Friday, February 26, 2010
Pink Elephant Announces 2009 ITIL® Award Winners
TORONTO, ON – February 26, 2010 – Pink Elephant has announced the winners of the ITIL Awards, presented at its 14th Annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition held in Las Vegas from February 21-24.
The awards honor the best in five categories: ITIL Project of the Year; ITIL Practitioner of the Year; ITIL Case Study of the Year; Pink Elephant Student of the Year; and Innovation of the Year.
ITIL Project of the Year: This is presented to a practitioner organization that has shown a significant commitment to ITIL. The organization must have a clearly defined project with dedicated management; a project start date occurring at least six months before the conference commences; clearly documented and communicated goals; high involvement from ITIL-certified staff; and measurable project benefits.
The winner of this year’s award is Northwestel for the Northwestel IT Initiative.
ITIL Practitioner of the Year: ITIL Practitioner of the Year goes to an IT practitioner who has placed best practices at the core of their organization’s IT operations. This individual has also championed the strategic benefits of ITIL and shown a commitment to sharing knowledge about ITIL inside and outside their organization.
The winner of this year’s award is Elaine Lauritzen from Brigham Young University, recognizing her commitment to ITIL within the organization. Elaine is also a dedicated ITIL champion outside the university, speaking at many industry events, including Pink Elephant’s annual conference.
ITIL Case Study of the Year: This award is probably one of the most prestigious, because it is chosen by conference attendees. During the conference, Pink Elephant tabulates evaluation results from all the ITIL case studies. The award is given to the individual who delivered the most compelling session and received the highest score.
This award was presented to Steve Bozzo, CIO, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. In his session, Chargeback Arrangement Delivers For 1-800-FLOWERS, Steve shared how he and his team approached the problem of decentralization and developed a hugely successful costing and chargeback mechanism and methodology for allocating and recovering IT costs for technology services.
Pink Elephant Student of the Year: This is presented to the Pink student with the highest exam score in the ITIL Service Manager course. Successful completion of the course requires a high level of commitment and a demonstrated knowledge of the goals, benefits, challenges and integration points of the ITIL processes.
This year’s winner is Rafal Otto, IT Service Manager, CERN.
Innovation of the Year: This award recognizes a product or service developed by the vendor community that has made the greatest contribution to IT Service Management in the last calendar year.
This award was presented to EMC for Ionix.
“Organizations across the globe are continuing to use ITIL’s best practice framework to improve efficiencies and create an optimal bottom line. To further illustrate and promote ITIL’s benefits, it’s important to recognize the work of these companies and their IT practitioners,” says George Spalding, Pink Elephant Vice President. “Pink Elephant is proud to have a hand in recognizing these achievements as honoring the winners. Congratulations to everyone.”
Nominations are now being accepted for the next awards, presented at the 15th Annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition, taking place February 20-23, 2011 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
For more information about the 2011 conference and ITIL Awards, call 1-888-273-PINK.
About Pink Elephant
Pink Elephant is the leader in IT Management best practices. Operating through many offices across the globe, the company is the world’s #1 supplier of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education and consulting services. To date, close to than 200,000 IT professionals have benefited from Pink Elephant’s expertise. Pink Elephant has been championing the growth of ITIL worldwide since its inception in 1989, and was selected as an international expert to contribute to the ITIL V3 project as authors of the Continual Service Improvement book and through representation on the International Exam Panel. For more information, please visit www.pinkelephant.com.
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.
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For further information, please contact:
Brent Artemchuk
Director, Marketing & Communications
Pink Elephant
Toll Free: 1-888-273-7465, Ext. 252
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
EHOBOK Planning Worksheet
For those of you who will be visiting the Exhibition Hall (which is hopefully all of you), here is a worksheet you should fill out before you come to conference to make sure you are prepared for assessing the products on display.
Use this worksheet in conjunction with the EHOBOK Exhibition Hall Body of Knowledge - see previous posts here on this blog or those of you who enroll for my Exhibition Hall optimizer session will get a nice PDF version of the EHOBOK.
Pink Elephant Announces ITIL Award Winners At Annual Conference
TORONTO, ON – February 16, 2010 – Pink Elephant will announce the winners of the 2010 ITIL® Awards at its 14th Annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, February 21-24, 2010.
