BRM Forum discoveries -The role of BRM in CSI?
At the Baxter & Thompson associates BRM Forum in London delegates gained some practical takeaways after participating in the Grab@Pizza Business simulation game.
The simulation game is an experiential learning instrument that can be used to support BRM training courses such as BRMP and CBRM. The simulation can also be used in organizations to create buy-in for BRM, assess current BRM capabilities and agree a roadmap for moving forward.
In the simulation workshop, the team, playing the Business & IT roles in the fictive organization ‘Grab@Pizza’ must work together to create value for the organization by deploying a number of digitally enabled strategic business initiatives, whilst at the same time ensuring continuity of existing services.
The simulation game is played in a number of game rounds. Between the game rounds at the BRM Forum event the teams used the maturity assessment of Baxter Thompson associates to assess their current maturity on 6 aspects and to identify and agree improvements.
New insights and takeaways
An important understanding was the need to set a realistic ambition for the next level of partnership. Expecting the organization to mature from 1 to 5 in one go is unrealistic. Current organizational culture, trust, credibility, maturity and skills will dictate the speed at which a strategic partnership can be realized.
These were the key takeaways captured during the end-of-day reflection.
‘What did you apply in the simulation today that you will take away and apply in your own organization’?
- Clarity of roles: The difference between a Service Manager and the BRM; the BRM as a tactical or strategic role; the CIO clarifying the role of the BRM to the rest of the organization; the responsibilities of the Business in Governing IT.
- Cultivate a relationship with Service Management. Help ensure KPI’s are business related; facilitating ‘Business intelligence’ and ‘Business understanding’ within ITSM; ensuring ITSM needs are taken into account.
- BRM’s are currently a bottleneck to Digital Transformation initiatives. Requires the right amount of BRMs for the business demand, a good business understanding and the right skills to enable strategic BRM.
- Relationship with ITSM Problem management. Problem management can help focus on understanding ‘Value Leakage’ and reducing technical debt, at the same time signaling trends and risks to Value creation.
- Ensure priorities are known end-to-end and embedded end-to-end in priority and escalation mechanisms, including the business responsibilities.
- BRMs do not just focus on Value creation and innovation. Value optimizations encompasses Value leakage as well. Addressing this can help win ‘Trust’ and demonstrate ‘Credibility’.
- ‘Thinking time’ – stepping back to look at things from an end-to-end perspective with the relevant stakeholders.
- BRMs to take an active leading role in embedding CSI into the culture and for prioritizing improvements.
- CSI is a core capability for moving forward.
- BRM’s can facilitate engagements with business and users to gain a better understanding within IT of business impact.
- Help shift current language of Business AND IT. We are all the business and must be working towards shared goals as partners.
- Spend time with the key stakeholders to gain a better understanding of ‘drivers’, ‘pain points’ and ‘perceived improvement needs’.
‘This is a powerful way to explore the need for BRM and help shape decision making on the strategic role of BRM with an organization’ said one delegate after the session.
A clear need was raised for having ‘Value Management’ the topic for the next forum.
Does a simulation help?
Jeremy Byne, University of Loughborough, representing the winner of the BRM ‘Professional Service Management Awards 2017’ stated in this case study ‘We certainly achieved our objective for the day and despite some initial scepticism by some delegates, everybody said it was well worth a day’s downtime to stop work and focus on how we actually do work. We have a clear action plan and a better respect and understanding for each of our roles so the simulation was great value’.