Recently, the U.S. General Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Education teamed up to share lessons learned through the creation of the Technology Business Management (TBM) Playbook. The playbook, which supports progress towards the TBM Cross-Agency Priority Goal was built to assist federal agencies as they start TBM implementation. While each agency will tailor its TBM plan to their organization’s current state and desired outcomes, this is a great starting point based on real life experience from some of the Federal Government’s early adopters.
Each play includes a plan of action or strategy used to move toward a goal or objective. The 7 plays in this book will improve your chances of beginning a successful TBM implementation. They include:
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Identify key players and stakeholders: An effective TBM program consists of business stakeholders, financial analysts, and IT and acquisition professionals. Together, this team drives change through collection, analysis, reporting, and informed review of IT data.
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Determine current state: To understand what the TBM journey will look like for your agency, it’s necessary to understand current data collection and aggregation methods, financial systems, business processes, and models your agency already has to support TBM. No matter your current state, TBM can bring value.
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Identify measurable desired outcome: Identify how your agency can deliver the right IT services for the best possible price as you work with stakeholders to identify priority areas to focus your TBM efforts.
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Start aligning data: Based on your agency’s current state and desired near term outcomes, it’s time to start working with financial data. Starting from the bottom up is recommended - aligning financial data to cost pools before moving to tower and service mapping.
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Look for insights: Now that you have started mapping your data, where does that data lead you? Focus on examining the data to see how it provides insights into issues or benefits around the identified outcome
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Rollout and adoption: Now that you have completed the first iteration of your TBM implementation, start integrating TBM principles, data, and value discussions into meetings and funding reviews.
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Keep maturing the TBM implementation: Assess your maturity and identify opportunities to maximize your TBM implementation