The Open Group IT4IT Standard, Version 3.0

The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards. Our diverse membership of more than 870 organizations includes customers, systems and solutions suppliers, tools vendors, integrators, academics, and consultants across multiple industries.

The mission of The Open Group is to drive the creation of Boundaryless Information Flow™ achieved by:

Further information on The Open Group is available at www.opengroup.org.

The Open Group publishes a wide range of technical documentation, most of which is focused on development of Standards and Guides, but which also includes white papers, technical studies, certification and testing documentation, and business titles. Full details and a catalog are available at www.opengroup.org/library.

The Open Group IT4IT Forum enables industry thought leaders to collaborate in the development of the IT4IT Value Network and the IT4IT Reference Architecture Standard for business benefit.

The mission of this Forum is to create and drive the adoption of the IT4IT Reference Architecture Standard to manage the business of IT, enable business insight across the Digital Value Network, increase focus on business outcomes, and improve agility.

Participation in the IT4IT Forum enables digital practitioners, consultants, technology and training vendors, service providers, business managers, and academics to come together in a technology- agnostic, industry-agnostic, and vendor-neutral environment to solve shared digital management challenges. Participants in IT4IT Forum Work Groups benefit as they:

For further information about the IT4IT Forum, visit http://www.opengroup.org/it4it-forum. For further information about the IT4IT Standard itself, visit http://www.opengroup.org/it4it.

This is a Snapshot document of what is intended to become The Open Group IT4IT Standard, Version 3.0, referred to within this document as either the IT4IT Standard, or the IT4IT Standard, Version 3.0. It covers the capabilities required to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a Digital Product; from plan through build, instantiate, and operate. It assumes that the principles and capabilities for managing a Digital Product are industry-agnostic: that all digital technology leaders share the same problems and opportunities in managing the product lifecycle.

Effective management is delivered partly through organizational structure, competencies, and capabilities. A missing link in Digital Transformation has been a well-defined Digital Product reference architecture prescribing the value streams and capabilities required to manage the Digital Product lifecycle. The IT4IT Reference Architecture proposes a standard for this that can be mapped to existing landscapes yet remain flexible enough to support the inherent volatility of the technology industry and accommodate changing paradigms (composite apps, Agile development, mobile, multi-sourcing, empowered teams, etc.).

The IT4IT Digital Value Network and IT4IT Reference Architecture described in this document provide the missing link: a prescriptive guide on how to structure the management of Digital Products and their associated services.

The Digital Value Network and IT4IT Reference Architecture are a new paradigm for IT4IT operating models. They provide a welcome blueprint to help the Chief Information Officer (CIO) plan and accelerate support for the business transition to digital, illuminating the path from project-based investment models, waterfall methodologies, silo-oriented manual practices, and reactive order-taking, to a modern foundation and engine for delivering Digital Products and services with a product-based investment model, Agile planning and development, integrated and automated DevOps at scale, and effectively managed and measured service brokerage.

The following topics have been included/enhanced in Version 3.0 of the IT4IT Standard:

Normative references for this standard are defined in Section 1.4.

The following documents are referenced in this standard or provide further information:

The subject of this Snapshot document is the specification of the IT4IT Standard, Version 3.0, a standard of The Open Group. It prescribes a reference architecture based on a Digital Value Network with value stream mappings, information model, capabilities, functional components, data objects, and data flows that can be used to manage the business of Information Technology (IT) and the associated lifecycle management of Digital Products.

This Snapshot document presents a proposal for a standard that is an end-to-end, value-based blueprint to help establish competitive advantage by exploiting new and innovative digital approaches. Adoption of the IT4IT Standard can help business leaders to improve organizational efficiency by reducing the gap between business objectives and digital outcomes by aligning key stakeholders around value-led, collaborative product and service delivery.

The IT4IT Standard uses a value stream approach to create a model of the functions that organizations must perform to help them to identify activities that contribute to business competitiveness. This value stream framework is often referred to as a Value Network. A Digital Value Network is specified in this document as part of the IT4IT Reference Architecture, which defines an integrated management framework focusing on the lifecycle of Digital Products. It identifies the key things that organizations must do – and do well – to deliver digital capabilities. It allows an organization to achieve the same level of business predictability and efficiency that supply chain management has allowed. It is designed by practitioners to be industry, product, and vendor-independent.

The approach put forward in prior versions of this standard was based on the long-standing thought experiment of “running IT as a business”, a common theme in IT management discussions for the past 40 years (see Betz, p.10 for extensive citations). In recent years, this need has rapidly evolved as the business itself has become digital. In other words, as the business delivers Digital Products, IT becomes the business.

