IT Environment Pillar

IT Environment describes the space our solution has to be designed to operate in and set a lot of constraints on what we can deliver. These skills generally ranked low in criticality, but some of the lowest were IT operations and governance. This is indicative of the “as is” state where we have such an abysmal project success rate. Without knowledge of the IT environment, the costs of our solutions could negate any business value they could provide to an organization.

IT Environment Capabilities

Technical Project Management

Role of project management specific to an IT project or program. Understanding the existing deployed solutions (and the limitations of those solutions) in developing the future state capabilities required by new solutions and balancing the cost of the new solution against the overall goals and timelines of the organization. Expected to demonstrate understanding of the factors involved in estimating solutions and their cost and cost tracking methods and tactics.

Asset Management

An understanding of developing and deploying a solution designed to manage the intellectual property of solutions and architectural components within the IT environment.

Change Management

A deep understanding of the vital nature of designing and utilizing effective change management processes and the critical role that change control plays in a quality operational design.

Infrastructure

Tools, techniques and operations of a data center. Networking and network management.

Application Development

Define and describe the varying approaches to application development and will include COTS package implementation and infrastructure upgrades.  The functions of opportunity definition, preliminary analysis, software development, testing, deployment, and overall managing of the development environment and process will be covered. Different ways to approach structuring projects including, waterfall, iterative and incremental, different levels of formality from methods with a high degree of ceremony to agile approaches.

IT Governance

Detail the decision-making environment within an organization and the importance of having clearly defined roles and responsibilities relative to oversight of projects, processes, and products. Show competence in designing solutions that achieve regulatory goals and objectives and allow for guidance and oversight that continuously track to the needs of the business.

Testing Methods, Tools and Techniques

Detail best practices in testing theory, techniques and tools. Expected to demonstrate competence in the scientific method and important testing techniques.

Knowledge Management

Understanding and designing a solution that supports how business information is built, stored, managed, and made easily accessible. Current issues around the organizational challenge of maintaining long-term organizational memory and ways to address this challenge.

Decision Support

A major area of architectural advancement is in decision support and ‘smart’ systems. Concepts and components in decision and business intelligence systems and will demonstrate effective architectures using these components.

Platforms and Frameworks

A working knowledge of primary platforms and frameworks used throughout the public and private sectors. Emphasis will be put on the architectural qualities and not on specific platforms. Expected to understand how they relate to each other and will be given opportunities and tools to evaluate frameworks against each other in specific and different contexts.