Author: Dot Tudor
Date: 2007-02-01

Managing the IT Estate

Delivering IT Services Using PRINCE2®, DSDM and ITIL®

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We will consider in more detail just a few indicative disciplines below:
  Availability management is concerned with ensuring that stated business requirements for application availability are consistently met. The business requirements for the developing application are typically established early in the project. Without any input from the availability management, such 'non-functional' requirements may be unrealistic or may be overlooked completely. If overlooked, there is an element of work to be done to implement these requirements when they are discovered which will not have been accounted for in the project plans, causing delay to implementation and extra cost.
  IT service continuity management is about providing an 'agreed level of IT service... to support minimum business requirements following an interruption of business'. This will also include the provision, testing and implementation of back-up facilities. If this discipline is not considered early in the project, the understanding of the 'minimum business requirements' may be unclear. DSDM would cause prioritisation of business requirements early in the project, with continual review of this during the project. However, the involvement of IT service continuity management will give a new perspective and further clarity to defining a requirement as 'must have', 'should have', 'could have' or 'won't have' and will ensure that this prioritisation is consistently used when the application becomes 'live'. The involvement of the ITIL discipline will also ensure that the project takes account of the additional work needed to set up backup and recovery procedures.
  Change often results in the need for new hardware, new versions of software and/or new documentation, created inhouse or bought-in. These need to be controlled and distributed as part of a packaged 'release'. Release management, to quote the ITIL manual, "undertakes the planning, design, build, configuration and testing of hardware and software to create a set of release components for the live environment." There is clearly an overlap of responsibilities here with those of the PRINCE2 or DSDM project manager of any application development. It is insufficient to involve the release manager at the end of a project, just before a release is needed.

Additionally, DSDM takes a regular, incremental approach to delivery, in order to gain business benefit early. In such a case, to avoid loss of control, release management may need to be involved continuously with a project.
Change management and configuration management are disciplines on which PRINCE2, DSDM and ITIL all offer guidance. The good news is that all three approaches have developed over the years in line with each other and their advice does not conflict. Indeed, between PRINCE2 and ITIL some evidence of 'cut and paste' can be perceived (not surprising as both are owned by the OGC). However, the practicalities are that the approaches do allow some flexibility of implementation and it is crucial to success that the ease of handover from project to live environments is considered.

In conclusion

PRINCE2, ITIL and DSDM are all mature, well-established approaches to managing different aspects of providing the IT service. They are widely used by companies large and small and have accreditations and qualifications to ensure professionalism in their use. However, alone they are not sufficient for the end-to-end management of the IT service. Used in isolation from each other, they will not deliver their full benefits.
To gain the full control and benefit of the best practices which they all embody, they should be operated together. This will avoid confusion and unnecessary rework and lead to a coherent, controlled management of the organisation's IT service.

Key Benefits of PRINCE2

Well-documented project management method;
Strong framework for the governance and management of projects;
Clearly-defined management roles;
Allows 'management by exception', having a clear escalation and issue handling process;
Business-focused;
User-centred;
Product-based;
Controlled and organised start, middle and end to projects;
Already well established in many public and private sector organisations.

Key Benefits of DSDM

Well-documented Agile approach;
On time, on budget delivery;
Business-objective focused;
Promotes early and continuous delivery of product, in business-valuable increments throughout the project;
Continuous active user involvement at both management and team level, with guidance on making this effective;
Clearly-defined management and team roles;
Guidance on small, self-directing teams;
Techniques for communication, project control and team working;
Already well established in many public and private sector organisations.