Why Social Media is important for ITIL and ITSM practitioners November 9, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in cloud computing, itil, itsm.Tags: change management, customer, economy, IT Service Management, itil, technology, the art of service
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Life will never be the same again! I remember the day in the last century when I purchased my first mobile phone so I could continue the conversations with my clients while I was stuck in one of many traffic jams in The Netherlands. I also remember that most of my consultancy clients didn’t have email addresses, although there was inter-company electronic mail and those big yellow internal mail envelopes for paper memos etc. To connect with clients you used the phone or fax.
fast forward to 2009:
Our current clients have email addresses, a skypeID, google chat, twitter accounts, a facebook or myspace page, a google Wave account and everybody always talks on their mobile computer (isn’t it amazing that the Apple iPhone has this cool apps that you can download so you can even make phone calls with it?)
So what did I do? Over the past few months I have been more and more active with social media for The Art of Service. For one reason: we want to continue to create long-lasting relationship with our clients and course participants.
For me this is natural and logical: Our clients discuss important and urgent issues on twitter and facebook (as well as the not so important but still urgent), so where are there to answer their questions and to engage in the conversation.
So how has the interaction changed?
- I have my own twitter account http://www.twitter.com/ivankamenken . I use this account to share my research findings, ideas, comments and general communication around IT Service Management, ITIL, Cloud Computing, Business Management and personal ’stuff’
- Because not everybody is interested in my thoughts and rants, I also create a corporate twitter account to discuss our events, programs, products and generic information. http://www.twitter.com/taos_events
- I started promoting my mobile phone number on my business card and email signature again to encourage clients to speak with me directly, rather than going through my PA.
- I have a personal SkypeID, and the company has a corporate SkypeID so nobody has to feel they can’t connect with a client at the other end of the world
- The Art of Service has a corporate blog, posts ideas and links on posterous
- We encourage people to send in their questions and requests for help via the forms on our websites
- and of course there are the multiple of RSS feeds, Digg and delicious bookmarks, the hyves and Linkedin profiles
So when I look back at my first years as an ITIL and ITSM practitioner and compare it with the current situation – I would say that social media is a must for every ITIL and ITSM consultant or practitioner who wants to stay connected with the industry, their clients, peers and colleagues.
The way we did business 20 or 30 years ago doesn’t work (as well) anymore, we can’t stop growing… if you don’t use social media yet… change, and embrace it!
The secret of success: structure and discipline! (ITIL/ITSM people – are you listening?!) October 19, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in business, itil, itsm.Tags: capacity management, change management, IT Service Management, itil, service management, time management, value
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Today I chaired a meeting with 6 other entrepreneurs. (in my role as Forum chair for the Brisbane chapter of EO) The funny thing is that these entrepreneurs are very like-minded and they are all used to making the decisions.
But I didn’t prepare the meeting very well (these things happen) and the funny thing is: due to the lack of structure and strict timelines on the agenda we went 15 minutes over time.
Would the meeting be more valuable with the additional layer of structure and discipline? ABSOLUTELY! It seems contra-indicative, but the more structure and discipline you bring into an organisation the more you get done and the more satisfaction people get from doing it.
Same thing is true for the IT industry – from where I am standing I see a lot of time (and money) being wasted because of people going around and around in circles, going off on tangents due to a lack of structure in the organisation.
Think about it – when did you feel most valuable in your job? When you get a lot done! Most of the times this would be the day before you go on a holiday. You get so much done because your have your priorities straight, have a clear plan on what you want to achieve, have a vision of going home and leaving behind a clean desk and an empty inbox; and you structure your days around these disciplines…
So tomorrow – when you get back to work, just think about the benefits of structure and discipline when you do a walk-through of an ITIL process, embrace the benefits of discipline when you sit in on a CAB meeting.
Ultimately you will feel more valuable as a result of it.
Which ITIL lifecycle phase interacts with the clients? October 11, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: change management, customer, customer service, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3, itsm
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The ITIL Framework is based around IT Service Management (so basically the activities that need to be done to create, deliver and manage IT Services).
As the focus is on the management of services it is of vital importance to stay in constant contact with your clients, every phase in the Service Lifecycle focuses on customer interaction.
For Example:
Service Strategy – Demand Management needs to listen to the clients to figure out what the Patterns of Business Activity are. What is it that the client needs from IT in terms of service types and support?
Service Design – This phase has processes like Service Level Management and Service Catalog Management. The Service Catalog has a business component to help clients make appropriate decisions in relation to the type of services they wish to purchase. This phase also starts the creation of a Service Design Package which features User Acceptance criteria.
Service Transition – This phase interacts with the customers about changes to the Services and Service Experience. Change Management will interact with the clients for high impact changes as their input is important in the assessment and authorization of changes.
Service Operation – This phase interacts mainly with the End-users of the service as this is the phase where all day-to-day activities take place. The Service Desk is the first point of contact between the business community and the IT Group.
