC and enterprise policy and innovation

5.5 BIMC and contract management

5.6 BIMC and management control

5.6.1 Measuring is knowing

5.6.2 Quality and risk management

6 BIM COORDINATION

6.1 Organizing BIMC

6.2 Strategic and tactical tasks within BIMC

6.2.1 Tasks within policy, innovation and advisory management (PIA)

6.2.2 Tasks within contract management

6.2.3 Tasks within management control

6.2.4 Tasks within user management

6.3 How to structure BIMC within the enterprise

6.4 BIMC competences

6.5 How many people are needed in BIMC?

7 IMPLEMENTATION OF BIM

7.1 Practicing BIM

7.2 Step 1: Understand the business model

7.2.1 Identify your business drivers

7.2.2 Analyzing underlying topics and issues

7.3 Step 2: Governance, strategy and business transformation

7.3.1 Essential questions for your strategy

7.3.2 Gather essential supporting information

7.3.3 IT planning

7.3.4 Architectural issues

7.4 Step 3: Identify capabilities needed

7.5 Step 4: Present the business case

7.6 Step 5: Secure the transformation

7.6.1 Delegating responsibilities for functional management

7.6.2 Performance

7.6.3 Compliance with policy, strategy and performance

7.6.4 Quality and efficiency

7.7 Don’t give up

Part 2: Implementing business information management using DID

8 CREATING THE INFORMATION SYSTEM STRATEGY

8.1 Information System strategy

8.2 Scoping and studying strategy

8.3 Strategy definition

8.3.1 Using the capabilities

8.4 Implementation planning and monitoring

8.4.1 Monitoring, tuning and reviewing

8.4.2 IT infrastructure planning

8.5 What we do in the shadows

9 IMPLEMENTING BIMC

9.1 A roadmap for BIMC

9.2 Opening up BIMC: four responsibilities

9.3 Building BIMC using DID guidance

9.4 Results of analysis in the different DID domains

9.4.1 User management

9.4.2 Policy, innovation and advice

9.4.3 Contract management

9.4.4 Management control

9.5 Quantifying the added value of BIMC

10 CREATING A BIM STRATEGY

10.1 Focus on outcome

10.1.1 Creating a strategic BIM vision

10.1.2 Strategic issues

10.1.3 Strategic themes

10.1.4 Creating and managing the strategy

10.2 Agenda of strategic themes: analysis and decisions

10.2.1 Analysis using DID model

10.2.2 Business strategy

10.2.3 Data strategy

10.2.4 Service strategy and service integration

10.2.5 Technology strategy

10.3 To conclude

11 PROVIDING STRATEGIC GUIDANCE: A CASE STUDY FROM INDUSTRY

11.1 Strategic investment in IT

11.2 Governance, Strategy, Improvement and Operation

11.3 Upgrading technology in line with business information needs

11.4 Implementation issues

11.5 Practical implementation

12 A DID BOOT CAMP

12.1 A DID boot camp session in four phases

12.2 Preparation (Step 1)

12.3 Analysis and results (Step 2)

12.4 Reporting and aftermath (Step 3)

12.5 Conclusion

Appendix A: Terms and definitions

Appendix B: The DID canvas

About the authors

1. BUSINESS INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

1.1 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

To execute a strategy, you first need to build a foundation. Enterprises function better when they have a sounder foundation for that execution. They have taken actions and measures that secure efficiency and enable them to reliably execute the core operations of the enterprise. An enterprise needs to transact business at the right time, at the right place, and with the right information. To effectively manage the enormous amounts of data available in the digital world of today, we need business information management (BIM). Failure to meet the demands of those needing the data, your customers (both internal and external), results in a negative customer experience.

The proliferation of data, by which we mean the huge amounts of electronic ‘information’ and the never-ending push to make all information digital, means IT is integral to success. Paper will not disappear just yet, though the business world (and government) increasingly drives everyone to electronic access and delivery of data.

A rough definition of information management is the management of the information services comprising functionality, data and technology. Information management in general is considered to be the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more sources. In this book, the scope also includes technology since it is increasingly difficult to separate this from information and data gathering; and the construction and operation of software applications that process data.

Forget ‘business information’ and ‘IT’; most information is now held as bits and bytes in massive data warehouses. Pretending that business information is a protected species is failing to recognize the dependence (good or bad) on technology.

