ITIL Training Zone, ITIL Guides, Free ITIL Foundation Exam Questions, ITIL Service Operation

Hot to Get ITIL Expert Certification Status Online

2011-11-27T10:08:00.000Z

Progressing from Foundation to ITIL Expert can seem a daunting task. So many courses, so many options and lots of ‘pathways’ available to the budding ITIL Expert – and then so many providers and different ways of studying and taking your exams.

It’s a jungle. So, grab your machete and join us – as we take a peek at the online training route to ITIL Expert…

Read How To Achieve ITIL Expert Certification

ITIL Expert Online Training Program

2011-11-11T09:37:00.000Z

Become an ITIL V3 Expert with our Online ITIL Expert Training and Certification Program. 100% Online.

All 5 ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle courses and ‘Managing across the Lifecycle’ (20 ITIL Credits)

Each of the above 6 courses includes: -

* Detailed ITIL Video Tutorials
* Downloadable ITIL Study Guides
* Exercises, Resources and Online ITIL Quizzes
* Practice ITIL Exams with Examiners Rationale
* Online access to the official ITIL® V3 Library
* Personalized Course Completion Certificate
* Ongoing ITIL V3 Expert Tutor Support
* Web based ITIL Exam (two options)
* Lots of free bonus resources such as ITIL Mindmaps

All Delivered online from a dedicated, high speed ITIL Experts Portal – self paced and flexible

Study whenever and wherever you need to: from work, home, customer sites, hotels etc

If you are not ITIL qualified in any way, then we will provide you with online access to our ITIL V3 Foundation course – free of charge.

Learn More about the Online ITIL Expert Training Program.

Online ITIL Expert Training Program

2010-07-13T00:36:00.002+01:00

		Become an ITIL V3 Expert with our Training and Certification Program. 100% Online
		All 5 ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle courses and ‘Managing across the Lifecycle’ (20 ITIL Credits)
		Each of the above 6 courses includes: - Detailed ITIL Video Tutorials Downloadable ITIL Study Guides Exercises, Resources and Online ITIL Quizzes Practice ITIL Exams with Examiners Rationale Online access to the official ITIL® V3 Library Personalized Course Completion Certificate Ongoing ITIL V3 Expert Tutor Support Web based ITIL Exam (two options)
		Delivered online from a dedicated, high speed ITIL Experts Portal – self paced and flexible
		Study whenever and wherever you need to - from work, home, customer site, hotels etc
		If you are only ITIL V2 Foundation qualified, then we will ‘bridge’ you up to V3 - by providing you with the ITIL V2-V3 Foundation Bridge free of charge.
		If you are not ITIL qualified in any way, then we will provide you with online access to our ITIL V3 Foundation course – free of charge.

It’s the complete flexible, online solution to achieving your ITIL Expert status.

Free ITIL V3 Service Operation Guide

2008-09-11T10:58:00.000+01:00

Grab Your FREE Complimentary ITIL V3 Report Now!

Just released - this new 55 page ITIL V3 Design Guidelines Report.

This exclusive new ITIL V3 Resource
has just been released. Contents: -

- 55 Pages packed with real world examples

- 46 Examples of ITIL V3 Service Operation

- Covers all NEW ITIL V3 Processes

- Includes Event and Access Management

- New! "Components of Design Guidelines"

Download Your FREE Copy here - Limited Time Only

FREE ITIL V3 PDF REPORT - Service Operation Guidelines

ISO/IEC 20000 Explained! Free Teleseminar, PDF and Bonus Information.

2008-08-25T16:36:00.000+01:00

ISO/IEC 20000 Explained!

Free access to ISO/IEC 20000 Resources.

As the de-facto standard in IT Service Management Quality, ISO/IEC 20000 continues to grow in importance to anyone delivering IT Service to Clients, Customers and Organizations, I've collaborated with renowned worldwide expert - David Clifford - to bring you this exclusive free information.

In this, the second in the 'Expert' Teleseminar series, I ask David the Top Eleven, most burning questions about ISO/IEC 20000 that readers of the IT Service Blog wanted answers too!

Questions Raised To David:-

1. What exactly is ISO/IEC 20000?

2. Is there any type of defined relationship between ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL?

3. What types of Organizations should seek certification and what are the reasons?

4. What is the eligibility criteria for Organizations seeking ISO/IEC 20000 certification?

5. What is the relationship between scope and eligibility?

6. What are the benefits of ISO/IEC 20000 to an Organization?

7. What is a typical timeframe for achieving certification and what are the costs involved?

8. What is the return on investment (ROI) for achieving ISO/IEC 20000 certification?

9. What skills, education and capabilities are required to successfully obtain certification?

10. Is it more difficult to maintain certification than it is to achieve it first time?

11. What does the future hold for ISO/IEC 20000 in the next five years?

David reveals all the answers and more in this special 65 minutes Teleseminar.

You can register below - for free - to access:-

- 65 Minute Audio Download

- Fully edited PDF Call Transcript

- Free Bonus ISO/IEC 20000 Slide Deck

- Plus access to special links and materials

Access Now

Creating a "Statement Of Service Requirements" - Part One

2007-03-07T04:29:00.000Z

In this special series of articles we look at creating a Statement of Service Requirements (SSR). Over the coming days we will look at what an SSR actually is, why it is important, it's likely content and how you can effectively use one to both procure and execute against your Outsourcing agreements.

The idea for this article series came when I was clearing out the office recently. I usually have a good tidy up in between Christmas and the New Year - but I felt unusually energetic this weekend and the desire to 'de-clutter' my office got the better of me. Anyway, I found (tucked away behind an old printer) a copy of the CCTA's (remember them? Now they're the OGC! You know the owners of ITIL!) 1993 book, "Producing a statement of service requirements".

Way back in the olden days of 1993 this meagre 84 page "book" cost a
whopping $90 (£45 / 60e) but was so packed full of interesting goodies that I
just had to bring it back to life - and use my own interpretation of today's
meaning within a service operation. Sound ok to you?

Great, let's get on with some of the detail...

What is an SSR?

- A Precise and Complete Statement of the Requirements and Constraints for the IT Service to be provided

- An SSR forms the very foundation for a formal procurement of IT Service

- It provides a sound basis for the creation of evaluation criteria and the terms of the contract between a service recipient (or guardian of the service) and the service provider (let's think about an outsourcing deal here).

- An SSR describes the job that Outsourcers need to do. It is accurate, detailed and complete.

- An SSR enables a potential service provider to effectively bid for new service contracts.

- It enables service providers to fully understand what they are getting themselves into; derive an accurate costing model for running the service over time (and so helps them determine their profit!)

- It provides the service guardian with the opoprtunity to compare and contrast multiple prospective bidders in a competitive tender situation; enabling shortlisting and opening up focussed discussions about service requirements.

- It acts as the "definitive reference" (CCTA term) during discussions and ongoing negotiations between provider and guardian.

Why invest the time in producing an SSR?

Make no mistake - creating an accurate and in-depth SSR is tough work and involves detailed extraction of user/business and internal IT/IS requirements. You will need to overcome many challenges in producing one; such as gaining access to the right people, translating business requirements into more refined service requirements and obtaining approval that the completed document is in fact a detailed and accurate 'big picture' statement of what the business needs!

So, an investment in time and energy is definately required.

Why bother? Well, you will produce a document that enables:-

- solid backbone to base discussions, decisions and negotiations on
- effective change managements of the spefici details within the requirements
- fair comparisons between bidding repsonses can be made (protecting your organization from objections from certain bidders who suspect you may be unfair or biased in some way)
- validate what the current incumbant is actually delivering for you today. Even if you stay with your current provider - you want to know that they are hitting all the right spots for you.

What do I need to know about creating an SSR?

- Your business objectives
- Your internal IT / Technology Objectives
- The strategic positioning of your Service Delivery organization within your business
- Resources and skills needed to create an effective SSR
- Understanding of who else to involve (Legal, Business Sponsors, Commercial teams)

Free ITIL Foundation Exam Paper - 40 Free Sample Questions

2006-11-04T12:51:00.000Z

GET THE 'SECRET' ADVANTAGE!

If you are taking your ITIL Foundation Exam very soon - why not give yourself the UNFAIR advantage over other students and obtain this exclusive NEW collection of proven tips, strategies and techniques specifically written for the ITIL Foundation Exam.

This brand new exclusive eBook is packed full of proven strategies, techniques and tips to help ensure you give yourself the best chance possible to pass the ITIL Foundation Exam first time.

With 136 easy to absorb pages you will learn more than 30 step-by-step techniques to help ensure your ITIL Foundation exam success.

This really is the ‘missing element’ from your Foundation revision and the perfect compliment to any training notes or study guides you may already have.

This eBook contains essential information you need to know about how to pass the ITIL Foundation multiple choice exam. This information has been carefully selected, along with worked examples from the syllabus, to create this unique eBook.

Written by a top ITIL Consultant who has proven these techniques time and time again with students he coaches.

Across 12 content packed chapters you will learn: -

• The awesome 3-PASS answering strategy to obtain over 26 points
• Worked examples of ITIL questions and three mistakes you must avoid making!
• Exam jargon demystified: Stems, Options, Qualifiers and Modifiers – Revealed

• How to overcoming the challenges and pitfalls of the ITIL Foundation exam
• How Examiners actually create questions and the secrets you must know
• How to verify you have the correct answer and avoid changing your mind

• The ‘DNA’ of ITIL Foundation questions explained – step-by-step
• How to effectively boost your memory recall using Flashcards
• Five ways to ensure you quickly eliminate incorrect answers
• Three ways to ensure you fully understand the question

• How to quickly overcome exam blackout and anxiety
• How to study four times more effectively
• How to minimize your chances of failure

Multiple Choice Secrets also includes these special bonus resources: -

• One FULL 40 question ITIL Foundation exam – plus answers
• Sample ITIL Flashcards to boost your memory retention
• Free ITSM resources and downloads – worth over $200

This is the PERFECT compliment to your Study guide or Training notes.

Get Your Copy Here --> Give Me The Unfair Advantage

Download A Free ITIL Test Paper --> Free ITIL Foundation Exam

CMDB: A Long Road to ITIL's Return-On-Investment?

2006-10-11T00:53:00.000+01:00

CMDB: A Long Road to ITIL’s Return-On-Investment?
By John Worthington.

A key concept of ITIL’s best practice for IT Service Management is obviously to focus on Services, from the business’ perspective (read business process). So this means that Citrix, Web front-end infrastructures, and even SAP are not technically services, but segments of end-to-end services that make sense to IT (not IT’s customer). Supply chain, logistics, sales accounting, might be more likely to be considered services from the business perspective.

So, ITIL defines core Service Support and Service Delivery processes and suggests roles and responsibilities that can cross organizational silos and begin to treat IT from a services orientation. People, Process and Products (tools) become part of an overall Continuous Service Improvement Program (CSIP).

It does not take long for customers to learn that a key area and challenge will be the establishment of a Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB).

As most ITIL-ers know, the key difference between a CMDB and an asset management system is that the CMDB also contains relationships between Configuration Items (hardware, software, et al).

Establishing the relationships between components for an end-to-end business service is a big challenge. In fact, some tool vendors are selling ‘automated’ dependency mapping as a standalone product.

In fact, the costs associated with CMDB tools can be very significant both in terms of hardware/software and implementation. Placing this cost burden too early in an ITIL deployment can sour management on the overall benefits of the ITIL implementation, with the potential to mortally wound the program before it really gets anything going. This is especially true for tool-driven implementations.

Some customers implementing ITIL best practice have quickly become engrossed in the mud associated with detailed data base design efforts, in an attempt to make sure the CMDB is designed properly and anticipates the entire organizations’ needs.

While CMDB design is important, this can drag out the implementation of ITIL significantly.

In addition, it tends to focus the customers attention towards Change and Configuration Management tools and on service segments, rather than end-to-end business processes. This is the attempt to “eat the elephant in small bites” philosophy. This can delay true business alignment which is a fundamental objective of IT Service Management.

To make matters worse, in many organizations most of the costs of IT are spent in isolation and diagnosis on problems in n-tier infrastructures. Focus on CMDB design and ‘rapid’ implementation of Change and Configuration management, across only some segments of the end-to-end service infrastructure (read silos) - may not help accelerate ROI and business alignment fast enough to meet the needs of the business. In addition, even the most robust Change/Config tool may not isolate a problem. It also has the potential to drive the decision for a CMDB tool sooner than the organization is really ready.

Finally, so much focus on Service Support puts opportunities to leverage Service Delivery processes on a back burner. This almost exclusive focus on Service Support actually compounds the delay in ITIL’s ROI since all ITSM processes are inter-related and achievement of the overall Continuous Service Improvement Program goals depend on ALL the process areas being implemented.

Is there another (faster) road?

While there are no shortcuts to proper design and construction of a CMDB, there may be other opportunities to accelerate the ROI associated with implementing best practice.

I have worked with a partner who has been providing customers with an “EasyEVAL Program” for over a year, as a somewhat traditional approach to evaluating software. Typically, a customer identifies a target segment (Citrix, Web, etc.) of a service and excersizes the software in this environment. The usual software sales pitch…

However, customers could be missing an opportunity to put real VALUE in these eVALUations. I have seen clients quickly establish a services-oriented CDB (not really a CMDB), that contains many of the exact relationships that the CMDB will require. We have done this in some pretty complex environments in less than a week. The file containing these dependencies could be exported to the team responsible for populating the CMDB however our focus has been on establishing cross-silo baselines of performance across an end-to-end business service.

