The OCMO Model: Operational capability and maturity model for offshoring

Abstrakt

With an increasing use of and dependencies on IT, comes a need to professionalize the management of IT and optimize the readiness for change of the business. Previously, many have turned to enterprise architecture to help guide the process. But how does this apply when offshoring? So far EA-theory has focused primarily on documentation and on creating an overview of people, processes and systems in an organisation. The result has given many organisations the capabilities of handling large enterprise-wide strategies, with the perspective of the overall business architecture in mind. In my thesis I hypothesize that business architecture needs to be expanded by adding crosscutting disciplines as maturity capabilities as well as governance and strategic alignment, in order to manage change needed to gain offshore competences. Offshoring being a difficult management issue is in need of less system-oriented processes and more compliance to the needs of the people using it to support successful business transactions while offshoring. You need to consider the process-oriented view. I also examine, how the organisation may stay flexible while maintaining consistent business architecture at the same time and thereby introduce my theoretical view in an offshoring framework known as the Operational Capability and Maturity model for Offshoring - The OCMO Model. For my theoretical framework, I refer to disciplines as enterprise architecture, IT governance, and strategic business management. I also examine the most essential offshore challenges and the offshoring best practices, in order to arrange a crosscutting view on the way to do business with success when offshoring. These disciplines are furthermore addressed by viewing from different management perspectives: knowledge based, transactional based and value based perspective in order to adapt the humanistic behaviour into the business. My findings indicates, that devoting time and energy in establishing a clearly defined governance approach by a consistent pace throughout the implemented business architecture for offshoring may cause added value in the inherent processes, by cutting down the idle time from working with the newly integrated business area. The model is derived by actual real-life experiences and entail perspectives of cross-cutting disciplines as offshoring by itself is nothing but another business infrastructure setup going across country boundaries. As OCMO is based on these experiences, it takes the challenges of offshoring in recognition forehanded which imposes an active risk management. The OCMO Model is expected to force the holistic thinking and pursue a well founded business rationale based on specific needs and circumstances when the business is undertaking a virtual business. An IT organisation serves everybody’s interest best, by addressing the challenges the way, the staff must encounter the use of the embedded business systems by following specific documented workable processes. This is why, OCMO is considered to address these operational concerns when undertaking it as a framework for business offshoring alignment. It does so, by addressing the maturity of the three inherent process areas incrementally and iteratively, when building capabilities for the offshoring practice. The process of the OCMO lifecycle is on-going, which provide the ability to measure the progress even when undertaking the very first steps of the OCMO framework. This call for management of the offshoring program, as the model thrives for assessing ability when building offshore competencies. Focus should never the less be how to add value to the becoming value chain within the specified business area of the offshoring program.