Drive to Survive

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Excelling in the Identity Access Management Space

by Harold Black, Senior Solution Architect

 

Many are familiar with the popular television show Drive to Survive. For those who are not acquainted with the show, it is a behind the scenes look at the world of Formula One (F1) racing.

You may wonder what does F1 have to do with the Identity Access Management (“IAM”) space? There are many commonalities between the two, some more nuanced than others. The obvious parallels are:

1. They are in it for the long run. IAM is a program not a project. Formula One is a series with multiple races over the course of the year generating points toward a championship.

2. They require teamwork – an F1 requires drivers, engineers, pit crews and so on. A strong, mature identity team requires developers, analysts, and operations people. Each job has its own set of skills and lessons learned and must have the ability to work well with other groups within the larger team. Attempting to have anyone fill too many roles will lead to lower performance and static thinking.

3. They require Strategic and Tactical thinking. Any given F1 race weekend contains multiple mini events – practice rounds, qualifying rounds, and race day. Each phase lays a foundation for the next and consumes time and materials from a finite pool of resources. All of this is with the aim of contributing to the larger goal. A tactical decision that is solid in the moment can be catastrophic in the long run. Conversely a strategic decision that sounds good without the resources or support to make it a reality is a sure way to hit the wall. Sound familiar?

This brings us to less obvious similarities between F1 and IAM – the Drive to Survive. Every good team in any endeavor understands their success drivers.

 

 

F1 teams design their cars with success drivers in mind. Some teams are faster on the straight aways, others on the curves. Some focus on reliability and asset management to gain some points every race. Others win a big once or twice and seldom score the rest of the year. There is no wrong answer; it’s about the team’s personality and resources that establish their “success drivers.”

In the IAM world this means program business drivers. These drivers lay the foundation for what your program is all about and lead to the way you design your systems and processes, and prioritize your work. Without adherence to a driver focused program development, teams end up with an assortment of nice but disjointed features, a collection of unsupportable processes and conflicting priorities, which makes everyone unhappy.

What does a driver focused program management mean? In the Identity world, the primary drivers are Security, Compliance and Business Enablement. Each of these have variations and subsets but they boil down to one of the three. Each has arguments to support why they are number one.

• The business will say, “We should be the primary driver because we make the money”.
• Security will respond, “That may be true but we make sure we get to keep it”.
• Compliance will say, “We prevent regulatory fines and hits to stock prices”.

All three are correct and must be addressed in your program.

The way to a successful race is to identity your drivers, determine the value of each, spot the point of diminishing returns and establish a ranking system for each driver. When you have competing requests for your limited resources, a well understood prioritization tool allows you to focus your efforts and gives the customer a realistic view of the “finish line.” Attempting to make everyone happy at once leads to hitting a wall and losing a chance for a win.

So in conclusion, establish your drivers, start your engine, and enjoy the race to success!