For most customers, the compelling aspect of the technology is a patented data flow and dependency based correlation technology that essentially automates the triage process that occurs as customers attempt to isolate n-tier infrastructure problems, directly addressing a significant source of costs for many IT shops. However, it also greatly has accelerated the IT staff’s orientation from silos to services, via a unique and very simple user interface.

The company’s willingness to conduct proof of concepts across n-tier business services is a real opportunity for customers to quickly obtain a clear definition of the service dependencies and a performance base line across every layer of every tier of a business service.

So, go ahead and take the proper steps to carefully plan your CMDB and choose your vendor carefully. However, in the meantime don’t pass an opportunity to leverage the potential to establish a service oriented CDB, automate the triage process, accelerate the paradigm shift to a service orientation and help discover CMDB application dependencies; especially when this can be done as a POC or small consulting engagement!

Even if the tool is not selected, the result will be a more effective CMDB selection and acceleration of ITIL’s ROI at the same time. I’d be interested in other comments on how performance management tools and/or the CDB is complimenting ITIL implementations.

For more information - click MyServiceMonitor

John M. Worthington
IT Service Management Consulting
MyServiceMonitor, LLC.

John holds both a Manager’s Cert and a Practitioner Cert in Release & Control.

Free ITIL Resources

2006-10-01T15:42:00.000+01:00

Free ITIL Resources...

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, Free PDFs, Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/ - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/11/secrets-of-passing-multiple-choice.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/10/leveraging-cross-silo-base-lines-to.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, Free PDFs, Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/11/creating-statement-of-service.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/10/kickstart-your-itil-implementation-or.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/10/real-world-itil-implementation-tips.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/10/evergreen-systems-launches-assessment.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/08/ready-to-create-your-it-service.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/10/seven-sources-of-problems-full-url.html - Similar pages

Dr. ITiL: Free ITIL Guides, PDFs, and Sample ITIL Foundation Exam ...
ITIL, free ITIL, articles, process guides, information, advice, ITIL foundation, exam questions.dritil.blogspot.com/2005/10/it-service-delivery-were-right-in.html - Similar pages

IT Governance - The Six Keys To Effectiveness

2006-09-25T10:00:00.000+01:00

IT Governance - The Six Keys To Effectiveness.

IT compliance helps companies to deal with the day to day complexities that come with managing infrastructure and assets. IT governance solutions help companies to make sure that the right people have responsibility for key decisions within the business, and that there is a lot of input from others who have relevant knowledge or skills to move the business forward.

Successful IT governance organization performers generally possess six distinctive characteristics including:-

[] Possessing strongly defined business strategies including customer relationship management, innovative product and service delivery and a commitment to operational excellence all link bank to IT compliance to ensure that future business strategy and operations run effectively and efficiently

[] Ensuring that the company focuses on specific objectives for making and maintaining IT investments as part of a wider IT governance plan, including improving product quality, reducing time-to-market for product development and improving employee collaboration and participation

[] Ensuring high-level and consistent executive participation in IT governance management and the creation of IT governance solutions as evidence shows that companies that have higher executive participation in IT governance management, also have more consistent attainment of corporate goals and targets

[] Implement an IT governance plan, monitor it annually and make as few changes as possible. Studies show that stability in IT governance solutions and processes are vital in ensuring business success and too many changes make it harder for business executives to understand how IT governance operates and how IT compliance can actually help the business perform optimally

[] Ensure that the company can implement IT compliance strategy and process changes to support desirable behaviors and eradicate undesirable behaviors, particularly when something is going wrong

[] Ensure that formal communication methods are established early on and monitored so that they remain effective and efficient.

Companies that perform well in IT governance management always have formal communication methods and mechanisms in place as part of their IT governance plan.

These methods and mechanisms reinforce the fact that IT governance is critical to both business and technology outcomes for the company.

To read more about IT Governance visit here.

Speaking and Presenting with Impact!

2006-09-05T14:26:00.000+01:00

Attention 2005 itSMF Conference Speakers (especially any 'first timers'!)

To some, presenting and talking to a large group of fellow professionals is the most natural thing in the world - to others it is a daunting task!

I have pulled together 7 of the web's very best sites on Effective Presenting and Speaking to provide you with some last minute pointers to help deliver a knock-out presentation talk for your ITIL hungry audience.

The Top 7:-

#1 Essential Presenting Skills – The Three Things You Must Know Now.
Presentation Helper.com
http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/Essential_Presentation_skills.htm

#2 Presenting with Impact – It’s a skill that can be learnt. CEO Online.
http://www.ceoonline.com.au/content/expert_talk/10/877

#3 Public Speaking – The Art of Speechmaking. Impact Factory.
http://www.impactfactory.com/gate/public_speaking_training_course/freegate_1552-1104-88327.html

#4 Presentation Skills – Over 20 Quality Articles.
Presentations.com
http://www.presentations.com/presentations/delivery/speaking_archive.jsp

#5. Do’s and Don’ts for PowerPoint Presentations
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/management/qt/powerptpres.htm

Still can't find what you need?

#6 Links to 10 other Websites. Presenting Tips for Public Speaking.
http://www.aresearchguide.com/3tips.html
(Note:- scroll down to the bottom of the page)

#7 Presentation Helper Forum – Post Your Questions.
http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/Forum/

ITIL Implementation Strategy: Free Resources

2006-08-02T09:38:00.000+01:00

The ITIL Implementation Strategies Teleseminar took place yesterday and I was extremely pleased with how everything went!

Randy Steinberg, my guest for the call, packed tons of great content into the call - covering your top 12 most burning questions.

I would like to acknowledge Randy for his sterling contribution to this event and also thank everyone who sent in their most burning question.

We had so many questions, I had to group them into categories (12 in total) to ensure that we got through the content in the allotted 2 hours.

The 12 questions Randy covered in detail were:-

Q1. How can you best 'sell' ITIL to the board / Senior Management and persuade them that ITIL is the right thing to do in the first place?

Q2. How do you obtain buy-in for ITIL and overcome objections from anti-process colleagues?

Q3. How do you define and measure the ROI of ITIL in order to prove its value?

Q4. How do you maintain momentum and buy-in as the ITIL Implementation programme proceeds?

Q5. What 'soft skills' are required to implement ITIL?

Q6. How do you go about implementing ITIL at the very beginning - from scratch? What are the very fist steps I should take?

Q7. After alert monitoring, alert management and the helpdesk - where should I commence my ITIL implementation programme?

Q8. What are the main reasons why ITIL implementations fail? How can you overcome these reasons?

Q9. Can ITIL be used with other methodologies - such as CoBIT and Six Sigma? If so, how?

Q10. How do you implement ITIL in small (or not-for-profit) Organizations?

Q11. Where do you start to begin implementing the CMDB?

Q12. Where do you start to begin implementing a Service Catalog?

Randy answered all these questions in detail - and then some!

I have made all the following materials freely available to you:-

- Audio Download of the Teleseminar (listen to it on your iPOD!)

- Teleseminar Executive Summary Notes (key bullets of each answer)

- Full transcript of the Teleseminar (professionally edited PDF)

- Online Resource Guide (over 20 accompanying links to PDF's)

Randy also gave away two quality bonus items:-

- The Complete PDF of Chapter Three of his book, "Implementing ITIL", which provides a strategic view of all the key stages of ITIL implementation programmes.

- An ITIL'ized version of the DICE Model (Excel spreadsheet and PDf guide) which helps you to understand the overall chances of success that your ITIL Implementation projects currently face - and how you can improve your chances of success.

To access all of the above material and keep up to date with the release of the mystery bonus resources - you only have to visit:-

Ask The Service Expert

An Introduction To ISO/IEC 20000 - Your Free Guide

2006-07-31T14:01:00.000+01:00

Now, for the first time global Organizations wishing to seek assurances that IT Service Providers and Outsourcers are really “up to the job” have a major weapon in their armoury, namely ISO/IEC 20000. The new internationally fast-tracked IT Service Management Standard.

More and more Organizations wishing to ensure that prospective IT Service Providers are capable and have a track record of delivering quality service are ensuring that ISO/IEC 20000 certification has already been achieved and is capable of being achieved for the boundary of service delivery covering their own organization.

But why ISO/IEC 20000?

It’s important to remember that ITIL is NOT a standard. ITIL has no auditing criteria. Contrary to popular belief ITIL tools cannot be officially regarded as ITIL Compliant. ITIL is a framework of best practice that aims to ensure cost effective, appropriate and quality IT services are delivered. But there’s nothing in ITIL to Audit against. It just wasn’t meant to be that way.

Based totally on BS15000, ISO/IEC 20000 certification and achieving the standard is increasing in popularity, especially in the UK and Europe.

Elsewhere adoption is relatively sparse – but this is subject to change considerably since the ISO released it as ISO/IEC 20000 in December 2005. Now, for the very first time the IT Service Management community has an international standard for auditing and certifying IT Service.
But Organizations must beware of Vendor and Outsourcers claims. The Standard has strict eligibility criteria for IT Service Providers. For example, the IT Service Provider MUST maintain effective management control of all aspects of IT Service and there must be a solid commitment to ongoing Continual Service Improvement.

As a standard, ISO 20000 shows IT how to manage and improve IT while establishing audit criteria. In fact, there are 217 requirements that IT Service Providers must achieve when audited by a Registered Certification Body (RCB). In addition, three months worth of actual recorded information must support the IT Service Providers quest for certification.
ISO/IEC 20000 is currently in two specific parts: -

Part One is ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 => The Specification.

Part Two is ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 => The Code of Practice.

Part one is ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 IT Service Management Specification for Service Management. This provides requirements for IT service management and is relevant to those responsible for initiating, implementing or maintaining IT service management in their organization. Organizations can have their IT service management systems independently certified as conforming to the requirements of ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005. Part 1 also defines the processes and provides assessment criteria and recommendations for those responsible for IT Service Management.

Part 2 is ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 Information technology service management. Code of Practice for Service Management. This gives guidance to internal auditors and assistance to service providers planning service improvements or preparing for audits against ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005. ISO 20000-2 documents a “code of practice” that explains how manage IT with regard to ISO 20000-1 audits.

Both ISO 20000-1 and ISO 20000-2 are related to the ITIL best practice framework. However you DO NOT have to have ITIL implemented to be able to move forward with ISO/IEC 20000 certification. It sure does help though!

ISO/IEC 20000 actually groups many of the core ITIL processes into five core process sets:-

1. Service Delivery Processes – Which includes Service Level Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, Continuity Management, and Budgeting and Accounting (But NOT Costing) for IT Service Financial Management. These are accompanied with Information Security Management and Service reporting.

2. Relationship Processes – There are two key ones to consider, namely, Business Relationship Management and Supplier Management.

3. Resolution Processes - Incident Management and Problem Management.

4. Control Processes -- Change Management and Configuration Management.

5. Release Process -- Release Management.

So, what does ISO/IEC 20000 actually mean?

It means that there is at last a more assured way of Organizations who spend millions of dollars with Service Providers every year, now have an Audit Standard to help them and ultimately their business.

It also means good news for ITIL which is currently undergoing a re-fresh to Version Three. The development of ITIL Version three is paying close attention to ISO/IEC 20000.

With ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 combined, although different and exist to deliver quite separate deliverables, will enable IT Service Providers to march ahead with confidence in their ITT bids and their day to day IT Service Operations.

The development of ITIL into Version Three can only fuel the demand for ISO/IEC 20000 further.

To learn much more about ISO/IEC20000 why not download my free resources.

You can gain access to a free 65 minute audio briefing and PDF download.

Free Registration HERE.

The Lost World Of Problem Management

2006-07-31T11:01:00.000+01:00

Karen Ferris' excellent article is here and it helps to uncover the lost world of problem management.

Karen points out, quite rightly, that many organizations think they are doing Problem Management when in fact they are managing major incidents.

So, if you think you know about Problem Management, have you got the answers to these questions ?

- What's the main difference between Incident and Problem Management ?

- What skills and people are required to run a great Problem Management function ?

- How can Problem Management ROI be demonstrated ?

Read the full article to find out for yourself (just you make sure you got the right answer ;> )

Download the Full PDF Here

Dr ITIL's Diagnosis and prescription

2006-07-31T08:50:00.000+01:00

Diagnosis Of Common issues Affecting Many Organizations Today.

"Firefighting", "too busy" and seeing repeat problems time and time again are all symptoms of a stressed or innefficent IT Service Management environment. Specifically, these include:-

*Stress - too many incoming problems generated by the production environment for the number of people available to handle the problems

*Innefficiency - correct amount of people available but those people are not trained/practicing best practice

*Lack of knowledge, appreciation and understanding - The people and teams who support the production environment are not structured correctly around the ITIL process descriptions, which are there to underpin the IT strategy (which should have a clear line of sight to the overall business strategy). The people lack experience in identifying multiple and/or repeat problems. The incident management process is not closing down and categorising incidents and known errors correctly - so you need to look further up the "food chain" to the Service Desk and level one support team operations.

Prescription.

1. Take the temperature down.

The goal here is to attack the worst offending problems first, eradicate some of them quickly and "buy yourself" some valuable thinking/planning time.

If you don't do this you will move from one fire to the next.

Some thoughts...

- Identify where the sources of pain are regularly coming from. Track the "Top 10" problems by impact on the business/operation and also by frequency of occurence. Produce these reports and trend them by week, month, quarter and eventually year.