BIM is the management domain responsible for all of the tasks and activities that are aimed at governing, defining, improving and supporting the use of the information services needed for running the business and achieving the enterprise goals. Most often, IT is the delivery mechanism for how business information is captured, processed and stored; using IT means that information services are based on IT need. The importance of these activities demonstrates that BIM must be strategic and underlines the recommendation that every enterprise needs a Business Information Management Coordination, also called Coordinator (BIMC).

Success in the modern world depends on IT. Financial drivers have increased the move to outsourcing and business success might be the result of successfully outsourcing IT (or elements thereof) and retaining a business function to manage the business/IT interface, or it may wholly rely on ‘in-house’ management - or any combination in between.

IT deficiencies can stop your business operating effectively. In times of change, you must still operate because of the need to run your business on a day-to-day basis; operation often depends on managing small scale changes that frequently get in the way of long-term thinking.

In 2005, the ASL BiSL Foundation created an operationally-focused first version of the BiSL framework, based on the practical principles of ITIL, to manage day-to-day issues. DID expands this guidance into the critical areas of strategy and design of digital information management. This book focuses on practitioners and expands DID Foundation guidance in the areas of applying and implementing BIM on both a tactical and strategic level.

The guidance will cover all aspects of operational management and strategic management, from operational management through to data governance and strategy. The new guidance has been merged with operational practices current in the BIM world.

To be agile in the sense that the term DID should be used in the context of best practice, it means that you still need to know what you are doing and the potential pitfalls which enable you, as an expert, to decide which elements of best practices are most relevant, which can be put aside and how to accelerate improvements without causing chaos and rework.

1.2 BUSINESS SERVICES ARE IT-DRIVEN

How many business services can you identify that are neither entirely dependent on IT, nor at the very least IT-driven, where the critical elements of strategy and design have been overlooked and where the daily management of data therefore suffers?

Business information services produce and use ‘business information’ to achieve business goals and to provide a good experience for those who need to make use of data. Business goals differ from one market sector to another and are markedly different between government and private sector enterprises. What is common to both is that IT is used to collect, process and store most of the data and turn it ultimately into knowledge; in the majority of cases IT is also needed to keep it safe. Think about ’the right to be forgotten1’ and the consequences of when the securing of data is overlooked. In the modern age most people are unaware of the value of their data and how social media businesses make money from their data2.

The capabilities associated with managing any digital information assets of an enterprise or government body, are many and diverse. Increasingly, however, enterprises take the view that information is an asset of the enterprise and should, therefore, not be treated differently to the financial resources, capital equipment and building/estate assets of the enterprise. Digital assets, properly deployed and employed, create additional value with a measurable and demonstrable return on investment.

BIM is about the governance, strategy, improvement and operation of information services from a business perspective. The purpose is to help you manage business information and technology securely and efficiently, control IT and to integrate it within your business, precisely when you may feel you have other things on your mind.

Hence BIM should encapsulate the capability of the enterprise to set up an expert interface between all business information activities and the users and suppliers of that information. The capability ensures strategic design for the governance and management of the BIM organization and will require a BIM coordinator (or team) that we will term the BIMC, (and after this, we will drop the ‘the’, unless it is needed to clarify our writing style).

Focusing on business information management provides you with the opportunity to:

■  Govern business information management;

■  Concentrate on transformative data-driven services;

■  Be strategic with regard to the information needs of the enterprise and networked enterprises and to coordinate data and information services design accordingly;

■  Address the development of business services that depend on information by controlling the development of digital business services via the coordination of information needs throughout services development using program and project good practice;

■  Ensure the required operational functionality will be delivered through the use of good practices to address information and data management, functionality, software and infrastructure support.

The key strategic issues for effective business information management are:

■  Portfolio and program management in line with your enterprise strategy;

■  Designing business information services that meet business needs (business process developments related to information);

■  Organizing your digital information needs (information partner and supply chain developments);

■  Selecting appropriate technical (technology…) infrastructure (technology developments);

■  If you can’t ‘do it yourself’, finding people you can trust (market opportunities and risks).

1.3 DIGITAL INFORMATION DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR BIM

To support you in the area of business information management, Digital Information Design (DID) guidance has been developed as a good practice. At the Foundation level (renewed in 2020 by the APM Group to reflect the need to develop strategic thinking about data) we focused on understanding the DID framework and explored the different subjects and key issues to be addressed in a consistent and coherent approach. But to bring the disparate parts together it has to work as a consistent entity. As a consequence, the DID practitioner needs to understand the context in terms of where BIM adds value.

