Learn how IAM Roadmaps ensure your Identity Management project is successful, the first time around.
Technology is changing at an accelerating pace. Traditional approaches to strategic IT planning are no longer sufficient for organizations to be successful. Strategic plans determine the overall direction of a program and establish its principle goals; however, these plans rarely include a roadmap for how to build the capabilities (people, process, technology) needed to realize and sustain these changes. Without organizing your Identity and Access Management (IAM) program around new capabilities, it’s almost impossible to change the way the organization works and achieve the results you want. Identity Management fundamentally re-engineers the user lifecycle and demands that HR and IT develop new capabilities to realize the benefits of the IAM program. The transformational change paired with lack of planning is why many IAM and IGA programs come up short.
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The most common theme in Identity Management is moving from high-touch, human-driven processes to a policy-driven, automated approach for identity lifecycle management. The promise of IAM and IGA solutions is that access decisions can be improved through automation, and can be done faster and cheaper. The goal is to make access decisions more precise (more targeted to job function/role), more consistent (improve user satisfaction), and more agile (ability to efficiently adapt to change in the organization). The question is, are these benefits self-evident?
Project teams and organizational leaders assume that if the strategy makes sense, then people will figure out what to do, so they don’t invest in creating IAM Roadmaps. Those close to the project usually understand the benefit of a roadmap but they cannot do it alone so their projects ultimately fail.
As an example, let’s look at the user onboarding process where automation requires large changes to the operating model. Dozens of managers will have to learn the new process to onboard a user, different HR and IT divisions will need to share information and collaborate, new roles for coordinating user accounts will have to be created, and hiring processes will have to be changed to support an automated user lifecycle, etc. These changes mean that hundreds of people in the company will have to work differently in some way – but the strategic plan said nothing about developing new capabilities. So despite the agreement that the strategy was sound, the missing capabilities made it impossible to implement.
IAM Roadmaps marry the strategic plan to the tactics that need to be carried out by stakeholders to build new organizational muscle. They layout new ways of working with the IAM/IGA solution, and they drive responsibility for moving the program forward.
In summary, here are 5 benefits of IAM Roadmaps:
- Help organizations make sure they have the technologies and capabilities when they are needed
- Reveal gaps in processes and technologies so they can be addressed before they become problems
- Set realistic goals and identify the requirements to meet them
- Build a common understanding and shared ownership of the plan to drive cross-functional collaboration during implementation
- Define the best path to a successful implementation
Learn how an IAM Roadmap can benefit your organization.
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