Again, a new approach has entered the scene and heavy discussions are going on about the right and wrong. Like this one: SIAM is a hoax
Looking at these discussions, I think we missed out the most important point.
Maybe SIAM is a hoax. At least it is something that has been practiced in multi-sourcing since some time and finally added to existing frameworks.
Anyway, this doesn’t really matter.
After having worked many years in SIAM-like outsourcing environments, I strongly believe that there are other things which make the success and the agile manifesto brings this to the point:
“- Individuals and interactions OVER processes and tools
– Customer collaboration OVER contract negotiation
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more”
From my experience, there was so much damage created by only focusing on the things on the right side (by just technically adapting ITIL, SIAM, ISO20k, …). This always resulted in catastrophic failure of outsourcing contracts. At the end it’s like a marriage contract: This SLA will not make you a happy couple, but it’s good to have one if things go terribly wrong ;-).
Or how Dilbert would put it:
So, approaches like SIAM are important, but they don’t make the real difference. They even can make things much worse.