- To do this effectively you will need to correctly label your problems by categorising them properly (severity / priority / impact / cost of occurence / cost to close down etc).

- Focus more support team activity on understanding exactly why these occur in the first place using true root cause analysis techniques. More people onto temporary assignments. Use overtime. Backfill 'regular' roles with temps. Create new "task forces" designed to attack these problems.

2. Make elimination a part of everyday life.

The goal here is to build into the day to day operation all those activities that need to take place to effectively DO Problem Management.

- Examine the Service Desk, Incident Management and Problem Management functions. Look at the flow of different types of incidents through these functions and (i) ensure that simple incidents are in fact resolved early on (say by the Service Desk), (ii) check that the incident management function is correctly categorising your problems. Without this the volume of problems being pushed through to Problem Management will always stay overbearing.

- Establish (if you have not already done so) a separate and independent Problem Management team. It should be independent from the Service Desk and all support teams. Give this function some 'real teeth' and management support. Empower the people who work in this team to "do whatever it takes" or "no door is closed" when assertively trying to eliminate problems from production. Enable the team to talk to and freely communicate with suppliers, internal support teams and managers to drive forward the Problem Management agendga. From this description you can see that strong communicators and relatively assertive people are best for this role.

- Track progress every day. "What gets measured - gets attended too". Publish daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly reports - not just on how many different types of problems you experienced - but what the teams did to prevent future recurrences.

3. Establish the continuous improvement mindset across the IT organisation.

- To deliver world class service, you need world class delivery processes/tools and most importantly people. It's people who make the ultimate difference.

- Hardwire the results and achievements of Problem Management (I.E. reduction of repeat and high impacting problems) into everybody's in-box, across IT, in the correct way.

- Help people understand how they "fit in" to what Problem Management are striving to achieve. E.g Project managers can deliver new releases with minimal (but known) errors and assist by improving future deliveries through improved testing and/or original build quality.

- Let all the project managers KNOW how their release did, say, for the first six weeks after the release. There are many more examples across the IT organisation.

* KEY *

- Recognise and reward progress. It's people that make service happen - not tools or technology. So make sure that management recognise and reward people for a 'great job' done. Afterall every problem permanently resolved means a cost saving to the business/organisation in some way. It also means that attention can shift to the next problem on the list. Recognition also reinforces the reality that Problem Management is vital and sends out the right message to other teams within the IT organisation.

THINGS TO AVOID

- "Hero" mentality. Too many people actually get a buzz out of firefighting and actually enjoy the adrenaline rush it creates! Watch closely the next time some major incident occurs. There are probably groups of people huddled over PC screens busily discussing the problem - often far more than should be involved. It's infectious and eats up a tremendous amount of the organisations time. Time is money. The "Hero" mentality also physically drains people (adrenalin effect) and they will often be troughing their performance level for hours if not days after a major incident.

- Upsetting the Technical folks. Technical specialists do not enjoy Service Management people wandering around and 'poking their noses in' where it's not really welcome. Problem Management have a tough job to perform - so it's vital that they strike up and maintain solid real-life working relationships with the other teams. Firm - but fair. The Techie folks should be subtly reminded each week/month (via reports) that if it was not for Problem Management then they would actually spend more time on repeat (boring!) incidents. So Problem Management must be seen as a benefit to the organisation/business as well as to the internal Service/support/techie teams. Having said all this sometimes you have to break down doors when the heat is on and this means being demanding and/or going over people's heads to get the job done. Be careful when Problem Management need to use these cards.

- Upsetting Suppliers. In the long run, most Supplier managers are agreed. You don't get anywhere 'bashing' suppliers with the perverbial stick. The best approach is (a) have sound contracts in place to fall back on [note - if you have to refer to the contract every incident - that's a sure sign that the relationship is in trouble!], (b) nurture true business relationships based on mutual respect and an understanding that you are trying to deliver the best you can for the same organisation/business and (c) People who have been previously bashed are far less likely to step-up and risk getting bashed again. I.E. You never know when you need a particular skills set or person in the future.

- Solving the whole organisations problems. The function is not the agony aunt of the business or the technology department. Ensure that Problem Management have a clear mandate and scope so that it is not used as a scapegoat for legacy issues/political agenda's that are found in most organisations. Keep the Problem Management team focussing on reducing business impact of repeat problems.

Bottom Line:- Problem Management is vital. It saves money. It prevents time wastage. It's difficult to set-up and establish. It needs the right kind of people working within it. Right skills, right knowledge, right level of authority.

What are the Critical Success Factors for ITIL ?

2006-07-28T17:07:00.000+01:00

Much of what has already been written about ITIL is based on the premise that it's some kind of 'magic wand' or 'silver bullets' that will quickly improve and bolster an organizations service delivery capability.

Unfortunately, this ITIL consultant knows different.

Let's begin with a tour of the critical success factors for ITIL and I will highlight key considerations as we go.

The purpose is to quickly establish that implementing, running and improving an ITIL based service delivery organization is just as hard work, if not more, than one that has never been near ITIL.

The benefits, as we shall see, however make this all worth while.

Critical Success Factors for ITIL:-

- Proven best practices used by many top private and public companies that delivered results.

- It gives a good structure for the organisation as far as development of processes and procedures.

- Increased knowledge on the processes and systems across departments and offices.
Consistency in the use of processes and procedures.

- Better tracking, increased customer service, management control quality product and services

- Increased moral and better adaptation to change.

- Alignment to business need.

- Management and staff belief in ITIL vision.

- Required budget available.

- Plan that provides regular stream of wins during implementation.

- Building on existing practices rather than starting anew.

- Common terminology and definition of processes and functions is the primary success factor.

- Repeatability.

- No need to re-invent the process flow.

- Good base information.

- Clearly defining the processes.

- Monitoring the performance of processes.

- Reviewing and improving.

- Standardisation.

- Comprehensiveness.

- Relatively easy to understand.

- Adaption of common processes.

- Ability of an organisation to compromise and accept standards.

- Support from upper management.

- Establishing culture of service management.

- Ability to build and maintain configuration database.

- Understanding what your services are.

- Building a reasonable cost model.

- Understanding how the framework can be applied to your business.

- Reduce data duplication and redundancy.

- Improve process understanding.

- A foundation against which to measure.

- Buy in and tailoring Support from senior management/CIO.

- Training for all/most IT staff.

- Evangelise.

- Demonstrate to business the benefits of user pays.

- Do it better/ Do it cheaper than competitors.

- Management support from the top.

- Effective leadership and desire for improvement is fundamental.

- There must be a real, communicatable vision with the realistic timeframes set.

- A organisational change management program is essential.

- The business also has to be willing to embrace change and possess a holistic view of the benefits to be gained over the long term, not just immediate.

- The framework is there, it is best practice, you can talk to others about their experiences as it is.

- Cost savings.

- Service Continuity.

- Increased assurance is provided to the business that processes are in place to give an efficient and business focussed IT Service.

- ITIL describes very well the relationship between processes and brings an organisational focus to the work of individuals.

Welcome To A Wealth Of FREE ITIL Information!

2006-06-14T14:09:00.000+01:00

A special welcome message...

Hi, my name's Robin Yearsley and I've been involved in IT and IT Service Management for over 15 years now, specializing in ITIL for the last ten years.

How times have changed!

I originally started Dr. ITiL in February 2005 with the sole intention of hunting down quality ITIL information and posting it for the benefit of 'newbies' and experts alike.

It's difficult to believe looking back now, but there used to be a distinct lack of valuable free content - in fact - Dr. ITiL was the first and only Blog running that was dedicated to ITIL!

As you know, all that's changed now and there are a wide variety of excellent Blogs, sites, articles and RSS news channels appearing almost every week.

I have also changed my approach to Blogging about ITIL and developed a more focussed new Blog which covers more advanced ITIL and ISO / IEC 20000 articles.

So in January 2006, I decided to 'cease' any new posts.

So, is this the end for the Dr. ?

Interestingly, Dr. ITiL still receives over 10,000 page views each month from all corners of the globe and is very well ranked within Google.

I guess it must still be proving useful to many ITIL people wishing to learn more about specific topics - so I've decided to give 'him' a gentle spring clean and leave all the articles in tact.

Please accept my apologies for any broken links - obviously things change on a daily basis across the Web - but I'll do my best to keep things useful!

However, using a clever mixture of searching through the Google Bar and clicking on Links in the Categories Side Bar, you can find wonderful examples of ITIL process guides, ITIL templates, ITIL PDF's and sample reports on just about every ITIL topic you can imagine.

Everything's FREE! I've always maintained that policy for this Blog.

I hope you find what you need... if you don't chances are you can find it below...

ITIL RESOURCES

NEW! If you're interested in learning more about ITIL, CoBIT, ISO/IEC 20000 and want free access to materials on ITIL Version Three Refresh - please visit my new Blog here.

New! If you would like to learn more about ITIL Implementation Strategies, including step-by-step proven techniques that work in real-life, then visit here.

Just Updated! If you need access to free ITIL Foundation Exam Questions, Exam Tips and Strategies - plus several free guides, presentation packs and white papers, visit here.

Wishing You Great Service!

Robin Yearsley.

Top Tips For Passing The ITIL Managers (Masters) Exams

2006-06-02T12:34:00.000+01:00

Achieving the ITIL Service Managers Certificate is a big challenge that should not be under estimated.

Let me tell you why...

1. It's usually delivered in two parts by training providers; week one for service support, then a few gaps weeks (varies by training provider) and then week two for service delivery. By week, I mean five solid days education and sample questions.

2. There is also a lot of content delivered during the two weeks and to commit to memory.

3. The actual exams consist of two written papers, each three hours long. Therefore exam technique and actually being able to write coherently for six hours is essential!

Therefore my tips for success if you are taking the certification soon are these:-

* Review and re-learn the ITIL essentials BEFORE you even start the course. Go there fully revised and prepared! This head start is critical!!

* Use the actual two course weeks to learn about the "interfaces" between the different processes and to soak up the more advanced material – not the basics. You should know these ‘going in’.

* Practice learning and writing from memory the core essentials of all processes:- definition, benefits, challenges, core process steps, metrics, reporting, people roles, interfaces with other processes.

* Also try to get hold of some sample questions from your training provider in advance of the course (or from EXIN). Get a feel for the types of questions asked.

* In advance of your exams - practice writing each day. It sounds a bit daft - but when was the last time you actually wrote anything for more than a few minutes!? I know I type nearly everything these days! Get your writing hand used to working, and use muscle relaxation techniques to warm-up and warm-down. I promise you - this will make the difference when you actually do the exams.

* Think through how best to use the time in between the two weeks of education. Should you revise what you've learnt - or - focus more on what's coming up?

* When you're actually doing the course - set yourself some basic disciplines like getting up in time for breakfast and doing some light revision of the previous days activities. Set aside some reading time before you go to sleep to maximize the time that information is flowing around your brain overnight.

* Some of your marks are based on an in course assessment these days. It's wise to maximize the points you get on this to give you the very best chance of success.

* Exam technique is also worth remembering. Know the difference between exam questions like: "Contrast", "Explain", "Compare", "Highlight" and so on. Each has slightly different and subtle meaning.

To close, what do the people who mark our papers think?

Did you know - examiners most commented statements when marking papers are:-

- The Hand writing is impossible to read
- The student did not answer the question asked (but answered what they 'thought' was asked)
- The student re-gurgitated a lot of information - but it was not asked for!

I hope these tips provide some advance ‘food for thought’ and if you are sitting your papers soon – I wish you the very best of success!

Great Service!!

Robin.

PS - Looking for ITIL Guides and Revision Materials? Visit the IT Service Blog Now!

Free Access to Hundreds of Articles!

2005-11-24T14:32:00.000Z

If you're relatively new to Dr. ITiL, you may now know that we have hundreds of quality articles, posts and hot links hiding within the depths of our archives.

We've covered just about every ITIL topic over the last eight months, writing nearly every day, and always trying to bring you something fresh and different - at zero cost.

Try the Google Search Boxes that are scattered around the site.

You can find articles on:-

- ITIL adoption
- ITIL Implementation Tips
- ITIL process maps
- ITIL tools
- Problem Management
- Change Managment
- Incident Management
- Service Desk
- Configuration Management
- CMDB
- ITIL Foundation Exams
- Free Exam Questions
- e-TOM
- Cobit
- Six Sigma and ITIL

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

Completing the Seven Critical Areas of an SSR

2005-11-24T13:29:00.000Z

We have introduced the SSR model, talked about it's benefits and looked at the first three areas - so today we are going to complete our review of the content of an SSR by looking at areas 4 through 7.

4. Service Specification

- Service Specific Requirements. List the services to be provided by the provider to meet the previously specified business requirements. For example:- The provider must provide a Service Desk Service that will receive, record, track, escalate, monitor, record, coordinate inform and resolve end-user system incidents and work requests.

- Service Levels. The provider must meet the performance targets for the services listed. For Example:- In the Service Desk function - the provider must provide a service from 0800 Monday through 1800 Friday. Additionally, the provider must resolve x% of all incoming calls/e-mails within y minutes.