The awards honor the best in five categories: ITIL Project of the Year; ITIL Practitioner of the Year; ITIL Case Study of the Year; Pink Elephant Student of the Year; and Innovation of the Year.
ITIL Project of the Year: This is presented to a practitioner organization that has shown a significant commitment to ITIL. The organization must have a clearly defined project with dedicated management; a project start date occurring at least six months before the conference commences; clearly documented and communicated goals; high involvement from ITIL-certified staff; and measurable project benefits.
This year’s finalists are: BMO and Northwestel
ITIL Practitioner of the Year: ITIL Practitioner of the Year goes to an IT practitioner who has placed best practices at the core of their organization’s IT operations. This individual has also championed the strategic benefits of ITIL and shown a commitment to sharing knowledge about ITIL inside and outside their organization.
This year’s finalists are: Peter Barrotti from University Health Network and Elaine Lauritzen from Brigham Young University
ITIL Case Study of the Year: This award is probably one of the most prestigious, because it is chosen by conference attendees. During the conference, Pink Elephant tabulates evaluation results from all the ITIL case studies. The award is given to the individual who delivered the most compelling session and received the highest score.
Finalists are announced during the conference.
Pink Elephant Student of the Year: This is presented to the Pink student with the highest exam score in the ITIL Service Manager course. Successful completion of the course requires a high level of commitment and a demonstrated knowledge of the goals, benefits, challenges and integration points of the ITIL processes.
The winner is announced during the conference.
Innovation of the Year: This award recognizes a product or service developed by the vendor community that has made the greatest contribution to IT Service Management in the last calendar year.
This year’s finalists are: EMC, Cherwell and Service-now.com.
“For years, Pink Elephant has worked diligently to increase awareness of ITIL’s best practice framework on a global scale,” says George Spalding, Pink Elephant Vice President. “Part of this work has included the introduction of an awards program to further illustrate and promote ITIL’s benefits. While competition was fierce, this year’s winners truly exemplify the best ITIL has to offer. Congratulations to all finalists.”
About Pink Elephant
Pink Elephant is the leader in IT Management best practices. Operating through many offices across the globe, the company is the world’s #1 supplier of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education and consulting services. To date, more than 100,000 IT professionals have benefited from Pink Elephant’s expertise. Pink Elephant has been championing the growth of ITIL worldwide since its inception in 1989, and was selected as an international expert to contribute to the ITIL V3 project as authors of the Continual Service Improvement book and through representation on the International Exam Panel. For more information, please visit www.pinkelephant.com.
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.
###
For further information, please contact:
Brent Artemchuk
Director, Marketing and Communications
Pink Elephant
Toll Free: 1-888-273-7465, Ext. 252
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Monday, February 15, 2010
Service Desk stuff at Pink Elephant’s 14th Annual Conference and Exhibition
Well next week is the 14th annual Pink Elephant Conference and Exhibition. As we have the past several years we are holding this monumental event in Las Vegas at the Bellagio Hotel. The first full day of the conference is Monday February 22nd, but for those of you coming to town the day before, there some events beginning Sunday including Primers and Conference Optimizers late in the afternoon from 4:15-5:15PM.
Now for the theme of my blog, there will be specific workshops devoted to the Service Desk among them the following:
Monday February 22
7 Tips for Creating and Managing a World-Class ITIL Service Desk from 11:55AM-1:10PM being delivered by none other than myself!
Tuesday February 23
Dr. Jim’s Q & A Forum (that’s me again!) where we will have an open discussion about Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management and Change Management. This is a Breakfast Club from 7:15-8:20AM
Wednesday February 24
Dr. Jim’s Q & A Forum is repeating the same as Tuesday from 7:15-8:20AM
Using Process Baselines to Kick-Start Successful Service Desk Implementations delivered by Alexander Keller, Senior Technical Staff Member and Ivor MacFarlane, IT Service Management Consultant and Trainer IBM. This is also a Breakfast Club from 7:15-8:20AM. This is conflicting with my Breakfast Club, but here is a great solution. Go to my Breakfast Club on Tuesday and Alexander’s and Ivor’s on Wednesday.
Focus Group: The Role of the Service Desk Manager from 10:20-11:35AM
I’m also doing a workshop Wednesday on The Biggest Mistakes IT Organizations Make Implementing Problem Management & How to Avoid Them from 10:20-11:35AM which is a repeat from last year that was well received. And finally, I am conducting a ½ day Problem Management Process Clinic Workshop Wednesday from 12:15-4:15PM.
