TBM Framework & Taxonomy

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  • 1.  Customizing TBM taxonomy?

    Posted 03-21-2023 12:00

    We are just starting implementing TBM taxonomy 4.0 to get transparency in our IT costs. There is some pressure to have the TBM taxonomy customized/changed to reflect the needs of your business? E.g. we are thinking to create a new TBM Tower for Cloud - do you think it is a good idea?



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    Jiří Sýkora
    Finance Operations Manager
    Adecco Group AG
    +420728214957
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  • 2.  RE: Customizing TBM taxonomy?

    Posted 03-22-2023 08:37

    Hello Jiri,

    Great to see you in the community! In reference to your question, if we take IaaS as an example, cloud is just another form of compute that translates up the model from cost pools, just like if it were a managed service or other on-prem hardware option. Generally, organizations want to know what their compute spend is (including the supporting internal/external ecosystem, which can be extensive) for each type of compute (Wintel, Linux, AS400, Azure, AWS etc.). You can always break out the cloud aspect from a reporting perspective, but if it is a separate tower you may then wind up adding it back into any calculation of total compute spend for various use cases. Your operating model may help guide you toward the best answer as well. Many "service provider" archetype IT orgs (or higher, as defined in the TBM book and course) model compute up to solutions (apps, products, services, platforms etc.) in the next allocation layer.  In that Solution layer are cloud services, which are often consumed by Line of Business tech organizations, which is where you would allocate your cloud and related compute spend (e.g. like spend on the rest of your cloud ecosystem, or other tower components). That Solution layer is where your "cloud service" offerings manifest, which are comprised of aggregated tower components. I've seen others create a new tower layer, but it is far less common than what I laid out above, and can cause rework. Think about all the various forms of cloud now available (compute, storage, PaaS, DBaaS etc..), would you chose to create a separate tower for each? Or a tower for aggregation of all (thereby exacerbating the problem mentioned above)?

    Hope this helps! 



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    Jack Bischof
    VP, EMEA
    Technology Business Management Council, Ltd.
    1234567
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  • 3.  RE: Customizing TBM taxonomy?

    Posted 03-24-2023 04:41

    Hi Jack, 

    Thank you very much for this! I recently joined our company to find implementation of TBM was progressing differently in Finance (introducing Cost Pools and Towers/Sub-towers to financial data) and in IT. IT is working on creating a Service catalogue = definition of technical services central IT provides to other entities in our group. These should eventually be priced and also used for recharges, budgeting etc. Technical services roughly follow the structure of TBM Sub-towers but not 100% (IT created a few new Sub-towers in Compute area and split Network area into 20 technical services while there are only 3 TBM Sub-towers)  . I can see both Finance and IT worked in silos and my concern is once we have TBM implemented we will find out we cannot really compare financial data from accounting with consumption data from IT as both will have different TBM structure. Am I right these difference should be treated and both sides (finance and IT) aligned while we are still at the beginning of TBM implementation? If yes, then is the best way to introduce Solutions to both finance and IT? Or maybe Sub-tower elements?

    Sorry for all those questions, I think what we lack the most is someone with oversight of finance and IT (I am myself more from the finance side)...

    Have a great day, 

    Jiri



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    Jiří Sýkora
    Finance Operations Manager
    Adecco Group AG
    +420728214957
    ------------------------------