Why The Australian Taxation Office needs to improve its Demand and Capacity Management. ITIL anyone?! March 17, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: capacity, capacity management, Demand, IT Service Management, itil, service management, the art of service
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OK – here’s the deal:
On Saturday I received an email from the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) notifying me that I need to renew my digital certificates. These digital certificates are important as I can’t do my company tax, payroll tax and Sales Tax declarations online without them.
It is now Tuesday and so far I haven’t been able to renew the certificates due to a number of reasons:
- The ATO application only seems to work on Internet Explorer. My laptop defaults to Mozilla Firefox so the initial attempt to renew ran into an error code…
Not too worry, I’ll re-run the renewal in Internet Explorer… or so I thought: - The website didn’t work on Internet Explorer and I had to send 2 requests for support before somebody contacted me this morning with a known error:
The Skype add in to Internet Explorer has to be upgraded as this is incompatible with the Java Applet that the ATO uses for the digital certificate renewal process.
OK… I think I get it… and lucky me: it worked! That is…. it worked for 1 certificate! Now – I need to do 2 certificates and the process started again:
“General Process Error – An unexpected Error has occurred. Please contact your service desk for technical support” - So I called the Service Desk again… And you know what the answer was? (you’re going to LOVE this one!)
A lot of people are trying to use the renewal system at the moment. The server can’t cope – can you try again later?!?!
WHAT THE?!
Hang on – let me get this straight: the ATO sends renewal notices to a number of business owners (I now suspect I wasn’t the only person who received the email on Saturday). But when these business owners actually renew the certificates, the server can’t cope???
ITIL Demand Management and Capacity Management 1-0-1:
When you send an email to 100 people asking them to renew their certificates…. you need to be able to deliver this service to 100 people – in the unlikely event they ALL decide to renew their certificates at the same time!
If you don’t want this for whatever reason….(I can understand that this might be cost prohibitive) stagger or tier the notification process so you can manage the demand for the service… you can do this! You can schedule emails to go out on different days to alleviate the demands for service and spread it out over a longer period of time.
Maybe the ATO needs some TLC from The Art of Service… 
I’ll be happy to have a chat to them over a coffee. I’m sure we can work something out and make this world a less stressful place for business owners!
The secret of ITIL Service Level Management is… manipulation! February 25, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: business, capacity management, customer, Demand, IT, IT Service Management, itil, management, service management, SLA
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No, it’s not a bad thing to compare ITIL Service Level Management to manipulation! Basically, what I mean to say is that we as IT professionals know what we want to do and NEED to do to support the business goals and through Service Level Management we make sure we offer our clients and customers options in such a way that they choose what is best for the company and therefore exactly what we wanted!
In my books that is manipulation! Let me explain how I think it works:
- The Service Level Manager needs to figure out what the business needs in relation to IT Support and IT services. The information is collected through discussions with the customers, Business Relationship managers and Demand Manager. Based on this information an analysis is done on the future trends for the business and how IT can best support these needs and desires.
- Based on this analysis we develop a service offering, ideally with a number of options for the client. Through technical and financial restrictions we can make some choices more interesting than others. Because we as IT professionals know exactly how this service interacts with the other services and what the corporate consequences are of certain choices. We therefore design a service package that presents the options in such a way that the customer chooses the option which is best for the organization (and easiest and most cost effective for us to manage and support)
without an accurate and up-to-date Service Catalogue, supported by a Configuration Management Database and the strong interaction between Demand Management, Capacity Management and Service Level Management we wouldn’t be able to do this… But now we can!
And trust me… manipulation can be used for good causes as well! It is the secret weapon of ITIL Service Level Management, and it helps to have all our customers working together towards the overall corporate goal.
ITIL Service Strategy: Demand Management, and the top 4 resistance you can expect during implementation January 25, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: business, capacity, Demand, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL expert, ITIL V3, itsm, management, project, service management, SLA, the art of service
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Every process that you implement into the organization, will initiate some form of resistance. A large component of your project planning should revolve around communication, education and awareness. It is through these activities that people in the IT organization AND in the business units start to understand what Demand Management is trying to achieve.
It may take anywhere between 6 months and 2 years before people start to actively believe and evangelize about the benefits of Demand Management, keep that in mind!
Some potential reasons for resistance are listed below:
- Difficulty to produce a service before the demand materializes.
Developing products and keeping them in stock is easy: as long as you have a manufacturing process and the warehouse to store it. With services this might be more difficult. For services you not only need physical assets, but also the capabilities of Human assets. In order to prepare for the delivery of a service you need to train, up skill or employ people with the desired skillset. When the demand is not there yet, these people might feel frustrated because they can’t do the job that they were promised. - Aligning Capacity Production cycles to PBA (Patterns of Business Activity).
