What do we mean by ”managing in silos”?

Continuing from my previous blogs, let’s elaborate on the siloed organizations and challenges associated with such structures. Applications are engineered and developed in an effort to address the functional requirements as well as non-functional application-related requirements. Infrastructures are engineered, developed and managed with the aim to manage technology components within those infrastructures. There may exist more than one “release” channel into production. Senior leadership and management, both within the businesses as well as IT, receive largely disconnected information that does not enable intelligent decision-making.

In the middle of such chaos, unfortunately, you also come across leaders who are unable to appreciate the new generation of challenges that their business enterprises face and want to force obsolete ways of managing IT. A combination of these and other similar barriers leads to a non-delivery of those exact services that IT exists to deliver and that are required by our business customers.

This cycle creates an overall negative impact on what IT stands for and promises to deliver (which is to enable business processes in an effective and efficient manner).  The following silos contribute negatively to the overall realization of a service culture:

• Siloed Engineering and Development: End-to-end service management requires an integrated approach to managing application development and infrastructure engineering.
• Siloed Technology Management: If we continue to manage technology in siloes, our business and customers will continue to face challenges in meeting their desired business outcomes.
• Siloed Request Management: All functions within an IT organization must operate in harmony in order to ensure management of service requests required to meet service targets.
• Siloed Reporting and Communication Management: Siloed management results in siloed reporting and communication management.
• Siloed Vision and Leadership: Siloed vision and leadership at an IT level can result in lack of alignment between IT components thereby compromising the overall value that IT exists to deliver.
• Siloed Supplier Management: If we are managing our suppliers in siloes, it will present significant risks to the overall realization of agreed targets.

In other blogs, we discuss the above-mentioned siloed thinking across various domains in greater detail and establish a better appreciation on the impact of such siloes on business outcomes.

To learn more about Learning Tree’s ITIL curriculum, click here 

Ahmad K. Shuja