These are but a few of the more than 150 workshops going on throughout the conference. Also, don’t miss the many exhibitors in the exhibition hall to learn about many of the great products and services that might help you.
Hope to see you at one of more of these. And don’t forget to look me up to say “Howdy!” I’ll be all over the place!
Permalink
Education and Training issues - Part 3
In my previous blog entry, I mention that I would start mapping soft skills to processes and/or activity within a given process.
I also provided this word of caution: of course, all the soft skills would apply but if your education dollars are limited, the mapping would represent you biggest “bang for your buck” (i.e.: benefit).
Here are SOME examples of soft skills
• Team Building - includes
o Uniting a team amidst cultural differences
o Interacting with others (includes observing various forms of etiquette)
o Defusing arguments with timing, instructions and polite, concise language
• Leadership
• Teaching
• Presenting
• Public speaking – includes maintaining…
o Meaningless conversation (small talk)
o Meaningful conversation (discussion/debate)
o Feigning interest and speaking intelligently about any topic
• Negotiating
• Motivating
• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Listening
• Coaching
• Mentoring
• Writing
It would seem obvious to follow the lifecycle of a service and follow the order of the ITIL® core books. To many, this would not make sense. However, many may argue the most popular topics being Service Operation, Service Transition, Service Catalog Management, and Service Level Management; this is where we should start. Even within Operation and Transition, not all processes offer the same level of interest to everyone. The following list is not scientific but it is based on the most popular courses and consulting topics people call us about, here at Pink Elephant. There are in alphabetical order as they are among the most popular, Change Management, Incident Management, Problem management, Service Asset & Configuration management, Service Catalog Management, Service Desk, and Service Level Management.
However, before I start looking at any process in particular, I shall be looking at the Service Operation functions, which are:
- IT Operations – IT Operation Control and Facilities Management
- Technical Management
- Application Management
- Service Desk
Here is what the Service Operation book says about the four functions in regards to communication, education, and training.
Section 5.14.5 Communication
It should go without saying that good communication about changing requirements, technology and processes will result in improvement in Service Operation. However, communication is often neglected. Service Operation improvement is dependent on formal and regular communication between teams responsible for design, support, and operation of services.
Section 5.14.6 Education and training
Service Operation teams should understand the importance of what they do on a daily basis. Education is required to ensure that staff understand what business functions or services are supported by their activities. This will encourage greater care and attention to detail and will also help Service Operation teams to better identify business priorities.
Training programs should ensure that all staff have the appropriate skills for the technology or applications that they are managing. Training should always be provided when new technology is introduced, or when existing technology is changed.
Technical Management and Application Management
As per the Service Book, sections 6.3.1 and 6.5.1, Technical and Application Management have very similar dual roles.
- They are the custodian of knowledge and expertise related to managing the IT Infrastructure.
- They ensure that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve IT services is identified, developed, and refined.
- They provide the actual resources to support the ITSM Lifecycle.
- They ensure that the resources are effectively trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate, and improve the technology required to deliver and support IT services.
Depending on the size and complexity of the organization, some of the following may or may not be in place. However, I would argue that regardless of the organization, there are managers and there are technical personnel.
For all four functions, here some possible roles
Possible management roles: manager, supervisor, team leader, senior analyst
Possible technical roles: senior, intermediate, and entry-level analysts
By the way, it does not matter if the people performing these roles are internal or are employed by a third party supplier; they all require soft skills proficiency.
