PinkPresident

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Heads Up - We’ll Soon Be Hitting The Road For The “Pink Perspective 2010 Series” - Our 4th Year!

George Spalding and I, along with a few special guests, will be starting our Pink Perspective series of customer appreciation days in late May. Here’s how the dates are looking right now:

May 25 - Hong Kong
May 28 - Jakarta, Indonesia
May 31 - Singapore
June 2 - Sydney, Australia
June 7 - Toronto, Canada
June 8 - Washington D.C., USA
June 9 - Chicago, USA
June 10 - Dallas, USA
June 11 - San Francisco, USA

We’ll have more dates in other locations later in the year. The full agenda will be published on our website within the next day or two.

Hope to see you somewhere!

If Every Tool Makes The List - What’s The Point?

Observed a little tweet exchange earlier this week questioning the value of ITIL software certification when it appears ALL products & vendors claim to be certified.

First, let’s be clear - not ALL products appear on either the PinkVERIFY list or the OGC/APMG Software Scheme list. We are approached on a regular basis (every couple of weeks?) by a “new” vendor enquiring about how they can get their product on the PinkVERIFY list. We direct them to the website to download the white paper - which explains the process - and the requirements list for all 15 processes available for verification. Not all of them call back! So what does that tell you? Maybe they discovered that their product does NOT meet the compatibility requirements for ITIL. Maybe they just had second thoughts and decided not to bother going through the process (I’m sure there must be ITIL-compatible products out there that are not on the list).

Regardless of what assumptions or conclusions you draw from comparing which products are on the list and which aren’t, you cannot claim that “… all products are on the list so what’s the point of having a list?”

So what about the products which ARE on the list? Is there really no differentiation between those dozens of products claiming “PinkVERIFY status”? This is what I hear most often from the cynics. But, there certainly is differentiation - and it’s there in plain sight for all to see! (You may want to take a peek at the PinkVERIFY 3.0 product list at this point and see if you can spot what I mean before I explain!)

“PinkVERIFY status” is not a useful statement to bandy about without including the qualification of which processes each product supports. Some niche, or “point solution”, products meet the compatibility requirements of a single process and there are some that are compatible to multiple processes - anything from 2 to 14! So just because a vendor claims “PinkVERIFY status” doesn’t mean their product is equal to anything else on the list. There’s your differentiation - HOW MANY and more importantly WHICH processes?

Even if we ever get to the hypothetical day when ALL tools support ALL processes (let me know when that happens!) I’d like to think there’d still be some value in maintaining a criteria list that developers and practitioners can refer to in order to validate what we all mean when we say “ITIL compatible”. And then there’d need to be a place we can all go to see that some independent body has verified that all these products really did meet the requirements we all expect.

Keep in mind that the PinkVERIFY list does not recommend products. One product is not better (whatever that means) than another because it appears on the list and supports x number of processes. The list is simply an initial screening tool to help identify what we all mean by “ITIL compatible” and to help buyers narrow options before embarking on evaluation, testing & final decision-making.

Use PinkVERIFY for what it is. If you’re a software vendor - look at the requirements lists and see what the rest of us expect from an “ITIL compatible” tool for each process. If you’re a practitioner looking for new tools - use the requirements lists to see what you can expect in terms of functionality for each process and think hard about what you really need, then look at the product list to narrow your search.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Printer Manufacturers - Get Responsible!

This morning I was nagged from all directions from my family because the colour laser printer we have at home stopped working. More toner needed. So I stopped at Staples on the way home this evening and bought the FOUR cartridges needed to get it back into working order. I have to say, I was shocked and horrified on two fronts:

1. The cost was $260 - just for toner, not a new printer!
2. The huge and elaborate amount of packing involved.

While $260 is not an insignificant amount, I found that it was the packing issue that really got my back up. Four separate sturdy cardboard boxes (what proportion of people only buy one cartridge at a time, I wonder?) and each box containing a robust heavy duty cartridge elaborately protected by hard plastic bits and pieces held down with the kind of sticky tape that would firmly hold the fuel tanks to the side of the shuttle at take off. All this inside some specially inflated “bubble wrap” that ensured absolutely nothing was going to be damaged in transit. Let’s get back to basics here - all I needed was more toner; that’s coloured powder to me and you. And apparently almost indestructible powder at that - (if every you’ve spilled any you’ll know what I mean).

