IT has traditionally been organized so that Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) is a monolithic unit, with both development and maintenance functions combined in one entity. While this model offers the ability to leverage scale, adapt to changing business requirements and develop subject matter experts in business domains, it can also create problems. These include lack of communication between siloes, loss of visibility into IT spending and limited funding for innovation or new development.
To address these issues, a relatively new organizational model is gaining increasing traction in business enterprises. Termed Plan-Build-Run (PBR), this approach separates strategic, customer-facing and development-oriented tasks from operational, IT-facing and maintenance-oriented tasks.
Adoption of PBR is being driven largely by the need to expand the new development pipeline, enhance responsiveness and reduce maintenance costs. Moreover, as IT becomes an increasingly important source of competitive advantage, businesses are becoming more willing to undertake the inherent risks involved in transformational change initiatives such as moving to a PBR model.
This ISG white paper explores the relevance of PBR to today’s changing business environment. Critical success factors involved in determining whether PBR is appropriate and managing the change process are also discussed.