In the following list, I am using
[M] - represent management roles
[A] - represent analysts performing technical roles
[B] - indicate that it applies equally to both
Team Building [M] / [A]
• Uniting a team amidst cultural differences [M]
• Interacting with others (includes observing various forms of etiquette) [B]
• Defusing arguments with timing, instructions and polite, concise language [B]
Leadership [M]
Teaching [M]
Presenting [M]
Public speaking – includes maintaining… [B]
• Meaningless conversation (small talk) [A]
• Meaningful conversation (discussion/debate) [B]
• Feigning interest and speaking intelligently about any topic [B]
Negotiating [M]
Motivating [M]
Decision making [M]
Problem solving [A]
Listening [B]
Coaching [M]
Mentoring [M]
Writing [B]
Sunday, February 14, 2010
The IT Skeptic’s Situation Room discussion panels
Please come along to my Situation Room discussion panels:
The Situation Room: The Real Benefits Of Professional Certification will feature:
- Rob England, (The IT Skeptic) - moderator
- Richard Pharro (APM Group, administrators and accreditors of the ITIL certification scheme)
- Aidan Lawes (independant and vocal critic of the scheme)
- Julia Chapelle (Loyalist a north american examination institute)
- Pierre Bernard (Pink Elephant)
and The Situation Room: A CMDB – Really? will feature:
- Rob England, (The IT Skeptic) - moderator
- Doug Mueller (BMC, a leading CMDB vendor)
- Randal Locke (CA, also a leading CMDB vendor)
- Bill Iffland (Progress Energy) Bill has a CMDB presentation at the conference Slow & Steady Wins The Race – But Is There A Finish Line?
- Chris Dancy (ServiceSphere) Chris is an outspoken proponent of pragmatic ITSM
- Glenn O’Donnell (Forrester) Glenn co-wrote the book “The CMDB Imperative” with Carlos Casanova
Both these discussion panels have top teams of luminaries with differing points of view. Come along for some lively debate! Ask questions!
Friday, February 12, 2010
SaaS Service Management solution from our platinum sponsor
Today we talk to Matt French, the Marketing Director at Service-now.com, who are the Platinum Sponsor of the 14th Annual ITSM Conference.
Skep: Service-now.com provides service management tools using the model of On-Demand or SaaS or ASP (Application Service Provider) or “the Cloud” or whatever folk want to call it. How does that stack up cost-wise against buying a tool and implementing it in-house?
Matt: There’s a big difference between SaaS and ASP. It’s the difference between a modern application and hosted software built in the 1990s – we’ll get into that more later…
Ask a Service-now.com customer and you’ll find that although total cost of ownership was a factor in the decision criteria, simplicity, flexibility and partnership were the real decision drivers.
When evaluating the total cost of software it is important to look well beyond licensing. Sure, Service-now.com can save organizations a boatload of cash on licensing costs with an affordable and predictable subscription fee. The savings really accelerate through the substantial reduction of implementation and reimplementation (upgrade) costs and infrastructure costs. Our approach helps IT be more self-sufficient and frees resources to focus on core competencies.
Service-now.com customers get into production faster than on-premise deployments and continue to evolve their application as needs change without fear of ‘version-lock.’ Today’s client-server ITSM software often impedes agility and can’t effectively support the business by forcing costly six figure reimplementations every few years.
Meanwhile, three times per year for the past five years Service-now.com has simply and automatically applied significant new functionality to customer instances while preserving all of their customizations.
Skep: Your business model depends on economies of scale and getting clients onto a common platform. Doesn’t that mean your services/products are the Lowest Common Denominator, the one-size-fits-all standardised design? Surely the tool ends up looking like a “Mao suit”?
Matt: We’ve all been in the ITSM business for quite some time. Rarely do we speak to an enterprise IT organization that believes a pure out-of-box system will meet their needs. While Service-now.com supports ITIL guidelines, 100% of our customers have customized the application to accommodate their unique ITSM processes and goals, and many have built custom applications on the Service-now.com platform.
This might sound like vendor nuance but it is imperative that a “SaaS” consumer ask the right questions about tool flexibility, get hands-on with the tool, and understand the cost of various approaches before they subscribe. Why? Because there are many one-size-fits-all SaaS offerings out there and an increasing number of ASP offerings posing as “SaaS” that were never designed to be delivered over the Internet or customized without incurring significant cost.
One key to successful outsourcing is to retain control of governance and higher-level management. How can your clients monitor you and hold you accountable?
We are not a traditional software vendor. We provide a service based on partnership and honesty and as a service provider our success is literally and directly tied to the success of our customers.
Each Service-now.com instance comes equipped with system monitoring tools and dashboards that are exposed to the customer. A support portal allows customers to monitor the status and performance of their application and view all open incident and change records. All changes and system accesses are tracked within the system for governance purposes. This coupled with a 99.97% availability SLA results in governance and ongoing accountability.
Skep: What happens when you come out with a new version? Isn’t it simpler to upgrade a system and easier to do the change control when it is in—house rather than hosted externally?
