BTM BOK Objectives

The BTM BOK project was launched in Fall 2017 in partnership with MITACS and Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO).

The main objective of the BTM BOK is to equip the BTM community with a Free, Libre, Open Specification (FLOS) to help guide the digital transformation and fulfill the BTM Forum mission, namely (1) coach digital leaders, (2) develop hybrid acumen, and (3) broaden digital vision.

Secondary objectives of the BTM BOK relate to supporting various Human Resources Management (HRM) and Talent Management processes.

In particular, the BOK will help define seamless career paths across multiple specializations to ensure more complete experience and knowledge for digital transformation.

The core meta-model or framework of our BOK, building upon and integrating existing practices, will ensure digital leaders at all levels can rely on a logical progression of the common core competencies of their profession.

The BOK can be used for certification of digital leaders at Associate, Professional, Entrepreneur, Manager, Executive, and Fellow levels.

The BOK can also serve for accreditation of degree programs, better defining the logic of Learning Outcomes (LOs), and gauge which school is most innovative, and clarify which one is best for each digital leader as per their stage and path of professional growth.

The potential benefits of the BTM BOK span all segments of the profession, whether professionals, associations, academia, employers, industry vendors, and the economy and society in general.

BTM BOK Deliverables

The BTM BOK will provide a systematic, exhaustive, and evolving framework for professional practice standards, in service to support IT Human Resources Management (HRM). It shall help to make BTM job knowledge easily accessible, customizable, and reusable for decision-making by professionals, employers, higher education, and other associations involved with IT-related standards, certification, and accreditation.

Our 3 sub-projects will follow relatively linearly, with some overlap, and rely on complementary methodologies. In particular, the use of surveys to discover the right professional profiles for digital transformation will be essential. The use of text mining to discover potential relationships among numerous integrated standards and specifications will also prove valuable, as a complement to community contributions to our open editorial process. The final reuse scenario, while not a full commercial proof of concept, will nevertheless serve as a technical feasibility and end-user quality assessment of using APIs to distribute our free and open BTM BOK assets.

BTM BOK Framework

BTM is a new profession uniting disciplines at the interface of management and technology. These include key research areas taught in business schools and often in partnership with computing schools, such as: Information Systems (IS), Information Technology (IT), Technology and Innovation Management (TIM), Project Management (PM), and Strategic Management and Transformation (SMT).

While IT Management remains primarily focused on “managing IT for traditional organizations”, BTM focuses on digital organizations. Because transformation is a challenging endeavor, they require professionals that can achieve a high degree of business-technology-management “hybrid acumen” or digital mindset, addressing the following principles:

• The digital mindset is clearly visible in the 5Ps of your business strategy:
  • the agility in how your people use and master IT;
  • the innovative application of IT throughout your processes;
  • the fusion of IT in your products and services;
  • the unusual places and expanding territory or things where you integrate IT;
  • the strong, transformational leader positioning, in applying IT for business value, relative to other firms in your market and value chain.
• This hybrid acumen doesn’t come naturally, it requires creative nurturing of people.
• Creating the digital organization requires a different kind of professional with hybrid skillset.
• It requires training digital leaders in BTM, with capabilities in both management and technology.

The digital transformation journey presents at each phase new leadership challenges to BTM professionals. While most traditional organizations are familiar with digital projects and programs of small projects, few have entered the “bulk of change” phase where the organization becomes digital. This is where BTM professionals at all ranks become essential, where the organization becomes truly digital, i.e., BTM leaders help making products, process, people, partners, and business portfolios more agile in using IT. Beyond that point, the digital transformation is self-funding through internal savings and renewed competitive positioning.

