Harold Leavitt coined the phrase people, process, and technology in his 1964 paper, Applied Organization Changes in Industry. It’s been over a half a century since the introduction of this concept as a method to identify the key components for business success, yet IAM organizations (actually almost any organization) tend to default to solving problems by considering technology solutions only…
Not everything can be solved with technology.
Focusing on just the technology is a myopic view that rarely results in a solution that solves the problem at hand. Without looking at people and process, implementing technology just adds more complexity to your environment.
At IDMWORKS we’ve come to understand that the phrase, people, process, and technology, defines an order of operations. Success in IAM programs comes down to placing an emphasis on people and their processes and waiting on technology/solutioning until you have a deep understanding of the first two things. IAM program success depends upon superb requirements elicitation and truly understanding the business needs of the organization. It is only through a deep understanding of people and their situations that you can begin to identify appropriate and agreeable processes that technology can support.
So before you dive in to solutioning or send out a single RFI, make sure you understand and document the relationship between your people, processes, and technology.
Start with people:
Do the people in your organization fully understand your own procedures and how to use the technology you already have? Ask technicians what they are doing today and document it step-by-step. Analyze the gap between how people are behaving and what the ideal state looks like if they were to adhere to existing processes and got full usage out of existing technology solutions.
Map out ideal processes:
Determine the process changes necessary to fix problems, and then seek out technology that can automate, streamline or improve those processes. Know that automation of business processes is a never-ending cycle. Be prepared to modify the integrations between systems as the business grows and changes.
Find the right technology:
Now you’re ready to analyze the gap between your current solutions and your ideal state needs. The gap between the two is the new technology that needs to be added to your technology portfolio.
Reach out to us if you’d like to discuss in detail or need help working through how your people, processes, and technology can come together to solve IAM needs.
IDMWORKS Lessons Learned Series
After 750+ IAM engagements, IDMWORKS has compiled what organizations need to know before, during and after implementing an IAM program. We polled our customers and our 150 IAM engineers, architects, and PMs responsible for their success, to draw from what they see on the job every day and boiled that down to a series of lessons learned. Every organization in any stage of IAM maturity will find value in these highly-accessible, technical jargon-less, universal rules-to-live-by to make your IAM program successful.
Questions, comments or concerns? Feel free to reach out to us below, or email us at IDMWORKS to learn more about how you can protect your organization and customers.