Matt: I think we can agree there is nothing simple about upgrading on-premise, legacy software. Many ITSM organizations have faced the upgrade predicament – either spend large amounts of time, money and resources on a disruptive reimplementation, or look for something modern to eliminate upgrade hassles.
We’ve been automatically upgrading customer instances for almost five years now and it just works. Service-now.com customers are given the opportunity to apply upgrades directly to their production environment or their development environment. Many new features and applications are available via plugins, which are not automatically applied to instances. This gives customers complete control of their ITSM tool change control process.
Skep: How’s business? During a recession, one of the advantages of a service-provider model as compared to a vendor model is the on-going revenue stream. Did you see that? And now that things are warming up again, are you seeing any shifts in business patterns?
Matt: Business has never been better. We’ve doubled our recurring revenue every year since inception and expect to do the same at the end of FY2010. We have been cash-flow positive for three years. We’ve experienced widespread adoption in shared services (HR and facilities) environments and with the continued rapid adoption of Service-now.com in ITSM, we are well positioned to continue our aggressive growth.
There’s no doubt the new economy has driven organizations to think and operate differently. Necessity has spawned innovation over the years. We help IT organizations capitalize on the changing landscape by offering a tool alternative that reduces costs, but most importantly drives efficiency. However, as I said previously, simplicity, flexibility and partnership are the keys to customer success, not cost.
Skep: You guys are big on the concept of Web 2.0. How’s your customer community developing?
Matt: Between local and virtual Service-now.com user groups, Service-now.com user conferences, a culture of transparency and existing social networks (including the Service-now.community), our customers and partners have many options to work together. We’ve simply made sure to be where our customers are and to interact with them how they like to interact. We are constantly looking for ways to expand and improve our community.
Our success depends on customer and partner interaction. We inject customers and partners in the development process. Virtually every functional enhancement can be linked back to a customer or user community request.
Skep: Service-now.com were early proponents of the ASP (Application Service Provider) model for service management. Were there any competitors around and are they still about?
Matt: We believe we offer technology and service that is vastly different than anything offered in the IT service management market. We see a kinship with companies like NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Google, Amazon and Workday. (BTW, I don’t think these SaaS vendors would categorize their offering as ASP.)
Service-now.com represents a new breed of modern software. SaaS has long been pigeonholed as one-size-fits-all and built for smaller organizations. Our customers are proof that modern SaaS is ready for the large enterprise.
We think it is great that SaaS has entered mainstream, but just because the box says it’s SaaS, it doesn’t mean it’s SaaS. Proceed with caution. Here are few items to discuss with the “SaaS” vendor while in the exhibit hall:
· How is the application administered and who is involved?
· How do I change or customize the application?
· How is the application upgraded, how long will it take to upgrade, and who pays for the upgrade?
· How long does an upgrade take?
· Ask for five references.
Skep: Are you happy with 358 customers? Will SaaS always be a niche or do you see it going mainstream in service management?
Matt: 365 customers in five years is simply a good start. Especially when compared to some of the legacy vendors who have a decades-old install base and thousands of customers.
SaaS is mainstream today. Service-now.com customers include the largest businesses in the world. Our growth has been, and will continue to be, exponential because it is in our DNA to make customers successful by delivering a great service. Our business succeeds when we accomplish this simple objective.
Skep: It’s only a few weeks away. Any special surprises for us at the Pink conference? Go on, you can give us a hint.
Matt: We’re just happy that virtually every block of sessions includes at least one Service-now.com customer presenting on various ITSM topics. Be sure to attend Monday’s panel discussion, “IT Leaders Share Their Perspective on Software as a Service” to hear from Chris Pope of NYSE Euronext, Greg Lazzaro of VeriSign, Amy Irwin of Pepsi Americas, and Carolyn Dugas of Clark County, Nevada.
Pink Elephant To Announce ITIL® Award Winners
TORONTO, ON – February 12, 2010 – Pink Elephant will announce the winners of the 2010 ITIL Awards at its 14th Annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, February 21 – 24, 2010.
The awards honor the best in five categories: ITIL Project of the Year; ITIL Practitioner of the Year; ITIL Case Study of the Year; Pink Elephant Student of the Year; and Innovation of the Year.
ITIL Project of the Year: This is presented to a practitioner organization that has shown a significant commitment to ITIL. The organization must have a clearly defined project with dedicated management; a project start date occurring at least six months before the conference commences; clearly documented and communicated goals; high involvement from ITIL-certified staff; and measurable project benefits.