- Performance Measurement. Performance will be measured against the service level targets specified above. For example here are three performance attributes:-

Timeliness - degree of success in meeting deadlines or milestones
Responsiveness - ability to react to a single event within a given time
Capacity - ability to handle the required workload or volumes successfully

Additional key points:-

~ The provider must monitor and measure service levels for all services it provides

~ The provider will take positive action to prevent and correct out of line service situations

~ The provider will provide weekly and monthly reports to prove the efficiency and effectiveness of Service Delivery to performance standards

- Security and Audit.

~ The provider must adhere to (or introduce) appropriate security, confidentiality and access controls to protect the integrity and continuity of service

~ The provider must comply to all necessary laws, including data protection acts

~ The provider must give access and disclosure to internal auditors to provide independent assurance that delivery meets required performance standards

- Sustainability. In the event of a service failure, the provider must restore service in accordance with agreed procedures and authorizations. The provider must supply a level of resilience, contingency and robustness to safe guard against known and reasonable causes of disruption to service. The provider will provide, in the event of a disaster, a known and well executable plan to restore service within agreed timeframes.

- Transition, Start-up and Acceptance. Services will have to be transferred to the new provider in a controlled and planned fashion. The plan should contain all the principle activities that will achieve a successful transfer without any disruption or degradation of service performance. The provider can be invited to share best practices in transitioning in new service, since they will ultimately have a lot more quality experience in this activity.

5. Service Management

This section contains three principle functions:-

- Roles and Responsibilities. A contract manager should be appointed to act as the single point of contact and coordinate all key activities. A Service Manager underpinned by an appropriate management and team structure should be installed. A list of responsibilities between the provider and the receiving organization should be drawn up to provide clarity. Providers should recruit, train and maintain appropriate skills and capabilities throughout the life of the contract. Controls, checkpoint meetings and management sign-off is necessary to monitor and track successful progress throughout transition.

- Management Review Process. An internal Contract/Vendor Manager will meet regularly with the provider to review and help improve the overall quality and performance of service. Typically a monthly service review meeting will achieve this. The emphasis should be on rapid resolution of service issues, prevention of incidents, cost control/reduction and the progress of various service improvement initiatives. A formal record of these meetings; including actions taken and progress made should be kept. Additionally Audit and Major Review Meetings should be proactively scheduled across the calendar year to review and approve compliance with the SSR. Reasonable access and disclosure agreements should also be known and agreed to in advance of any sign off.

- Change Control. Changes to the Service comes from two possible sources: change that is within the bounds of the SSR agreement, and significant change that requires the provider to perform significant additional work - not covered under the terms of the existing contract. In both cases the provider must provide a suitable method for impact assessment to identify issues and risks and work to enact the change with no (or limited yet known) impact to ongoing Service.

6. Constraints.

This area will specify the constraints that providers will have to take into account when creating their proposals for an SSR.

- Service Contraints. These items will limit the ability of either the receiver or provider to undertake their service delivery duties. Examples include:- named staff and staff displacement, staff turnover and attrition rates, internal policies and procedures, differences in legal requirements between countries where the service is delivered, recruitment of a providers staff member and staff security clearance levels. These should all be investigated.

- Standards. Providers must adhere to certain standards depending on the accreditation levels and requirements of the organization. Examples include: BS17799 and BS15000 (soon to be ISO 20000). The provider must indicate the extent to which their systmes, methods and procedures have met these requried standards and of course evidence in the form of a certificate should always be requested and inspected visually.

- Contractual Matters. Details of contractual matters are beyond the scope of this article, however the British Computer Society offer these Top Ten Tips for Contracts and companies such as Proposal Kit offer low cost information to help you scope out and list your requirements in this area.

7. Instructions to Outsourcers / Vendors / Providers

It is important, especially whne you are going to receive multiple bids from multiple providers that the approach, guidelines and instructions are clearly laid out and adhered to throughout the bid process. From a legal perspective, some providers may cry "cheat", if they feel that they have not been allowed to bid in line with other bidders. Key items here include:-

- Time table for procurement. Steps taking us from initial announcement through to: bidders conference, bid evaluation, negotiation of draft contracts, invitation of offers, invitation of best and final offers, shortlisting, final review, award of contract and commencement of implementation.

- Format for Proposals. Failure to conform to these standards will lead to the providers bid being rejected outright such is the importance of this section. Format items include things like: electronic V's hard copy, bindings, layout, page numbering, paragrpah numbering, labels, whether a response if madatory, informational or just for back ground.

- Terms and Conditions. Provider must meet all requierments and specify to what level they will meet these requirements. The receiver of the service cannot be held responsible for the method and actions of the provider.

- Further Information. Additional information, to support the bid, may be necessary. A separate section should be reserved for this information to avoid clutter and complexity within the main body of the SSR.

Next time we will look at the three major pitfalls of implementing SSR's within your organization.

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

The Seven Critical Areas of an SSR (Statement of Service Requirements)

2005-11-23T07:14:00.000Z

There are seven critical content areas for a statement of service requirements to help ensure that it is complete, accurate and serves its purpose as a basis for negotiation with both the business lines and your potential outsourcers.

In summary these are:-

Introduction
Background
Scope
Specification
Service Management
Constraints
Instructions to service providers

Let's take some time now to examine in more detail the possible contents in the first three areas of an SSR.

1. Introduction

- Purpose

- Composition / Outline of Contents / Summary of main drivers

- General Information / Company / IT Service Challenge / Cost reduction / Value Improvement

- Background / Leading up to the production of this SSR

- Nomenclature / e.g. paragraphs marked "M" are madatory requirements ("D" = desirable, "I" = information)

2. Purpose

- Outline the content of any supporting appendices / material

- Outline the business objectives / why you are doing this

- Key business requirements to be supported

- Testing objectives / what has to happen before you feel confident enough to transfer / go-live

3. Scope of the SSR

- Services Included

- Services Excluded (and why)

- Service options/additions that you will consider

- Relationships with other named providers

- Current relationship with the incumbant service provider

Not all of this information is readily to hand and may require some focussed effort to research and compile it. In the above example content it would also be advisable to have a business representative as part of the SSR creation team.

In the next article, we will explore the remaining four areas of an SSR as well as look at how to implement one into your organization.

To understand the background to SSR's in more detail you can reasearch more and gain access to free information such as free whitepapers, example templates and vendors vist here

Additional Resources

Education Paper - "Root Cause Analysis for Beginners"

2005-11-17T00:25:00.000Z

By James R. Rooney and Lee N. Vanden Heuvel.

[From the July 2004 issue of Quality Progress, published by the American Society for Quality.]

Would you like the low down on Root Cause Analysis Techniques - starting from the very beginning - but building quickly into a comprehensive guide?

The excellent "Root Cause Analysis For Beginners" will take you through the definitions, four major steps, presentation of results and how to use graphical presentation to get your point across.

"This picks up where ITIL Problem Management left off".

>>Access the White Paper Here<<

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

Free Pre-Course Resources For the ITIL Foundation Exam

2005-11-15T15:25:00.000Z

Over at www.FoundationSuccess.com we've just activated a new sidebar resource section containing free ITIL materials suitable to support your Foundation training and studies:-

- ITIL Introductory Presentations/PDFs
- ITIL Overview Guides
- ITIL Primer with Images
- Sample Exam Questions and Answers
- How to improve your Multiple Choice Success!

It's ideal for people who are just about to go on their ITIL Foundation Training or take their Exam Online.

Visit www.FoundationSuccess.com to help you pass the ITIL Foundation Exam.

How To Pass the ITIL Foundation Multiple Choice Exam

2005-11-11T06:57:00.000Z

Did you know that multiple choice exams, especially the ITIL Foundation Exam, are actually quite tricky to pass - especially if you are an experienced Service Professional and you have studied carefully!!

Several, long-time Service Managers, have reportedly failed because they 'read too much into the answers' or they 'tried to apply what they know from their own experience - rather than the ITIL material'. They reported that they 'listened' to their own inner voices too much and basically talked themselves out of the right answer!!

Let me explain a bit more...

Multiple Choice Exam Questions are structured in several different ways with a root question and several possible branch answers.

For example, look at this question...

Q1. Which of these tasks are regarded as proactive?

1. Collecting statistics regarding Known Errors.
2. Reviewing incident and problem analysis reports to identify trends.
3. Preventing problems in one service being replicated in another.
4. Identifying the root cause of incidents.

A. l & 4.
B. 1,2 & 3.
C. 2 & 3.
D. l & 3.

You have to read each possible Answer A to D and then validate each statement carefully. Then, through elimination determine the correct answer.

What do you think the answer is?

But what if you are 'stuck' between two answers. What if your inner voice tells you that both answers are correct? How can you quickly rationalise your thinking and get to the right answer?
Well, researchers have produced quite a lot of useful material on this topic and I have painfully distilled it into just three special articles.

You can reach them here...

www.foundationsuccess.com

New! The above link now includes a FREE Exam Paper - Ready to download.

That's 40 full exam questions, plus the answers at the back.

Great for revising and practising!

Foundation Success is the new Blog that's dedicated to providing ITIL Foundation students with key tips, hints and insights into studying for and taking the multiple choice exam.

Oh, the answer was C by the way!

SLA's, OLA's, Contracts and Self-Service - Where are the Hotspots?

2005-11-10T05:57:00.000Z

You may remember a few articles ago that we covered the the basics of the "business adapter" layer and talked about process standardization, in the context of Service Delivery.

Click here if you need a refresher.

In today's article we explore the topics of Service Level Agreements, Operational Level Agreements, Contracts and something critical that's invasive on your ability to deliver a defined service to your business - technology enabled self-service.

We have highlighted additional quality links for you to click through to - if you need to know the detail about the three terms, and the differences between them.

HotSpot #1 - Correctly Defining Your SLA.

It is ESSENTIAL that your SLA is clearly and correctly defined, drawn up, agreed to and implemented in the knowledge that your Service delivery Organisation is geared up to deliver to these specifications - from day one. In your Customer's eyes a Service Delivery organization is often only as good as it's last mistake. With the focus firmly on the ability of your delivery organization's capability to execute to agreed standards - you really are in the spotlight from day one. Many delivery functions may temporarily 'gear up' to assure delivery to standards in the early days/weeks. This over resourcing may seem excessive but it will help to overcome minor teething challenges in the early days - especially when you execute against items in the SLA for the first time in the 'real world' e.g. month end SLA reporting.

To assist in the clear definition and agreement to the SLA - most delivery organizations now temporarily employ the services of an "intelligent business representative" - someone who has all round knowledge of the business operation that can critique the content of the SLA and ask tough questions in advance of the SLA being signed. The business representative will assist in clearly drawing up the SLA in business terms; something that usually the business has little time (and inclination) to do in-depth and, if we're honest, something that the IT Service Organization often struggles with due to a lack of detailed business process knowledge. Overall, this is an extremely effective way of 'future thinking' and often prevents issues before they impact your business... and your own organizations credibility.

HotSpot #2 - The hidden 'Overlap' between OLA's and Contracts.

Like it or not - there are conflicts of interest and hidden overlaps (in terms of people and time) between your OLA's and Contracts (delivered by Vendors).

This is an area that the next version of ITIL will help to resolve since the forthcoming new books will be written to address the very real challenges of internal V's external sourcing, when to outsource and operating in a multi-sourced environment.

The key overlap lies with your internal technical and service folks. Oftentimes they are drawn between two simultaneous pressures:- servicing the internal OLA's and supporting/liaising with suppliers against their contract delivery. If you view your organizations people/staffing structure and place a yellow dot against anyone involved in OLA's and then place an orange dot against anyone involved in supporting suppliers (in their ability to deliver agaisnt their contract) - then you may be surprised just how much this pressure is apparent in your organization. Ask your technical support manager to perform the same exercise and he may tell you a more interesting story!

To address this pressure you may wish to review:- separation of duties, assurance of vendors call on internal people's time and the extent that this overlap actually exists in your organization.

Hotspot #3 - The Control of Technology Enabled Self-Service.

Finally, we come to a more modern phenomenon - the evolution and rapid integration of self-service technology. This is the technology that your businesses true-end Customers use everyday to fulfill their requirements (in full or in part) as a result of dealing with your business.

Pseudo-Technology organizations have been breeding in business units like rabbits around such applications as automated ticketing, ARU's, Booth's and loyalty card systems for the past five years now. Get back-to-the-floor for a day and ascertain what percentage of your IT support team effort is spent on underpinning or indirectly supporting these pseudo business/technology organizations. Perhaps it's time that your Service Delivery Organization re-gained control and absorbed the pseudo-technology resources (from the business areas) back into the core of your IT / Technology Division?

Additional (and useful!) Resources:-

Steve Morgan – PTS Consulting - an excellent presentation pack on Operational Level Agreements; how difficult they are to implement; OLA content and How to Implement OLA's. (via the itSMF):-
http://www.itsmf.com/upload/conference2002/steve%20morgan%20OLA%20presentation.pdf

SLAs and Internal Contracts - an article from "beneath the buzz"; "Forming clear agreements for services and projects, the basis for accountability, teamwork, and resource management"; what goes into SLA's and Contracts:-
http://www.ndma.com/resources/ndm14413.htm

Microsoft – Technet - Service Level Agreements; an excellent resource; in depth details of SLA's and Operational Level Agreements:-
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/mo/smf/smfslamg.mspx#E0NB0AA

Online Self-Service – Excellent Article; benefits of Self Service; Self Service Myths:-
http://www.inin.com/News/PressCoverage/presscoverage.asp?id=221

Reminder of the original article and image... click here for re-fresher

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

Aligning CobiT, ITIL and ISO17799 For Business Benefit

2005-11-10T03:20:00.000Z

Here's a 62 page little gem of a document produced jointly by the OGC and ITGI detailing much more than just how ITIL and ISO17799 maps onto CobiT. It provides a much needed management level guide as to why IT best practices are necessary and how these three best practice frameworks have evolved.

