Building a BRM Community of Practice
Increasingly, business relationship management (BRM) is being recognized as a critical means of enabling business-IT convergence. Organizations that are establishing a BRM capability often envision a team of dedicated business relationship managers, each ensuring innovation, business strategy, and business value results for business functions or value streams.
In some sectors, however, organizations don’t have the budget to staff a team of relationship managers right out of the gate. An alternative approach is to build out the capability with business relationship management as an integrated role of many, rather than a specific job held by a few.
This way, an organization can begin to develop a BRM discipline or community of practice, composed of application managers, project managers, and others who already have touchpoints with business.
Launching a BRM Discipline or Community of Practice: Pros and Cons
The main advantage to approaching BRM as a discipline and role is that it allows an organization to build a nascent capability without significant headcount.
Some dedicated resources are still required; standing up the discipline calls for at least one dedicated leader to provide the framework, champion best practices, and lead the discipline throughout the organization. The primary focus, however, is on establishing BRM as a set of competencies to be embraced and leveraged by an array of leaders in various business functions.
One disadvantage to this approach is that it increases the scope of the business transition management effort.
With the community of practice approach, leaders who are identified as business relationship managers become critical change targets in their own right, with specific issues to be addressed.
Launching a BRM discipline under any circumstance entails some transition management with business partners. With the community of practice approach, leaders who are identified as business relationship managers become critical change targets in their own right, with specific issues to be addressed. These include:
- Learning and development needs for leaders taking on new responsibilities
- Anxieties around assuming a role outside of their comfort zone
- Workload and capacity issues—BRM responsibilities may not be the individual’s top priority, which can pose a risk to the success of the overall program
To address these issues and risks, the primary business relationship leader must leverage their Business Transition Management expertise and BTM techniques to establish the new engagement model successfully. As with any change initiative, establishing a sense of urgency and maintaining strong executive sponsorship is crucial.
Additionally, models and frameworks that emphasize learning theory and continuous development (such as Peter Senge’s learning organizations model) can be especially useful.
Strategies for Success
The organization can reduce anxiety around new roles and skills by leveraging strong existing relationships between business function managers and business partners. While developing the contact inventory for business partners, look for areas of relationship maturity between the business and individuals. The contact inventory, used with the customer value hierarchy and relationship value map, helps prioritize BRM activities and leverage strong relationships where they are needed the most.
Relationship Value Map
Source: BRM Interactive Body of Knowledge (BRMIBoK)
The most critical factor for success lies in the team’s ability to create a collaborative environment in which new business relationship managers can learn and grow. Since each individual is beginning at a different point in terms of relationship management skills, it can be a challenge for the team to adapt a broader BRM mindset.
This mindset shift should emphasize a perspective beyond the service delivery silo with a learning and development program structured around BRM core competencies. As natural relationship managers emerge and flourish, the practice of encouraging more formal training like the BRMP® certification can create a cadre of practitioners with increased commitment to the discipline.
Ultimately, a community of practice isn’t a community without a space for the team to come together. Collaboration tools and check-ins allow the team to discuss challenges, share successes, and build a sense of common purpose around their new strategic mindset.
Carrie Gatlin is an IT Business Relationship Manager at the University of California Office of the President, where she is responsible for managing the relationships between university business teams and the Information Technology departments, with the goal of fostering more strategic, value-driven partnerships. Carrie is a seasoned IT professional with 15 years of experience working in higher education in a variety of customer-focused roles, from business analyst to application/service delivery manager. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA.
Thanks for a great article Carrie. Having even a small team of BRMs is probably a luxury that many organisations may not be able to afford, so utilising existing relationships of other managers is a great strategy. One similar tip I’ve picked up in my organisation is that where I provide a BRM role for the IT function, I have colleagues will have similar roles for Finance, HR, Legal teams etc. Buddying up with those colleagues as we have the same internal clients is often beneficial for both.
Thanks Steve! That’s a really good point, that this approach doesn’t need to be limited to the IT function, and there’s an opportunity to expand the community of practice to includes roles in other domains. As you say, we are serving the same internal clients so it’s a good way for relationship managers to share insights into the client goals and pain points.