The IT4ITTM Reference Architecture, Version 2.1

Book excerpt: The Open Group IT4ITTM Reference Architecture, Version 2.1, an Open Group Standard, provides a vendor-neutral, technology-agnostic, and industry-agnostic reference architecture for managing the business of IT. The Open Group IT4IT Reference Architecture standard comprises a reference architecture and a value chain-based operating model. The IT Value Chain has four value streams supported by a reference architecture to drive efficiency and agility. The four value streams are: • Strategy to Portfolio • Request to Fulfill • Requirement to Deploy • Detect to Correct Each IT Value Stream is centered on a key aspect of the service model, the essential data objects (information model), and functional components (functional model) that support it. Together, the four value streams play a vital role in helping IT control the service model as it advances through its lifecycle. The IT4IT Reference Architecture: • Provides prescriptive guidance on the specification of and interaction with a consistent service model backbone (common data model/context) • Supports real-world use-cases driven by the Digital Economy (e.g., Cloud-sourcing, Agile, DevOps, and service brokering) • Embraces and complements existing process frameworks and methodologies (e.g., ITIL®, CoBIT®, SAFe, and TOGAF®) by taking a data-focused implementation model perspective, essentially specifying an information model across the entire value chain The audience for this standard is: • IT Professionals who are responsible for delivering services in a way that is flexible, traceable, and cost-effective • IT Professionals / Practitioners who are focused on instrumenting the IT management landscape • IT Leaders who are concerned about their operating model • Enterprise Architects who are responsible for IT business transformation Topics covered include: • An introduction to the standard and the purpose of the IT4IT work • Key terminology of the standard • An introduction for executives and others introducing the IT Value Chain and IT4IT Reference Architecture concepts • IT4IT Core, which defines the structure of the IT4IT standard as well as the process and document structure used by the IT4IT standard • The Strategy to Portfolio (S2P) Value Stream • The Requirement to Deploy (R2D) Value Stream • The Request to Fulfill (R2F) Value Stream • The Detect to Correct (D2C) Value Stream • Background information on the standard.