So here’s my point (I do have one). Mr & Mrs Printer Manufacturer - we’ve had these laser printers around for at least 25-30 years. Isn’t it time you came up with a design which made re-filling the powder a little more straightforward? The amount of waste involved in discarded cartridges & packing is shocking (never mind the cost of manufacturing & shipping).

Of course the cynics will say “… this is where they make their money - selling printers really cheaply and making the profit on the re-fills”. It certainly looks that way - but if you’re prepared to step forward with a strong dose of social responsibility I think you’ll leap ahead of the competition and clean up. Put your clever designers & engineers to work on developing something more practical, convenient and LESS IRRESPONSIBLE! You’ll get my business right away.

Come on - show a but of social leadership in the world of printing!

Roll On Number 15!

Planning for the 15th Annual IT Management Conference & Exhibition has been underway for a few months now. For the record, we’re back at the Bellagio in Las Vegas (I just love that property!) on February 20-23, 2011.

The program is already becoming populated with interesting speakers and sessions. There’s still some gaps to fill, though - however I have the feeling we’ll have it all firmed up within just a few more weeks. So, if you have an interesting story or vision to relate - we’d love to hear from you. And you’ll go to the front of the line if you can also deliver your session in an eye-catching style. The topics we really want to include in our widened program next year include: other IT disciplines related to ITSM; mobile computing, virtualization & cloud computing; IT leadership & generic business skills; ISO; Six Sigma - but feel free to suggest anything you think to be relevant. 

Pink CEO and The IT Skeptic Look Like Buddies!

Nice to see Pink’s CEO - Fatima Cabral - all smiles with Rob England (The IT Skeptic) at last week’s 14th Annual Pink Conference.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Memories of the 14th Annual Pink Conference

I feel so guilty that it’s been 3 weeks since my last blog entry. There’s some irony here - if you can stick with me.

These past few days I’ve been verbalizing - to anyone who would listen - that I thought the Conference which wound-up last week went like clockwork ("wound-up" and “clockwork” - please forgive the pun). After 14 goes, this is the one that seemed to involve the least hassle - and the most fun. And by all reports it was very well received by everyone. I guess this is what you can call win-win.

So if everything went like clockwork, and people like me weren’t hassled too much, how come I couldn’t find 5-10 minutes to write about it? Sorry. I don’t have any plausible excuses. I guess I was so wrapped up in the fun of the thing that it slipped my mind (OK - I agree, that is NOT a plausible excuse).

Anyway, here’s a few memories that will stick with me ....

1500 folks had the faith - and desire - in such challenging economic times to show up at this latest Pink event. That number being the same number as last year. We’re very grateful and humbled by that.

Hosting a special dinner for our Consulting & Training teams in Prime on the Friday evening before the Conference. If it wasn’t for these folks - we’d be nowhere!

Meeting up with all our international Pink buddies on Sunday. Sometimes it’s the only time we get see some of these folks from one February to the next.

Seeing Chris Dancy interview Chris Gardner backstage before the opening keynote. No big deal there, except it was done in a changing room where George Spalding and I were getting dressed in our Beach Boys outfits. I was as discrete as I could be - but George, oh dear - what a show-off! At least Chris had the decency before posting to the Web of editing out the scene of George dropping his pants and ...... never mind you can use your imagination.

Tweeting like crazy in all the keynote sessions. I loved it (could you tell?)

Hosting the “Vendor Thank-You Reception” on Sunday evening. I feel that the vendor community is often regarded as some kind of necessary evil at trade shows. Certainly that’s the way I’ve often felt when Pink has exhibited at other industry events. But not from our point of view. These folks are our customers too, and we appreciate and value their support. If we can get them away from the crowds and give them some nice food and wine for a couple of hours - that’s the least we can do.

Lovely dinner with some of our VIP customers in Prime on Monday evening. Great fun and hilarity on the night was tempered the next day when I realized how much we paid for the wine (thanks George - that’s the last time I’m letting you pretend to be a sommelier). We really do love our VIP customers - but not THAT much! (only kidding!)

Wiping away tears of laughter listening to Allan Pease deliver his keynotes on Monday & Tuesday afternoons. I notice there were more people in his second session - clearly word had spread! I also had a cosy chat with Allan on Tuesday afternoon where he told me the story of his tattoo (what it is and where it is). I’m sworn to secrecy, but if you give me Martinis or wine ....

