Ask the Analysts - Gartner, Burton Group, Forrestor - about the field of Identity Management and you will get all sorts of information, but the one thing they will all agree on  is that it spans many aspects of you infrastrucure:-

• Identity synchronisation
• Enterprise Single Sign On (or as I prefer to call it Simplified Sign On)
• Federated Identity 
• Access Control
• Smart card authentication
  
• Biometric authentication
• Buildings Access
• Application Access
• Data Security

You can start almost anywhere in that maze of technology, but the important thing is to ensure that you also stop in that same technology space for that project if possible. I add the caveat at the end because in some instances it is necessary to undertake a project that spans two or three areas at the same time. In these case you should look to restricting the size of the audience who will be affected by the change e.g. one department, one year group or a target set of citizens.

Don't try to do it all, and to everybody at the same time!

A well-used phrase in many organisations is "We're looking for the quick wins." What is a quick win? Well,  it is not necessarily the quickest thing that can be achieved because that may give you little or no business benefit. When looking for a quick win, make sure it has a well defined and tight scope, can be delivered within a reasonable timeframe (how does less than 3 months sound?) and it is something the stakeholders want to happen!

Once you've achieved one or two quick wins, it should be easier to convince the money spenders to consider something a little more ambitious. Beware to make sure the scope is still well defined and doesn't include boiling an ocean!

If you need any assistance or advice on scoping your Identity Management project(s) please contact me using the details below.