This year’s finalists are: BMO and NorthWestel
ITIL Practitioner of the Year: ITIL Practitioner of the Year goes to an IT practitioner who has placed best practices at the core of their organization’s IT operations. This individual has also championed the strategic benefits of ITIL and shown a commitment to sharing knowledge about ITIL inside and outside their organization.
This year’s finalists are: Peter Barrotti from University Health Network and Elaine Lauritzen from Brigham Young University.
ITIL Case Study of the Year: This award is probably one of the most prestigious, because it is chosen by conference attendees. During the conference, Pink Elephant tabulates evaluation results from all the ITIL case studies. The award is given to the individual who delivered the most compelling session and received the highest score.
Finalists are announced during the conference.
Pink Elephant Student of the Year: This is presented to the Pink student with the highest exam score in the ITIL Service Manager course. Successful completion of the course requires a high level of commitment and a demonstrated knowledge of the goals, benefits, challenges and integration points of the ITIL processes.
The winner is announced during the conference.
Innovation of the Year: This award recognizes a product or service developed by the vendor community that has made the greatest contribution to IT Service Management in the last calendar year.
This year’s finalists are: EMC, Cherwell and Service-now.com.
“For years, Pink Elephant has worked diligently to increase awareness of ITIL’s best practice framework on a global scale,” says George Spalding, Pink Elephant Vice President. “Part of this work has included the introduction of an awards program to further illustrate and promote ITIL’s benefits. While competition was fierce, this year’s winners truly exemplify the best ITIL has to offer. Congratulations to all finalists.”
Going for Gold! Preparing for OGC ISS Gold and Silver Process Compliance Badges
For vendors and service providers who are planning on engaging in the PinkVERIFY Service to have their ITSM technology solution (tool) assessed for a PinkVERIFY V3.1 logo and for an OGC ISS Gold or Silver Process Compliance Badge or Logo, think about starting now to gather customer documentation.
A PinkVERIFY 3.1 tool assessment qualifies the vendor, the tool version and the assessed processes for a PinkVERIFY 3.1 logo and for an OGC ISS logo – the Bronze, Silver or Gold level is chosen by the vendor or service provider based on the following requirements.
OGC Bronze: The ITSM tool and processes have passed the assessment, but have not been purchased by 3 or more customers
• Requirements for the OGC ISS Bronze level logo are simply pass the assessment.
OGC Silver: The ITSM tool version and processes have been purchased and deployed (“in production”) by at least 3 Customers.
• Requirements for the OGC Silver level logo include “proof” of order of the assessed tool version and processes by 3 customers. The “proof” is required on the customer’s electronic or paper letter-head stating the tool, version and processes have been deployed in production (values can be removed). The vendor provides a copy of this documentation to the Licensed Software Assessor (LSA) who contacts the vendor’s customers to confirm their submitted documentation.
OGC Gold: The ITSM tool version and processes have at least three “in production” customers that have implemented and are using the tool and are “happy to reference that they are using the tool to automate the assessed process in accordance with ITIL”.
• Requirements for the OGC Gold level logo include “proof” of implementation of the assessed tool version and processes by 3 customers. The “proof” is required on the customer’s electronic or paper letter head stating their use of the tool version to automate the processes in accordance with ITIL along with at least one piece of evidence for each process (screenshot or report). The vendor provides a copy of this documentation to the LSA who contacts the vendor’s customers to confirm their submitted documentation.
Vendors might consider including the activities to gather the required documentation into the tool implementation process, which include:
• Asking customers for their permission to provide information for “proof” of their purchase, deployment and use of the tool and processes in accordance with ITIL
• Informing the Customer the information will be provided to Pink Elephant and APM Group only - for ISS OGC Swirl certification and will be kept confidential and not shared
• Providing customers with a template to be completed on their “letterhead” for the required information and produce screenshot / report examples for Gold and the vendor contact information to whom the documentation should be emailed / sent
• Informing the customer that Pink Elephant will contact them via email to confirm the submitted information as required by OGC and APM Group
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
What Is My Next Step With ITIL Education?
This answer varies, but, we typically ask our customers to review our Personal Development Path and check out ITIL’s Credit Profiler site.
http://www.pinkelephant.com/articles/PersonalDevelopmentPaths.pdf
http://www.itil-officialsite.com/itilservices/v1/map.asp
I Hear That ITIL V2 Is Being Retired. What Does That Mean?
