Curso Completo em Português

Service Oriented Organizations

The "Service Oriented Organizations" is an organizational model that comes from the evolution of the traditional hierarchy and serve as an alternative to scaled agile frameworks.

The most essential aspect of this model is to be as simple as possible, so that any team, person or area can easily understand it without the need for any specific certified professional, expert or coach to sustain it's implementation.

This doesn't exclude the necessity of expert to implement specific practices, such as Kanban, Scrum, ITIL etc., which, for us, should not be seen as organizational models, but management tools to resolve specific needs.

To achieve this, the SOO model is written in an architectural layer, not covering in details specific and generic practices, but promoting a way of combining these management and governance practices in an efficient and effective way.

Provide

Consume

Consume

Provide

Author: Breno Lima Ribeiro

Service Governance

The C-Level of a Service Oriented Organization acts as a legislation, strategic direction and controlling layer. Instead of commanding, the executives define:

• Policies to set the limits, values and minimum rules largely applicable
  
• Relevant indicators based on which the effectiveness will be measured
• Control objectives based on Risks
• Demand for audit

The objective is to mitigate micro management and, by reducing the operational interventions from leadership, boost team's commitment, creativity, autonomy and maturity.

The C-Level may drill down the Policies, Objectives and KPIs specifically to each Service Unit, such as financial, legal and others, or through the Service Center for end to end aspects, such as SLAs, NPS etc.

Back to Main

Service Governance Elements

Control Objectives

The Service Governance organization should set specific objectives aiming to control relevant topics, such as Segregation of Duties, Data Protection and other legislation, until internal values, such as inclusion, diversity etc.

These Control Objective may be formalized through Policies.

Examples of control objectives might be:

• Minimum X% women in leadership
  
• Every financial system change must be approved and reviewed
• etc.
  

Strategic Objectives

While strategy is about "how" to achieve a given objective, the Strategic Objectives are those which will help the company to achieve it's purpose and vision.

The executive layer must set the end go and communicate to the customer-facing Service Units, who will be responsible by triggering the service chain to ensure alignment.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

By defining how the overall organization's success will be measured, the C-Level passes a clear message on what is relevant for the purpose of that organization.

Those indicators should not be much specific, but more generic.

Examples of indicators may be:

• Service Level Agreement (SLA) - % accomplishmet
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) between Service Units
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) between Service Units
• etc.
  

Back to Main

Service Units

The Service Units are groups of up to 150 people focused on a given service portfolio.

Why 150 people?

Each Service Unit is seen as a semi-independent organization with it's own purpose, which must be linked to serving internal or external customers.

The Service Units may be Customer-Facing or Not. However, in any scenario, the customer (internal or external) must be in the center of each decision.

Service Portfolio Owner

Service Owners

Multidisciplinary Team

Back to Main

Service Portfolio Owner

Service Portfolio Owner

Description

The Service Portfolio Owner is equivalent to the director/head level, and is accountable by ensuring that:

1. The most relevant services are in place
   
2. Reviews in portfolio are made to ensure continuous relevance
3. Irrelevant services are deprecated
4. Investments are adequately distributed across the services
5. New services are set up
6. The clients of the portfolio are well known
7. Others

The focus of the Service Portfolio Owner is on the strategy perspective, and indicators must be in place to assess the portfolio value through data.

The portfolio must contain both operational services and development initiatives, since from agile to traditional.

Back to Previous Layer

Back to Main

Service Owner

Service Owner

Description

The Service Owner is accountable by ensuring the strategic.decisions for one specific service. He must ensure that all the processes, indicators and technologies are in place to delivery a service continuously aligned to the customer's necessity.

Responsibilities:

• Maintain the alignment with the internal/external clients
  
• Maintain the Service catalog clear and available for any new customers to subscribe and use the service
• Agree upon service levels with customers
• Allocate people as necessary to ensure proper development and operations
• Review and improve continuously the service architecture
• Negotiate and consume services from other Service Units

The Service Owner must work in full collaboration with the team.

Back to Previous Layer

Back to Main

Multidisciplinary Team

Multidisciplinary Team

Description

A T-shaped multi disciplinary team of specialists in technical aspects of the service, where the roles and skills are prioritized initially by the Service Owner, but lately by the team as a whole, who decides on which new professionals are necessary to support and develop the current service.

Each professional area will have their own necessities and must be defined by the specialist (i.e.: finance, HR, operations etc.).

Responsibilities:

• Develop and improve the services
  
• Operate and support
• Ensure the quality agreements are accomplished
  

Back to Previous Layer

Back to Main

Provide

Each Service Unit may be, simultaneously, provider and consumer.

As a provider, in order to make sure all potential customers know about the existence and conditions of a given service, the Service Unit must publish and maintain a clear Service Catalog through the Service Center.

Alongside with the Service Catalog, conditions for the service consumption must be clear through Service Level Agreements.

Each customer must be seen as they were an external customer, where the provider makes it's best to adapt the offerings and find a good balance between efficiency and quality delivery.

Back to Main

Service Center

The Service Center is a central entity specialized in the Services Catalog, who encapsulates the complexity of the services chain and facilitates the access from consumers to providers.

This central entity may be a team or a technology, such as a Service Management Portal system which , if well architected, may be enough for smaller companies.

Back to Main