http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/troy A Weblog Dedicated to the Uncharted Reaches of ITIL Space en t.dumoulin@pinkelephant.com Copyright 2010 2010-09-02T20:41:48+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/help_no_one_is_following_our_processes/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/help_no_one_is_following_our_processes/#When:20:41:48Z I Just Don’t Understand Why They Don’t See The Value! We did everything by the book and We thought for sure this would work. The CIO stood up and declared that she/he believes We sent everyone to ITIL Training We engaged knowledgeable consultants We developed process design teams with participation from key stakeholders We had creative communication sessions We conducted proof of concept pilots, focus groups, process testing workshops We delivered quick wins and small improvements to show people we were on the right track We designed and executed a brilliant marketing campaign We purchased a great ITSM Service Management Software We trained all key stakeholders on our new processes Why then is there no real adoption or compliance to the new Process?!!! Interesting question, can you relate? Apparently many organizations are in the same boat. This week alone I spoke to three quite different companies with this specific challenge. Now to be clear, all of the points above are necessary and the right things to do when you are tackling a major transformation project. However all of that is not sufficient to ensure the organization follows the process after you go live and disband the project team. The item missing from this list comes down to Professor John Kotter’s 8th Step for Managing Organizational Change “Anchoring new approaches in the culture” from his well known books “Leading Change” and the “Heart of Change” Establishing a sense of urgency Creating the guiding coalition Developing a vision and strategy Communicating the change vision Empowering broad-based action Generating short-term wins Consolidating gains and producing more change Anchoring new approaches in the culture Without that last step in the Kotter model the result of all your work comes to naught leaving you (and the rest of IT management) frustrated and disappointed. In the end, this last step may well be the most critical to your transformation activities. You have to find the courage and organizational will to transcend silos, create new governance/ownership structures, new roles and personal performance measures that will ensure that Executives, Managers and Staff feel personally accountable to actually change their behaviour and practice the new methods. When you address these critical success factors for anchoring the new approach at a personal level for every individual in your organization you will get real change. Oh, the more positively inclined and cooperative people will get your message and intuitively understand why the new process is better. However it probably means more work for them and they will willing follow the process until during a stressful moment they are forced to make decisions about what to do and what to drop. Unless the individuals / departments and organizations believe they are being measured and held accountable for the process in a real and tangible way that actually has consequences, they will resort to the path of least resistance when deciding about how they operate and what work they will prioritize. This inability to establish the organizational capability to deploy the process is one of the key impediments to success that we hear over and over again, and is a key finding of the research we did at our Pink Perspectives in 2008. 7 Enablers for ITSM Expanded - Ability To Deploy - Designing An ITIL Process Is The Easy Part Moving people to change their current practices takes effort on many levels. In one sense you need to engineer out of the organization any potential legitimate excuse for non compliance. A topic I explore in greater depth in the following article: Employee Compliance A Key Factor For ITIL Process Adoption So, if you are on an IT Service Management journey and you look back on your efforts and are asking “Why is there no real adoption or compliance to the new Process?” , the chances are that you have not created the necessary organizational structures, governance roles and performance measurement systems to motivate people to believe that this is a change that benefits them as well as the organization and that they have to follow the processes or suffer the consequences. Ask yourself,  “What are the real consequences of not following that process you worked so hard to establish?”  Build it and they will come only works in fantasy movies like “Field of Dreams” You can have the world’s best process design and a great IT Service Management tool and people will still not choose to change and follow your process unless you have anchored your new approaches into the culture with personal accountability. Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours PS: Make sure you check out the comments for this article from several of Pink’s most experienced Executive Consultants. “Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power” ~George Washington   ITIL & Beyond 2010-09-02T20:41:48+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/hy_you_need_to_know_iso_20000/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/hy_you_need_to_know_iso_20000/#When:21:14:29Z When You Are Building a House It Needs To At Least Meet the Code ISO 20000 as the International Standard for Service Management has been published since 2005 and it is going through its first major update this year and next. My good friends and fellow Pinkers Jack Probst and Robin Hysick are involved in the update project and Jack has the honor of serving as the US Task Group lead (Task Group 25) for the 20k update and is in the thick of things. Add to this a noticeable lift in general interest and the addition of the ISO Foundation course to our growing portfolio of IT Management Education products and you will see why ISO 20000 is top of mind for me. In my role of Product Strategy and as the Lead of our Consulting Practice I am expected to answer the “So What” question on a frequent basis. So What: Why should I care about ISO 20000, if I have an ITIL background and certifications up the wazoo? Or conversely why should I care about ITIL since I have my Auditor’s or Consultants Certificate in ISO 20000? Both are good questions that until recently I have struggled to find a concise “Elevator Speech” for. That is until just recently when I was talking with another Pinker friend of mine Anil Dissanayake. Anil and I were discussing the ISO 20000 class he was teaching and wrestling with the best way to position these two elements ITIL / ISO 20k when an analogy came to me that made the whole puzzle crystal clear in my head. First we need to establish some baseline understanding. ITIL is a library of knowledge or good practice which provides a reference model covered in 5 substantial books of a few hundred pages each ISO 2000 (2005) Is a standard documented in two main parts: Part 1: Specification - “Must Haves” (24 Pages including all the white space, terms of references and the usual acknowledgements) Part 2: Code of Practice “Nice To Haves” (42 Pages providing an expansion on the specification with illustration, commentary and additional concepts) So in total being overly generous there are 66 pages of content to teach, consult or Audit on - providing you count the title pages and table of contents. This is why I find discussion about adopting or implementing ISO 20k extremely frustrating. A topic I address in the following article. ISO 20k The Industrial IT Password / The Value And The Misunderstanding of ISO 20000 So that being