This is also a potential area for resistance as the Business processes might be fluctuating more than initially expected. With the help of Demand Management you spend a lot of effort in aligning the Production cycles to (what you think is) the PBA, but all of a sudden the business activities change. This also may lead to frustration of staff members and you will hear the catch phrase “I told you so… this new process doesn’t work!”
- Customer resistance to Demand restrictions
Potential resistance doesn’t only come from within the IT organization, but you can also expect some to come from the business side. Especially since most of the communication around demand and business activities has been between the Business Relationship Manager and the Customer…. Most end-users won’t necessarily have been involved in this process but they will be affected by the potential demand restrictions that are a result of these discussions. This form of resistance can be managed by strong communication messages to all stakeholders, including end-users. - Loss of business growth due to too many restrictions
One of the possible challenges that you may face is that the Demand Manager will be a bit ‘too enthusiastic’ about the way the process is implemented. The process and associated controls go from one extreme to the other (being from no formal demand restrictions at all to too many restrictions). The pendulum needs to swing to a happy medium where the business is supported in its growth strategies by appropriate demand restrictions and controls. This issue won’t happen as clearly when the Service Level Packages are clearly aligned with the desired business outcomes.
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.
What Sao Paulo forgot to do…. (follow on from ITIL Capacity Management) December 8, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in business, cloud computing, itil, itsm.Tags: itil, itsm, business, capacity management, CSI, Demand
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A few days ago I wrote about the license plate based restriction on car use in São Paulo. And you must agree that in theory this sounds like a good idea.
However, what São Paulo forgot to do are the demand forecasting, sizing and modeling activities… The city grew way bigger than expected and so did the use of cars.
So even WITH the restriction traffic is an absolute nightmare. I spoke with one of the federal police people and he mentioned that São Paulo needs at least 450km of public transport lines (mainly metro, tram, train) and they currently have 125km!!
This is part of the problem – walking is not an option as it is too dangerous. Public transport is not an option as there is not enough supply. So people use their car and the taxi system…
So what can we learn from this as IT professionals? Well, I think we can improve the way we do our capacity planning in a number of ways:
- Business focus
Whatever we do in the IT department should be in line with business strategy, business growth and business expectations. At the absolute minimum, review your capacity plan every year. Once we have a solid understanding of the business processes and their patterns of business activity, we can adjust our capacity delivery to support this! - Continual Service Improvement
Things change – and sometimes they change rapidly. So we need to be able to move with the change and to quickly change direction so that we can continue to support the business. This can only happen when we have a structured approach to Service Improvement.
The volatile our industry is, the quicker we need to be able to adjust. Reviewing your capacity plan every year may not be enough – you may want to do this every quarter! - Out of the box
Just like São Paulo really needs more public transport, so do we need to look at other ways of supporting our business. Conventional way not working, not able to respond quickly to changes in demand? Look for different options. There might be outsourcing options, or look into cloud computing options for capacity related flexibility. There are many ways we can deliver our services… we have to be creative to make these delivery options sustainable!
Again, I probably make it sound easier than it is… but it’s certainly food for thought! After all, a happy client pays the bills on time, and that is what we want to aim for as IT providers!
(right?!)
ITIL Capacity Management and Financial Management working together to block business processes December 5, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in business, itil.Tags: capacity, connectivity, cost, Demand, finance, Internet, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3
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I just checked into my hotel in Rio de Janeiro – great location: close to the beach and not too close to the busy streets. As I have to deliver a presentation tonight I wanted to do some work in preparation, so I asked the girl at reception about the internet connection. (normally I have to ask for a cable as I don’t carry one with me)
No problem with the cable as it is wireless internet so she gives me the userid and password for the connection. I am happy as my business processes can continue from my mobile/virtual office. But that happiness quickly vanished when she shouted at me – just before I stepped into the lift on my way to my room – “oh, and internet is charged at $0.20 per minute”
WHAT?!
Wow – that’s a bit steep!! In most hotels it is either free, or you pay anywhere between $18 and $25 per day for connectivity. But 20 cents per minute? Most of my business processes rely in some shape or form on internet connectivity! So that will cost me $12 per hour?! I had to swallow really hard to accept that. But there was no option – it’s this or no internet at all…
So while I walked on the beach it got me thinking: we talk within the ITIL processes of Capacity Management, Demand Management and Financial Management about financial constraints to channel business usage of IT services. But never should it lead to our business people taking walks on the beach because they get really nervous everytime another minute passes and they know they have to pay for it.
Remember – charging models have to be simple, realistic and FAIR. I fail to see how these principles are applied in this particular hotel.
Over and out – I’m turning off the internet now.. this blog has cost me $2.00 already!