Understanding the context means understanding the processes that need to be in place in order to make something work or function optimally. For example, think about a laptop, just an unremarkable little flat box that now has more computing capability than the supercomputers of 30 years ago. But this little box only functions because of the wider context in which it operates. Think about the capability grid that needs to be in place, including an operating system that connects to different surrounding assets. See for example the development of supercomputers the size of a credit card. The supercomputer will serve high-performance applications that are constrained by size and weight, such as small commercial robot drones, or high-resolution industrial IoT sensors3.

Understanding the context of information needs helps you to understand how to execute BIM and add value. DID good practices than enable you to analyze, organize, synthesize, and implement the appropriate solutions.

Applying this knowledge and educating the people in the enterprise how to use the proposed solutions are the essential components that makes you a practitioner. The overarching capability that you need to master is that of the intelligent customer. The intelligent customer capability focuses on:

■  An understanding of the information processes between demand (customers) and supply (service suppliers).

■  A BIM focus on business, data, technology and service.

■  A BIM focus on business model, operating model (enterprise architecture), operational model, service design.

■  Understanding that the benefits approach appraises the full investment in business information service change and is not simply a validation of the IT components.

■  Understanding contractual, performance, technology and customer issues in relation to service delivery.

■  Information lifecycle management.

■  Understanding functional management, at the strategic, tactical and operational levels.

The intelligent customer concept is not a ‘new invention’. It is not a creation of the DID Foundation or the authors of this book, it is in fact a long-standing and well documented best practice created by the originators of the ITIL and PRINCE2 best practices. We have simply followed the guidance of these practices and adapted them for the digital age to improve the operational management of BIM.

1.4 MANAGEMENT OF BUSINESS SERVICES

To manage data strategically, the overarching capability can be viewed as a variation of the intelligent customer best practices. As mentioned above, the central topic of this book is the understanding and application of the intelligent customer in coordinating information services, or in other words, the role of the intelligent customer in an enterprise. Tools are provided for the correct application of business information management (BIM) based on the necessary outcomes of these services, which may for example (as a result of total outsourcing or the placement of services in a shared service enterprise) be managed at a distance from the parent enterprise.

Almost all enterprises, other than those working with small pieces of paper (or small brain cells) and notebooks, will sooner or later have to deal with the question of how the tasks associated with the implementation of IT or IT service provision should be organized. This concerns both the supporting services (such as facilities, IT) and (parts of) the primary processes. Some enterprises continue to provide these services internally, others choose to use external service providers. The way in which implementation is organized (and this can be done in many different ways) is called sourcing and the ‘source’ can be in-house or from a large number of different suppliers.

The reason for sourcing is almost always the need to strengthen the relationship between the client and the service provider following some form of ‘out’ sourcing. It often appears that problems which existed before the commercialization are still present after the commercialization and sometimes have become even greater due to increased transparency or the lack of substantive knowledge or lack of proper management. The enterprise is then still responsible for managing the agreements, for example in contract form, and for ensuring that its own customer enterprise gets what it needs. In general, most of the time is spent on the sourcing process.

Too often, insufficient time is spent on thinking about the commissioning activity and its consequences. Certainly, when the sourcing process is more difficult than anticipated and is delayed. Only during or after the sourcing process do we become more aware of the necessity to manage the result of the activities that are placed at a distance and to arrange for a more business-like relationship between client and service provider. The enterprise gradually realizes that there is a need for a component or central point that can properly manage questions from the business-related services that are related to quality and costs, both before, during and after the sourcing process. More often than not, this central point relies totally on information and is frequently the least educated in regard to any form of BIM.

Added to this is the fact that the issues of information design and management are generally neglected until IT is engaged to design applications, which illustrates one of the reasons why so many projects that rely on data capture, processing and exchange either fail completely or fail to deliver as promised. For instance, in the Netherlands the failure rate of IT-outsourcing amounts to 40%4.

Questions that the enterprise then has to deal with include:

■  How to focus on the quality of outsourced services and how do we organize the management function within the enterprise?

■  What are the policies regarding digitization, data and information in the business?

■  Do we need to manage the design of business information strategically or are we confident it is a task that can be left to IT?

■  How do we need to design day-to-day operational data handling?

■  How do we organize control and management to maintain the quality of services?

■  What does this mean for our employees?

■  And how do we deal with cultural change?

These are some prominent questions that are related to the management of business services, perhaps arising as a result of outsourcing or internal charging to make costs transparent. In other words, there is a need for management to control the result of work carried out by internal or external parties. But what is the structure of that management and how do you organize the coordination function in your own enterprise?