said why should you or anyone want to attend a course on ISO 20000? This is where my analogy comes in: Electrical Code and ISO 20k Lets for the moment put this in the context of the trade of Electrical Engineering or simply the study to become a Certified card carrying Electrician. As an Electrician you will need to study a body of knowledge relevant to your trade through a series of courses which start with the fundamentals of electricity and then progress on to harder courses studying the application of the fundamentals in various circumstances. This course of study will likely take you a series of years requiring you to pass a set of exams and certification processes which will eventual reward you with your license as an Electrician. As part of this course of study you would also take one or more courses on the “Electrical Code” ensuring that you understand the minimum requirements for either the design of new projects or the repair and maintenance of existing facilities. As with most codes there is a minimum specification or mandatory set of requirements and also subsequent documents that expand on and provide context and further explanation of the code itself. As part of your course of study you would study both the body of knowledge and the specification or code. It would not occur to you to do otherwise, even if your certification process as an Electrician did not require it. So in this analogy you can make the following tie into the ITSM world. As a student of IT Service Management you study frameworks of knowledge such as ITIL and COBIT but you also need to have a firm grasp on the minimum specification and code of practice for ITSM to ensure you build with the code in mind or conversely ensure your suppliers are providing you an ITSM service that meets at least the mandatory set of requirements. Explicitly: ITIL is the framework of reference and ISO 20k is the specification / code of practice that validates a minimum level of quality. So the correct answer to the question: Which course should I take ITIL or ISO 20k? is Yes (Both are required) Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? ”He knows the tax code as thoroughly as the pope knows the Lord’s Prayer.” William Proxmire     ITIL & Beyond 2010-08-13T21:14:29+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/request_fulfillment_improvement_roadmap/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/request_fulfillment_improvement_roadmap/#When:20:07:31Z Request Fulfillment And Its Many Moving Parts From the dawn of IT Support the users and customers of IT services have looked to the Service Desk or at least someone who will answer a phone or monitor an email account to respond to requests for new, modified or additional services.  As of ITIL version 3 Request Fulfillment is understood to be a separate and distinct process from Incident Management. I explored this process in an earlier article. Service Request vs. Request for Information From the ITIL v3 glossary we can find the following definitions: Service Request: A request from a User for information, or advice, or for a Standard Change or for Access to an IT Service. For example to reset a password, or to provide standard IT Services for a new User. Service Requests are usually handled by a Service Desk, and do not require an RFC to be submitted. See Request Fulfillment. Now that the debate over wether an Service Request is part of Incident or Change Management is over despite your personal views on the matter. Lets look at what it really means to tackle improvements around this process we have been doing for years. First it is important to point out that making improvements to the process of managing requests is not as simple as dealing with one workflow. Like most things in life Request Fulfillment is more complicated under the surface than it may seem. Sure you can create an efficient way to submit requests without too much of a challenge. However, its what happens behind the scenes from the point of someone filling out the web form or making a call to the Service Desk until the shining new laptop is delivered fully loaded that takes the real work to figure out. Think of the Request Fulfillment process like the two slices of bread on a sandwich, in between the top and tail of the processes are several other inter-related but separate processes.  To improve the maturity of this process (make sure the new employee is productive on day one, or that that laptop comes with the right OS and software image) it is necessary to understand the approval, ordering, inventory and supply elements that support the provisioning of the request. A key understanding is that Request Fulfilllment is typically front ended by a Service Catalog or IT Portal and integrates key processes such as: Service Catalog Procurement, Cost Center Approvals Asset Management Service Asset and Configuration Management Service Level Management Provisioning Access Management (On boarding / off boarding of employees) Image Management Etc.. Without the tight integration of these various management practices the request is received and not progressed through these process dependencies in an efficient and time sensitive manner. For Example: You receive a request to prepare for a new employee start in 5 business days but it is several weeks before all the accounts and elements the employee requires to be productive are delivered for their use. Since what we are describing here is the coordination of a set of variable and dependant tasks executed by many different groups it is highly recommended that this process be implemented leveraging a tool best suited to supporting the full lifecycle of the request and that supports the management of dependant and parallel work orders or tasks. Since what I have described can be a complex task it is typical that an organization will improve Request Fulfillment as a series of maturity stages or steps. In my experience the maturity of this process can often be improved in the following steps. Step 1: The process is managed as an extension of Incident Management and front ended by the Service Desk. There are no separate process elements or established ownership elements. The process record is differentiated from the Incident record by an attribute on the incident record that establishes it as a request. This record level differentiation supports reporting separation and different escalation policies. Step 2: The process is understood as separate and distinct from Incident Management and has defined in relationship to both process and requestable service elements. The Request Process is managed by an ITSM tool that supports the management of complex task assignments to multiple support groups that are required to provision different aspects of the request in a parallel or set of sequential tasks. Step 3: The Request Fulfillment process is front ended by a Portal or Service Catalog that enables the workflow and approval aspects of requesting and provisioning service elements. Integration is defined with other key processes such as procurement, asset management and various supplier-provisioning processes. Remember that perfection is not always the goal and that incremental improvement is better than no improvement at all. Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? “Consciously or unconsciously, everyone of us does render some service or another. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and it will make not only for our own happiness, but that of the world at large.” ~Mahatma Gandhi   ITIL & Beyond 2010-07-09T20:07:31+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/using_lean_principles_for_effective_continual_service_improvement/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/using_lean_principles_for_effective_continual_service_improvement/#When:20:37:45Z “Standing On A Lean Scale Takes Discipline and Unusual Courage” Lets face it sometimes ignorance is bliss! One of the challenges related to effectively engaging in continual service improvement or even the initial task of documenting processes, policies and roles is that it forces us to take a long hard look at what we do today. The desire not to acknowledge or confront what we know to be issues stems from the same irrational dislike we have for bathroom scales or even worse the annual fitness assessment at our family doctor. As long as we don’t have the facts confronting us we can willfully ignore what we intrinsically understand to be true but do not have to will or desire to face. This is where formal Improvement Models can be used effectively to move us into the discipline of self evaluation and prioritized improvements. This is the same reason we sign up at health clubs and work with expensive personal trainers or in our context consultants. It is not that we could not figure out what needs to be improved on our own, but somehow working within a structure and being held accountable gives us the discipline to get things done. This is where Lean Principles can be used to drive a discipline of assessment and improvement. First: We acknowledge that there are many things we do today that are not directly or indirectly beneficial to our goals or produce value. In short activities or actions in which we engage that are wasteful, redundant and provide zero to no value. This means we have to first understand which activities of a process are part of its “Value Stream” where process inputs are worked on and transformed into a valued output that meets a validated need. In light of this understanding we can assess all process activity in terms of: Valued Activity: Actions, resources or activities which have a direct connection to producing the desired outcome Non Value Activity: Actions, resources or activities that while not having a direct hand in producing outcome provide the necessary measurement and governance elements to keep the process intact. (The glue that holds the process together and executed as expected) Waste Activity: Actions we take that neither support the outcome or have a hand in keeping it glued together With these principles in mind the goal is to optimize the valued activity, minimize the necessary Non Value Activity and eliminate the waste. However the question is how do we identify the waste, trim the fat and make sure we are only doing things that produce value? This is where the Lean waste categories come in; time to have your process measured on the Lean Scale! Consider using the following categories to evaluate either your current “As Is” process or even your freshly minted “To Be” process design and face the unpleasant and sometimes downright ugly facts of process bulge that will likely require a lifestyle change to remove. Overproduction—Too many steps, transactions, authorization requirements, cycles in the process Lets face it sometimes our processes look like Mac Trucks when what we really need is a Honda Civic or a GM Vibe. The problem with some of us process geeks is that we can over engineer a process based on the goal of perfection versus fit for purpose. Sometimes good enough is good enough! ƒƒOver processing—Too much Non Value-added activity Yes measurement is good, and assessments have their place to keep an eye on quality and service improvement opportunities. However, maintaining a sane balance of reports, administration and process governance is key based on the complexity and risk required. ƒƒWaiting Unnecessarily—Too much time between process activities Since a process is at heart a series of dependant or parallel tasks which take inputs from the upstream activity and passes them downstream towards the eventual value based outcome there are many points of potential wait states where the flow of the value stream spends unnecessary time queuing. Making sure that these wait states are not unduly long or even necessary is a key part of finding opportunities for process improvement. ƒƒOwnership Issues—When a single person cannot be identified as the single point of process accountability (The request “Take Me To Your Leader” produces a blank stare!) Without clear ownership a lot of finger pointing and “Someone should really take care of that” type of statements are common. Just like having 25 priorities means you have no priorities, a process with out clear ownership suffers from benevolent neglect. The concept of we all own it is sure to lead to wasteful activity. ƒƒUnnecessary Movement —Too much or redundant movement between value-added steps A good example of this is an incorrectly designed Change Management process where all changes regardless of risk or size flow through a change advisory board for approval. This tends to bog a Change Process down to where it is deemed to be ineffective, bureaucratic and yes wasteful of people’s time. The idea is that changes should have the right level of approval and release assurance based on the level of risk. To many approval cycles for a minor change is not beneficial. ƒUnderutilization Of Human Resources and Talent — We don’t use the skills and talents that we have We typically think of waste in regards to things we should not be doing. How about those things or people we should be using but do not due to political or lack of knowledge reasons. An example of these types of situations? How about not giving the Service Desk ownership of end to end incidents? Not utilizing your Quality Assurance folks as part of your production assurance steps of Release and Deployment Management Not tying your Architecture group into the process of defining IT Services (many of which they helped to design). Unfortunately we too often allow silo mentality block us from using the skills already inherent in our organizations. Lets face it we could all loose a few pounds of inefficiency if we looked at our current practices through the pragmatic lense of value and waste. Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours “Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.” ~Arthur Brisbane ITIL & Beyond 2010-06-17T20:37:45+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/the_three_perceptions_of_implementation/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/the_three_perceptions_of_implementation/#When:15:43:27Z Contrary To Popular Belief Semantics Do Matter! In this article I am going to explore three very different perceptions / definitions about the word “Implement” that are critical in regards to any IT related project but also have a great deal to do with the success of an ITSM program. The source of this article comes from a great book titled “Change & Effect” ISBN 978-87-993289-0-1 on Managing Organizational Change from our Partners in Denmark aptly called “Implement” Now before the ITIL purists protest vehemently that you don’t implement ITIL practices, preferring to use the word adopt or adapt let me but this in context. What we are discussing in this article is the fact that you are going to implement a change of some sort into your management system that will impact the processes, policies, ITSM tools, job descriptions, measurements, etc. of your current organization. Also by Implement I am assuming you hope the change to stick and benefits come of all the work and money your organization has invested in your project. The primary point of this article is to reflect on your personal or organizational understanding of this very important word! I may have already tipped my hand in the previous paragraph but consider that in the last decade or so I have seen many organizations fail at their ITSM projects due to the fact that they have greatly underestimated the work effort of