Experiential BRM: A Recap

‘An eye opening experience’ was how one attendee described it. At the first BRMConnect conference of 2016 in Charlotte, Instrumental BRM and GamingWorks conducted a three-hour Grab@Pizza business simulation session, which was a dynamic, highly interactive, and experiential learning workshop in which attendees explored the role of the BRM in solving realistic Business & IT–Alignment (Convergence) issues.

The scenario

Grab@Pizza is a very successful company selling millions of pizzas every year, but after six months in the current year, the sales figures are far below expectations. IT is posing a significant business risk due to excessive down time and its inability to respond to changing business needs (Risk Optimization). However, the CEO has urged the Business Managers to make a challenging recovery plan, which is based on a six-month strategy to bring the sales and profit back on target (Value Optimization). Existing IT capabilities are poor, and resources are tied up in ‘keeping the lights on’ rather than supporting and enabling new innovations. In order to execute the strategic plan and effectively balance resources (Resource Optimization), the IT department must ensure that the appropriate capabilities, including BRM, are in place.

The start situation

At the start of the simulation, the team was confronted with the current state and the need for change.

The team got into a ‘huddle,’ but IT was very internally-focused when they were discussing Improvement Initiatives. The Business Relationship Manager was initially engaged, but seemed to have no relevance and was then ignored by IT.

The Business Relationship Manager then tried going to the business to talk about ‘strategic partnering’ and was told in no uncertain terms by the CEO, “Who are you? Where’s the CIO? I’m losing market share and revenue as we speak and you want to talk to me about being a ‘strategic partner?’ First show me you can plug the leaks!”

What had happened? The participants had created a situation in which the BRM role held little relevance, since each team member dived into their own silo and concerns. The team had also failed to clarify the BRM role in the context of the provider strategy and operating model, which is the roof of the House of BRM.

As Joe Topinka stated in his opening keynote, you must legitimize the role of the BRM if you are to be successful.

The simulation experience

We then played one month of the simulation, at the end of which the CEO declared in frustration, “I just lost $25 million of projected revenue (Value Creation) and lost $10 million as a result of outages (Value Leakage)…what happened?” The team then reflected on their experience.

Value Creation vs. Value Leakage

What had gone wrong? The Business Value needs were lost in translation, and Value Leakage occurred at all steps in the processing of work. To understand why this happened, we then analyzed three major constraints in the value chain as a group.

The first constraint occurred at the strategic demand-shaping level. In the simulation, there were insufficient BRMs to service all business units, resulting in missed opportunities. Another symptom of this constraint from the Business perspective was the Business failing to allocate sufficient time, effort, and knowledge in clearly defining the Requirements and Value; instead, they simply threw demands “over the wall” to IT, and then blamed IT when they weren’t realized.

The second constraint happened at the tactical level, where changes are built and implemented. Since there were always too many changes to schedule and no portfolio overview or priority mechanism to help with this, change management could not delegate all the changes to the Business projects and the Business relevance (Business IQ). Changes were then planned through a mechanism of assumptions and ‘who shouts the loudest.’ Additionally, the Business did not allocate the time, effort, and appropriate resources to help prioritize changes wherever there were resource conflicts.

The third constraint occurred at the operational support level, where calls are received and outages are resolved. Again there was always too much work to do with no priority mechanism in place to guide it, and support had little understanding of the business impact of outages. Too many calls (and the wrong ones, at that) were left unresolved, causing lost revenue. At the same time, the Business did not spend enough time and effort training users in effective usage of value-harvesting solutions, meaning that Support was unaware of new business systems and expected usage that could be invested in handling the growth of calls or incidents—which, in turn, increased calls and incidents at an operational level.

After analyzing these three constraints, we then asked the attendees to suggest what the BRM should do differently in the next round (or in reality), each from their role in the simulation.

Among the many takeaways of the simulation, here are the top eight:

1. Business is often focused on Value Creation without being aware of real Value Leakage and the true potential impact of risks. These need to be made visible and formally accepted.
2. The project demand from the Business division forces the BRM into the position of an order taker. BRM needs to apply a Value Management approach to quantify their value needs in terms of innovation, decision making, process improvement, or foundation with the Business. When demand exceeds provider capabilities, then a formal decision-making authority is needed.
3. BRM needs to be a single point of focus, by orchestrating, connecting, and navigating—not fighting fires. Therefore, there needs to be a clear division of responsibilities and ownership.
4. BRM should be the “voice of Business” to ITSM, ensuring that Business needs are translated into ITSM strategic, tactical, and operational capabilities or improvements. That means that the BRM needs to share what is in the pipeline and how this will impact the delivery chain capabilities (such as capacity, change preparation, support skills, and volumes of transactions/calls).
5. IT talks in terms of RFCs, technology, incident resolution rates, and availability of technology. BRM needs to help translate this into business language and make it meaningful to the Business, helping change the ‘inside-out’ language of IT to ‘outside in.’
6. BRM should help surface information needs to identify, capture, optimize, and recognize value throughout the end-to-end ITSM capabilities, ensuring that nothing is lost in translation.
7. BRM must help IT position emerging technology in business value terms, by helping IT make a business case, being the ‘voice of the business,’ and orchestrating and connecting IT with the business. This will help shift IT technical staff away from “information technology expert” to “business technology expert.”
8. Lastly, the BRM should help ensure that the change impact assessment and prioritization is aligned with value creation and leakage, and changes are made to be transparent in relation to Business initiatives.

At the end of the simulation, one attendee said, “We “communicated” a lot throughout the simulation, we just did not talk about the right things.” Many attendees said the simulation was a valuable form of learning, by raising new insights, creating ‘aha-moments,’ and bringing end-to-end teams together to explore, discuss, and agree on the role and position of BRM.

Ready to learn more skills and techniques that will help you communicate effectively and solve convergence issues within your organization? Sign up for any of the three remaining BRMConnect conferences of 2016, in Sydney, Banff, and Amsterdam!

Interested in getting the simulation for your team? Contact Instrumental BRM for more information.