Comparison of ITIL Sourcing and Delivery Strategy

Simple comparison between Insourcing, Outsourcing, Co-sourcing, Partnership, Merger & Acquisition

The readiness assessment provides a structured mechanism for determining an organisation’s capabilities and state of readiness for delivering a new or revised application in support of the defined key business drivers. The information obtained from such an assessment can be used in determining the delivery strategy for a particular application, IT system, or IT service. The delivery strategy is the approach taken to move an organisation from a known state, based on the readiness assessment, to a desired state, determined by the business drivers. There are many ways to prepare an organisation for deploying a new application. The method and strategy selected should be based on the solution the organisation chooses for fulfilling its key business drivers, as well as the capabilities of the IT organisation and its partners. The scale of options available is quite large and not every option need be considered in every case. However, keeping all the options available for consideration is key for building and operating innovative solutions to the most difficult business challenges. In the end, this may be the difference between a failed project – or even a failed company – and a successful one.

Although the readiness assessment determines the gap between the current and necessary capabilities, an IT organisation should not necessarily try to bridge that gap by itself. As noted earlier, there are many different delivery strategies that can be used. Each one has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, but all require some level of adaptation and customisation for the situation at hand. Below lists the main categories of delivery strategies with a short abstract for each. Delivery practices tend to fall into one of these categories or some variant of them.

ITIL Delivery Strategy Advantages and Disadvantages Matrix