their initiative. (Adopting, Adapting, Implementing) ITSM practices is not about simply documenting a process or purchasing and implementing and ITSM software solution. In fact these are only enabler’s to the goal of achieving a change of behaviour. More on this subject in the Article. “Establishing Or Assessing An ITSM Program” However, on a more narrow scope of discussion lets apply the three definitions found in this excellent book. Note: I have taken some literary liberty with the Headings but remain true to the concept’s of the three definitions. Install The Software And Let Them Figure Out How To Use It In this definition of the concept of Implement, the focus is typically centred on the software and little to no effort or thought is given to process, policy documentation outside those basic things needed to configure the tool such as the rudimentary classification structures. Any training sessions that are provided are strictly focused on tool functionality. Phrases you often hear from people who hold this perception of the word Implement are: “These folks are IT professionals they should be able to figure this out for themselves” “We don’t need to define processes since the tool will provide all the process we need. We will simply adopt the process in the tool” “The tool is very intuitive we don’t need to develop much if any kind of training strategy” Book Quote: “Implementation is to install a change, You focus on commissioning the change initiative and handing it off to line managers, expecting them to accept responsibility for it.” The good folks who hold to this perception of the word Implement largely focus on the Tool as the primary element that needs to be considered and managed. Unfortunately they are also the folks that will be accused of another IT project being thrown over the fence for someone to catch without any knowledge of what to do other than login and open a screen or two. Define, Automate The Process and Train Users On How To Do Their Jobs In this definition of the concept of Implement the focus goes beyond the tool to also having some definition around the job skills, policies, process and automation elements of the new working methods. Focus is given to creating what we often refer to as “Deployment Workshops” where the users of the new process and tool are required to go through a training session that covers both the newly defined process elements and provides exercise / use case based tool training in a lab or online environment before they are asked to begin using the new process. Phrases you often hear from this perspective are: “We need to train process users how to do their new or modified Jobs” “We need to measure how the process is being executed for compliance” “We need to make sure people understand the policies related to the new way of working” Book Quote: “Implementation is to install a change and secure stability of the new state. You launch the change and make it stick by training the users and helping them develop procedures to support and reinforce the change.” This approach is typically help by organizations that look at the process and tool holistically and are focused on making sure that that Joe and Jan process user knows how to perform their daily tasks. Establish A Process Governance Structure To Build And Improve On The New Process and ITSM Tool Deployment This perception starts interestingly enough with the understanding that perfection is not the goal. Rather the goal is to create an overall organizational capability relative to the governance, process and tool structures that will target the realization of value from day one but that also focuses on establishing the structures needed to take what is initially deployed and to improve and further refine it over time. In essence the focus of the project is on creating a platform for continual improvement that will take the initial project and hand it over to an organization that will immediately begin to personalize and improve it based on Continual Service Improvement principles. Phrases you often hear from this perspective are: “ITSM is not a project or a short term diet, its the rest of your life” “The goal is not perfection but just good enough for now so we can build on what is first deployed” “The ITSM project is a transformational program needing serious management of change, not just a tool or process documentation exercise” Book Quote: “Implementation is to install a change and build capacity for the organization to develop by itself. You work to integrate the change into current practice while leaving things open for further change. The new elements are not considered an end-state in themselves.” Based on my personal experience this third perception of the word Implement most accurately describes the appropriate perspective of an ITSM program. Unfortunately the first two understandings of the word are all too common and often lead to very disappointing and unexpected results. Success with your ITSM/ITIL project is ultimately determined by what foundations and structures you have put in place to take your initial project deliverables beyond the proverbial “Toss Over The Fence” to a more integrated approach to establishing the elements required to realize positive change that endures the test of time. Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.”  ~Francis Bacon   ITIL & Beyond 2010-05-25T15:43:27+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/the_art_of_building_an_itsm_process_design_team/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/the_art_of_building_an_itsm_process_design_team/#When:14:00:27Z Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination! Documenting processes is rarely on the top 10 list of an organization’s fun and interesting things to do with its non-existent free time! However, it is a fundamental necessity once the organizational complexity no longer supports an organic or immature approach to key management processes.  Or perhaps other key drivers that force a company to the drafting table may be risk to the business mission or the legal requirement to comply with audit and legislation. Whatever your drivers may be you will one day find that it is time to formally put pen to paper and map out the who, what, when and why of what you do or perhaps more importantly what you should be doing. As each organization reaches this point they are inevitably faced with the fact that they have scant resources to accomplish their process design goals. They also often find out that their current processes no longer scale or need to be changed to follow best practices.  This double constraint gives them the idea that surely they are not unique and that there must be other organizations or consultants that could help them short cut the time required to define new processes with pre-defined templates and hard won experience. While this is true it is important to understand that there is a positive and a disastrous way to bring in external assistance to help with your resource and knowledge gaps. Using External Consultants: How and when to use external resources is a very important decision that can either fast track you on the way to having your processes defined or end up with you wasting a great deal of money with little to no real lasting impact or value for your investment. While it is true that external resources can provide the missing expertise, knowledge and pair of extra hands you so desperately need it is equally true that they are seen as not belonging to the inside family circle and have limited ability to change perception and practice.  