Managing IT, or as we increasingly formulate it “managing digital”, often uses guidance from frameworks (such as ITIL®, SAFe®, COBIT®, and the PMBOK™ Guide), standards (such as ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011), and other IT management professional literature. The IT4IT Reference Architecture is a complementary practicable standard for the value streams, functions, and information in a prescriptive approach to managing a Digital Enterprise. The focus is business-centric and ultimately user-centric in advancing strategy and attaining goals.

Together with the IT4IT Reference Architecture, the IT4IT Digital Value Network concept represents the Digital Product lifecycle in a new and powerful way, providing the missing link between industry standard best practice guides and the technology frameworks and tools that power the current IT management ecosystem. The IT4IT Reference Architecture is a solid foundation on which to inform a digital operating model, and it has become a welcome blueprint for the CIO/CTO/CDO and other business leaders seeking to accelerate the Digital Transformation of the business.

The Value Network is broken down into seven prescriptive IT4IT Value Streams, forming an integral part of the IT4IT Reference Architecture. It was created by a consortium of enterprise IT consumers, vendors, and partners to address strategic challenges and opportunities brought about by disruptive technology changes such as mobility, cloud, big data, and the modern threat landscape. The IT4IT Value Streams create a prescriptive model for managing the Digital Product lifecycle at scale, as well as brokering digital services to both the enterprise and to customers with the use of a multi-sourced approach.

The absence of a product-centric operating model has constrained the value that could be delivered by best practice process frameworks such as ITIL and COBIT. By showing how to shift the focus of digital investments from project to product-based value delivery, the IT4IT Reference Architecture provides a usable model for standardizing the digital automation fabric to support constant innovation and accelerated digital service delivery.

This is a Snapshot document, not an approved standard. Do not specify or claim conformance to it.

This document contains provisions which, through references in this standard, constitute provisions of The Open Group IT4IT Standard. At the time of publication, the edition indicated was valid. All standards are subject to revision, and parties to agreements based on this standard are encouraged to investigate the possibility of applying the most recent edition of the standard listed below:

ArchiMate® 3.1 Specification (C197), a standard of The Open Group, November 2019, published by The Open Group; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/c197

For the purposes of this document, the following terminology definitions apply:

It is expected that this document will need to be revised from time to time to remain current with both practice and technology.

Functionality groups provide an abstraction of what is needed to manage the new digital reality in a way that helps to simplify conversations between interested stakeholders. In the IT4IT Standard, we use it to describe a collection of functionality and data that is responsible for a well-defined part of the overall value creation. We describe the groups at a high level, and we decompose one level to have well-defined categories for defining the Supporting Functionality.

The IT4IT Standard defines four IT4IT groups of functions that deliver the outcome for the high-level IT4IT Value Stream. These are known from previous versions of the IT4IT Standard as making up the IT4IT Value Chain:

In addition to these four IT4IT functional groups, digital management depends on a set of Supporting Functions. The IT4IT standard defines six of these in Chapter 10.

The Supporting Functions are only defined in terms of the minimum functionality they need to deliver in order to support the core of the IT4IT Reference Architecture. Other standards define these capabilities in much more detail and it is not our aim to compete with these standards.

Figure 2 illustrates how the capabilities work together, with the IT4IT Value Streams and the associated decomposition of the concept of a Digital Product.

A traditional model for defining factories is Porter’s Value Chain concept [Porter]. This revision of the IT4IT Standard breaks with the Value Chain model and moves to the more recent concept of Value Networks. This reflects that value creation is a complex interaction within many systems and organizations.

In Figure 3, it is recognized that in addition to the core value stream for managing digital, a complex interaction with a number of supporting capabilities in an enterprise is needed. These functions are not at the heart of the IT4IT Standard, as other standards and frameworks have these functions and capabilities as a focal point.

The Value Network is further defined through the interaction of the Digital Product with customers, business partners, vendors, as well as government and regulatory entities. The Digital Product is creating value for its consumers. The business partners and service providers can both provide resources for delivering Digital Products as well as creating their own value using the Digital Products delivered through the IT4IT Standard. As you develop Digital Products you must comply with government and regulatory rules and thus participate in the value creation of society; see Figure 4.

For the second decomposition, a split is made with the Digital Product as an abstract entity in a set of data objects that form the essence of the Digital Product Backbone. This is complemented with seven new value streams that, together, explain how to define and manage the delivery of digital value.

