Identity Management Success

Clients often ask us “do we need to spend the money on IAM vendor Project Management services when we already have our own?”

This is a great question, and a crucial component of IAM Program Planning.The short answer is: there is no one-size-fits-all-answer. To put the question in context, let us suppose for a moment that your organization is highly “projectized” or “matrixed.” The organization has a strong centralized PMO (Project Management Office), or perhaps PMO’s organized along line of business (LOB) or departmental lines. Or, your organization may be the exact opposite: little or no centralization, distributed project management, a lot of ad hoc resources. In either case, the important thing to know is that the right decision is not solely a matter of # of project resources, or even internal expertise. Nor is the decision absolute. In some cases for example, it may make sense to engage the IAM vendor’s project resources during certain phases of the IAM Program, and disengage in other cases.

To assist in the decision process, Links Business Group, LLC offers the following guidelines.

Engaging the vendor’s project manager may be beneficial or necessitated in the following cases:

• Internal project managers are overallocated to current projects
• Your organization has no existing enterprise-scale IAM expertise
• The vendor is adding 3 or more engineers/architects/developers to the IAM deployment
• Vendor engineers will not be tightly embedded with internal staff
• Vendor has complex time and reporting requirements
• Terms of vendor SLA
• When multiple vendors are engaged in complex deployment scenarios, with each owning a piece of the program
• When technically complex deliverables are required with very tight timelines
• When multiple concurrent deliverables are required by multiple vendor and internal teams
• Internal project plan validation
• Maintaining program continuity during internal resource shuffles or key resource losses

Vendor project managers may be redundant or less critical in the following cases:

• Ongoing maintenance
• Portions of the program that are solely internal, such as planning, determining compliance or regional requirements
• When two or less vendor engineers are deployed
• When internal project plans are tightly scoped, vetted, and agreed with vendor technical staff
• When vendor PM overhead is cost prohibitive
• When there are significant difference in project tools and document formats
• When significant internal Identity and Access Management (IAM) technical and PM expertise exists and is available

When in doubt, it is best to err on the side of safety, especially when an IAM infrastructure investment is substantial. Should you decide to test the waters with vendor PM resources, follow this checklist:

• Insist on an iron-clad Scope of Work (SOW) document
• Establish clear PM beginning, ending, and review dates prior to implementation
• Require firm delineation of what the vendor PM would do, relative to the vendor’s engagement/service manager

NOTE: May vendor PM functions may already be performed by the engagement manager.

Have more questions? We can help. Call us today at 877-769-8938, or send email to request a complimentary half hour consultation.Until next time, all the best, of Identity Management Success.

Corbin H. Links, President
Links Business Group, LLC