Continual Service Improvement – This phase needs clear direction from the business and as such interacts with the customers in relation to vision, mission and strategy. Customer Satisfaction surveys are usually initiated from this phase in the lifecycle.
See? Every phase interacts with the clients and end-users at various levels. The IT group can’t work in isolation (anymore…) and needs to know exactly what it needs to deliver to the customers to what level of expectations.
ITIL pop quiz: Remember what Sharon Taylor said in October 2008? September 22, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: change management, IT Service Management, ITIL V3, service management
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The answer: There will be no ITIL V4
Ok – it is now nearly 12 months later and so far there is no talk about ITIL V4, or is there?….
The IT Skeptic was one of the first globally to find the announcement from OGC about the review of the current version of ITIL. Mind you – OGC has not given a timeframe in which all this is supposed to happen
Reason given for this review is:
The core guidance will be updated in response to issues raised
via the Change Control Log and from criticism of inconsistencies
in both the content and structure of the five titles. The update
will include corrections to the manuals based on responses to
issues raised in the Change Control Log, such as clarification of
diagrams and concepts, and other general incremental
improvements.
Additionally, user feedback and feedback from the training
community indicate that the Service Strategy publication
is difficult to understand. The text needs to be made more
accessible by using simpler language, so that all the concepts
remain the same but are explained in a clearer manner. The
readability is to be improved by a technical edit that will involve
rewording but not necessarily rewriting the whole text.
ITIL, ITSM and ownership – the perfect trio for success August 11, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: call centre, change management, IT Service Management, ITIL V3, itsm, management, service, service management
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Last night I was watching the movie ‘outsourced‘ and apart from the fact that it is a really good movie (laughed so hard I was afraid I’d wake up my son… ) it made me think about accountability and ownership.
Every time I talk with clients and students about Roles and Responsibilities for the various activities in the ITIL Processes the discussion always turns to proven ways to make this approach successful. After all – we want these processes to work. We implement them for a business reason (and not just for the sake of them… it’s not a form of occupational therapy for ITIL consultants).
But the true success of an implementation like this lies in the ownership of the internal employees. You can’t expect them to just change overnight without at least involving them in the process and explaining why certain things are done in a certain way. That’s why it never works when you simply engage a group of ‘ITIL Experts’ to do the work for you… the same happened in the movie – the American guy was very good at his job, you could say he was an expert, but it didn’t make any difference. He didn’t have the buy in from the staff and as such all his good work was in vain.
Ownership is more than feeling responsible – you OWN the activity, and therefore make it your own. You take pride in the fact that this task is performed in a professional and effective manner. But you also take ownership of the things that do not go to plan. Acknowledge that you made a mistake, or that you forgot something. Ownership means that you keep looking for ways to do this task better, easier, faster, smarter, cheaper. It means keeping your eyes and ears open to be aware of the handover points, and formalise them so there are no grey lines – everybody knows what is expected. It also means that by doing this you will identify new communication channels that you didn’t know existed.
In the movie it became clear that until the callcentre team took ownership of their role, task and deliverables, nothing really went to plan. But after this point there was no turning back.. they took pride in doing things better and achieving their goals and targets! The group culture changed into a ‘we can do ANYTHING, just watch me!’ and isn’t that what we try to achieve with the implementation of IT Service Management?
IT Professionals… you can do ANYTHING and you only need to take ownership of your part in the ITIL Framework or IT Service Management methodology..
I’m watching!
ITIL V3 Service Strategy Process Demand Management works with other processes January 24, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: business, capacity management, change management, customer, Demand, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3, management, service, SLM, value
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The ITIL V3 lifecycle phase of Service Strategy puts a strong focus on Demand Management and the role it plays in the strategy towards, and design of, IT services that meet the expected demands. However, this process can not work in isolation…
Demand management needs to work closely together with the processes in the other lifecycles to manage and control all aspects of demand for IT Services. Some examples follow…
Service Strategy:
- Financial Management is involved in costing and pricing issues, but also in preparing a value proposition and ROI calculations. It helps with preparing financial constraints measures.
- Portfolio Management is involved with the strategic planning decisions for this new service. How does it fit into the service pipeline and the current live service offerings? It keeps a high level overview of interactions and possible contra effects of this new service.
Service Design:
- Capacity Management is involved with the design of the service offering AND the supporting environment to deliver the appropriate level of capacity to deliver the service as agreed.
- Information Security Management plays an important role in the analysis of the PBA’s differentiation criteria. Different PBA’s have different security requirements, and the IT organization needs to respond with the correct level of security measures and associated policies.
Service Transition:
- Service Validation & Testing receives test criteria from demand management and the service design processes. These criteria will be based on the Service Package description and especially the Service Level Package descriptions. Based on these criteria, appropriate type and levels of testing are designed to ensure that we can predict the performance of the service and if it is in line with the demand requirements stated by the customers.