A value stream represents a sequence of activities that creates an overall result for a customer, stakeholder, or end-user. As shown in Figure 5, the complete set of value streams depicts the various ways in which an organization orchestrates its capabilities to create stakeholder value through Digital Products. The value stream has a direct linkage to an organization’s business model (specifically to the value proposition). As an organization translates its business model to an operating model, those value stream stages can be translated into digital delivery processes as well as related data objects, tools, integrations, etc.

This document defines the following seven value streams: Evaluate, Explore, Integrate, Deploy, Release, Consume, and Operate.

These value streams are briefly introduced and described in the following sections.

The seven IT4IT Value Streams are normatively defined in Chapter 5. The definitions have a central theme – the data objects used and controlled by the value streams in order to manage the Digital Product.

A data object must be controlled by applications. The IT4IT Standard defines the application building blocks for managing Digital as functional components.

In the IT4IT Standard, a decomposition is made from the four high-level functional groups to the eight (sub-) functional groups that must be established in order to manage Digital Products.

These eight functional groups shown in Figure 7 are then populated by 33 functional components that control 44 key data objects. The 44 data objects are manipulated as the seven value streams are exercised: exploring, integrating, deploying, releasing, consuming, operating, and evaluating the Digital Products.

The IT4IT Standard defines seven value streams that control the Digital Products. Information on the Digital Products is tracked through a set of interconnected data objects that is managed by functional components. These are the components at the center of delivering the Digital Management capabilities, as illustrated in Figure 8.

Combining the value streams with the four high-level functional groups results in Figure 5. Combining the value streams with the eight sub-level functional groups results in Figure 6. Combining the data objects with functional components and functional groups results in Figure 7.

For details on the formal object types, metamodels, and associated ArchiMate solution patterns used in Chapter 11, a quick reference card can be seen in Figure 9.

This chapter describes the Digital Product: the single, simple, unifying entity referenced over the full management lifecycle and across all the value streams in the IT4IT Standard. It encapsulates the traditional management and deliverables of technology-based products and services. The definition of Digital Product describes what is managed, incorporating the main concerns of both traditional applications and services management, as well as meeting the need for Agile and DevOps practices where Product Manager or Owner roles are responsible for everything associated with a product, from funding through support activities. The Digital Product, as defined here, integrates traditional Product Management acumen with IT management disciplines, whether for internally or externally consumed digital offerings.

The rationale behind the Digital Product-oriented thinking is The Open Group White Paper The Shift to Digital Product: A Full Lifecycle Perspective [W205], where a proposed Digital Product definition, with examples, was initially documented. In the paper, a proposal was made to evolve the IT4IT Standard in order to better address the full lifecycle management intent of the standard with a more modern approach of a product-oriented IT management operating model.

Digital Product Portfolios, as described in the IT4IT Value Streams, reference aspects of the Digital Product along its lifecycle stages, including related data entities such as instances, source code, backlog, resources, subscribers, and incidents. The IT4IT data model and functional components reference the Digital Product to simplify traditional IT management disciplines where either application or service were previously used, often ambiguously.

Digital Product as a new entity provides an abstract definition that is applicable to a wide variety of product and IT management scenarios while addressing lifecycle management disciplines, regardless of the size, scope, and architecture of the Digital Product. The intent of our definition is to combine end-to-end management disciplines that include traditional IT Operations Management and IT Service Management (ITSM) with the product financial, marketing, and management concerns.

Establishing a single, well-defined concept for a Digital Product creates a fulcrum within the IT4IT Value Streams and functional components that promotes cooperation across disparate roles. Reporting, Financial Management, and team structures can better understand what they are working on, and what consumers they serve.

We extend the initial Digital Product definition into what we call a Digital Product Backbone, which elaborates on the Digital Product deliverables that support all stages in the lifecycle from planning, through operations, consumption, and support activities. The backbone ensures traceability, which is required to understand how investments impact the consumer and how consumer experience is traced back to initial investments.

In defining the Digital Product with a mapping across the entire IT4IT model, we bridge the disparate management practices and disciplines in each area and component to address traceability, delivery and reporting concerns; see Figure 2.

In the IT4IT Standard, Version 2.1 [C171], as well as in ITIL and other service management practices, “service” has been used to describe the core element that IT should be managing throughout its lifecycle. Application is the common portfolio used for planning and development activities. A simplified approach using one abstract unifying term, “Digital Product”, to relate to all aspects of the IT context solves contextual challenges and removes ambiguity.

A “Digital Product” aligns with the semantics of IT trends (such as DevOps and Agile practices and IT management “Project to Product” shifts in Financial Management), reorganizing work from separate silos along the lifecycle to a single cross-functional team.

