Getting Started with an Integration Competency Center (ICC) – Part 1
So one has heard about Integration Competency Center (ICC), read analyst briefs on it and understood another three letter acronym. But the questions still lingers in the back of the mind “How do I figure out if we need an ICC”? “We are already doing integration projects and doing Ok, so how do I sell this idea internally” OR “We know things are not working well for us in integration projects and there are issues, but where do we make a start?”. If you empathize with this situation (and it is a common one based on what we hear from our prospects), read on. In this blog series, I will share my thoughts on challenges and approaches when it comes to handling the most critical phase in your ICC journey ‘Getting started with it”. This phase will mostly involve envisioning, business case creation, internal selling, evangelization and roadmap development.
Irrespective of context behind ICC conceptualization, a clear answer to following questions need to be arrived at during this initial phase.
1. How does ICC fit in my 2-3 years IT and Integration portfolio roadmap (for creating the larger strategic vision and selling it)?
2. What are current challenges and issues that justify the business case for an ICC? (for a compelling case for quick ROI so that your CFO loves it)
3. Who are the stakeholders impacted by ICC rollout and how do I get their buy-in? (for navigating your way through maze called ‘organization’)
5. Where to make the start and how to prioritize to ensure that we prepare the proper ground first for scaling up and cover the risks? (for giving confidence to others that this can be pulled off)
6. How do I ensure co-existences of ICC with other relevant organizational parts and capabilities and leverage them? (for achieving an ICC eco-system based on collaboration and getting required support)
I mentioned the term ‘Context’ behind ICC conceptualization earlier. Let me explain what I mean here. There are mainly two dimensions to this. One is the source of motivation or trigger why you are looking at ICC? Is there a crisis already at hand (e.g. unstable production systems, inability to support key business initiatives with integration solutions, poor quality of solutions etc.) that is identified and needs to be addressed or you see ICC as a required model to manage the scale of integration landscape you will have in next 2 years? Now both these motivations are different in nature and require different approaches to address ICC adoption.
Second dimension is around ‘preparedness’. What is the level of preparedness your organization has to adopt ICC? This dimension will have elements like IT organization structure, skills and competencies, previous experience with shared models and other form of competency centers deployment. So essentially if point # 1 above represents the ‘hunger’ for ICC, this point represents to ability to ‘digest’. Look at both to tailor make the approach to get ICC up and running.
In the next part of this blog, I will be covering the topic of ‘Strategic vision for ICC’. Why it is critical to have this view and what all to consider in order to come out with a effective strategy? Watch out and do share your views on this post.