BTM BOK Integration

The BTM BOK will serve as a generic core language to integrate several Free, Libre, Open Source (FLOS) specifications, methodologies, reference models, and standards. These have been published under open commercial licenses, such as Eclipse Public License 1.0 (EPL 1.0), European Union Public License 1.2 (EULP 1.2), Creative Commons Attribution-SharelAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), and other more liberal licenses such as CC BY 4.0 International, Apache License, MIT License, etc. When assets contain separate contents with varying licenses, only the commercially reusable contents are used, to avoid limiting the reuse of our BOK by all organizations.

The BTM BOK is delivered in a single Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Wiki, developed through an open community effort to simplify the relationships between several BOKs. It is supported by multiple citations to academic and professional literature, helping learners find the most trusted sources. It is also highly open and customizable, with API to reuse its contents in various Talent Management functions (e.g., custom BTM-compliant job descriptions, automated matching of CVs and job competencies, learning path recommendations given prior experience for recognized BTM careers, etc.).

The resulting wiki contents are structured along a simple menu-driven navigation, allowing to quickly pinpoint BTM BOK contents of interest, as well as map thoroughly the relationships between all components.

The FLOS assets will cover initially 15 core practice or competency areas (more to come soon, suggestions welcomed) of digital transformation leadership, starting with those where references are readily available. Logical models are being explored, first classifying practices broadly along the 3 disciplines of the BTM profession: business, technology, and management.

We can also model BTM following basic questions about digital transformation, with a more“dynamic” model, representing constant change and fluid state of BTM initiatives. The 15 initial practice areas can be identified by the “level” or layer of the organization they impact on: fabric (blue) as where and why of digital transformation, team (green) as who and how of digital transformation, and outcome (orange) as what and how much of digital transformation. BTM experts are accountable for 6 joint tasks to accomplish digital transformation, and are bound by a primary dependency, among many more forms of collaboration to develop shared foundations and practices.

The following table provides a list of the primary FLOS assets reused within the BTM BOK.

We integrate 57 FLOS references, of which 17 are by vendors such as methods, toolkits, whitepapers, or documentation (VM), 15 are by authors of textbooks (TB), 11 are by open source authors or initiatives (OS), 7 are by research institutions (RI), 4 are by government agencies (GA), and 3 are by professional associations or standards organizations (PS).

This table is only a small part of the BTM BOK bibliography, which also reuses parts of 30+ of academic articles under CC BY or CC BY-SA, and references 100+ other academic references.

Reference points to the FLOS specifications, and indicates the name of the first author, the vendor, or the government agency in the case of a method linked to a book, textbook, toolkit, or whitepaper. We do not indicate the author in the case of open source initiatives, professional associations, non-profit organizations, standards organizations, or research institutions.

License refers to standard identifiers: https://spdx.org/licenses/

BTM BOK Licensing – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 

Licenses Frequently Used for Methods Developed with Eclipse Process Framework (EPF)

• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

https://wiki.openmod-initiative.org/wiki/Choosing_a_license

• Eclipse Public License (EPL 1.0)

https://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/epl-v10.php

• European Union Public Licence (EUPL 1.2)

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/introduction-eupl-licence

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-text-11-12

http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/eupl

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-compatible-open-source-licences

• Comparison with Several Other Licenses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Why is the BTM BOK licensed as Free/Libre/Open Specification (FLOS)?
2. Who benefits from a FLOS strategy?
3. Why should any organization (non-profit or commercial) release its specifications as open license?
4. What happens if organizations continue to favor proprietary copyrights?
5. What are an organization’s advantages to release their assets immediately?
6. How can our organization get involved in the BTM BOK initiative?

1. Why is the BTM BOK licensed as Free/Libre/Open Specification (FLOS)?

We follow a FLOS strategy as we want to encourage reuse everywhere, ensuring the widest uptake and strongest critical mass of users. A rapid growth will generate interest also to attract the most motivated contributors as reuse becomes common practice. We also adopt licenses that require share-alike or copyleft, ensuring other groups that reuse our specs develop innovative ways that will help us promote our framework.