Product management disciplines have become the focus for traditional IT organizations, and startup Digital Product teams that need to scale up as they grow. In both scenarios, the IT4IT Standard provides value that can be leveraged. Product management is a proven, mature competency with well established roles, activities, frameworks, lifecycle management approaches, and so on. Adopting “product” as the IT4IT governing metaphor within the IT4IT Standard brings this acumen to the fore. The IT4IT Standard will not define the role of a Product Manager; instead we focus on defining the Digital Product in the context of the main IT4IT Value Streams, functional components, and data model required to manage them.

The IT4IT Standard is part of the solution set that supports Digital Transformation, connecting proven IT management practices with newer methods required. For the most successful organizations, Product Management and IT management roles will converge and unite into a new competency we call “Digital Product Management”.

The Digital Product definition used in the IT4IT Standard highlights the distinction between Digital and non-Digital Products and provides clarity about the use of the term “digital” throughout the rest of the IT4IT Standard.

This definition flows from widely accepted definitions of both “digital” and “product”, brought together to form a unique type of product that incorporates IT management. Merriam-Webster defines Digital as “characterized by electronics, especially computerized technology”.

The Business Dictionary defines product as “a good or service that most closely meets the requirements of a particular market and yields enough profit to justify its continued existence”.

The Economic Times defines product in more detail as:

A “Digital Product” can be defined as:

The criteria of a Digital Product:

A Digital Product refers primarily to the perspective of a Product Manager and represents a complete product line over its lifetime, to include product variants, types and locations of consumers, annual and lifetime financial models, dependencies on other products and services, supplier relationships, capacity, service-level options, distribution models, pricing and usage rules, delivery and management of Digital Product Instances, and so on.

In the IT4IT Reference Architecture, Version 2.1, the Service Model Backbone represents the full lifecycle of an IT service, which had previously included services from both a labor and a digital perspective. The Digital Product, however, changes this focus to address technology or code as the main actor in the delivery of an outcome of a service, removing those services performed by human labor.

Figure 11 describes service relationships and interactions from the IT4IT Reference Architecture, Version 2.1. This conceptual view has evolved in this document with a redefinition of the service to a Digital Product concept, exclusively addressing digital type services. In Figure 12, the IT service model has been refactored by:

Figure 12 provides a view for how the Digital Product’s software and supporting technical components interact with consumers, following practices described in the IT4IT Value Streams and functional components:

Figure 12 can be used as a template for the instantiation of a Digital Product Instance, in which a specific Service Offer becomes the basis for a Contract, and a specific subset of system resources is allocated per the Offer and supported in the Operate value stream for the term of the Service Contract.

The examples listed here are consumer products that are easy to recognize. However, the majority of Digital Products are primarily designed to be incorporated within another product. When thinking about a Digital Product we need to recognize that the critical boundary of a product is what a supplier provides to the consumer.

A Digital Product may be composed of, or relies upon, other Digital Products. For example:

The network of dependencies of interconnected Digital Products may be deep, and may form very complex systems.

Each component in the system may be another Digital Product. Each Interaction may have a Service Offer, though sometimes they are not well defined.

Some Digital Products are expected to be shared and used broadly as components or dependencies in more complex Digital Products. Microservices architectures are a common example. For a Digital Product that is an “internal” sub-component or dependency of another Digital Product, some formalism in understanding pricing and contracts helps in three ways:

Digital Product Portfolios are managed from three perspectives, as depicted in Figure 14:

Jeanne Ross et al. made these perspectives clear in Designed for Digital: How to Architect your Business for Sustained Success [Ross et al.]. In this book, the authors explain that there are two areas in which organizations should focus their Digital Transformation:

Figure 14 captures these two perspectives as subsets of the overall Digital Product Portfolio. A third portfolio captures those shared, foundational Digital Products used in both contexts.

Directly linking Digital Product Portfolios to Strategy in this way provides clarity on investment priorities and should reduce bad outcomes in competition for funding. Management agility is improved when analyzing costs, and investment decisions become more strategically aligned.

A career and competency of Digital Product Management has emerged in which two distinct professional competencies are combined:

Digital Products inherently rely on technology resources and infrastructure such as networking, computers, databases, and software to realize value, each with their own lifecycle and contract and/or subscription.

Digital Products may have shared resources, such as people, marketing, and lifecycle processes assigned to them. Digital Products may have tightly integrated, shared resources dedicated to facilitating delivery, support, and lifecycle management processes for systems and consumer interactions. Shared functionality could include self-updating apps, in-app support processes, in-app usage monitoring, and update processes within a smart device, and so on.