- Change Management plays an important role in the overall control of the IT organization. It has to ensure that changes in the infrastructure, processes or services do not negatively influence the service delivery performance. Change Management actively controls and coordinates changes made to Configuration Items, including critical documentation like service catalogues and descriptions of PBA’s.
Service Operation:
- Event Management enables the operations to perform a lot of the support monitoring tasks automatically. This is important in the context of demand management as the event management systems may pick up variations in the use of the IT Service that haven’t been noticed by the Business Relationship Manager or Customers. The reports coming from Event Management will help to identify variations and differentiations within the PBA’s.
- Problem Management, especially proactive problem management will be asked to provide input into Demand Management. Problem Management will analyze demand requirements and compare this to current known issues and hotspots in the IT environment, it also does trend analysis on incidents and feeds this information to Business Relationship Manager for discussion with the customers.
Continual Service Improvement:
- Service Level Management not only works within the Service Design phase where it is involved in negotiating and agreeing on Service Levels, it also plays an important role in the continual improvement lifecycle phase. As a result of ongoing performance monitoring we know where unexpected flaws are and can plan for improvements toward better ‘business outcome based delivery’.
- Measurement & Reporting works with all other processes but demand management specifically needs standards and guidance on measurement, metrics and reporting to ensure that the demand expectations based on the analysis of the Business processes is measured consistently and doesn’t differ from month to month due to inconsistent reporting processes.
ITIL Release and deployment management for Windows 7 January 17, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: business, capacity management, change management, customer, customer service, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3, itsm, microsoft, service management, testing, value
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With all the hype around Windows 7 I have been thinking about the release and deployment processes that would be associated with a large and very visible project as this one. Obviously, there has been quite some customer feedback from the previous releases and versions (Vista). This would have been the basis for the RFC (request for change). So how would the ITIL processes be applicable to this project?
- It will all be under control of Change Management, as this process is meant to manage all risk associated with changing the IT infrastructure and IT Services. As there will be a major potential business impact for faults and mistakes, I would expect a rigid process and procedures around this project and a strong CAB with firm decision making powers.
- Change Management will rely on the process of Evaluation to gain a better understanding of the expected performance and quality criteria for this changed service and product. This is most likely the reason for the current public beta testing that is being performed, as this is a fantastic way to gather performance information from the production environments.
- Service Validation and Testing definitely plays an important role! Especially as we are talking about software development as well as the development of associated support services. Not only will the project team need input from the support engineers early in the project (as is appropriate when one follows the V-model for testing), but the formal transfer of knowledge – including, but not limited to Known Errors – is very important for future client support. Knowledge Management is considered to be a separate process that is very closely related to both Service Validation & Testing and Evaluation.
- The project will also be heavily involved with the Release and Deployment process of the organization. How are we going to make sure that we manage the transfer from one environment to another with out disrupting the status quo? (things should only get better.. not worse). Who do we include in the training and education, as well as the communication plans around this release? As this project is delivering a product that will be for sale to the general public, you will receive direction and input from the Sales and Marketing departments as well as the technical support areas.
It all sounds so easy, and on paper it will be. However, I haven’t even talked about the connection with Service Asset & Configuration Management, Capacity Management, the Service desk and all the operational processes. It is much more involved than you can type up in 400 words but… in order to manage a project this large and this visible, maybe you have to start very simplistic and state the obvious processes, procedures and work instructions that are needed for a smooth transition. Maybe, just maybe, this will help in identifying all the people involved and the gaps in the initial thought patterns.
Who knows… it might even help Microsoft in delivering a product to the market that actually does what it is supposed to do and is accepted and revered by clients across the world?!
Or would that be too good to be true?!
ITIL V3 – to be a process or not to be a process, that is the question! November 27, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in itil.Tags: business, change management, IT Service Management, ITIL V3, itsm, process, quality, request fulfillment
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As always we have the same discussion again in relation to ITIL V3: Are the ‘processes’ in the Service Operation Lifecycle, really processes or merely procedures within a larger process?
Today the discussion flared up again in relation to Request Fulfillment Management. Should this really be a separate process, or should it be a component of Incident Management? And to be honest, I think the authors of the book really don’t know what it is that they want because in the scope section it says:
“it is up to the organization to determine and to document which services are considered to be standard and therefore part of the request fulfillment process”
So what happens when the organization answers: 0 (zero)
Do you still need to implement request fulfillment process or are you going to run it just like you did before with the activities of request fulfillment as part of Incident Management and Change Management?
Personally I think it really doesn’t matter that much – you can have day-long academic discussions about this subject but at the end of the day it comes down to what works for the business. What is best for our support objectives to the business. What is most effective and efficient? If it means running these activities via Incident Management and Change Management? Go for it!!
But to be honest, I think that in most cases the answer would be: We really would like these activities in a separate process so we have the ability to split the monitoring and reporting activities so we have better measurements and also because it gives us the ability to automate these processes separately.
And does the business care about the naming conventions of the processes? All they (should) care about is that it helps US to support THEM according to our agreed Service Levels, as well as proven continual improvement!
