As you know, the purpose of business process mapping is to map business processes in order optimize customer value, increase efficacy and eliminate inefficiencies as part of process improvement initiatives. I.T. Operations Process Mapping, which is simply business process mapping of your information technology operations, serves a similar purpose in your information technology organization. Project Management Organizations, Project Management Offices and Project Support Offices all provide defined processes and artifacts for more effectively and efficiently delivering projects. I.T. Operations Process Mapping takes this mature approach to structured project management, and suggests that mapping out the actual processes from initiating a project to closing a project improves the effectiveness and efficiency of project delivery. In addition, I.T. Operations Process Mapping goes beyond projects, and improves operational efficiencies throughout the information technology organization: technical support, infrastructure maintenance, application maintenance, and system deployment just to name a few. Admittedly, it is difficult to allocate resources in resource-strained information technology departments to I.T. Operations Improvement Initiatives and I.T. Operations Process Mapping. However, the payoff for investing in I.T. Process Improvement is increased scale and scope of delivery to customers. Consequently, these initiatives position your information technology organization to more effectively manage the balance between a limited supply of resources and an increasing demand for services.

*I haven't seen much of this type of internal process improvement work in I.T. Departments, but I think it is something for I.T. leaders to consider as a possible way of more effectively and efficiently serving their customers.