Digital Product Management must address two distinct lifecycle concerns that map to various IT4IT Value Streams (see Figure 15):

The lifecycle of the contract is predicated on the existence and management of the system that is used by the consumer. The system(s) should not be retired until all contractual obligations are met, or the contract is terminated per the provider/consumer agreement.

The provider may choose to end a contract with the consumer, ceasing to support the underlying system and effectively ending obligations to support or warranty the system per the contract. This can leave consumers frustrated with regard to being able to retrieve critical data, being able to migrate to alternative systems, or being able to maintain the system on their own. In some situations, consumers have banded together to continue supporting Digital Products long after the support from the provider has ceased. A Digital Product Manager must consider these end-of-life scenarios and provide consumers with recourse when facing end-of-life situations.

Until a system is retired, its underlying resources and dependencies must be managed until no active consumers depend on it and all instances have been retired, and possibly longer, depending on factors such as regulatory requirements for data retention.

To maintain the operational integrity of a Digital Product, the code, hardware, third-party software (each has their own support lifecycle), and integrations must be managed. Often, dependencies have their own upgrade and maintenance cycles that should be tracked as well.

Digital Products rely on a supply chain that is often real-time: code-executed and data-driven functionality. The Digital Product Manager is accountable for ensuring that dependencies with other Digital Products are managed along with any contractual, financial, and technical requirements.

The rapid cycle time for changes in Digital Products requires a level of automation not needed for more traditional products. Many products receive software updates weekly or even daily. This can only be managed using an automated toolchain and support process. The IT4IT Standard describes how this can be done.

Data, both generated by and used within a Digital Product, presents unique opportunities and advantages, as well as risks if improperly managed. Data can be collected from a wide range of sources to include the consumer, external sources, automatic capture through embedded sensors, or related Digital Products in complex systems. Insights for the consumer or Product Manager can be generated as data is analyzed to provide reports and recommendations, and to take proactive action.

For effective, full lifecycle management, policies and controls should be put in place to ensure the information created in the design, creation, management, and support of the Digital Product, and operational support of systems deployed to support Digital Product Instances remain available for a much longer period than is typical in a project-oriented operating model.

Data governance must be effectively applied across the full lifecycle of the product, including data retention management and compliance with privacy and other applicable policies.

The design, planning, source code, and other information created to define and manage the system should be retained for future planning and support purposes. Without this, it is impossible for the Product Manager to track technical, operational, and financial aspects of the Digital Product over time.

The Service Contract exists separately from the digital and physical components of the Digital Product, and may require management for reporting and regulatory purposes long after active users or Digital Product Instances have gone.

A simple example would be a regulatory requirement to retain financial and customer records for a period of time based on laws and regulations in the country of operation.

The fulfillment flow illustrated in Figure 16 demonstrates consumer integration with the Offer. The initial Request to Fulfill process captures the steps involved in fulfilling a request to consume a Digital Product. This often results in allocating devices and resources specific to the consumer, shared resources, and resources from an external dependency such as another Digital Product.

Figure 17 more fully shows the elements of a Digital Product Instance. This Digital Product Manager’s perspective includes the contract as well as common concerns such as dependencies on other Digital Products, the product team, market and distribution factors, and lifecycle management processes.

Different types of consumer have different expectations and ways to interact with the Digital Product. A robust Digital Product includes a well-defined, detailed Service Offer structure that defines all anticipated consumer interaction methods, and that can be expressed in terms of the consumer contract.

Figure 18 suggests a classification of key consumer types to consider in the Digital Product Offer, interaction methods, and system design: consumers of a Service Offer may be internal or external (or both), and may be machine or person/organization (or both):

Criteria for Service Offer types are:

It is important to set proper expectations for both human and machine consumers in the Service Offer, such as response time, resolution to issues, notification of planned down-time, etc. as described in the Offer functional component. Characteristics may vary across this landscape, requiring different Cost Models, SLA templates, consumption rates, security requirements, and business criticality commitments, resulting in more complex Service Offer definitions, and ongoing Subscription management.

As mentioned above, the resources within the system may include contracts to use other internal or external Digital Products, with both technical and financial dependencies. These third-party dependencies and their explicit or implied contracts are an integral part of product definition, and a consideration in pricing and other management concerns.

Figure 19 shows a more complex view of the possible dependency mesh of a Digital Product.

When more elaborate Digital Product systems are deployed and connected using Service Management models such as ITIL, some resources can be managed as Configuration Items (CIs), representing the system’s underlying and integrated resources. Each CI represents a device or software object (such as an executable file for an application, operating system, etc.) that is discoverable when active on the enterprise network, or that has been manually recorded.

