GBS Solutions Assets

Solutions assets are used by Global Business Services (GBS) consulting professionals to provide IT solutions to clients. Assets intended for GBS consulting professionals are applicable during various activities related to their client engagement. The major types of activities are sales, solutioning, and delivery. To enable the GBS consulting professionals to locate and use assets specific to their client engagement activities, GBS uses a Bill of Materials (BOM) taxonomy that classifies assets by the type of activity performed in an engagement. Furthermore, assets are associated with (related to) specific industry solution offerings (or portfolio items). Therefore, GBS solutions assets are classified and organized as sets of assets using the BOM and the industry solutions offerings (or portfolio items) in a catalog of assets. In addition, assets are further classified based on various other factors such as geography, language, and other business constraints such as restricted access, company and client confidentiality, and country-specific trade restrictions.

GBS uses a front-end application called the Asset Hub to approve, publish, consume, and manage the lifecycle events of solutions assets. The asset repository serves as its backend asset management platform.

GBS Governance Scenarios Overview

Define review for one or more assets and their relationships (Priority 5)

Specify the review process that applies to an asset or a set of assets based on their classification, including their BOM, industry solution offerings, business constraints, etc. or their relationships

Initiate review for asset(s) (Priority 1)

When an asset or a set of assets is submitted for review, depending on the review process that applies to that specific asset or to the set of assets, the appropriate review process is initiated and the reviewers notified (This was added to the Scenario: Developer Publishes Service Specification)

Retrieve the assets that I need to review (Priority 1)

As a reviewer, I can locate the assets that are awaiting my review and retrieve them to perform the review (This was added as part of the Scenario: Developer Retrieves Service Assets.)

Vote on asset(s) (approve, reject, ...) or relationship(s) (Priority 3)

Reviewer to approve or reject one or more assets or relationships

Submit my review of one or more assets and their relationships (Priority 3)

Complete the review of an asset or a set of assets and their relationships at a time and submit my approval or rejection, along with my feedback and comments

Verify asset(s)' policy compliance (Priority 2)

Retrieve the policies applicable to an asset or a set of assets and verify their compliance or non-compliance

Retrieve the current state of one or more assets and their relationships (Priority 1)

Retrieve details on the current lifecycle state of an asset or a set of assets and their relationships (This was added as part of the Scenario: Developer Retrieves Service Assets.)

Move an asset or set of assets and their relationship(s) to another state (Priority 1)

Change the state of an asset or a set of assets and one or more of their relationships to another valid state. If the target state is not valid, obtain details on why the state change is not allowed. (This was added as part of the Scenario: Developer Publishes Service Specification.)

Stop (or cancel) or Override review of asset(s) and their relationship(s) (Priority 2)

Abort or override the normal review process underway for an asset or a set of assets and their relationships. While aborting a review returns the asset(s) or relationship(s) to a state prior to submission for review, overriding the review process moves the asset(s) or relationship(s) to a valid state, bypassing the need to complete the normal review process.

Retrieve who is responsible for asset(s) in the current state (Priority 2)

Obtain details on the current state of an asset or a set of assets, including their relationships, and the names of individuals who are responsible for moving the asset(s) and relationship(s) to another valid state. For example, if an asset is pending review, retrieve details on reviews completed and pending reviews.

Retrieve how long have assets and relationships been in a specific state, including current state (Priority 4)

Obtain details on the duration for which an asset or a set of assets and their relationships have been in any given state

Remove/Add user(s) from the review process (Priority 3)

Modify the review process underway by adding or removing users from the list of reviewers

Define review for one or more assets and their relationships

The solutions portfolio management team for an industry has decided on their portfolio of solutions offerings that they want to go to market with. They are gathering existing assets related to their offerings that they would like their practitioners to reuse during their sales, solutioning, and delivery activities. Prior to making these assets available to practitioners, the assets need to be approved by corresponding practice leadership teams. The practice leaderships teams that need to review and approve assets vary depending upon the industry, specific solution offering, geography and market where the solution is offered, local business constraints, the specific activities for which an asset is intended, etc.

