Ninja Tip - Six Secrets of IAM Success

Typically, we wrap up an ID-30 session with what we call a ninja tip. It's some exclusive insight that you only get if you attend the session. Well, as you probably realized, the past 25 minutes have been all about exclusive insight. So, we could count this entire time as one big ninja tip. But let's spend a couple of minutes summarizing the key insights we've learned. So, here's six secrets to identity and access management success from someone who has done it right. Number one, create an IAM Center of Excellence, or a centralized location where resources related to the program reside and are readily available to all constituents, employees, management, partners, and IT. Number two, take baby steps and don't bite off more than you can chew. IAM's success is a journey, not a destination. So, I approach this very large program as a series of discrete, achievable, and measurable milestones. Do a phased rollout, not a big bang. Number three, treat your IAM program as a business program, not an IT project. Involve all aspects of your business from the very early design stages through rollout and into the daily use. Create working groups and give them a platform to help make decisions on how the program will work, the user experience, and the required workloads of all parties. In other words, give them some skin in the game. Number four, communicate. Make sure that all stakeholders from IT to management to end users knows what's coming, why it's coming, and what's in it for them. This can tie-in nicely with your AIM Center of Excellence we discussed earlier. Number five, focus on enablement. Even the best technology is useless if people don't know how to use it, or even worse, resistant to using it. So, create a rich catalog of materials for end users, managers, or whomever. And create those materials in the format that is best for your audiences. Could be videos, on-demand training, shorten just-in-time training, instructor-led training, or whatever. And number six, make sure that your internal support teams are up to speed and ready to help. As you roll out your IAM program, even if it's in baby steps as we recommend, the best way to set yourself up for success is to equip those at the front lines to be responsive, quick, and thorough, as they deal with the inevitable service desk issues that come up with any significant IT initiative. So, there you have it. Now go out and conquer with your new IAM program.