A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is used by most large organizations to manage a subset of possible CIs that has been defined as interesting for management of the IT landscape. Discovery tools or manual data entry are used to capture and update CI information.

More sophisticated CMDBs and CMDB users are able to aggregate individual CIs into a data set that represents more complex and interesting management objects such as licensed software instances, in-house applications recognizable with a “signature”, etc. A challenge for Digital Product Management is to define the extent to which the Digital Product footprint can or should be recorded using an extended CMDB metamodel.

For example, it may be sensible for each instance of a Digital Product found in the CMDB to include a foreign key pointing to the Subscription record created at instantiation, or to the consumer represented by that record. This or some other mechanism should enable system resources identified in the Configuration functional component to be traceable to those consumers, their Service Contracts, and Subscriptions.

As suggested in Figure 19, interaction among collaborating Digital Products, through Service Contracts and Subscriptions, pertains to both human and machine interfaces, entitlements, ownership, and access to systems.

Underlying code executes within interconnected systems to complete interactions for consumers, and may involve external suppliers as well.

The main objective in defining a Digital Product is to establish more rigorous management practices to apply the IT4IT Value Streams to all Digital Products recursively and to manage them using the same IT4IT Standard definitions, regardless of where they are located in the organization. This approach provides a clear understanding of the technology investment and the value to consumers. As more formal dependencies are managed through Service Contracts and Subscriptions, the roll-up of costs, accountability, and commitments are better understood allowing the organization to make better business decisions on technology spend.

Organizations wishing to adopt the Digital Product Management approach can apply the IT4IT Standard and tooling ubiquitously, ensuring the rigor of proper management and cost accounting practices are in place for Product Managers and other stakeholders to report on and make management decisions to invest, or divest in Digital Products, no matter where and how they are used.

The Digital Product concept described in this chapter simplifies the management approach described in the rest of the IT4IT Standard that strengthens the core management functions and tools for all teams involved in creating, using, and selling Digital Products.

Overview

The value stream “Evaluate”, as shown in Figure 21, contributes to the business strategy and portfolio planning activities. It provides a blueprint for optimizing products, services, and investment Portfolio Management. This value stream is focused on the continuous assessment and evaluation of the entire Digital Product Portfolio to optimize co-creation and alignment of business and technology Strategic Objectives.

Many organizations have portfolio processes and solutions in place but suffer from the following limitations:

Organizations need accurate and point-in-time information to understand the inter-relationships and inter-dependencies required to truly orchestrate all the moving parts of Digital Products in ways that can help support business objectives and goals.

The Evaluate value stream provides holistic views of Product Portfolio activities. These views offer an understanding of the inter-relationships among many sub-domains, including Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture, Application Management, Information Management, Operations Management, and Information Security Management.

The Evaluate value stream is triggered by a portfolio planning cycle. Portfolio planning can be done in weekly, monthly, or annual cycles.

The overall funding of a Digital Product consists of portfolio epic-based funding (often referred to as Grow the Business (GtB), or discretionary) and product specific investments (often referred to as Run the Business (RtB), or non-discretionary). The product-specific Scope Agreement is defined in the Explore value stream and aligned with the prioritized portfolio level Scope Agreements. This funding methodology enables decentralized decision-making by the Product team.

Key Stakeholder

The primary value stream stakeholder of the Evaluate value stream is the Product Portfolio Manager. The Product Portfolio Manager is responsible for ensuring consistent services and portfolio balance through rationalization and sound investments. The Product Portfolio Manager works closely with Strategists, Business Relationship Managers, Architects, and Technologists to align with strategic drivers, consumer demand, and policy standards. They must work together to optimize the portfolio through well-defined control points, data objects, and governance.

Value

The outcome of the Evaluate value stream is a portfolio investment plan with funding and resources to conduct product exploration activities and refine the plan. This value stream delivers an optimized Product Portfolio with secure and quality Digital Products that are consumer friendly and cost effective, accomplished through continuous portfolio improvement and refinement.

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Evaluate value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Evaluate value stream are:

The Evaluate value stream, as shown in Figure 22, an ArchiMate representation, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the sections that follow.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Evaluate value stream:

Overview

The value stream “Explore”, as shown in Figure 23, is performed on the Scope Agreements developed in the Evaluate value stream. It ensures that all planned and accepted Portfolio Backlog Items are further detailed, budgeted, and sourced for Digital Products. This value stream continuously explores new features and/or future directions of a Digital Product aligned with strategic direction and business needs. It ensures that the Product Design evolves to facilitate innovation and optimize business outcomes.

