I’d like to expand the conversation on a topic that I started a couple of weeks ago. Let’s dive back into the dimensions of a Mobility Center of Excellence. If you didn’t join our webinar on this topic from December 1st, I encourage you to lsten, and also read the first two posts on this topic: What is a Mobility Center of Excellence? and Why should I consider a Mobility Center of Excellence? . Now to talk about the dimensions of a mobility COE.
As you can imagine (and are probably living), different organizations are in different stages of their mobility adoption and maturity. This shapes their experience level, competency mix, and comfort level with mobility. Where do you think you are in terms of experience? Regardless of your answer, a mobility CoE can be a good idea. And there are dimensions to consider; Scope, Organization and Governance.
Scope: Defining the scope and the charter of the mobility CoE is a critical first step. Ask yourself these questions to get started:
- What is the core function of the MCoE?
- Are you hoping to drive better collaboration across the organization?
- Do you want to shape and drive a mobility strategy for mobility initiatives?
- Do you want the team to provide support on mobility projects?
- How broad is the span of mobility capabilities that the MCoE covers?
- How will the MCoE interface with your existing IT organization?
Further details on these questions and additional thoughts can be found in the whitepaper written by Vishy Gopalakrishnan.
Organization: Once the scope for the MCoE has been defined, the next element to review is the underlying organizational structure and associated ways of working. Again, we go into much more detail in the whitepaper, but to give you a taste, you need to start with securing buy-in from your major stakeholders – executive buy in is critical to success. The next steps are to outline roles and reporting structure to build out the team. Of course, what is a team without a leader – picking this person is a big decision. You need to choose someone who has vision, can drive and deliver on innovation and at the same time is grounded in real-world IT project delivery.
Governance: In defining the governance for the MCoE, it is important to keep this process lightweight and pragmatic. If you look back over the past 12 months in mobility you’ll notice an incredible amount of change has occurred. Only 12 months ago, BlackBerry and Nokia were major players in the space and Android was an up-and-comer. We didn’t even have the iPad 2 yet. For a space that is moving as fast as mobility, you need a governance process that is nimble yet robust enough to get the desired results. Being transparent about how mobility projects are reviewed, approved, and delivered is a critical part of the governance model. Again, I encourage you to read the whitepaper to dive into Governance in more detail – there are so many areas to cover in the governance space that I can’t even being to get to them in this blog..
In my next and final blog on this topic, I’ll look at best practices recommended by Vishy in the whitepaper. Again, if you haven’t listened to the webinar yet, I encourage you to watch it ondemand now.
