A Return on Our Experience of Modeling a Service-Oriented Organization in a Service Cartography

Abstract

Abstract. We present a longitudinal project using action design research, which is a four-year collaboration between two EPFL entities: The research Laboratory for Systemic Modeling (LAMS) and EPFL's IT department, called the VPSI. During that time the VPSI was going through a transformation into a service-oriented organization. The research project began as an open-ended modeling of some of the VPSI processes. It slowly matured into the design and development of a visualization tool we call service cartography. During this research, we learned that, to successfully apply service-orientation, focusing purely on IT architecture and end-customer value is not enough. Attention must be given to the exchange of internal services between the service organization members and their alignment with the services expected by the external stakeholders. In this paper we present the evolution of (1) our understanding of what services are, and (2) our conceptualization of how the service cartography facilitates the service-oriented thinking.

Digital services governance: IT4IT™ for management of technology

“…Services are identifiable abstractions of, mostly, human work and human intervention using a relatively broad set of skills and competencies (Tapandjieva et al, 2017;McBride, 2009;Kans, 2013). Services are closely related to human work that both rely on services but also produce services in work-systems (Alter, 2014a, b).…”

“…(2) Better alignment between competencies and services often with distinct competency mapping included in the service definition: this is following a defined service (product) ownership regarding senior management and technical competencies in Pollux' organisation; often, there is stated a "matrix" style of competencies for advanced and/or cross-cutting competencies, e.g. certified network engineers (Tapandjieva et al, 2017;McBride, 2009;Kans, 2013).…”