Digital Product Portfolio Backlog Items for investigating a new idea, optimizing existing ideas, or retirement may be resolved by different funding, management, reporting, and contractual obligations for various types of consumers. Differences in budgeting, technology, contracts, business domains, security, or organizational/management structures will influence the portfolios required for an organization.

The Explore value stream is intended to be executed in quick cycles to validate release iterations. The Portfolio Backlog Items should include the generation of a proof-of-concept, conceptual service, or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with the high-level architectural attributes and activities to begin gathering requirements for the build stage.

The Explore value stream stage ensures that the allocation of resources, budget, and phases for Digital Product releases remain aligned with agreed, planned, and accepted Portfolio Backlog Items and Architecture Blueprints. The primary stakeholder of this value stream is a Product Manager who approves Scope Agreements and release plans for Digital Products.

This value stream can be triggered by a changed Scope Agreement.

Key Stakeholder

The primary value stream stakeholder of the Explore value stream is the Product Manager. The Product Manager is responsible for the development and success of a Digital Product for an organization. Product Managers own the business strategy, manage the requirements, and launch features for a product. The Product Manager coordinates the work done by other functions, including: Business Relationship Manager, Architect, Strategist, Technologist, Business Owners, and DevSecOps.

Value

The outcome of the Explore value stream is an accepted and planned Product Backlog with a detailed Scope Agreement, Release Roadmap, and resource allocation. During the Explore stages, Scope Agreements are refined to include product specific details. The value is a Digital Product roadmap with allocated resources.

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Explore value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Explore value stream are:

The Explore value stream, as shown in Figure 24, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the following sections.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Explore value stream:

Overview

The value stream “Integrate”, as shown in Figure 25, creates a new Product Release. It covers the planning, design, development (or configuration), and testing of a new Product Release (in non-production environments), and makes the Product Release available for deployment and release into production. A new Product Release can also be related to an emergency fix needed to resolve a production issue (such as resolving vulnerabilities and critical bugs).

The Integrate value stream covers the creation and modification of all types of Digital Products such as custom-build software, configuration of SaaS applications, Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software packages, PaaS platforms, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products, etc. This value stream is not limited to application development, but also subject to the development and maintenance of infrastructure products (and platforms).

Work is initiated and managed in the Product Backlog (and related team backlogs), which can receive demand signals from consumer or business stakeholders (e.g., new features or business requirements), or from other functional components such as Portfolio Backlog Management, Policy Management, and Problem Management. This may take the form of an approved Portfolio Backlog Item, or may be a smaller-grained signal such as an individual feature, user story, Defect, or Problem.

The Integrate value stream continuously pulls work from the Product Backlog based upon various triggers and inputs; such as:

The Integrate value stream delivers the Product Release (for a new or modified product) which is packaged for immediate or future deployment through the Deploy value stream.

Note that although the stage is shown as a linear process, the actual work in the value stream consists of multiple iterations, continuous cycles, and flow of work with feedback loops (e.g., Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and continuous testing, etc.).

Key Stakeholder(s)

The typical key stakeholders involved in the Integrate value stream are the Product Manager and associated Development Teams (also referred to as Product Teams, or DevOps Teams if Development and Operations are combined into one team), responsible for the planning, design, creation, and testing of a Product Release.

Other key stakeholders involved are business stakeholders and customer representatives involved in defining business needs (voice of the customer), validating (and testing) the product, and those who ultimately benefit from the value created by using the product.

Value

The outcome of the Integrate value stream is a new Product Release, accepted and ready for deployment and release into production. This is a release for a new or existing Digital Product which provides additional value (and/or reduced risk) once made available and used by consumers in production, as a result of:

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Integrate value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Integrate value stream are:

The Integrate value stream, as shown in Figure 26, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the sections that follow.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Integrate value stream:

Overview

The value stream “Deploy”, as shown in Figure 27, is installing a Product Release into production. It can also imply the removal, disposal, or updating of an existing installed Product Release, so it is made available or unavailable to the customer. Many possible strategies for deploying a Product Release can be scenarios within the Deploy value stream; for example, deployment to a targeted audience, or deployment using a dark launch in which functionality is not directly released to consumers. If the user requirements and/or the characteristics of the Digital Product demand that the installed Product Release is improved, released, and deployed frequently, a drive to automate these value streams can emerge. To comply with regulatory requirements, organizations can require approvals and an audit trail of all the Changes made in production environments. The Deploy value stream ensures that all changes are tracked and related to a specific Product Release.