2. Who benefits from a FLOS strategy?

First, adopters that implement the framework will be free to customize it, and then share it outside in their ecosystem, without any concern whether it is used in commercial or non-commercial settings.

Second, organizations with proprietary specifications will find value in reusing a free generic core language, helping to map their assets to those of others, keeping mappings stable even if others change.

Third, academia will be free to build courseware derived directly from the text/contents of open specs, without having to negotiate with license owners, and relying on free open textbooks to benefit students.

Fourth, governments will find value in open specs that can effectively be reused and republished as policy documentation, without owing any royalty nor be concerned about costs of maintaining specs.

Fifth, vendors will want to reuse our assets commercially, refocusing their budgets on R&D instead of costly methods and specs, leaving our assets without commercial alternatives and less competition.

3. Why should any organization (non-profit or commercial) release its specifications as open license?

There are more advantages than disadvantages in releasing your assets as CC BY-SA 3.0, EPL 1.0, EUPL 1.2, or any compatible licences with the same features (i.e., ensure attribution, allow derivatives, allow reuse in commercial context, and require share-alike or copyleft).

Obviously, if your assets are sold and generate revenue, this approach is an immediate loss. This is however a concern for very few organizations, and primarily those that are oriented toward commercial service. Most organizations nowaday donate specs/methods to end-users to promote learning and help them sample the relevance of other products and services (e.g., certifications, training, software).

Yet most non-profit associations have kept their specs, methods, and standards as proprietary copyright. Many are competing aggressively without much benefit, as the differences between specs are becoming less and less perceptible. The cost of maintaining, expanding, and diversifying these assets is also increasing as specs are becoming more complex and require more quality assurance processes. These initiatives dilute the efforts of their membership, and any delays in releasing new versions also creates concerns about the vitality of the organization and its ability to create a viable strategy for its profession.

Releasing assets as open source ensures that you avoid the costs of proprietary specs, broaden and diversify the reach of your brand, and gain access to new channels to recruit users and contributors.

4. What happens if organizations continue to favor proprietary copyrights?

From a public interest perspective, the enduring competition creates a vacuum in the availability of specs that allow and encourage integration among standards. Hence CIOs and other digital executives are left without a proper mapping as to how to manage the digital transformation. A “do-it-yourself” approach may work for a while, but in-house specs are not cost-effective nor benefiting from outside contributions. This is also affecting organizations concerned with regulatory compliance, where relying on external standards is a requirement, one that cannot be fulfilled given the absence of such assets.

The BTM BOK attempts to fill this vacuum by encouraging non-profit and commercial organizations to take a pioneering step in releasing assets, methods, and specs as CC BY-SA 3.0, EPL 1.0, EUPL 1.2, or similar licences. By putting an end to costly competition, these organizations will be recognized as those that unlocked the present situation, creating loyalty on part of adopters and contributors. As well, end-users will no longer be forced to “choose who’s the best”, as no organization will make such claims, relying on the BTM BOK instead as a neutral ground to resolve what elements and contents of specs shall be promoted.

5. What are an organization’s advantages to release their assets immediately?

Copyright owners are encouraged to benefit from the first-mover advantage, as “empty placeholders” throughout the BTM BOK will rapidly be filled by various organizations and contributors. Being a follower in this case leaves only the choice of “mapping” proprietary assets to the BTM BOK. A few years later, the odds are the cost of maintaining assets internally will become too large, and the choice of “reusing/integrating” some BTM BOK asset will become inevitable. The outcome will therefore be the same as joining the BTM BOK initiative early on, without first mover, nor any copyright mention.

To ensure a first-mover advantage, the BTM Forum will sign an alliance Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). It will first commit the BTM BOK development team in respecting the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0, EPL 1.0, EUPL 1.2, or other compatible open licenses, hence ensuring the way in which an organization’s brand is named in BTM BOK assets. It will also ensure that the organization remains in control of its brand and assets, as reuse does not in any way imply transfer of brand use, nor require any commitment on part of the organization.