The result of which is that they can excel at some tasks but will fail miserably at others if used unwisely. For example if you are brining in external consultants to document what you do already then it is feasible for them to hold a series of workshops and interviews to piece together the intricate workings of your existing policies, processes and roles and hand over a written account of what you do today. However, if you are changing what you do to follow an external best framework such as ITIL or CMMi then what you are really talking about is a transformation project where you have to convince a very distributed and culturally diverse organization that they need to change their long held behaviours, beliefs and tools. In this second scenario it is self-destructive to assume that you can hire out all the work to an outside firm. What you will end up with at the end of the day is a very nice process binder that no one in the company believes they had any part of designing (even though you involved them in interviews and workshops) and will treat it as a “Not Invented Here” deliverable which will sit beautifully on the shelf and not be followed. Building Buy In Through Sweat Equity and Emotional Attachment: At the end of the day a transformation project requires organizational involvement in the heavy lifting of a process design and software configuration project. As indicated in the paragraph above the internal stakeholders will not feel connected to the new process unless they have the perception that they have been involved in it’s design in more than a casual way. However, if you accept this premise the key question and constraint continues to be how do you free up the internal resources to work on this project in some meaningful capacity.  The answer to this question is a blended approach to using both internal and external resources. Here are a few important assumptions: You need to involve key stakeholders in the design for the organization to believe it will work for them. You also need to use external consultants to bring to the table the key value elements of experience, knowledge, resources and fast track templates. It is important to realize that without a formal project approach to the transformation effort little change will occur. Transformation efforts never succeed as a side of the desk activity. The most likely candidates for your internal design team are already engaged in other activities making dedicated commitment to the project not plausible. You need to balance the involvement of high value internal resources with a need for speed to delivery. The true deliverable of your project is not a completed document or process but your organization operating in a new way with new values.  This last point is perhaps the most significant of all the assumptions and is the basis of why using only consultants to help define your new processes is not a viable solution. The key realization here is that it is the process of building and gaining agreement (not consensus) that is the true deliverable of a process design project. The actual achievement of a finished product is the icing on the cake and perhaps a minor but relevant detail for actually supporting a transformation project. Consider that the true goal of a transformation project is to change behavior and eventually culture. To achieve this it is necessary to define a process, write it down and automate it in a software application but these are only enablers to the true outcome of transformation. At Pink Elephant our experience tells us that there are seven key ingredients for a successful recipe when building transformation teams: Establish a formal project with the classic project sponsorship, governance and controls necessary to accomplish any major initiative. Source a reliable external trusted advisor that has a solid track record in supporting process transformation projects. This vendor should provide both strategic and operational support and come with a little red wagon full of time saving tools. Develop a small part time internal process design team that will work on the process deliverables 2 to 3 days of week schedule permitting. This team should be made up of internal subject matter experts, change agents from key stakeholder groups and be supported by your external advisor and software administrators responsible for process automation. Define an extended internal stakeholder group of middle and Sr. Management roles that will provide feedback and approval on your process deliverables via email feedback loops or workshops to optimize organizational acceptance. Start early on defining the ongoing process governance, support and execution roles that will use the process after it has been deployed. Leverage other organizational support groups such as corporate communications, HR, internal audit, procurement and software development to support your initiative. Plan your deployment and rollout strategy to occur as rapidly as possible without jeopardizing your existing service delivery. (Its not easy to change your tires as you are driving down the highway) As individuals and key stakeholders take an active part in the design of your new processes they begin to feel the necessary emotional attachment to their deliverables and want to see the blood, sweat and tears they have shed be effective and successfully deployed. It is amazing how a far a little bit of sweat equity will go in the effort to convince people that change is a good or at least an acceptable thing. Many organizations have tried to short cut this effort or relied exclusively on external resources believing that this level of involvement and internal investment is not really necessary. Only to find out that to ram the change down the corporate throat with out consultation or involvement may have short-term success but will also just as likely result in the organization’s eventual rejection of the change once the heavy hand of compliance is lifted. This Article was originally written for publishing on ITSMWATCH.com Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? “That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t matter much whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home.” (Edward Abbey)   ITIL & Beyond 2010-04-08T14:00:27+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/reaching_for_the_future_with_bsm/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/reaching_for_the_future_with_bsm/#When:21:59:42Z On The Path Towards Business “Oriented” Service Management I had a very interesting discussion this week with Bill Keyworth  (Editor-In-Chief) of BSMReview.com about the concept of Business Service Management (BSM) and how there seems to be many conflicting definitions around this popular term. From my perspective: At a high-level BSM refers to the strategy, manufacturing and management processes/capabilities a Business Organization uses to deliver products and or services to an external consumer base.  