In particular, the detail around the mapping of the three standards is outstanding - a job very well done here.

Attention All Speakers at Brighton Next Week!

2005-11-04T00:22:00.000Z

In August we produced a special article highlighting the Web's best presentation and speaking hints and tips. It was published to coincide with the itSMF US Conference.

The article proved very popular with several of the first time US Conference Speakers.

In advance of next weeks UK itSMF Conference we have decided to re-publish the link.

So, if you a seasoned speaker looking for something new to spark your audiences attention, or you're a first time speaker looking to deliver a knock-out presentation click here to gain free acces to the links you need.

Back To School - Learn ITIL From The Ground Up.

2005-11-03T19:08:00.000Z

Dr. ITIL has just made learning the UK Government's Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) even easier by discovering a wealth of information that's just waiting to be accessed.

Sometimes, the excellent and highly recommended OGC ITIL books are just a little overwhelming and difficult for beginners in Service Management to grasp.

But what if a more rudimentary - but fully complete - set of ITIL based practices existed. What if an entire set of FREE ITIL based processes, procedures, templates, how to guides and other resources lay waiting to be accessed?

Well they are... allow me to explain...

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) is the UK Government's key partner in the strategic development and delivery of its information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning strategy for the schools and the learning and skills sectors in the UK.

Becta has helped develop FITS. This stands for Framework for ICT Technical Support and it is based on ITIL.

ITIL is derived from the collective experiences of ICT technical support providers all over the UK. It represents their learning curve over the last 20 years and has been distilled into a set of common processes applicable to any establishment using ICT.

Becta have applied these processes to UK schools, and FITS is designed to enable you to by-pass all the mistakes commonly made and implement the processes successfully from the start but at a more basic to intermediate level.

The emphasis of FITS is on proactive tasks as well as reactive ones. It views technical support not just as a function responsible for resolving incidents, but as a service provider whose main objective is to prevent incidents from occurring in the first place. We see this as the ultimate goal of technical support and we aim to help you make it happen.

There are many benefits of FITS. Here are just a few.

- It gives you the benefit of hindsight over the last 20-plus years of the development of ICT technical support techniques and is based on ITIL.
- It contains tried and tested processes that have been adapted with the school environment in mind.
- It provides simplified and ready to use processes that can be used immediately.
- It contains templates, checklists and downloads that can be used as they are or personalised.
- It has a quick-start approach to help you make the best use of time and resources available and see quick results.
- It separates administrative tasks and technical tasks to help you assign the most appropriate resources.
- It helps you keep costs to a minimum.
- It helps you protect (school) teachers from having to get too involved in technical support issues.

Before you go overboard at finding this superb set of resources - please remember:-

- This is a much more basic to intermediate view of ITIL. It is perhaps not comprehensive enough for most commercial organisations.
- Some of the advanced detail available from the OGC is not replicated within FITS, so care should be taken when using the material to base your entire multi-million dollar ITIL investment strategy?!

However, it has several other advantages:-

- It is easy to get into!
- It is easy to absorb and appreciate the core concepts (if you're new to ITIL).
- It is a rudimentary ITIL resource enabling you to swiftly move onto the bigger stuff armed with a solid appreciation from the 'grass roots' up.
- It is easily accessible, intuitively laid out and well hyper-linked.
- It is presented in a complete "case study" scenario... Schools Technology.

FITS is ideal for more junior staff to begin learning about ITIL too. Ed note - From the feedback we have received it is interesting to note that perhaps some CXO's new to ITIL would also pay a sneaky visit to get up the learning curve faster ;>

Which ever way you look at it - FITS is a great 101 primer in ITIL - and it's FREE!

Begin your FITS journey here...

Dr. ITiL Reaches the Four Corners of the Globe

2005-11-03T12:30:00.000Z

Above is a visitor profile, captured today, showing that Dr. ITiL reaches the four corners of the globe. With over 16,000 visits in October and an average visit duration of just over 3 minutes per day - it's further proof of the growing interest in all things ITIL.

The profile does vary, depending on when you view it - for example from 1400 (GMT) the majority of visitors are from the US - and so the percentage figures change - but you get the idea.

The fastest growing areas of interest are from India and Taiwan.

Take A Look At These 29 Process Guides...

2005-11-02T22:49:00.000Z

We have uncovered the location of 29 essential guides to process management covering the spectrum of ITIL disciplines.

Each guide is FREE to access using the link below.

Whether you are looking for further inspiration as to how to continue to improve your processes - or you are brand new to ITIL - look no further.

Please note - guides listed in GREEN are aimed at advanced practitioners only. The concepts covered are complex and should only be reviewed by experienced ITIL people.

Anyway, to give you an idea, here's the full list:-

1. Process Management
2. Developing Robust Processes
3. Establishing Mutually Beneficial Process Metrics
4. Change Management—Part 1
5. Change Management—Part 2
6. Change Management—Part 3
7. Audit Reconnaissance: Releasing Resources Through the IT Audit new
8. Problem Management
9. Problem Management–Part 2: Process Design
10. Problem Management–Part 3: Process Implementation
11. Business Continuity Emergency Communications Plan
12. Capacity Planning – Part One: Why It is Seldom Done Well
13. Capacity Planning – Part Two: Developing a Capacity Planning Process
14. Capacity Planning — Part Three: Benefits and Helpful Tips
15. Capacity Planning – Part Four: Hidden Upgrade Costs
16. Improving Business Process Management, Part 1 new
17. Improving Business Process Management, Part 2 new
18. Major Elements of Facilities Management
19. Major Physical Exposures Common to a Data Center
20. Evaluating the Physical Environment
21. Nightmare Incidents with Disaster Recovery Plans
22. Developing a Robust Configuration Management Process
23. Developing a Robust Configuration Management Process – Part Two new
24. Automating a Robust Infrastructure Process new
25. Improving High Availability — Part One: Definitions and Terms new
26. Improving High Availability — Part Two: Definitions and Terms new
27. Improving High Availability — Part Three: The Seven R's of High Availability
28. Improving High Availability — Part Four: Assessing an Availability Process
29. Methods for Brainstorming and Prioritizing Requirements new

(Guides highlighted in GREEN are for advanced practitioners)

Access the FULL 29 Process Guides Index

The "Secrets" Of Passing Multiple Choice Exams...

2005-11-02T04:25:00.000Z

Over at www.FoundationSuccess.com there's a three part article revealing the "secrets" of passing multiple choice exams which will prove inteteresting reading for anyone who's about to sit their ITIL Foundation Exam.

Foundation Success was launched this week and is set to become an important resource for all prospective and active ITIL foundation students.

We're not giving away any of the secrets here... but they will statistically beat 'guessing' and 'gut feel' that's for sure.

Foundation success contains several quality articles and links to ITIL Foundation study guides, examination tips, free sample exam papers, online ITIL questions and much more!

At the end of the day though - there's never any substitute for hard graft and revision... but at least now there's a decent study companion... www.FoundationSuccess.com

Sneak Preview - What Do You Think?

2005-10-31T19:36:00.000Z

We've been busy creating a new look Blog covering nothing but the ITIL Foundation Exam and how to maximise your success with the multiple choice exam paper.

Now We Need Your Help!

For Dr. ITiL readers only - we are releasing for a limited time - probably only 18 hours or so - a pre-launch glimpse of the new Blog and we would really really value your feedback!

(Now please bear in mind that it's currently low on content and will need some tuning!)

However, we really want to know...

- Do you like the idea?

- Do you think it will prove useful for Foundation Students?

- What do you think of the layout / color schemes?

- What other types of articles / general improvements would prove useful?

Please post a comment below with your thoughts!! We'll take everything on board and get ready for the launch later on in the month...

You can reach the Blog here

Many thanks!

The Dr. ITiL Team.

Simple and Effective Process Flows - Chorus Systems

2005-10-31T02:37:00.000Z

(Click to enlarge image).

We receive a lot of mails asking for good reference sources for process flow diagrams.

Visit www.chorussystems.com/resources for an ITIL primer and overviews of Incident, Problem, Change, Release and Configuration Management. Each section includes a color process flow chart that would make an excellent starting point for your own creations.

For example the above process flow is available at:-

http://www.chorussystems.com/resources/ITIL-Incident-Management.html

Check Out ITIL on the Wikipedia

2005-10-31T02:33:00.000Z

In case you have not seen it yet - you can learn ITIL from the ground up (to a certain extent) on the Wikipedia - and you can edit and add new pages to share your ITIL knowledge with others.

Check Out ITIL on the Wikipedia

The Seven Sources Of Problems - Full URL Version

2005-10-27T21:31:00.000+01:00

We received a lot of feedback on a recent series of articles based on the seven sources of problems. We have now updated this opening article with all of the links to each of the seven corresponding posts - to make it easier to absorb and enjoy.

We have planned a couple of follow-up articles on this topic, in particular how you use the seven sources model to strategically prioritize your 'areas of attack'. But for now, please enjoy this updated version...

On your next coffee break - take 5 minutes to think this one through...

There are only really 7 sources of problems. Yes - 7.

Every IT system, service, application or human problem can be traced back to these seven sources.

Over the next few days, Dr. ITiL will be publishing several (7!) follow-on articles where we will take you "around the clock" - from 1 through to 7 - and actually explain what each sources means and ways you can tackle it!

We've seen this time and time again in companies who are desperately trying to eliminate their problems to prevent any chance of recurrence.

Attacking the root cause of your problems is obviously the right thing to do!

However, you also need to get real tough on the sources of your problems - the real-world operating environment - in the widest sense of the term.

Incidentally, do you also investigate your "near misses"?

In the Airline Industry, where human safety is paramount, any planes found within a certain distance of each other that have to take evasive action - always have to follow through with a detailed report on how they got to that position in the first place and what they need to do to prevent a recurrence.

Imagine if your Problem Management team did the same?! The team would probably be considerably larger than it is today. Nevertheless, the seven sources model helps you consider not only actual "near misses", but potential "near misses" too.

The seven sources model is a reference model to accompany your thinking and improvement plans for Problem Management.

At the highest level and in a pretty down to earth style - we can summarise the seven sources as:-

[Links in Blue are now Available - Click Away!]

1. Acceptance into production - it got into your production world, you let it in, it caused a problem

2. New Changes - you let it through CAB, they implemented it, it caused a problem

3. Upgrades / Patches - you let them upgrade it (with or without change control), it caused a problem

4. Vendors / Suppliers - All of these categories, but considering suppliers instead of your local environment, they caused you a problem!

5. User Error - You let your Customer's use a system that they could break (bit unfair - some users will try hard to break their systems - albeit unintentionally)

6. How Production is Executed - The way you run your systems (re-scheduling batch processes, clock changes, deleting a job and it's dependencies fall over, you know the kind of thing!)

7. "Failures" - Electricity failure, mechanical breakdowns, elastic bands snapping

Click on any one of the links above to be transfered to the corresponding post.

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

ITIL - The "Pre-Flight" Checklist

2005-10-25T00:15:00.000+01:00

Here's a great little idea-jogger for anyone who is currently planning to implement ITIL in their organization. It's produced by the College of Continuing Education (www.cce.umn.edu).

It's a "pre-flight" checklist prompting you to think about whether certain activities and tasks have been completed.

Activities include:-

- Organization Support
- Baseline Assessment
- Scope of Implementation
- Training Strategy
- Implementation Strategy
- Certification Strategy
- Communication
- Resources
- Reporting
- Measurement
- Assuring On-Going Success

Take a look at the Pre-Flight Checklist

*Latest Resources*

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO/IEC 20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan, implement, deliver and improve your ITIL environment.

Visit the IT Service Blog

New! Learn the Step-By-Step Proven Strategies for Successfully Implementing ITIL. Free Audio and E-Book Downloads - Plus Special Bonus Resources.

Visit Ask The Service Expert

A 'handy' tip for passing the managers/masters exam

2005-10-24T04:01:00.000+01:00

One of the most under-rated and little known tips for passing the managers exam has nothing to do with ITIL whatsoever.

It's all about physical stamina and endurance.

Specifically, how long (and fast) you can physically write with a pen for.

This may surprise you - but those of us that have passed already will tell you that this is one of the most over looked areas of exam technique.

Think about it - you have two 3 hour papers to physically hand write, probably over two days. Excluding thinking and reading time - that's probably going to be about 2 to 2.5 hours physical writing per paper!

Points to ponder pre-exam:-

- When was the last time that you wrote for more than 5 minutes let alone 2.5 hours?!

- How legible will your writing be after, say an hour?

- Will an aching hand influence which questions you answer? (For example - will you steer away from an essay type question in favour of one of those 'split / multi-part' questions.

- What can you do to prepare yourself and overcome this often overlooked obstacle?

- Yeah sure you can write for three hours, no problem. But what about the following day when you come to sit the second exam? How's your writing hand feeling now?

OK, I've got to 'hand' it to you...here are some thoughts on what to do...

1. Stating the obvious first - please choose a pen (or several pens) that best matches your preferences. Some people prefer lightweight biros, others heavier gel pens. It's your personal choice - but make sure that you have written with that type of pen previously (for a couple of hours!) and you know it works for you!