However, for organization willing to make contribution, and benefit from the BTM BOK development team infrastructure and processes, the MOU can provide clauses for formal collaboration. It can ensure leadership roles of a certain portion of the BTM BOK assets development process, naming representatives to one or many of the 4 teams:

T1 - Contributors: delegate existing BOK task force members to take leadership of some parts of the BTM BOK.

T2 - Integration: engage directly with the BTM BOK staff/interns who will edit and map the various assets to one another.

T3 - Review: delegate senior leaders and co-authors of existing BOKs for quality assurance of BTM BOK assets and conformity to original meaning/intent of reused BOKs.

T4 - Oversight: elect representatives of your specific profession or specialization to guide the BTM BOK development team in releasing assets that serve your community’s interest.

6. How can our organization get involved in the BTM BOK initiative?

A list of committed organizations will soon be released, allowing others to decide whether it is worthwhile to benefit from the first-mover advantage. As very few are yet confirmed, making this move in 2019 shall prove most beneficial to all.

An alliance prospectus will be published on our web page by the end of 2019. At any time, please do not hesitate to contact our project leader by email, Stéphane Gagnon, Associate Professor at University of Québec in Outaouais (UQO), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

BTM BOK Editing

Our development methodology relies on the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF), which comes with readily developed practices, such as the Open Unified Process (OpenUP), Scrum, Extreme Programming, Agile Business Rules Development (ABRD), and DSDM. The main feature of EPF is the Composer, a set of extensions installed within the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). They are published in a wiki to enable the collaborative editing of open assets, which are then reintegrated as new assets.

• http://www.eclipse.org/epf/composer_architecture/
• https://www.eclipse.org/epf/general/EPFComposerOverviewPart1.pdf
• https://www.eclipse.org/epf/general/EPFComposerOverviewPart2.pdf
• http://www.etsmtl.ca/Professeurs/rchampagne/documents/epftutorial/index.html

Our editorial team is responsible for separate and loosely (unsynchronized) related tasks:

• Use the EPF Composer to design the BTM BOK framework and integrate various external assets
• Use the EPF Wiki to maintain and add contents and citations to external BOKs and references
• Use EPF Wiki API extensions to help reuse BTM BOK assets into key Talent Management tasks

The EPF Composer is used to develop the “plug-ins” that contain various BTM BOK assets, integrated within various “process configurations” describing BTM certification levels. The EPF Wiki is used to host the EPF site that helps to navigate the BTM BOK assets and allows registered users to comment and edit the BTM BOK guide (limited to the team and assessors for the first year).

Our selected FLOS assets will be aligned with our digital transformation lifecycle and maturity model. The BTM BOK core language will help integrate assets around the core elements of the EPF framework, as defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM 2.0), initially developed by IBM for the Rational Unified Process (RUP). The generic schema is easy to align to and makes the resulting framework seamless to integrate several specifications:

• Process: Overall digital transformation lifecycle and maturity model to align all sub-processes.
• Disciplines: 20+ BTM specializations and their main external BOK references.
• Workflows: Broad integrated activities guiding BTM leaders to master the digital lifecycle.
• Workflow details: Sub-processes connecting the competencies of the 20+ BTM specializations.
• Role: BTM certification levels regrouping the 20+ BTM specializations and their roles.
• Activity or Task: Competencies required by the 20+ external BOKs and defining the job roles.
• Artifact or Work Products: Expected input and output of the typical digital lifecycle tasks.
• Tools and Tool Mentor: Tools recommended to BTM professionals to perform the various tasks.
• Guidance, Checkpoints, Templates, and Reports: External references to best practices.

The EPF Composer presents several challenges for beginners, but once standard packages have been analyzed, most users are able to understand the logic and relationships between components. These serve to establish editorial priorities and help guide the team in large collaborative development efforts.