Lovely dinner with some new Pink friends In Sensi on Tuesday evening. I was going to say “lovely quiet dinner” but the IT Skeptic, Brenda Iniguez & Chris Dancy were all there - so it wasn’t too quiet! Here you can see two of those getting it on!

A sincere thanks to the incredible Pink team who produced this best ever Conference; and all those non-Pinkers who played their parts too - especially our practitioner case study presenters. They don’t present for a living, but they certainly looked like they should - well done!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Cloudy With A Chance Of Apples

I’ve written before about the evolution of ITSM and particularly how I think the increasing lack of control of infrastructure, and services, is just being conveniently ignored. Every day now I’m seeing more and more articles and commentary about the implications of the Cloud, and there are a few different angles:

- security risks through lack of control
- cost savings through reduced infrastructure spending
- improved service through greater availability
- greener IT through better utilization of resources
- flexibility through adoption of non-standard infrastructures

I have to say that in our organization we’re beginning to see the benefits of this new wave, while keeping in mind the risks. And when you get right down to it, you cannot argue with the technologies - it’s really all about understanding the risks.

Here’s a trivial, seemingly, example. Pink has always been a Microsoft shop, until the day about 8-9 years ago when I spent a few days in the Bay Area and was smitten by an Apple Powerbook. When I got back to the office a few days later I was surprised to see that it plugged straight into our Exchange network and the email client - Mail - seemed to work just fine for me. Next thing you know I’d installed the Office for Mac suite and was doing ALL my work on a Mac. Within a few weeks I’d “sent back” my Sony laptop to the IT team.

Within a couple of years one or two others in the Company made the same move. It’s not been a surge, I’ll admit. But my point is everything just works and we’ve had no support issues to speak of (no more than the average user, anyway). In parallel to all this we’ve had people activating their email on personal Blackberry phones. We went ahead and installed the Enterprise Server for Blackberry to make it more convenient for everyone, but now we have people using iPhones! You just can’t stop this (well, you can if you want to be strict and heavy-handed about it, but after all, we’ve seen no major issues with allowing this non-standard culture to flourish) - it’s the way the world is now when people have become more technology-savvy. Anyway, there’s been no serious incidents or unmanageable costs as a result of this freer world of infrastructure management (fingers crossed!)

OK - so we’re a relatively small organization - less than 200 users - but we do have critical services and data (to us) and we’re managing our loose strategy just fine. So, why not for larger organizations? I think the lessons are there. The Cloud’s coming, so are the Apples!

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Great Service From The Passport Office - No Bureaucracy There!

I just returned from a round-the-world trip involving about 8 or 9 border crossings (does Austria & Germany count as 2 - or 1 because it’s really one big EU?)

Plus in recent months I have had full page visas inserted into my passport for countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The upshot of this is, part way through my recent trip my passport suddenly had no space left for more stamps! Being the good problem solver that I am I came up with a decent temporary fix which involved ripping out the Pakistani visa (sorry to all my Pakistani friends, don’t think I was being dis-respectful, just that your considerate immigration officer was kind enough to stick it in by the corner - which made it easy to remove).

Anyway, back home again and needing my passport for another trip next week I had to hurry along to the Passport Office for a new one. Here’s my experience ...

First of all, no big hoops to jump through with the application for a renewed passport. The Canadian government now have what they call a Simplified Renewal Form - and process. This makes a lot of sense to me and I’ve always wondered why we haven’t had this before. Once you’ve jumped through all the hoops to actually get your first passport (establishing proof of who you are, signatures from responsible people who can vouch for you, etc) why did you need to repeat the whole process again when renewing? Surely the fact you now have a passport is all you should need to get a new one?  Well, yes, that’s now the case! I simply took 2 minutes to fill in the Simplified Renewal Form ( which was not much more than a “give us your name and address") - and I was on a roll.

I then stopped at my local photo store to get two new photos (didn’t look much different from the ones I got two years ago for my current passport!)

I then headed to the Passport Office in Hamilton - 20 minutes away. I parked the car, walked in handed over the form, photos, old passport and some cash and walked out again SIX MINUTES LATER! That’s right, it took me all of 6 minutes. No lines, no bouncing from one desk to another, no re-filling of forms, no surprises. It was a smooth as silk.