1.5 COORDINATING BIM: ‘THE INTELLIGENT CUSTOMER’

The word coordination has many different meanings, often depending on the context in which it is used. But all coordination functions have similar characteristics:

■  Focus on results;

■  Ensure that the service is provided;

■  Ensure coherence and offer coordination;

■  Monitor quality and costs.

BIM coordination is no different. Various labels are used within enterprises for coordinating or assembling services. For example, we hear about the retained enterprise, commissioning, demand and supply bundling and control, contract holder consultation, service management, contract management, demand management, management office, intelligent customer function, technical coordination team or service integration team, and vendor control.

Each enterprise, therefore, may use a different name for coordinating and controlling both internal, and remote services, or parts thereof. The term intelligent customer is the one used most often to cover the activities and is now so well understood that current publications as diverse as the Guardian and Private Eye use it without any explanation. Although primarily created to assist in managing the complexities of outsourcing, most of the intelligent customer guidance is generally applicable to any strategic management function. In particular, it is applicable where the strategic function is central to the business, as is the case with the issues facing modern business regarding the huge amounts of data that must be processed.

Figure 1.1 helps you understand the position of BIM in the context of the supply and demand of information services needed to manage enormous amounts of data. In this book we have adapted the intelligent customer guidance to suit the tactical coordination and strategic support of all business information activities and processes. We will demonstrate how to use the DID model, and provide guidance on how to build and operate a tactical BIM coordination role as well as perform a strategic support and advisory role.

Figure 1.1 Organizing BIM in the context of the supply and demand of information services

As ever, the role can be created in many ways to suit your enterprise; it might be one person or a team of 20 in a purpose-built office as discussed in the next section; it might be a part time role or all consuming. It is up to the enterprise to execute the role depending on its specific needs. We will introduce the role of BIM Coordinator, BIMC; it is up to the enterprise to decide how best to deploy that role once its value is understood. BIMC might be one person or a team; it is the role that takes all responsibility for business information in the enterprise and where BIM and intelligent customer expertise is to be found.

In all cases, the measures required to fulfill the associated management duties must be enacted as roles in different places, in different departmental units. Effectively coordinating outsourced implementation requires insight into the measures to be taken, into the resulting roles and the coherence of measures and roles within the enterprise. This also is true wherever business information is involved, for example in the supply chain, and leads to an issue in relation to the scope of the intelligent customer function. It is recommended that information and data policies that require DID processes (we believe this to mean all business processes) should be brigaded under intelligent customer auspices to ensure consistency.

Effective coordinating both strategic and tactical information management, on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis, is carried out by BIMC. BIMC is the intermediary between the enterprise with its internal customers on the one hand and the suppliers of service on the other. BIMC can be considered as operational management on a tactical and strategic level, and a means of ensuring that operational activities are carried out as contracted or agreed. Effective here does not necessarily mean a fully formal approach. In fact, when an enterprise struck a balance between formal and informal decision making, it increases the odds of IT-outsourcing success5.

BIMC should be set up with a clear goal: effective management of the results of both internal and remote BIM services throughout the business. This applies both on the demand-side, where demand bundling takes place within the enterprise and demand management, and on the supply-side, where requested services are bundled and managed using internal or external service providers.

1.6 WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?

This book is primarily about the design and functioning of enterprise-wide business information management using intelligent customer principles, with particular regard to digitization. The DID framework is used to describe, position and provide tools for the design of the BIMC function focusing on the enterprise information assets. This framework has been set up to effectively shape BIM within an enterprise, with the aim of ensuring a better use of information and technology in the enterprise.

This book is part of the DID library and specifically deals with the ability of an enterprise to manage and control data services from a practical viewpoint. The principles are written in such a way that they can be used in various disciplines of supporting services and the primary processes of a profit or non-profit enterprise.

It is, therefore, intended for everyone who is responsible for setting up BIMC (and/or a generic intelligent customer function that will extend control over to BIM) or who is involved in its implementation; this does not only concern the management of external parties.

We offer the readers a range of practical and pragmatic tools for, among other things, the following:

■  Strategic vision and principles for making digital business a reality;

■  Using best practices to manage enterprise-wide BIM;

■  Functional design, request and change management;

■  Internal business and IT service relationships;

■  Onset of potential outsourcing and gauging the impact;

■  Managing any outsourced services;

■  Improving the management of any outsourced services;

■  Control over the portfolio and transparency in costs;

■  Where the intelligent customer function exists, providing a better understanding of the need and value of business information and BIMC.