BTM BOK Tools

There are 8 main applications  that are involved in the BTM BOK development and integration . 

Read more about the BTM BOK systems and watch the video demos

 BTM BOK Planning 

The respective responsibilities of the 3 team roles:

• BOK asset designer builds the framework, manages contributors, and maps relevant assets;
• BOK asset integrator uses EPF composer and wiki to integrate all assets on a fine-grain basis;
• BOK asset re-user develops reuse proof-of-concepts for HRM functions through new APIs.

Here is a description of the development process and how tools are used by team roles, with capital letters referring to arrows:

1. Integrate all open source BOK assets, e.g., Open PM2, Open UP, and others to be released.
2. Import BTM BOK mappings between all elements, especially to connect 20+ BOKs to workflows.
3. Import results of the Career Survey App to find most typical positions and career progressions.
4. Publish BTM BOK assets and maintain EPF Wiki contents to ensure feedback reused in model.
5. Coach community contributions to map 20+ external BOKs using the BTM BOK Mapping App.
6. Coach community contributions to map core open source BOKs in the BTM BOK Mapping App.
7. Coach community to add contents to the Zotero References App and map them to BOK items.
8. Coach community to add contents to the Zotero References App and cite within the EPF Wiki.
9. Configure the Career Survey App using the 20+ external BOKs from BTM BOK Mapping App.
10. Import Career Survey App result as positions and career progressions in BTM BOK Mapping App.
11. Develop EPF Wiki API to integrate BTM BOK assets in key functions of the BTM Forum Job Portal.
12. Develop EPF Wiki API to integrate BTM BOK assets in key functions of the OrangeHRM Web App.

The project will unfold through 6 milestones that interns meet as a team, with BTM BOK Review Team involved at each point:

1. M1: Team recruited; infrastructure installed; plan formalized; IPR agreement starting;
2. M2: BTM BOK mock-up with assets; contributor documentation ready; invited 20+ contributors;
3. M3: First contributors update; validate BTM BOK mappings; reassign contributor tasks;
4. M4: Second contributors update; validate BTM BOK mappings; reassign contributor tasks;
5. M5: Public Demo of BTM BOK v3; integration to BTM certifications; integration to HRMS/CVs;
6. M6: Transfer BTM BOK assets and infrastructure to ITAC; report to MITACS and UQO.

BTM BOK Teams

Our project will expand rapidly in the next 6 months (November 2018 to March 2019), and several BTM Forum members will be invited to take roles in our various teams.

If you wish to explore how you can help, please contact the Project Leader, Stéphane Gagnon (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). You may either take a role in one of our teams, or just help informally, especially by finding additional BTM BOK assets, as well as new partners. In any case, we will welcome your involvement and ensure we match you to your most exciting roles.

 T1 - Contributors Team

Act as our Free, Libre, Open Specifications (FLOS) team, an international network of open source analysts, researchers, and consultants ready to integrate their best ideas in the BTM BOK. Work regularly on our team servers, and often publish blogs, social network posts, and academic articles, updating the public about progress in some sections of our BOK assets.

T2 - Integration Team

Act as Continuous Integration (CI) team, responsible for curating all BTM BOK assets, as well as configuring and maintaining all DevOps infrastructures for all teams. Support contributors and ensure coherence in integrating inputs at various stages.

T3 - Review Team

Act as our Quality Assurance (QA) team, staffed primarily with asset-specific experts, typical either of faculty or integrated BOK authors. Will perform close oversight of BTM BOK contents and development steps, and possibly sit on the doctoral thesis committees of some students who will publish some research re. the BTM BOK.

T4 - Oversight Team

Act as our Release Candidate (RC) team, a group who makes the call on what assets of the BTM BOK we are to release publicly on Github. Staffed with BTM Forum Governing Council members, including a representative from the IT Association of Canada (ITAC) as formal owners of the BTM registered trademarks in Canada and the United States.

BTM BOK Published