In this macro definition of BSM, the IT function works in partnership as one of many internal/external business support groups providing required and valued services to achieve the overall mission of the organization. In essence Service Management as a general term is a customer-focused approach to defining and delivering service a customer wants without asking them to worry about the details of how it is achieved. Sound familiar? “A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.” (ITIL V3) Unfortunately the confusion around the term Business Service Management often stems from one of the following incorrect assumptions: Business Service Management is analogous to IT Service Management or ITIL Business Service Management relates specifically to an ITSM Tool suite that supports the automation and management of IT processes required to deliver effective IT Services. While both of IT Service Management and ITSM Suites support the goal of BSM they are enablers as opposed to the goal itself. Consider that while IT is certainly a service provider the same can be said of other business functions such as Facilities, Plant Maintenance, Fleet Management, Human Resources, Finance, etc. Being a Service Provider does not make IT unique in a business context but it does focus the IT function on the value and purpose of the products and services it provides. For Example: A Bank has a business service called “Branch Banking” which is supported by Several IT Services related to telephony, desktop automation, application services, Internet connectivity, etc. At the same time the business unit within the bank responsible for delivering Branch Banking also subscribes to services supplied by Facilities Management, Marketing, Human Resources and Finance. Not to mention that there will need to be an external call center to take customer calls related to service disruption, complaints and requests. Every business function has strategic processes for defining requirements and portfolio, processes related to design and build, processes related to moving new products and services to a live state, and finally processes for supporting the ongoing management / maintenance of the products and services it provides to its consumers. A key principle related to the general concept of BSM is the realization that all service providers deliver products and services according to a lifecycle and require processes that relate to strategy, design, build, transition and ongoing operations. IT Service Management as documented in ITIL version 3 highlights the concept of IT as a service organization and provides guidance around good practice related to the processes required to define and deliver IT Services.  In this context the only thing unique about the ITIL library specific to the IT function are the examples and case studies used in describing the processes from an IT context. Coincidentally many of the tools developed for use for IT Service Management are used by other business functions to support what are in essence the same processes in a different context. What is a company webpage other than a Service Catalog? The challenge that IT has historically faced in this discussion is the self held belief that it is somehow separate and distinct from the business it serves rather than being an integral part of the business context as one of many peer service partners. A Cultural Perception Of Separation Much has been written on the concept of “Business and IT Alignment” or “Running IT As A Business.” However, the primary challenge with both of these mindsets is that it leads to an inaccurate IT worldview that presents the business and IT relationship as somehow separate as opposed to inter-dependant. We see this perception reinforced by both business and IT executives. The business will discuss divesting itself of its non-core competency without considering its very lifeblood for manufacturing and delivering value to its customers relies on digital automation. In turn the IT Executive will focus on running IT as a business to the point that they see themselves as an internal / outsourcer and end up getting treated that way.  To put this in perspective, it is important to first understand that information technology is only the latest of a series of technological advancements that have pushed business and commerce to new levels of automation and efficiency.  The introduction of electricity, the advent of mass transportation systems and the more recent adoption of hydraulic based manufacturing technology have all gone through a similar model of adoption and integration with business processes.  When these earlier technologies were introduced, they were seen as supplemental but separate from the business processes of their day and adopted in increasingly innovative ways until they became so intrinsic to the way business was done that separation was no longer possible.  In the early phases of these technology adoptions, specialized management groups were often created alongside the business organization to manage and maintain these technologies.  At one point the plant had a power generation department. (Concepts from Nicolas Carr’s “The Big Switch”) Business planning at the boardroom level for a manufacturing organization would not occur without the inclusion of ‘business roles’ responsible for assembly line technology.  However, this same organization – which is reliant on applications, networks and IT infrastructure to support these older technologies – would not even pause to consider the CIO as an appropriate participant in these planning sessions.  This lack of consideration is because neither the business nor IT have yet realized that IT is now as much ‘the line’ as the older and more mature manufacturing technology. Example Case: I recently did an ITSM executive session for a city transit authority. Half of the attendees of this session were from the IT shared services and application functions reporting to the CIO. They understood themselves to be part of the IT function and communicated clearly to me that they were part of IT not the business. The other half of the attendees had the title of “Engineer” who managed the key systems for running the trains and buses. They worked with applications; custom networks and servers still running NT 4.0 provided by external suppliers. This 2nd group insisted that they were not IT but part of the business. My question to you the reader is who do you think has a better grasp on reality? So perhaps it is more appropriate to refer to the adoption of IT Service Management principles as a move towards Business Oriented Service Management. A focus on BSM elevates the role of the IT function from one that considers itself simply as a cost center managing information technology in mythical isolation from the business to one that understands its role as a critical partner in the business value chain. For more information on these topics please refer to the following articles: “The Debate Over Products Versus Services” “Cultural Roadmap For ITSM Adoption” Perhaps IT should refer to any function in the business context as a “Partner” and reserve the term “Customer” for the external consumer of the organization it serves. (Despite what ITIL says!) Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? “People do not want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.” Professor Emeritus Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School   ITIL & Beyond 2010-03-25T21:59:42+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/supplier_managers_and_oylmpic_hockey/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/supplier_managers_and_oylmpic_hockey/#When:17:27:00Z The Supplier Manager Is Like the Coach Of An Olympic Hockey Team Its funny how our current focus areas are usually the product of several streams of consciousness. I suppose it all comes back to the old saying about the product of our efforts being greater than the sum of it parts. As a Canadian I am still enjoying the afterglow of the most successful Winter Olympics in Canadian history, with a record breaking Gold Medal win. This feat was topped off by the entire nation watching the Canadian Hockey team win the final medal game in sudden death over time. (What a rush!) My second stream of thought has been focused on the topic of Supplier Management. A subject I decided to research and write about early in the new year as it began to dawn on me that there is a growing strategic requirement to successfully integrate external suppliers of both classic and cloud based IT services into our IT value chain and management models. I understand fully that we have been in the business of outsourcing both operational and strategic services to external suppliers for some time now. The question of course is how successful have we been at