The book is aimed at DID practitioners, executive management and program and change managers who are responsible for ensuring the veracity of digital business and control of information assets. It is also useful for managers of service providers, service coordinators and advisers. In addition, the book is suitable for students of business administration and business economics in higher education who want to study data management and sourcing issues.

1.7 USING THE BOOK

We assume that readers are familiar with DID Foundation and have already passed the APMG Foundation training. If not, or you need more background, we advise taking a step back to read the Foundation book and take the current APMG exam. If there is no time, then we recommend reading Chapter 2 which gives a quick primer of the DID foundations.

Of course, just reading a book does not guarantee that the same or new mistakes will no longer be made. It is, however, our hope and expectation that with the background and insights provided, the management role or function within an enterprise can be designed simply, more effectively and faster. We use an approach whereby we do not tell ‘what’ you have to do, but rather ‘how’ you can use the ingredients of the intelligent customer in your own sensible way.

There is no empirical evidence that ANY IT best practice or method guarantees success (despite almost every one of the major best practices claiming that use of the technology to be promoted will turn water into wine). For instance, Frederick Brooks obtained the Turing Award for his seminal work that there is no silver bullet in the field of software engineering6. Next to that, the goal of DID is not to improve success. But the key to success is to be informed, to understand where best practices can help and to use these in context and as appropriate. Which means don’t (for example) use DevOps to manage infrastructure or ask a building constructor to design your house or the architect to build it (although in IT this seems all too common by letting programmers turn out code while its design is absent).

Too many claims are made that the latest method ‘solves all problems’; unfortunately, it is easier to believe that than it is to engage in proper thought and planning.

So, that ends the easy part. Moving onto Chapter 2, we will set the foundations for BIM and review the DID model.

Following on from this, the book then breaks down into two parts. Part 1 focuses on practitioner guidance for structuring business information management, using DID. In Part 2, we discuss the role of DID as a framework for implementing business transformation.

We address the need for information management in Chapter 3, information as a flow between demand and supply, and how best to deal with this. We look back at the lifecycle of application software development of a business service (together with some examples of appropriate good practices that can be applied during different stages) and discuss the strength of the DID framework, taking your business model as the starting point.

In Chapter 4 we explain how to manage business information in your enterprise, taking into consideration the many stakeholders you may encounter. We also look at a generic BIM decision model and how to apply it, being aware of your needs in terms of information service capabilities. Arising from the decision model, we focus on executing operational management on both a tactical and strategic level using business information management coordination (BIMC). BIMC is explained in Section 4.3.2 whilst in Chapter 5 we discuss how coordination is needed to support the Board and coordinate the activities of the various Executive Committees and also how BIMC acts as guardian of the data elements of the IS strategy. We use the DID framework to describe, position and provide tools for the design of BIMC in relation to the information assets of the enterprise. BIMC fulfils a bridging function between the demand from the enterprise and the supply from the service providers. BIMC takes over the needs of the business/LoB and translates this into assignments for information suppliers. In Chapter 6 we discuss how you can structure BIMC in your enterprise and what tasks can be part of it, or must be coordinated and managed by BIMC.

Chapter 7 focuses on how to implement BIM. The first question when implementing BIM is typically where to begin. There are two primary approaches you can choose: bottom up or top down. In this chapter we address both to help you to start. You should keep in mind that we are not postulating huge management structures and overheads, instead we are discussing options and the actual staff numbers will depend on the degree of automation already present in the enterprise and identified business needs.

This will conclude Part 1 of this book. In Part 2 we provide several examples of how to introduce BIM or improve BIM using DID guidance.

BIMC will need to be closely involved with creation of the Information System strategy (IS strategy). The Information Systems strategy covers ALL aspects of IT, not just the technology. In Chapter 8 it is demonstrated how you can set up an IS strategy which typically comprises five phases, all of which (to a greater or lesser extent depending on the data strategy, digital transformation, or just getting information properly managed), require BIM input. In Chapter 9 we show how you can implement BIMC and what the roadmap for BIMC can look like.