2. In the build up to your Managers/Masters - do some writing every day to get those little used tendons moving and exercising again (typings quite a different thing!) Practice writing out some acronyms and set pieces to help you committ key points to memory. Try to build yourself up (like a marathon!) by doing a little more each day. Use your training 'mock' exam questions wisely to also introduce a mock test for your ability to write for long periods. Time how long you can write before needing a 'rest'. Know your own stamina levels.

3. As you begin the exam, make notes on the type of questions you will be answering, in terms of how much 'pen power' you will require. Try to alternate between questions that require a lot of writing and one's that do not - to alleviate the stress on your writing hand.

4. Throughout the exam, do simple hand stretches/flexes during your "thinking" time to help your muscles out.

5. After the exam, warm down occassionally over the next several hours, doing regular flexes to alleviate tension and prevent cramp.

6. If your second exam is the next day - make sure you relax your writing hand. You can buy sprays and ointments etc - whatever works for you.

In summary, you can be an ITIL expert in everything, but unless you can get pen to paper and write the actual words - you won't answer the questions in enough depth - and you will not pass the exam.

Now there's a 'handy' thing to know.

Dr. ITiL.

dritil @ dritil . com

IT Service Delivery - We're Right in the Middle!

2005-10-19T04:28:00.000+01:00

This picture simply illustrates the Service Delivery Chain (click to enlarge) from underpinning suppliers through to the end Customer (who pay our Salary).

Yet it's interesting to see that actually, when you take a step back, we're pretty much in the middle of this Delivery Chain. This obviously means we are positioned ABOVE the provision and management of Systems (Architecture, Hardware, Operating Systems etc) but BELOW something we're calling the Business Adapter Layer.

In true ITIL terms, Service Level Management takes care of this function, but in the real world we often find that business units have effectively created their own interfaces too. The VP of Customer Satisfaction, for example, will often create a position to "deal with those Technology folks" or "handle all my system issues".

There are several advantages to a business adapter layer:-

- Simplifies contact and communication channels
- Creates a focus point for ongoing communication
- Enables "good news" messages about the quality of service and service improvements to be driven through the business unit more easily
- Helps the business "get into" service, as and when they need something extra
- Easier for the IT Service Groups to obtain information, feedback and progress action items
- Great source of up-to-the-minute information about the actual business line itself

However, there are also disadvantages to the business adapter layer:-

- Bypassing the Service Desk for more routine requests
- Bypassing the Service Desk for reporting/tracking of Incidents
- Can become too powerful and mis-represent the business line
- Can become too demanding, in terms of expectations around service quality

On balance, when managed carefully, the Business Adapter layer can make a significant difference when interfacing with the Service Level Management Function. For complex businesses with intricate support requirements this adapter layer is essential.

Interestingly, you will often find that business adapter layers (that are business driven) are resourced with ex-technology/service people. People who have experience in both IT Service and the business line. [This is useful - but remember they will know all the right questions to ask and which corners to cut to get what they need faster!]

Looking to the next 5 years or so, with the advent of business process commoditization (the so-called business processes 'out of the box') IT Service Delivery processes will have a much more standardized and common set of interfaces and touchpoints for each business process. (see the link below for a re-fresher on this topic)

Read http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/08/business-process-standardization.html

So, in a sense, common business processses will layout requirements which are satisfied by common IT Service Delivery processes (based on ITIL and CoBIT). Standard meets standard.

The key thing to note is this - IT Service Delivery Processes are standardizing far faster than Business Processes - which should be good news for future portability of your ITIL skills and experience.

We will build this model further tomorrow.

Real World ITIL - Implementation Tips

2005-10-18T04:21:00.000+01:00

*NEW! Just before you get into this article - you may like to pop over to our very latest site "AskTheServiceExpert".

We have just prepared a free download of a special two hour Teleseminar covering ITIL Implementation Strategies.

You can access the replay, notes and special bonus resources.

To Learn More Click HERE.

Scott, over at Real World ITIL, has recently raised several excellent questions on his Blog about Real World ITIL implementation. If you have not read this Blog before you really need to check it out today. Lot's of interesting and complimentary advice over there.

We thought we would take each of Scott's questions, in turn, and have a good go at answering it here - and then post all the article back over for Scott's readers to absorb too.

Please feel free to add your own comments to this article. It's a healthy debate - and your ideas and experiences will be appreciated by many!

Key Questions (and Dr. ITiL's Answers):-

Should there be only one entry point into IT for incidents and other requests or multiple points-of-entry depending on type of request?

Like Highlander (seen the film?) - "there can be only one". What we mean is this - one entry point ensures that the IT Service Organisation has one version of the complete truth at any one time.

This helps to ensure that everything is prioritised for resolution (or completion) against everything else. Also, it ensures that related (linked) Incidents are tracked and a complete picture of what's happenning where - is maintained at all times. Multiple entry points leads to conflicts when Incidents are presented to Support people. Multiple entry points also means that Senior Management and the Customer will not necessarily receive timely, complete and acurate Incident updates whilst service is restored - a recipe for Service disaster.

Work requests should be prioritised differently and allocated to different functions for processing. In both cases the end-user should have access to online tools that ask the approriate questions to help drive the accuracy of incident or work request allocation.

• What process should be implemented to govern requests for IT services that are neither incidents nor ordinary service requests (e.g., a request for a new major project).

Also, how much latitude do our IT managers really have to deny a request for a service that is not defined in our Service Catalog? There should be a 'one stop shop' approach for ANY incoming request to the IT Service Organization - the Service Desk (the clue's in the name!!) The Desk can log and track all requests - however some 'out of line', unusual or out of service scope type requests should be allocated to hand-off points, such as "new project" type requests. Such a request can then be examined in more detail by the appropriate team and feedback provided.

This makes everything very simple for the end-user, the business and ultimately the IT Service Function. Most Service Desks are used to the opening line, "I don't know whether you can help me - but I would like to know.......". As for the second point, denying requests, the astute IT Manager should never say "no", but should learn to say, "Yes, however...". Everything is possible - but requests take time, effort and money to process successfully.

The Service Desk should direct difficult and unusual requests to some kind of predefined 'back stop' manager, who's responsible for reviewing and then re-allocating such requests. So, returning to our example (above) you would hear something like, "Yes, you can have what you need, however, it's going to need to go through the project approval process... and here's how you can do that..."

• Should root cause resolution be pursued for all problems or only the ones that had the highest negative impact?

I don't really agree with the 'either' / 'or' premise here. Also, we're assuming the question should have used the word "elimination" rather than "resolution". With only a few exceptions (later) ALL problems should have their root cause assessed, analysed and where possible eliminated. Where this cannot be done a business decision about "impact V's frequency of occurrence V's workaround effectiveness" should be made. Obviously, the higher the impact and frequency of occurrence - then the higher the priority of permanently removing the problem from production.

As for the exceptions, well they are generally based on two criteria:- "It's just not worth spending the time to eliminate that problem" (probably because the system is being upgraded or retired soon) and, "We can't find the problem - it's far too complex to eliminate - therefore (in agreement with the business) we will just 'live with it' for now". Not perfect - but certainly real-world!

• Should dedicated teams be organized around Problem Management, Service Level Management, Change Management, etc. or should there instead be “virtual” teams defined from the existing hierarchy?

Mmmm, very interesting question. Your first answer would always be, "yes, let's get some dedicated resources focussing on each team." However, this is massively influenced by the maturity level of ITIL within your organization. When you are in 'start-up' mode or you have just recently launched a new service function - you definately require dedicated and focussed resources to drive through the benefits of the function and ensure that the business receives the service that (some how) it's paying for.

Thinking ahead though, when things are bedded in and running more like clock-work (which is influenced by the rate of internal change!) you will want to more efficiently allocate resources to the service functions. Having an expert team of cross-skilled ITIL'ers capable of delivering against multiple functions is a very advanced way of working. [anyone doing this??] It's also a very cost-effective way of working.

My advice would be: start off by being dedicated, then get smarter and utilize your resource capability across multiple functions. Warning: It's advisable to still have the functional manager focussing on one, maybe two key processes. The resources underneath, who perform the real work(!), can be 'pooled' over time. This also gives them a more dynamic career path and ensures job enrichment.

• If we’re a global corporation, should there be only one Definitive Software Library at a single location to hold all master media, licenses, etc. or should it be distributed?

Yes, again the one version of the truth model applies here too. One complete picture removes the need for multiples copies, which can lead to inconsistent views and erroneous decisions being made. In reality, several Sub DSL's will probably feed into ONE master DSL, in a logical sense. Note: Local contracts, laws, information/property/storage restrictions can apply that make the one version impossible.

• Given that completing an actual physical inventory of IT assets is unfeasible and that automated tools can only discover a portion of our assets, how much inaccuracy can we stand in our CMDB and still have it be of value?

Ask yourself this: "What happens in each ITIL process when my CMDB is innaccurate for X% of the data I use?". For example, during Incident Management you need to know your Infrastructure topology to determine the Incident's impact and be able to correctly categorize the Incident. If your CMDB is missing assets - how can you do this?

Another example, the Change team are assessing the risks of performing a change on your live production environment but the CMDB information cannot see the linkages between the item being changed and any related items for another geographic location. How can you determine the true risk without an accurate picture? In the real-world, the cost of moving from 95% CMDB accuracy at any one time - to 100% is likely to be very high.

You need to weigh up the cost of achieving and maintaining 100% V's 'the impact to service of <100%.>

If your team feels that you've settled for, say, 80% than that's all you'll ever get.

• How do we define “overprovisioning” and “underprovisioning” with respect to Capacity Management? Should we for instance establish a policy such as “we will manage infrastructure capacity to within +/- 10% of actual client demand for service?”.

In our view, Client Demand differs greatly from "what you need to effectively run the service - and keep it running!" Clients are humans too and will always go for whatever the maximum is. They don't want any downtime as a result of a system running out of capacity and neither do you.

In this example any past experiences with the level of demand should also be factored into the decision making process. So, for example: If the Client has (or is likely to have) high levels of new users on any system, but with incredibly short notice (that's if you get told at all!) then you know that you need to run capacity with an in-built slice of capacity to accommodate this scenario. Subject to SLA's, contracts etc.

In our experience - especially where resources are relatively inexpensive compared to the impact of downtime (e.g. Disk, CPU, Bandwidth) you should aim to keep between 15%-25% capacity free, when balanced against the potential to actually use it, the costs of providing it (and maintaining it) and the Clients demand profile. We find it rare that systems are so nailed down, change so tight and the Client so well informed that everything run, "just in time at the optimum level".

• What are the three most essential governance metrics that our processes should generate for management purposes?

[1] Satisfaction with Service Availability, [2] "Under Control", [3] Future-Proofed delivery.

Ok, we've tried to be clever and make some thing high-level and generic. But for me the most important aspects of delivery are:

[1] Is the Client and your board satisfied with your level of delivery against Service Levels - Are you delivering what you need to - to the Clients Satisfaction?

[2] Is everything "Under Control"? Are you managing your Audits, issues, risks, maintaining standards, delivering against KPI's, hiring people fast enough - there's a big list of things that fall under this category.

[3] Are we continuing to do the right things, at the right time, to assure and future-proof the delivery of service today, tomorrow and in a years time.

• How much influence should the Financial Management team have over the control of other service delivery processes? How much effort should we put into developing a cost transparency model for our processes?

None. It's not the Finance teams' role to control any other Service Delivery Function. However, they directly influence, impact and enable (all at the same time) the resource and cost levels apparent within the other Service Functions. This then determines the quality, scope and capability of the team [people, tools, training,etc].

As for transparency, this will depend on your desired cost-model and how the Client has opted to pay for the service it receives, via the Contractual terms. Smart outsourcers know, hoever, that transparency gives them greater scope for making ongoing cost casvings - and therefore helping them to increae their margins faster over a shorter time period - so they will opt for greater transparency. A smart Client will be keen to understand who they pay for , in terms of service delivery, and what saving they can make over time - this reduces the Outsourcers revenue stream. Natural tension or Tough Love? It all happens in the real-world!

Anything to add? Why not post your own views below and add to the debate.

An Important Note About Yesterday's Article.

2005-10-18T01:31:00.000+01:00

Yesterday - we made a mistake - the first one in eight months of publishing Dr. ITiL - which we would like to correct publicly here.

In the publishing process yesterday, we did not include a reference to the originator of the headings for the "Top 10 reasons for ITIL Implementation Failures". We apologise to Malcolm Fry and associates and have correctly credited this today.

However, in our opinion, the underlying content is original and actually adds to Malcolm's headings.

Dr. ITiL is not in the business of passing off other people's work. We provide a much used public service and wish to uphold the highest professional standards. We have responded directly to yesterday's comment and have re-published the article with the correct acknowledgements.

(Click on the Comments below to read the full story).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Top 10 Reasons in this article are accredited to Malcolm Fry. This article was inspired by Malcolm's insight and provides further comments in support of overcoming the Top 10 reasons why ITIL implementation Fail.

For futher information on Malcolm Fry - please visit:-

Top 10 Reasons for ITIL Failure

About Malcolm Fry

Implementing ITIL takes dedicated effort, active executive sponsorship and a little bit of magic from those executing the programme to ensure that everybody's on board, bought in and proactively helping to embed new processes, procedures and toolsets.

It's quite a challenge - but the rewards are worth it!