this up to this point. This is further complicated when we treat them like outsiders versus adopted family members. A challenge I have written on before:  Your IT Outsourcer - A Brother of Another Mother  The difference I see today is that this landscape is about to get a lot more complex now that we are also moving to off premise cloud services for both business and technical services. Having just returned from a very successful Pink conference where I spoke on the topic of ITIL in the Clouds I made a statement that I had initially written on this blog: Choosing to use cloud services is a choice to outsource multiple slivers of your IT value chain. In my article on this subject as well as in my session I made the case that it is critical to integrate our suppliers into the ITSM Management processes for delivering services to our business partners in a secure, reliable and cost effective manner. For this reason I personally believe that Supplier Management is the most important / strategic Service Design process for companies to get right for the next decade and beyond. So how does the concept of Supplier Management relate to Olympic Hockey you might ask? (I was hoping you would ) Consider for a moment how an Olympic Hockey team is formed. A Senior Management group selects players from multiple teams and assembles the best possible talent from all of these different sources to create what they hope is a team cable of great success. However, the challenge that an Olympic hockey coach faces is that while they have assembled star players into this new team they come from very different hockey clubs. Each club has its unique style, culture and ways of getting the job done. What they have to do is to take these individual talents “suppliers” and get them to start playing as a cohesive team with a common play book. (Enter a company’s IT Management Framework) In my weird way of looking at life the Coach for an Olympic Hockey team performs the same role as a Supplier Manager in multi-sourced IT Management environment. The Supplier Manager helps an organization to pick the right players for the value network and then ensures and contracts that they agree to operate by the common play book (ITSM Processes). Otherwise what you get is a lot of individual talent moving the puck towards the goal as a team of isolated individuals. Any Olympic hockey team that cannot make this transition from talented individuals to a cohesive team approach will never get close to a medal round let alone ultimate success and glory. If you think about it for a moment this scenario is exactly what we are faced with every day in IT organizations that have multiple suppliers that are not integrated well.  To close this article let me share with you a case study that I picked up at the Pink conference this year. As I was running from one of my speaking sessions to the next I was stopped in the hall by a person from a company that we had done ITSM consulting with in the past. He was very excited about telling me about a project related to Supplier Management that he had recently been involved in and asked if I would have some time to sit down and discuss it. Not being able to stop on route I made a lunch appointment with this person and I am so glad I did. At lunch he let me see a manual that he and a team of people had created to help manage and consolidate over 81 separate supplier contracts in a sane and consistent way. In this manual they had created common Service Definitions. (Eg. Database Administration) Instead of each supplier providing their own definition and set of attributes for this service they were asked to bid on a single common definition. This allowed the organization to multi source the same service to several provides without risk or variance between serve offerings. Also in this manual was a detailed description of the core ITIL processes that the organization had defined / deployed and the expectations of involvement that were required of all suppliers around policy, process, roles and key performance indicators. Example: Incident, Problem, Change, Service Asset & Config, Release and Deployment, etc) In short a common play book for all parties regardless of what team they originated from. This was the most beautiful ITSM thing I have seen in a long time. (Sigh: I know but it’s the life I lead) I wish I could declare who this was but he asked for anonymity. My hope is that he can present this project at next years Pink’s 2011 Conference. So in closing I would ask you if you have an Olympic Hockey Coach / Supplier Manager working on your team that is not only focused on getting the best players for the cheapest price but also defining a strategy to take individual talent and build it into a team with a common vision, goal and play book for success! Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? ”Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” ~Andrew Carnegie ITIL & Beyond 2010-03-05T17:27:00+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/iso_20k_the_idustrial_it_password/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/iso_20k_the_idustrial_it_password/#When:18:25:21Z The Value And The Misunderstanding of ISO 20000 I am writing this blog post on my way back from a 2 week Pink Expert Forum Roadshow with stops in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Dubai and now have a 14 hour flight to capture some of my thoughts around what I heard and saw and reflect on the interesting interactions I had with various people in South East Asia and the Middle East. One of the most memorable discussions I had was with a CIO who declared to me very proudly at a networking event that his organization was going to adopt and implement ISO 20000 in their IT organization. I thought this was a curious statement and proceed to ask some clarifying questions. I probed with a few gentle leading questions about whether what he really meant to say was that he was going to adopt ITIL practices for his organization and then go for an ISO 20k audit to verify and validate the improvements. However, he was not going to be deviated from his declared goal and insisted that his organization was going to Implement ISO 20k and that he had no business case justification for ITIL. Hearing his insistence on this goal I did my best to explain the relationship between ITIL the Best Practice Framework and ISO 20 the Code of Practice (Check list) used by auditors to assess an organization’s compliance to 14 IT Service Management processes but there was no shaking this gentleman from his dogged focus on ISO 20k as the goal. Interested in why he wanted this goal so badly I asked him why he was so interested in ISO 20k. His reply was very candid and frank. He told me quite clearly that his goal was to obtain the certification as proof to his customers that their IT processes were mature and followed best practice. After unsuccessfully trying to explain the difference between an ISO audit for compliance and a process maturity assessment (ISO audits do not measure maturity) I finally said with some regretted exasperation. “So what you really want ISO 20k for is a marketing tool for your clients” his answer to me was “yes that’s correct” Feeling that this conversation was not being very productive for either of us I took one final stab at trying to explain the difference between ITIL and ISO 20k. I told him that the real detail was to be found in the ITIL Library and that the ISO 20k Code of practice was only 42 pages long and that it could not possibly have enough detail in it to provide guidance on how to adopt the processes and elements it describes for audit purposes. Perhaps this statement was a bit over the top and for that I am sorry since it ended our conversation quite abruptly and the gentleman walked away towards the food and beverage tables. A third person that had been part of this exchange looked at me and said something to effect. “What many Executives wan’t out of ISO 20k in this region is the industrial password that will get them new business or increase their organization’s status.” Now don’t get me wrong, neither of these goals are necessarily bad in and of themselves but my personal belief is that the goal should be to improve your IT organization and services first and then if you have done the heroic feat of actually adopting and implementing 14 IT Service Management processes described in ISO 20k across the full scope of your IT organization then by all means celebrate this achievement by having an ISO 20k audit validate all the hard work your organization has done. There is a purpose and use for process frameworks like ITIL as well as ISO standards but it is important not to confuse the ends with the means. Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. ~Douglas Adams ITIL & Beyond 2010-01-29T18:25:21+00:00 http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/itil_castles_in_the_cloud/ http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/itil_castles_in_the_cloud/#When:21:29:00Z Launching A Cloud Computing Strategy Means Outsourcing Multiple Slivers of Your IT Service Value Chain [Young Cosette - Les Miserables] There is a castle on a cloud, I like to go there in my sleep, Aren’t any floors for me to sweep, Not in my castle on a cloud. Rhetorical Question: But wait I thought that cloud computing strategies are meant to simplify IT service provisioning? I cut the supplier a check and they take care of rest right? Response: In one sense this is a correct, since you are paying an external supplier to provide a complete service outcome. The service can come in the form of an account for a hosted software service, a development platform or a set of virtual infrastructure components without you having to own or manage the physical assets.  However, on the other side of coin it is critical to understand that what you are also doing is introducing a new set of players into your existing IT management processes. Just as Young Cosette discovered in the musical Les-Miserables we still have to sweep the floors and take care of business even when we live in the clouds. [At The End Of The Day - Les Miserables] At the end of the day you get nothing for nothing Sitting flat on your butt doesn’t buy any bread What the IT Community is quickly coming to realize is that to deploy a cloud strategy within their organization successfully a number of processes and IT Service Management elements have to be defined - and better yet - automated from request through verified provisioning and then keep running as long as needed. Take the following list as an example: Service Catalog: The cloud based service needs to be documented, managed and published in an actionable service catalog for IT customers to order from. Request Fulfillment: The cloud service has requestable components which require a process to support request approval and integrated workflow automation for request provisioning. Change Management: The infrastructure service is now a component service to other business services and changes to the virtual infrastructure must go through Change Management whether you or the cloud supplier makes the change. Service Asset and Configuration Management: While you may not choose to model a SaaS service within your CMDB, the infrastructure-as-a-service components play a critical dependency role in understanding component failure impact analysis and provides key information to many other processes. Incident & Problem Management: Congratulations! By outsourcing your IT services to a cloud provider they have now become part of your 2nd and 3rd level support organization and need to be integrated into your support agreements and internal operational level agreements. Release and Deployment Management: Many cloud providers make scheduled and unschedule releases to their offerings on a regular basis. This requires you to manage these new releases to your customers in a formal maner since the user interface, service functionality and underlying integrations can change at any point. Access Management: Just because your service is in the cloud does not mean you don’t have to be concerned about who can order a service component, what level of access / role the requestor / approver has to have, or support your employee on boarding and off boarding processes. Event Management: Your sourced cloud services need to be monitored and integrated into your NOC processes. Service Level Management: The SLA you negotiate with your cloud provider will need to support your customer SLA’s (This will be particularly interesting if your customer has executed a business process outsourcing arrangement based on SaaS/cloud and then turns to you to “manage” and integrate with the remaining IT infrastructure, data, and applications). Supplier Management: Using multiple cloud providers means managing a growing set of external suppliers as part of your internal IT value chain that all need to follow your established policies and processes to ensure consistent delivery of IT services. (see SLM) Financial Management: Thanks to the ease of use ordering up new cloud service units many organizations receive a shocking bill quite quickly. Keeping track of your financial obligations around accounts payable is critical. Else beware of “Cloud Sprawl”. Just because a cloud service has been purchased, doesn’t remove your old hardware and software or the lease payments, remaining maintenance, or book value associated with them.  Availability & Capacity Management:Thanks to elastic capacity and cloud support for failover and dynamic routing you can use cloud services to enhance both of these processes for service design, just be aware of the true external as well as internal costs. And what about that link you have to the cloud? How diverse/redundant is it? How dynamic is it’s routing and capacity? IT Service Continuity: Cloud services offer a great opportunity to support Disaster Recovery and off site storage requirements. However your strategy and process needs to be defined in order to use these services strategically (see Availability and Capacity) Information Security:  Public or Private Cloud does not matter, Information Security remains a concern regardless of where your data resides. (Won’t even touch legislation and privacy laws) Etc. Etc. Etc…... The key message I believe you may be picking up from this post is that the more complex your value chain of suppliers becomes, the more necessary it is to have defined, repeatable processes to support them. In the end moving to Cloud Services is a form of strategic outsourcing and comes with all the challenges and benefits of what that means. Don’t make the classic mistake of believing that once you outsource something you no longer have to worry about it (You are still concerned that the floors get swept). The old model of outsourcing your problem’s does not work in this model either. By all means look strategically at integrating alternative suppliers into your IT value chain, just be aware of what that means. For more thoughts on integrating external suppliers successfully take a look t the article I wrote:  Your IT Outsourcer - A Brother of Another Mother [Finale - Les Miserables] Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light. Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see? Do you hear the people sing? Say, do you hear the distant drums? It is the future that they bring When tomorrow comes! Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours? “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.”  ~Alan Perlis   ITIL & Beyond 2009-12-03T21:29:00+00:00