Creating a BIM strategy means clarifying, creating and refining the strategic vision, strategic issues, strategic themes and the candidate programs and/or projects that will go forward subject to approval. In Chapter 10 we explain how to create and manage a BIM strategy using an agenda of strategic themes. In Chapter 11 we cover an actual example of identifying an ideal opportunity to kick-starting BIM and how it leads to making the enterprise aware of the added value of BIM. Gathering the necessary people and collaborating together to improve business information management in your enterprise is a great way to work. In the final chapter we offer some thoughts on exploring the DID framework as a useful model to use in a boot camp

Throughout the book you will find several case studies that have been experienced by the authors. Closing the book you will find two appendices, an overview of terms and definitions in Appendix A, and an image of the DID canvas that is used in the final chapter included in Appendix B.

Key points:

✔Information management: the management of the information services comprising functionality, data and technology.

✔ Business information management (BIM) is the management domain responsible for all of the tasks and activities that are aimed at governing, defining, improving and supporting the use of information services needed for running the business and achieving the enterprise goals.

✔ BIM is the capability of the enterprise to set up an expert interface between all business information activities and the users and suppliers of that information.

✔ BIM is essential to ensure a positive customer experience when using IT because information processing depends on the proper identification of need, use, dependencies, storage, security and disposal/archiving.

✔ The capability BIM ensures strategic design for the governance and management of the BIM organization and will require a BIM coordinator (or team) that we will term the BIMC.

✔ The DID framework is used to describe, position and provide tools for the design of the BIMC function, focusing on the enterprise information assets.

✔ The DID framework has been set up to effectively shape BIM within an enterprise, with the aim of enabling better use of information and technology in the enterprise.

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1   In May 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled against Google in Costeja, a case brought by a Spanish man, Mario Costeja González, who requested the removal of a link to a digitized 1998 article in La Vanguardia newspaper about an auction for his foreclosed home, for a debt that he had subsequently paid. The court ruled in Costeja that search engines are responsible for the content they point to and thus, Google was required to comply with EU data privacy laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

2   See for example Shoshana Zuboff, The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for the future at the new frontier of power, 2019.

3   https://www.techerati.com/news-hub/nvidia-supercomputer-ai-edge-iot/

4   Delen, G.P.A.J., Peters, R.J., Verhoef, C., & Van Vlijmen, S.F.M. (2016). Lessons from Dutch IT-outsourcing success and failure. Science of Computer Programming, 130, 37-68 and Delen, G.P.A.J., Peters, R.J., Verhoef, C., & Van Vlijmen, S.F.M. (2019). Foundations for measuring IT-outsourcing success and failure. Journal of Systems and Software, 156, 113-125.

5   Delen, G.P.A.J., Peters, R.J., Verhoef, C., & Van Vlijmen, S.F.M., Demystifying a priori ITO-success determinants (unpublished manuscript, 2023).

6   Brooks, Frederick, and H. Kugler. No silver bullet. April 1987.

2. DIGITAL INFORMATION DESIGN (DID)

In order to provide context, we will recap some more of the basics from the DID Foundation publication. First, let’s be clear about BIM: this is the combination of activities performed or undertaken to acquire, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, use and distribute information needed to meet the demands of businesses, day-to-day and in the future. BIM focuses on the organization and management of information on paper, email, telephony, and in the modern world from a wide range of electronic sources.

Increasingly, business information is reliant on IT systems that make it easier to manage the information. But, as technology progresses, we find ourselves with more information than we need or use to run our business. BIM in the enterprise is focused on the need to prioritize, assess, secure and store what is necessary.

Even installations of technical equipment require data; information about how to configure hardware; the software that will be needed to run the infrastructure; the middleware. And where to build the data center. And what about the building plans? Information should be considered as being everywhere and used everywhere. Information management might focus on any aspect of IT, not just the obvious ‘data’ being used in business services. Building a data center is a business to some vendors and they need data to do that correctly. Think again about the totality of the customer experience.

Enterprises must deal with unprecedented forms of change in the way they conduct their business. These changes are often initiated by IT and IT is almost always influenced by changes in the business. Business information management is a crucial task for this.

Business information management (BIM) is about governance, strategy, improvement and operation of information services from an enterprise perspective. Regardless of how the BIM function is organized, whether in a line of business (LoB) unit or an IT service unit, one of the keys to success is that experts in business information management have knowledge of business processes and the way in which IT supports them. It is virtually impossible to find an information service that is not integrated with or dependent on IT, regardless of whether the delivery of the services is internal or external.

Digital Information Design (DID) is the new generation of BIM guidance, named to reflect an agile, modern world.

DID has been developed to manage and control information needs within enterprises. DID focuses on information-driven business services. The DID framework describes the activities that are required to establish and operationalize BIM responsibilities. The model supports efficiency and improvement through better use of information and technology in the enterprise.