Conference Coverage:- Day 2 - Walking the Halls

Tuesday July 20 – what a day – my feet are starting to complain, reports John Jasinski.

Chicago’s McCormick Center conference hall is huge.

In addition to the break-out educational sessions I’m trying to visit every vendor in the exhibit hall.

Today I attended two educational sessions, two keynote motivational speeches, the annual ITSMF-USA Awards Banquet reviewed new ITSM publications and spoke with several key industry leaders.

Keep in mind theses notes are rough, and intended to be a fast review for those unable to attend. Please excuse if I miss the spell and grammar check, I need to get back to the evening networking sessions at the bar.

The day started early with a Service Level Management (SLM) vendor breakfast focused on SLA’s. The content was ok, but seemed to lack of discussion of real agreement with the customer. It was a good pep talk for SLA’s but it didn’t fit with an understanding that the average IT shop is lagging in defining the customer, let alone gaining an agreement. Those interested in learning more should review the ITIL / OGC Service Delivery and the Business Perspective books.

Next came a light hearted session on how to fail implementing Service Management. The basic position was that Service Management is not rocket science, it merely places well known tasks into a structure and coordination. Don’t get carried away with complexity and ITIL books are only reference materials. For your own continuous Service Management efforts remember the obvious. Tip of the day memorize six key words: Vision, Today, Future, Path, Progress and Momentum. And for bonus points, remember Service Management is not a project, it has no start and no end, it’s a continuous journey.

The following session was back to the future. Two respected ITSMF-USA leaders presented opinions for the next ten years of ITIL. They cited accelerating change based on various converging trends and the view of IT as a commodity. Forecasts for ITIL: remains linked to ITSMF, increasing clarity and prescription, and connection to other best practice frameworks.

Book recommendations from the show: new last month, Introduction to ITIL, an OGC publication summarizing all the ITIL publications. This is must read material for every CIO in the world. It also could be used as a textbook for the Foundation course. ITSMF- USA will also soon be offering single and multi-user CD’s on all OGC ITIL publications, by far the easiest way to get your team on the same page. Watch ITSMF-USA web for details.

Well, tomorrow is another day, enough.

More late Wednesday.

JJ