Today, Dr. ITiL looks at the often quoted "Top 10" reasons for ITIL implementation failure and offers some 'front-line' pragmatic advice on how to overcome them. Note: These reasons originated from Malcom Fry and have entered the public domain and seemed to have 'stuck' as the most quoted reasons for failure, based on Google searches.

If you enjoy the article - why not join of FREE E-Zine list today - to ensure you receive bonus articles and materials not available on this site.

If you don't enjoy the article - then have your say - post a comment and let everyone know what you think...

OVERCOMING THE REASONS FOR FAILURE:-

1. Lack of management commitment

- You need senior commitment from the start since ITIL implementation is really large scale transformational change; people, working practices, meetings, reports, tools, management information - it's all going to change dramatically - so make sure the people at the top "feel the value" that ITIL is going to deliver.

- Deliver some 'quick wins'

- Solve some 'nagging' issue that the CEO/Senior Management have never really managed to 'crack' using just one concept/best practice from ITIL

- Look for a "MUST DO" reason to obtain executive sponsorship - BS15000 and ITIL are now often included in Service Contracts to ensure that the client/customer will deliver to a high standard

- Let the CEO know how many other Fortune500 / FTSE 250 companies are now heavily investing in ITIL

- Let the senior management learn more about ITIL without their learning experience being embarrassing or expecting a decision from them - 'there and then'

- Give them the web link to www.dritil.com

2. Spending too much time on complicated process diagrams

- Just as the technical guys can create 7 different auto-fail-over options for your server recovery programme, ITIL boffins can blind people with wonderfully complicated process maps, linkage points and 'swim lanes'. Be aware of who is 'selling' ITIL upwards. Put the right people in front of the CEO

- As your implementation programme develops - ensure that it remains pragmatic and focused on your defined deliverables

- Start process diagrams simple and high level - the underlying detail is easy to add - but it must remain true to the higher level

3. Not creating "work instructions"

- The typical hierarchy is (a) Policy Document, then (b) Process Document, then (c) Procedure Document and then finally (d) Work Instructions

- Work instructions are sometimes overlooked but are critical to ensuring that different people can execute steps within a procedure consistently, accurately and to a high quality

- Creating and changing Work Instructions is a bit of an art, but there's bound to be someone in your organization that actually enjoys writing them...and gets them done quickly too. Find them!

4. Not assigning process owners

- Assign an owner to each process and keep them separate if possible

- Empower the owner to really "own" their process - make sure they are passionate about it's implementation, delivery quality and continuous improvement

- A process owner should be like the owner of a famous restaurant - always delivering high quality, fussing around customers to ensure they received a great experience and improving everything based on customer feedback

- Some people like owning processes, some do not. Find the right people

5. Concentrating too much on performance

- Handling large volumes through processes is fine - but how well are you handling them?

- Quality delivery is important once the excitement of handling the initial volumes through the process are over

- The recipients of service will not be impressed by numbers - only the quality dimensions of what they receive, like timeliness, accuracy and completeness.

- Allocate some resource to measuring the quality of process outputs

- Target aspects of your ITIL implementation with the delivery of quality in mind from the outset - this will save re-work and expense over time

6. Being too ambitious

- Eating the Elephant in chunks is the order of the day!

- But the chunks must be tackled in a logical order - not a scatter gun approach. Keep control over who's doing what, and when, by setting up a small pragmatic ITIL implementation Center (similar to a programme office). The office should be empty most of the time because all you really need is a structured plan and buy-in from all concerned

- Remember ITIL implementations can be delivered in phases of maturity as well as the delivery of each process. Start by getting the most 'bang for your buck', revisit to tweak the detailed items later.

- Standing back and taking a holistic view of what you delivered and how it's operating after a few weeks will prove very valuable indeed. This technique should be built into the overall delivery plan for ITIL

7. Failing to maintain momentum

- Running out of steam mainly happens because management 'gets bored' or another corporate fire needs putting out somewhere else

- Implementing ITIL is not seen as 'sexy' because it's process and procedure orientated

- Recognize that momentum will fall away and try to time the delivery of key items to help push the momentum along

- Have a breather; allow some time for reflection between major phases of your programme, then build a groundswell of momentum by announcing the start of the next phase - building on the success of the last phase

- Internally, it may be advisable to be seen to use ITIL to complement another major initiative such as Sarbanes Oxley or Six Sigma. Partnering ITIL with other objectives will help embed it further in the organization

8. Allowing departmental demarcation

- Set shared goals across the organization to help prevent demarcation

- Sometimes passionate process owners can get too precious about their patch. Use the defined interfaces and hand-off points (as described in the Red and Blue Books) to show you where to set shared goals. This will reduce the likelihood of conflict

- Rotate process managers every 3-6 months. This allows managers to build up an insight and detailed appreciation of other processes and will remove demarcation points since the manager knows that they may be moving into a certain process area in a few months

9. Ignoring solutions other than ITIL

- Use other best practices and corporate frameworks to give ITIL a boost and help embed it into the organization such as COBIT, Sarbanes-Oxley and Six Sigma

- People performance and Supplier performance are also important

10. Not reviewing the entire ITIL framework

- "If I had my time again", said one ITIL Implementation Consultant, "I would have started with a fresh piece of paper and wrote the words Configuration Management in the center. Everything else is built around that configuration heart. It pumps and feeds the other processes. What we have done here is to rush out and implement a helpdesk, then Incident, then Problem, then some Change...then we realized...Configuration Management is the key to everything. Sharing information across the processes provides a massive ROI for any ITIL implementation. As things stand we now have to spend a lot of time re-working things to retrospectively re-fit Configuration Management"

- ITIL is wider than just Service Management (you knew that right?) it also includes:- Security Management and the ICT infrastructure management books. Learn the wider boundaries about what ITIL can offer before embarking on a major implementation exercise.

Kickstart Your ITIL Implementation (or improvement) Programme

2005-10-14T02:02:00.000+01:00

Since 2000, Gene Kim and Kevin Behr have met with hundreds of IT organizations and identified eight high-performing IT organizations with the highest service levels, best security, and best efficiencies.

For years, they studied these high-performing organizations to figure out the secrets to their success. Visible Ops codifies how these organizations achieved their transformation from good to great, showing how interested organizations can replicate the key processes of these high-performing organizations in just four steps.

What is Visible Ops?

The ITPI (The Information Technology Process Initiative) developed the Visible Ops methodology because they could not find any satisfactory answer to the question: "I believe in the need for IT process improvement, but where do I start? What do you implement first, and how do you do it.

Other information, publicly available from a variety of sources, is too general and vague to effectively aid organizations that need to start or enhance process improvement efforts.

The Visible Ops Handbook provides a prescriptive roadmap for organizations beginning or continuing their IT process improvement journey.

>>Read more<<

Welcome to Dr. ITiL - IT Service Management Fun!

2005-10-12T01:15:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Dr. ItiL, the world's largest Service Management Blog that's actively updated and carefully releases fresh new articles, white papers and Service Management News.

In case this is your first time over here (what took you so long?) we want to be seen to be friendly and giving... if you've been here before to visit us then you know just how giving we actually are.

We only exist to share best practices, new ideas and great content on any IT Service related topic.

Here's some of the things you've missed since we launched way back in February this year:-

Introduction to ITIL:- background, pocket guides, presentation packs, history, basic concepts:-

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/itil-service-support-and-delivery-free.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/free-itil-pocket-guide.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/05/itil-essential-links.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/grasp-essentials-of-itil-in-only-30.html

FREE ITIL Deliverables:- guides, templates, checklists and useful presentation material:-

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/free-process-management-guides.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/back-to-school-learn-itil-from-ground.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/06/free-41-page-guide-to-incident.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/06/implementing-or-improving-problem.html

ITIL Exam Tips:- Foundation study guide, exam hints and guidance, articles:-

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/08/free-study-guide-itil-essentials-pass.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/06/get-edge-itil-exam-tips.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/taking-itil-managers-masters.html

ITIL Implementation:- how to implement, best practices, what to avoid, pitfalls, mistakes:-

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/implement-itil-in-5-steps.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/how-to-implement-itil-with-six-sigma.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/07/itil-implementation-best-practice.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/05/implementing-itil-some-common-errors.html

http://dritil.blogspot.com/2005/04/how-to-help-your-organization-overcome.html

You will also find additional bonus articles hiding away within the categories over on the left - so give them a click and see what you find!

Have you joined our special mailing list yet? No?

You can sign up for free over on the sidebar on the left. You will receive a bi weekly E-Zine containing special content not available on the site - plus coming soon - new about the forthcoming brilliant new forum site - where you can exchange news, views and debate about IT Service Management stuff!

The Seven Sources of Problems #7 - "Failures"

2005-10-11T17:36:00.000+01:00

In this final articles in the series, "The Seven Sources Of Problems", we look at Source #7 - "Failures".

In this context we mean everything that could fail and have an impact on service or your capability to provide service; but not due to the other sources of problems, such as changes, upgrades, or suppliers.

"Things just sometimes fail". That's why we have maintenance contracts. That's why we have health insurance come to think of it.

There are a number of areas where failures can directly impact service provision and reduce availability:-

•Mechanical or hardware failure
•Data transfer or data formatting failures
•Logic failures
•Processing schedule failure
•Power failures

Now, there will often be a 'cause and effect' challenge; for example - the air conditioning system would not have failed if we had realised that there was an extra load on it due to 100 new business users starting in that building last week.

So, What can you do about source #7 - failures?

There are several working practices that can be adopted to help relieve the pressure of new problems coming from this particular source:-

Preventative maintenance schedules. Not only the schedules but the actual smooth execution of the work. Talk to your facilities team about their schedules too. Why not combine schedules to work effectively together to minimise overall downtime to the business? For every component you should be able to determine its health, it current status and when it might be due a check-up from the maintenance teams.

Manufacturers root cause analysis, including faulty batch validation. It's amazing how many times you have a problem - say due to failure - but you don't realize that you're not the first, and you're not alone. Manufacturers and systems integrators occassionally suffer from potential mass failures - and sometimes need to perform an emergency field upgrade (to prevent the failure) or an emergency field upgrade (note - same title!) to replace a failing/ed item. It's important when these occur to check your full inventory for any other similar / realted items and also ask the Vendor / Manufacturer whoch 'batch' did those failing items come from, what is the root cause of the problem - and most importantly - will the new item work? How do they know? What if the same symptoms occur again? Ask tough questions - because you have been impacted.

“Where else could this failure occur?”. Simple question - but it's often effective at obtaining an answer that helps to prevent further failures. When you get impacting by a failure - ask yourself this question. Take action to prevent similar failures elsewhere. For example if you have four highly redundant, all singing, all dancing super powerful Routers and one suffers a power supply failure and shorts the entire backplane - taking it our of service... then what ensures that the other three won't suffer the same sometime soon? People will give you a hundred reasons why it was a "one in a million" - but is it really?

Proactive failure prevention programme. Sounds a bit grand this one doesn't it? But you will be pleasantly surprised if you just call in your top support people, along with the facilities team and some of your key vendors and just "brainstorm" this topic for a couple of hours. I suspect they will tell you a few home truths about cable infrastructure, labelling accuracy, items that failed maintenance and have not been replaced or re-checked. It's real-life and these things happen. But getting everyone together and creating the right atmosphere where people can contribute and help to identify the most likely items to fail - is really useful.

Know your S.P.O.F’s and mitigate them. Identify, hunt down and eliminate (or mitigate) single points of failure, where you can afford to do so - or afford to accept the risk of not eliminating the SPOF. Single points of failure can also be at a logical, rather than a physical level, especially with network configurations and databases. So, keep your perspective pretty broad on this topic.

As a final point on the Seven Sources model, you should consider the initiatives, tactics and general approach to the actions required holistically, rather than in silo's across the individual sources.

An integrated programme apporach, where you keep costs low by improving the way that your support people currently work, is recommended.

Everything we've listed here is not really 'rocket science' but within our ever changing environments it's key to keep on top of these initiatives to prevent problems in the first place.

I guess this old saying sums it up...

"Problems are not like wine - they don't get better with age!"

The Seven Sources Of Problems #6 - Production Execution

2005-10-11T06:01:00.000+01:00

Last week we introduced the “Seven Sources of Problems” framework and listed the core seven sources for all production problems.

Today’s articles highlight source #6 – “Production Execution”

This source looks directly at the actual way that Operations, Production Support and any other maintenance and support function delivers the service they need to deliver to ensure non-stop continuous operations for a demanding commercial organization.

The way we actually manage, control, change and improve our production environment correlates the volume and frequency of new problems.

Stop/Start recovery procedures. Failing to have adequate stop/start procedures for your core Infrastructure, job scheduling, databases and other application support mechanisms will ultimately lead to new problems. It’s all about being in control. Can your IT support teams effectively take down and then, after some remedial action has been taken, start service again.

The goal is minimum impact and disruption. It is important to note that a significant proportion of new problems often stem from the way that service weas taken down and/or restarted. We have counted numerous times that either for routine (non service impacting) maintenance or during the life of a run of the mill incident, incorrectly executing ‘stop’ procedures or inadvertantly executing the wrong start script without due consideration to the time of day and the end state of the systems, can lead to far greater problems than necessary.

Checkpoints:-
- Have you mapped all your underpinning Infrastructure to a Service Map – so you know what needs to be available to drive your service?
- Have you clear and unambiguous stop/start procedures that are known and understood?
- Do your people know how and when to execute these procedures?
- Once service has been restored, are all data feeds and file transfers as you would expect them?

