Once and awhile I hear some puffing and moaning about the BiSL framework book. For many people the framework book is pretty dry stuff. It contains many bullet lists and difficult schedules and it doesn’t actually tell you what to do and where to start.

My general reaction is: that makes sense and is ok, because the framework tells you what to do but not how to do that. As stated in the book, the ‘how’ is very situational: it depends on the organization, on the internal process and distribution of tasks, responsibilities and authority. The ‘how’ of IT in a small town is different than in a large city and again there it is unlike with a bank or an insurer. Now there are publications that help you to the ‘how’: they describe some practices. We have some of those on our website. And the ‘how’ can be derived from examples of other organization: the best practices, of whichthe ASL BiSL Foundation has some on their website.

But otherwise you will have to determine the ‘how’ of your organization yourself, by translating the ‘what’ to your own situation. On top of that, some questions play a role in the ‘how’: how well are we doing and how well we do it? This brings us to the topic ‘quality’. Roughly speaking, there are three options to determine the current and desired quality for your situation: an extensive research, a quick scan and a self-assessment. It will be clear that The Lifecycle Company can help you with all three approaches.

For the self-assessment see our Factsheet_Selfassessments_The_Lifecycle_Company