In fact a lot happened in those 6 minutes. The lady who attended to me scanned my completed Simplified Renewal Form and made a few annotations. Even though the form was “simple” I still managed to screw up a couple of fields. She didn’t send me away, just asked for clarifications and crossed out what I had written and inserted the right stuff - such as transposed postal codes (I’m always mixing up my home and office postal codes!) and where I put “as above” for my next of kin’s address, she crossed out the “as above” and wrote out the address in full again. No whines, no complaining, no telling off. She just fixed everything up and then said “So, you’re renewing your passport after just 2 years. I take it you want the 48 page version this time?”

“Yes, please” said I.

“I suppose the extra $5 won’t be a problem then?” She said with a little wink and a grin. Wow, a civil servant with a sense of humour - this is getting even better! She then told me the new passport would be mailed out in 2 weeks “...unless you plan to travel before then - are you?”

“Well, yes, er, I am traveling next Tuesday - do you want to see my ticket?”

“No, that’s OK - you can come pick up your new passport on Monday - is that OK with you?”

“Sure! Great! Thanks!”

“Bye”

We often complain about government bureaucracy and poor service, but when they get it right do we always appreciate it? I do - well done Passport Canada!

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Nice Folks In Dubai!

A few of the early risers on Wednesday morning at the “1st Annual Pink Elephant Conference in Dubai”. As you can see a Starburst Orange shirt day for the Pinkers!

Interesting Social Media Habits In Southeast Asia & The Middle East

I’m just back home after a whirlwind tour of 4 major cities way east of here (actually I traveled west-bound all the way until I got home again, so I guess that means.... oh never mind). Anyway, the cities in question were Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Riyadh & Dubai.

In KL & Singapore I asked everyone who participated in the Pink Elephant IT Management Expert Forum if they were Twitter users, or if they managed a blog (either for work or personal use). I was astounded by the response - virtually no one! In fact, one gentleman was kind enough to explain to me that many organizations in the region explicitly restrict their staff from engaging in these activities at work. Another person asked if there was somewhere else he could download the Forum materials from apart from where we’d placed them on the special “Forum Blog” - the reason being that the url for the Blog included the word “blog”! Oh dear!

In the middle-east things were a bit better. My presentations at the “1st Annual Pink Elephant IT Management Conference in Dubai” and “USU’s 2nd ITIL Conference in Riyadh” were not concerning web 2.0, and so I didn’t get the chance to ask everyone those burning questions. However in the 1 to 2 days afterwards I suddenly garnered a good handful of new Twitter followers - from both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So that’s a bit more encouraging!

Photos From the Pink Elephant IT Management Expert Forum in KL Last Week

Some of the happy folks in KL last week were pictured being presented with the certificates by Julia Chapelle, Director, Loyalist Certification Services.

There’s also a few even happier folks who, in addition to receiving their certificates from Julia, also received prizes - from me!

All the photos can be viewed here at FLickr. 

Photos From the Pink Elephant IT Management Expert Forum in KL Last Week

Some of the happy folks in KL last week were pictured being presented with their certificates by Julia Chapelle, Director, Loyalist Certification Services.

There’s also a few even happier folks who, in addition to receiving their certificates from Julia, also received prizes - from me!

All the photos can be viewed here at Flickr. 

Monday, January 25, 2010

Presentation Materials For Riyadh

Here are the materials I will be using in today’s session:

Riyadh_-_January_25,_2010.pdf

Monday, January 11, 2010

Don’t Get Fooled Again: A Skeptic’s Handbook

I loved this book.

It’s easy to read and get’s straight to the point in telling us how and why we seem to fall for the most outrageous claims of conspiracy theorists and other trouble-makers. As I read this I could see how many of the problems we have in the world exist because of the persistence of mischief makers and those with a murky agenda.

The relevance for us in the world of IT management is that we shouldn’t accept anything at face value. Scratch below the surface and be prepared to challenge those ROI claims and impressive looking stats.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The Practicalities Of Problem Management (Again!)

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know I often refer to Problem Management and how I believe it’s a greatly misunderstood, and often neglected, area of IT service management.

Well, I’m putting some final touches to a presentation titled “The Top 5 Things Most Organizations Don’t Know About Problem Management” and I think it would be interesting and useful to include some insights from practitioners. So what do you think are the neglected critical success factors when establishing an effective Problem Management process?

If you give me your thoughts and I use them I’ll credit you as a source on any slide where your idea is mentioned. So what are the issues?

Clarity of objectives & value?

Lack of understanding and or skills?

Clarity of roles & responsibilities?

Funding & motivation?

Integration with other processes and functions?

Let me know what you think.