Without well-defined Core Processes, IT staff are in a constant state of beta testing for everything they do:

• Program & project management
• Applications support
  • Selection and integration
  • Maintenance
  • New development
• Information resource management
  • Data design and administration
  • Unstructured data repository management
  • Component library management
  • Enterprise object modeling
• Operations/systems management
• Personal technologies support

Having well-defined processes is vital. Don't, however, mistake their purpose: Good processes are enablers - they help people succeed. Success will never be the result of the processes themselves.

Choose a component to learn more about how it contributes to the IT Effectiveness Framework.

Program & Project Management: The core disciplines for ensuring change efforts are successful.

Applications Support: Applications are the means by which IT delivers business value. Applications support consists of three disciplines:

• Selection and Integration is the most important, because IT implements packaged solutions far more often than it develops custom systems.
• Maintenance is the second-most-important, as it is the means by which IT continually adapts to evolutionary change.
• New Development receives the most attention, but is the least important discipline in applications support, since IT only rarely develops custom applications.

Information Resource Management: While applications are the means through which IT delivers value, information is IT's enduring asset - the stuff applications process to deliver their value. IRM consists of four disciplines:

• Data design and administration is the well-understood discipline of managing structured databases.
• Unstructured data repository management - Sometimes called "document management," "knowledge management," or "content management." According to some estimates, as much as 80% of all information in most companies is stored in the form of unstructured data such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, and scanned images. Historically, IT has spent far less time and attention to managing these assets than it has spent managing structured databases.
• Component library management is significant in organizations that want to achieve significant levels of code re-use.
• Enterprise object modeling is for object oriented analysis and design what normalization is for relational databases - the heart of the practice.

Operations/Systems Management: No matter how sophisticated the applications and comprehensive the data, unless systems are operational and performing well, the value of the rest is limited. Two trends have made operations and systems management even more significant. First, IT is now built into the heart of all important business processes in most companies, so when the system is unavailable, all work stops. Even more significant, with the advent of e-commerce, customers now interact directly with many companies' information systems. When they are down or performing poorly, it now has a direct impact on sales and customer retention. ITIL (information technology infrastructure library) is the recognized repository of evolving best practices for IT operations and systems management.

Personal Technologies Support: Many in the industry ignore the significance of personal computing, considering desktop computers to be just another device, personal digital assistants (PDAs) to be either just another "edge technology" or just another pain in the neck, and telephone systems to be just plain boring, and with luck someone else's problem. In fact, personal technologies just might be as important to the enterprise as its ERP systems. Why? It's the personal technologies that allow workgroups and individual end-users to address the small-scale needs that IT lacks the resources to address. And while these small-scale needs might each have only minor significance, in the aggregate they can have a huge impact on a company's overall performance.