Books
The ITIL V2 books have still been available during the period since the V3 books were launched in May 2007. However the plan is for all V2 books to be discontinued in hardcopy form by June 30, 2011. As supplies dwindle, it’s quite possible (even likely) that they will only be available in electronic formats well BEFORE that date.
Examinations
The V2 examinations have been available while the new V3 certifications were being developed. However, now that the full V3 certification scheme is in place, the V2 examinations will now begin to be phased out according to the following schedule:
V2 Foundation to cease June 30, 2010
V2 Manager to cease August 31, 2010
V2 Practitioner to cease December 31, 2010
Foundation Bridge to cease December 31, 2010
(All of the above will be available for re-sits until (June 30, 2011)
Manager Bridge to cease June 30, 2011
Why Choose Pink Elephant For Your ITSM Education?
1. Pink Elephant has trained close to 200,000 IT professionals in ITIL®. That’s more than any other organization worldwide!
2. Pink Elephant offers the most comprehensive ITSM training program in the industry, addressing all modules at all levels of certification – Foundation, Practitioner, Manager and Executive.
3. Pink has an unrivaled pedigree in ITIL certification! In 1992, we were commissioned to write and present the first ITIL certification course!
4. Pink Elephant is a Registered Education Provider with the Project Management Institute. Look at our course descriptions to see how many credits you can earn!
5. Our certification pass rates – at all levels – are the best in the industry!
6. Our trainers are the industry’s best! That’s because our instructors receive more training than the required accreditation rules. Ask us about our own internal Pink Certification Program for Consultants and Trainers! Read more about our trainers and testimonials from Raving Fans.
7. Pink Elephant is totally independent. We don’t sell software, hardware or outsourcing services. Our primary focus is ITSM education.
8. Our courses are offered in a location near you! Choose a course in one of more than 60 cities around the world.
9. Our customers – your peers – tell us Pink’s courses are the best in the industry!
10. We are renowned for our Thought Leadership! Not only have we contributed to ITIL V3, but we’ve also written books and whitepapers or have developed podcasts that are considered groundbreaking within the industry!
Sunday, February 07, 2010
EHOBOK give-away maturity model
Here’s a Complementary Guidance supplement to EHOBOK, the Exhibit Hall Body of Knowledge. It was submitted by a friend of mine (thanks!) who wishes it to be credited to Phoenix the dog:
You might consider including toy/give-away strategies in the maturity model
- Level 1 – Keeps everything in the conference bag, lugging it all thru the airport and back home b4 realising 90% of it is guff better recycled at the green vendor booth. Wears the T-Shirt
- Level 2 – Tosses the obvious guff but shows no discretion at vendor stands, taking every giveaway and all the brocuhres
- Level 3 – Actively searches out the good stuff from the vendor stands but takes a heap of rubbish as well due to lack of prior experience
- Level 4 – Only takes the good stuff from the stands but only manages to get 1 of each, and misses the 2 coolest giveaways altogether
- Level 5 – Wins the Guitar from the GuitarHero comp; wins 5 of the 7 “drop your business card” prizes; gets multiple sets of the coolest giveaways; gets their PA to transport it all back to the office due to a late business meeting on the final day with the keynote speaker
I Have Lost (Or Misplaced) My ITIL Foundations Certificate. What Can I Do?
In North America, you can contact, Loyalist Certificate Services our exam provider at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) . They will be able to assist you in acquiring a new certificate.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Exhibit Hall Configuration
Further to our recent discussions about Exhibit Strategy domain of the EHOBOK, The Exhibition Hall Optimizer Body of Knowledge, here is an example of an Exhibit Hall Configuration for the upcoming conference (if you are wondering, the round circles are tables for breakfast and lunch).
PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS PARTICULAR PATH. This is an example only, drawn before I knew where the vendors are, and most critically before I knew where any ice-cream, chocolate, massage, swag, games or coffee are. This highlights how essential Exhibit Reconnaissance is. The only useful piece of information on this map is to start at booth 203, the IT Skeptic.
Of course the vendors will soon invent a GUI 3D interactive version of this configuration map integrated into their CMDBs which will give you far more productivity and ROI compared to this printable graphic but for now you will just have to struggle on with this format.