Balancing Competencies in IT

There are many team and lifecycle philosophies for IT these days. Microsoft's MSF has some interesting stuff. I was reminded of this as I was evaluating one of my IT shops in terms of it's performance and lifecycle competence and came up with a lifecycle of core competencies around implementation of IT:

• Analyze the requirements
• Create and communicate a recommendation
• Create the support plan
• Procure the necessary technology
• Implement the solution
• Implement the support plan
• Document configurations, processes and procedures
• Follow up

(We could argue the order of these but that's a different conversation).
Because small IT shops have limited staff, depth and performance in each competency can vary wildly because the interests, personalities, passions and dislikes are disproportionately represented (think of the single person shop as an extreme). Unfortunately, excellence in one area and mediocrity in another leads to the perception of overall mediocrity. Like a sophisticated home audio system, the end result is only as good as the weakest component.

I believe we can smooth out the variations in performance by employing excellent service management process and template designs that address the full lifecycle of implementation. Piece of cake, right?