8 Pitfalls of Next Generation IAM Programs

Editor's Notes

• #6: Use the power of many to influence the rejection of the few. Make sure to look for people who you might not normally think of for a ‘governance’ type board but have special skills to help your purpose.
• #7: We work through all IAM related activities as a team If one member of the roundtable has rapport with a specific group, let that person handle that group Democratically designed
• #8: When more people are involved in the decision, as long as they have a combined cause, they tend to fight less over who does what A roundtable doesn’t lend itself to having one person be ‘the only person’ on a project so IAM doesn’t become “Dave’s Project” Many more projects at OU than I would like to admit have been the result of manic planning. Your roundtable can share the load and plan different parts together If you require others to help you reach ‘big decisions’ then you are increasing collaboration across the entire university When you have several people from all different walks of life working together, your approach becomes more unified and centralized
• #9: There is nothing wrong with processes that have stood the test of time. The question is… did they pass the test of time or did everything else follow because it had to? Processes can be developed over years and decades and sometimes as a result of a firestorm, it may be that it was good when it was made but it needs to be examined for relevance You can have the most powerful IAM platform ever that spits out processes in realtime but if you feed it garbage, it’s going to spit out garbage.
• #10: If your IAM isn’t there to solve problems, why are you building it? You need to document the processes so you can put it into IAM but this may be the time to figure out what you don’t need in the new IAM world If you are a visual person, diagrams and flowcharts are amazingly useful. You might even be able to show a process owner things about their process they didn’t realize. Whatever you do, don’t bring the garbage into IAM, it will only make it stink.
• #11: After meeting with all stakeholders, this is what we determined was how identities came to be. Don’t try to stare too hard, you’ll go blind. But this diagram served to show all things about identity and has been infinitely useful
• #12: Don’t stare too hard, you’ll go blind! This diagram taught us how employees get their identities started. We found an area where things were being hand-keyed and likely causing some issues.
• #13: You would be surprised at how many people asked if they could keep copies of these documents because nothing else was documented like this Those who keep processes in their brain are either going to be happy that you took that load off them or they may be nervous about giving up control of their ‘baby’. Many of the diagrams we made became the core documents for our IAM POC build and this can be used in the Production build, too.
• #14: Everybody has those leaders in the organization who believe that only Gartner (or Forrester) are the best there is The way they evaluate products is for a much more generalized audience and there are few things that are ‘general’ in Higher Ed Even Gartner says “Just because it’s in the top right doesn’t mean it’s the best for you!”
• #15: Consider putting your product choices in a Matrix and using it to review the material at hand. Your roundtable knows what is important to certain groups and they can help you decide. Share the requirements as much as you can with other parts of your university so that you can have lots of feedback.
• #18: I picked this one because it was one of the most unique requirements we came up with and it really challenged a number of vendors.
• #19: You need buy in to achieve success If your leadership wants to measure what you are doing, the requirements list or documents can be a great deliverable Picking the best vendor is much easier when you prepare accordingly. Explain how we used the requirements matrix to serve as a mini-RFP.
• #20: Explain how you checked each vendor and scored them (0, 1, 2) Total the columns at the bottom and you can see which solution seems to do the most for your organization.
• #21: The thing about the future is that it quickly becomes the present and soon the past IAM has to be able to do things inside your walls and outside If there is a paradigm shift in the way students communicate (such as Social Media in our time), your IAM may not be control that Make your platform work for how you work now and how you MAY work in the future.
• #22: The future of education rests in the hands of those who are willing to reinvent it. You could be one of them. Yes, there are security concerns inherent in allowing other countries but that doesn’t mean you must avoid it The buzzwords of today will become the technology of tomorrow.
• #23: What if your IAM future was a fully integrated system that could handle an almost endless list of sources and systems? Think outside of your university walls just as much as you think within.
• #28: If the primary resources for IAM have other commitments, it’s that much easier to ‘kick the can down the road.’