The Deploy value stream delivers the initial deployment, update, or removal of an Actual Product Instance, and will put the Service Contract into operation.

Key Stakeholder

The main stakeholder of the Deploy value stream is the Product Manager, who can authorize deployment of Actual Product Instances to the customer in the production environment.

Value

The outcome of the Deploy value stream is that new Product Releases can be installed safely without causing unexpected outages to the current Actual Product Instances in use.

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Deploy value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Deploy value stream are:

The Deploy value stream, as shown in Figure 28, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the sections that follow.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Deploy value stream:

Overview

The value stream “Release”, as shown in Figure 29, ensures that the Service Offers for ordering a new, a change in, or the decommissioning of an Actual Product Instance or its support to them are offered to consumers. The Release value stream maintains the Service Offer Catalog, the catalog views, and the Service Offer promotion and information of available Service Offers to the consumer base so that the individual consumer can find and order Digital Products, or support for them. Service Offers should be made available for viewing and requests for access over multiple channels. This value stream publishes the Service Offers based on various triggers and inputs, such as:

The Release value stream delivers a digital service by means of a Service Offer that is made available and can be requested.

Key Stakeholder

The Primary stakeholder of the Release value stream is the Catalog Manager, who is primarily responsible for defining, implementing, and publishing the Service Offers so that they are available to be consumed by the target consumers.

Value

The outcome of the Release value stream is to ensure the management of the consumable Service Offers for the Digital Product. These Service Offers are for new service consumption; there are Service Offers for support or to change/retire an Actual Product Instance. This also provides the following additional value to the consumers but is not limited to:

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Release value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Release value stream are:

The Release value stream, as shown in Figure 30, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the sections that follow.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Release value stream:

Overview

The value stream “Consume”, as shown in Figure 31, manages the lifecycle of consuming a Digital Product. Digital Products are consumed as services and the lifecycle is managed as a Subscription to the service.

The Consume value stream covers the entire set of activities of a consumer, from selecting a Service Offer, ordering the service, fulfillment of the service, getting support, and status on the service.

The Consumer can be a person internal to the business or an external customer. The Consumer can also be a system actor that on behalf of an organization consumes the service.

The Consume value stream ensures the ordered Desired Product Instance will be delivered as an Actual Product Instance within the agreed terms. The value stream is responsible for all activities needed to deliver the Actual Product Instance(s) successfully or provide support for them to Consumers.

If ordered, the Consume value stream will create or update the Service Contract. To increase its delivered value and identify areas for improvement, the value stream will also measure the consumption of the Service Contract, and assess the ongoing needs of the stakeholder. These actions support the offering, deployment, and monitoring of the Actual Product Instance, ensuring commitment to the Service Contract.

Key Stakeholder

The main stakeholder of the Consume value stream is a customer and/or consumer (human or system actor) in need of a Digital Product.

Value

The outcome of the Consume value stream is to have customers able to locate desired Digital Product service offerings, and obtain them in a timely manner as deployed and instantiated Digital Products that will be supported by the Operate value stream, according to a Service Contract.

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Consume value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Consume value stream are:

The Consume value stream, as shown in Figure 32, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the sections that follow.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Consume value stream:

Overview

The value stream “Operate”, as shown in Figure 33, monitors and ensures that the availability and performance of Actual Product Instances are within the boundaries of their agreed Service Contract and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) targets. The scope of this value stream includes managing any compliance and security aspects of running Digital Product Instances and underlying systems that may result from deployment and/or fulfillment. The IT4IT Standard describes how to achieve this using integrated, automated, or fully autonomous data flows between the event monitoring (Event, Incident, Change, Configuration, and Problem Management) functions of the digital services. In addition, the data flows may be designed to be reactive, proactive, or predictive, and include a retrospective.

The Operate value stream delivering the Actual Product Instance is operated in a sustainable way within the agreed terms and conditions of a Service Contract.

Key Stakeholder

The primary stakeholder of the Operate value stream is the Consumer, who can use an Actual Product Instance or system within the boundaries of the Service Contract.

Value

The outcome of the Operate value stream is to ensure that the Actual Product Instance operates, and can be consumed as agreed in the terms of the Service Contract.

Cross-Value Stream Dependencies

The Operate value stream depends on:

Value streams that depend on the Operate value stream are:

The Operate value stream, as shown in Figure 34, is the more comprehensive view for included scenarios and detailed value stream stages for the value stream, and will be described in detail in the sections that follow.

In the following sections we document the scenarios and stages of the Operate value stream:

The Strategy Function is centered around managing and evolving the digital strategy.

The Portfolio function is centered around managing the portfolio of Digital Products.