Maximizing IT Value Through Operational Excellence - A Definitive Guide to Twelve Best Practices in Applications Support and Maintenance (Paperback)

To enable operational excellence, IT must become a suite of IT Application Service Chains as shown in figure 1 below. An IT Application Service Chain is an information-service orientated derivative of the Value Chain developed by Porter in 1980. Each IT Application Service Chain links to a profit center - viewed as either a Value Chain, or in the case of services, the Corporate Service Chain (shown in figure 2 below). Application developers, in their secondary role, are not a part of the IT Application Service Chain. Instead they are like supply chain managers, expected to use standard, off-the-shelf, low-cost software/hardware components to create and improve the IT Application Service Chain. In other words, application developers will be sophisticated business people able to buy/build links in the IT Application Service Chain to enable a better overall service to the end consumer.