Background

The major types of activities for which GBS solutions assets are intended for are sales, solutioning, and delivery.

Sales assets include executive presentations and demonstrations related to the solution offerings. They also include assets such as pricing guides and Statement of Work (SOW) templates.

Assets that can help the solutioning activities include solution overview material, business and marketing plans, and solution usage guidance.

Solution delivery assets include assets such as industry models, component business model (CBM) maps, architecture and infrastructure assets, as well as testing, operations, management assets and productivity tools. The delivery assets also include solution building blocks that can be customized and reused in solutions delivered to clients.

For any given market offering, the set of applicable assets is organized by their BOM type and collected together by establishing appropriate relationships among assets and portfolio items. Assets are owned by specific industry and solution teams, but they can be reused in other industry solutions offerings.

Initiate review for asset(s)

The solutions portfolio management team for an industry has identified and collected together assets that are related to one of their new portfolio items. Many of the assets they have gathered for this new portfolio item are new. They have loaded the new portfolio item and the new assets in the asset repository. In addition, they have also located existing approved assets in the repository that can be reused for this portfolio item. Some of these existing assets are owned by portfolio owners in other industries. Our solutions portfolio management team has organized the set of assets they have collected or identified and have established appropriate metadata and asset relationships to capture all the details needed for practitioners to locate, make decisions regarding the appropriate reuse of these assets for this specific portfolio item and perform their engagement activity successfully – be it sales, solutioning, or delivery. They have also previewed the portfolio item and all of the related assets in the Asset Hub to confirm that the end user views of the portfolio item and its related assets are complete and valid.

The solutions portfolio management team is now ready to initiate review of the portfolio item and its assets. They initiate the review process configured already for this portfolio item and the selected set of related assets.

Background

The solutions portfolio management team gathers and completes the construction of the portfolio item and the full set of sanctioned assets related to the portfolio item using an iterative process. During this process, the portfolio item and the related assets are stored in the asset repository, but they are not all in the published state. Even though assets that are already in the approved and published state in the repository are available for use by any practitioner, those assets are not related to the new portfolio item that is being put together. The solutions portfolio management team previews the portfolio item and all its related assets in the Asset Hub, but this view is not available to practitioners yet. Only when the portfolio item, along with the related assets that have been selected, are reviewed and approved by the appropriate reviewers, the portfolio management team will publish them in the Asset Hub and the asset repository for practitioner use.

Retrieve the assets that I need to review

A review process has been initiated and all reviewers associated with that review process have been notified. A reviewer receives such a notification by email and is ready to review the asset(s). The reviewer requests to see a list of the assets that are pending her review. By default, the assets are organized by the portfolio items to which they are attached and further grouped by their BOM types. However, at any time, the reviewer is able to organize the assets pending her review in any of several other ways, including organizing them by their BOM types, geography, language, etc.

Background

The reviewer uses a variety of criteria to review and approve the assets and the portfolio items. Criteria to approve an asset include completeness and validity of the metadata, quality of the attached content artifacts, appropriateness of the classification of the asset under various category schema, etc. Criteria to approve a portfolio item include the appropriateness and maturity of the portfolio item for a specific industry, the completeness of the set of Bill of Material assets and their quality, suitability of the portfolio item for the specified geography and market, clarity of the business terms and conditions, etc.

Vote on asset(s) (approve, reject, ...) or relationship(s)

The reviewer has retrieved the assets pending her review. The reviewer chooses to organize and view the assets in any of several different ways in which these pending assets can be organized and viewed. The reviewer adds her comments and feedback to the assets – one asset at a time or sometimes to several assets at a time – depending upon the scope and nature of the comments and feedback she wants to provide. She indicates her approval or rejection one asset at a time or for a collection of assets. The reviewer is also able to approve/reject an asset, but not approve/reject specific relationships an asset has with other assets. In addition, she is also able to approve/reject a relationship without approving the related asset(s).

Background

GBS expects assets and the industry solution offerings (portfolio items) themselves will mature and evolve over time. Depending on the industry, the maturity of the offering, and other business conditions, the solutions portfolio team may choose to make a partially complete set of assets related to a solution offering available to practitioners.