IAM Projects stalling - Plan First, Then Execute

Welcome. My name is Martin Kok. I'm principal Analyst at KOCO today. I will talk about reasons for identity and access management projects. So this is one of multiple podcasts in a series and the topic for today's the need for planning the need for concepts, the need for doing work ahead of implementing or selecting and implementing technology. So you don't build a house, which is very apparent without having a blueprint without having a plan. And you shouldn't do identity don't need access management without having a plan. And in this plan, it is not only about technology.

My perspective is everything starts with a good policy. So policy defines stakeholders, a policy defines the roles. A policy defines basic major requirements at the end of the day. So it sets the guideline. It helps you setting up the organization and it builds the foundation for processes and processes. From my experience are that part of work, which is most frequently missed in IM projects.

So I far, far, far to seldom find organizations which have a well defined well documented set of IM processes for all the relevant areas. And this is way more than trial mover lever in the life cycle management. This is about application onboarding. This is about maintenance of entitlements. This is about standard processes for approvals and many more. This is about process for access management for IGA, for Pam, and depending on what your scope is, you need don't need to do all the process, but you should do the process for what is in your scope and define them, define them in a tool.

Describe them. Well, you will learn a lot about how to do it, right? You will have a lot of discussions in that phase, maybe, which help you not having these discussions later on. And you have guidance for everyone who does the implementation. This is the process, and that's the way you implement it. That don't end up with a scenario where someone then starts implementing and later on the people say, but that's not the way we work. Then you did something fundamentally wrong plan. First and processes, policies, organizations are essential aspects of that planning.

The time you invest there will pay off as well as the money you invest will pay off multiple times later on in your project, by making it far more efficient. And one important word on processes, don't try to reinvent processes. The processes are pretty much The same for most organizations. You hire people, people leave, people change their chops, et cetera. There's there are some varies in these processes, but best you build on a set of best practice processes instead of reinventing everything, everything from scratch. So invest the time invested money in well.

So planning, this will save you a lot of time and a lot of money after work. Thank you for listening to me.