Automated tools and the ability to handle out of line situations. Tools are great – they cut down on human interventino and help us to manage moer effectively. However, the modern plethera of tools and their in-built complexity often means that they “sprawl” out on their own and no-one really knows what’s happenning with them, in terms of when they execute their own housekeeping, tidy-up routines and perform their core processing. To this end, when problems occur and the root cause requires rapid identifiaction and elimination – you really need to use the full power of your diagnostic tools to assist.

Checkpoints:-
- Have you got the right tools, measuring and capturing the right things?
- Will you tool configuration proactively support your problem management process?
- Are your tools paying off? Do you spend more time ‘tuning’ them – than they do providing benefit for your environment?

Impact of changes on production schedules, in particular business/environmental changes. The key point here is really simple, when aspects of service change (start time, number of users, new interfaces) does your underlying processing also change? There are many occurrences where the business aspect changes, but someone back in Operation forgot to re-schedule or re-design the overnight processing flows to accommodate these changes – resulting in new problems.

Checkpoints:-
- Are tools and scheduling products automatically linked to your change management process?
- Have you got your processing sachedules really ‘nailed down’ and under control?
- If an overnight job fails, are clear re-start instructions in place for your teams to continue processing without the need to call for support?

Human error. Final area to explore in this source of problems – but perhaps the most important. Human intervention by support teams, service teams and the business admin people can lead to procedures being executed incorrectly and errors made that cause new problems. It is critical that this source of problem is identified and the relevant person understands and knows ‘the error of their ways’. The biggest reason why people do not own up to human error is because their working environment suffers from a ‘blame culture’. Our advice is simple, eradicate any ‘blame culture’ and focus on a building a supportive culture with education to help people fully understand how to d othings correctly first time.

In the final part of this series of articles we explore source #7 - "Failures" where we recommend some key actions to help minimise how this source can impact your environment.

Your Service Catalog:- Special Delivery = 60 Days

2005-10-10T18:25:00.000+01:00

Centrata's (www.centrata.com) got a "Service Catalog Accelerator" which sounds like something right out of Star Trek (TOS of course!)

From their site we learn that if offers:-

- Rich out of the box content that covers over 70 percent of common IT services and associated workflows out-of-the-box, saving you time and delivery industry best-practices

- The ability to leverage your catalog and enable standardized demand management through a web-based request portal

- Out of the box reports and dashboard capabilities to deliver service visibility and enhance IT planning and optimization

- You can achieve all of these benefits from your catalog in as little as 60 days

Now, it's the last point that we REALLY like!

I've contacted Centrata via e-mail to ask them if they would like to provide us with a special guest article on how this is achieved.

And further on we also learn:-

"By deploying Centrata’s Service Catalog Accelerator, you’ll guarantee results:
- Improved Quality & Predictability of IT by standardizing IT
- Reduced Costs by improving operational and capital efficiency
- Improved Customer Satisfaction by setting expectations and proactively communicating IT’s value
- Improved IT – Business Alignment by focusing IT on what’s business-critical through actionable SLAs"

It's not that I'm sceptical - I've just been around for a while - so, if this product really does the trick then its going to be extremely valuable to a lot of us in our ITIL quests.

In the meantime - if anyone's got any first hand practical experience please let us know by posting a comment below...

Learn More About Service Catalogs Here...

Ten Tips for Successfully Implementing ITIL - A Critique by Dr. ITiL

2005-10-06T16:13:00.000+01:00

We read loads of articles every week claiming to know the "secrets" of ITIL implementation, offering half-baked ideas and money-for-old-rope approaches.

To be honest most of them are rubbish - but Isabel Wells (writing for CIO update) seems to have touched a few of our buttons.

So, we decided to give her top 10 implementation tips a good walk through and based on our collective experience, provide some feedback to each point, as follows.

[to read the original article in full, click here ]

Top 10 Tips for ITIL Implementation - Plus critique by Dr. ITiL

1. Approach ITIL implementation as part of the IT-wide strategy, and use it to guide all other strategic initiatives.

-ITIL process implementation has significant IT-wide impacts; it is not an isolated initiative. * TRUE.
-To avoid both resource and programming constraints, implementation must be aligned with other global and regional programs, IT initiatives and sourcing or supplier initiatives. * TRUE, as with any large Programme.

-A portfolio management approach should be taken to understand the alignment and priorities of all initiatives in addition to the overall benefits to the organization. * TRUE, though this is standard with any large Programme.

2. Consider the post-ITIL organization before completing the process design.

-Introducing ITIL-based processes generates requirements for new functions and roles, which could impact the current service management structure. *Absolutely. Different people are required to perform different duties, at different times. This is certainly one of the most challenging – but often NOT thought through areas of implementing ITIL. The new organizational structure is also a potential source of much discomfort for people, if communication and transformation planning is badly handled. People need to know where they are going, the benefits to be sold to them personally, and they need support and guidance with making an effective transition. *Warning: Sizing Service Teams is notoriously difficult. Can anyone point to “sizing models” that offer excellent guidance? I have never seen any. Usually sizing service teams is based around part considered workload analysis and ‘best estimates’. Hardly scientific!!

-Prior to completing process design, understand the roles and functions required to support the processes; giving specific consideration to the supplier/internal resource split. *Good thought. The internal changes in structure and roles, should also lead directly to a complete re-think on the roles and responsibilities of Suppliers. This could, in turn, lead to contractual re-negotiations. Depending on resource levels internally, there could be an opportunity to either out-task more responsibility to Suppliers, or to reduce contract costs and take more responsibility on in-house.

-Consideration must also be given to the governance structure needed to guide and support the new IT organization. Establishing a transformation program ensures that the structure from which to hang ITIL is secured and operational prior to process implementation. *Totally agree. Excellent governance (say, with a transformation board) to regularly monitor progress and assist programme managers by resolving their issues and mitigating risks can make ‘all the difference’.

3. Engage, engage, engage. Continuous communication is required at all levels of the organization.

-Implementing ITIL impacts the full spectrum of the organization’s employees. Because of this, it is critical to understand the impact at each level within the organization and the value each brings to the program. *Understanding – at all levels – is only the first stage though; the second point is where the action happens…see communications below…

-Subsequently, engagement, communications and training are absolutely key to success; from the initial engagement of senior stakeholders to the manager-level ITIL training of new global process owners. *Engagement and communications shouldn’t just stop at the manager level though. EVERYONE should receive appropriate briefings, especially analysts and coordinators who do the ‘real’ work everyday!

4. Set realistic expectations about benefits realization and establish a baseline from which to monitor improvements.

-Change within any organization takes time to be accepted and implementing ITIL is no different. Implementation of ITIL focuses on improving customer service and as the processes mature the subsequent ROI will be recognized. *Fine in theory, however how many of us actually went back and proved that the ROI was delivered within a suitable timeframe? It’s recommended that ROI be measured (a) before process implementation, (ii) a few weeks after, then (iii) as the process moves up the Capability Maturity Model. Note individual (or pairs) or ITIL proceses should be measured as opposed to the whole entire effort. ITIL is best implemented in a series of well executed, smaller projects.

-To determine the end result, focus the strategy and focus communications on improving service quality and establishing an early baseline of key performance indicators (KPIs) from which to monitor improvements. The chosen KPIs and their associated benefits should be business-focused and clearly understood so that effort is not wasted on measuring and interpreting superfluous data. *Good Advice.

5. Engage existing suppliers early.

-Existing suppliers and any subsequent SLA’s will be affected by the implementation of ITIL. The strategy for handling third-party engagement and establishing a robust communications plan must be clearly defined, with priorities focused on the desired supplier landscape. *Agreed.

-Early engagement with procurement and legal departments will help to support and address the ripple effect that occurs right through to existing contracts and SLAs upon implementing the new processes. An end-to-end SLA will also be ultimately required to support the operation of the new processes. *It’s not strictly true that SLA’s and contracts need to be changed just because you’re implementing ITIL – although if you’re implementing it successfully – then you will probably want to realise cost savings and change specific SLA targets / KPI’s. But it’s not mandatory to have to change contracts – it’s more about re-enforcing what you are aiming to achieve with your ITIL implementation.

6. Process

Identify and deliver the quick wins.

-It's "old" advice, but it remains fundamentally important to ensure that the organization achieves, communicates (and celebrates) early successes. *Absolutely! Deliverer a series of rapid, successive, well-executed quick wins right the way through your ITIL implementation programme. You need to keep everyone’s interest and keep generating positive news about the programme. For every process you implement there should be critical success factors defined in advance. Also, think through how the new processes and underpinning working practices can actually benefit the people within the teams. Finally, let’s not forget the CIO and CEO. What cost savings have you made recently?!

-Such an approach buys time for the process implementation and will help to gain the much-needed stakeholder engagement across the organization. Experience suggests that failure to achieve these successes will typically double the resistance to the change and halve the support within six months. * I’d say within six weeks of your first implementation – let alone six months. ITIL processes have a strong track record of implementation success, along with some ‘sexy’ features for the end-users of ITIL based tools. So, it’s not that hard to get success stories flowing on a regular basis.

7. Maximum benefit can only be achieved if the impact each process has on another is understood.

-The ITIL framework is comprised of ten service management processes and one service management function. Every ITIL process supports, interfaces and integrates with at least one other process. *No, Between Service Support and Service Delivery – there are 10 core processes defined, the complete ITIL has many many more. Important to realise that ITIL is wider than Service Support and Service Delivery. The inter-relationships between processes is far more complex than a “integrates with at least one other” – e.g. Change Management impacts and is impacted by every other support process. A full reasoning is beyond the scope of this article.

-For effective development and deployment the relationship, impact and interdependencies across the ITIL framework must be clearly defined and understood. The close integration and understanding of the processes allows for the continual flow of up-to-date, critical and accurate information that in turn enables management to drill down and identify target areas for service improvement. *Whilst factually correct, the inter-dependencies are already defined for you in the OGC’s excellent series of Best Practice books. You need to understand them and appreciate them, but not let them rule your operation. Nothing is cast in stone. What works for you – works for you.

8. Prioritize process selection based on current maturity; don’t bite off more than you can chew!

-It is important to take a holistic view to ITIL implementation, however it is not imperative to implement all processes concurrently in order to realize operational improvements and a significant ROI. *In fact – don’t even bother trying to implement all processes concurrently. It will cost 5 times more and take twice as long in the medium term – and most likely FAIL! The best way is a structured approach where you implement the ‘core’ of each process either singularly or in matching pairs (e.g. Incident and Problem, or Configuration and Change). One the ‘core’ of ‘essence’ of each process is implemented, you can then re-visit each one and enhance to the next level. People take time to adapt to new tools, new ways of working, new meetings to attend and new ways of delivering service. It is far better to implement what your organization needs to resolve a business / IT Service challenge. You have to allow people time to adapt and step-up to the new operating level. If you change too much too quickly – even if it does match ITIL best practice – the people side will still let you down.

-Implementation of individual processes or the prescribed combination of processes can deliver the desired operational improvements. Processes should be selected based on the benefits sought by the organization and the ones that drive the most business value. * I mentioned the first part above, however with ITIL there are some underpinning processes that, at first, will realise little business value. For example configuration management and the CMDB. These are enabling processes that will “turbo-charge” the quality, speed and accuracy of your Incident, Problem, Availability… in fact… all of your new ITIL processes. But delivered at first – they offer little on their own. This is the paradox with ITIL.

9. Use success as a springboard for further improvement.

-Implementing ITIL is a strategic commitment and will take many months to fully implement. During this time many different parts of the IT organization will be required to change. *Agreed.
-In this sort of environment it is important to also implement a program of continuous improvement (e.g. a "plan, do, check, react" cycle). First this will ensure that improvement is actually delivered as expected and, second, it will help to build further improvement rather than assuming the job is done and risk slipping back in to old behaviors. *Once you embark on your ITIL journey – you have put yourself on the continuous improvement treadmill. But this treadmill has not got a big red ‘stop’ button. It trundles along at a pace dictated by the business, or your internal strategy. You really have no choice but to continue to improve, change, mould, tweak your processes (people, capabilities, tools etc). Stand still and the treadmill throws you off. Putting all this positively – you have the right path to ALWAYS advance and continuously improve your environment!

10. Technology

Combine process and tool activities from day one as part of a single solution approach.

-Implementing a service management tool will support the streamlined processes, automate tasks and manage and distribute information. Knowledge management, e.g., the re-use and integration of information, is a critical component of the service management tool. *Mmmm, difficult area this one. The tool should certainly support the working practices, process flows and standards and policies you have in place – NOT – the other way around. However, integrating the knowledge management aspect of tools is notoriously lengthy, costly and difficult for Service people to continue to evolve. Not impossible – just difficult. Again, done properly and your support costs can fall dramatically, as level 1 support staff can now perform many of the tasks that only (the more expensive) level 4 could do previously.

-Integrating data control processes with the tool will ensure that information is current and continues to add value to the service management processes. *You’re only as good as the accuracy and timeliness of the data that populates your tools. Rely on tools? You need to rely on the feeds and to those tools and the original sources of data.

-Implementing ITIL is not just about evaluating and revising processes, it is about change: changing the way people work and are rewarded; changing technology platforms; and changing behaviors across an entire organization. *You don’t necessarily need to change technology platforms to implement ITIL. You do need to change the way people work and behaviors.

So, that's it. Some points we totally agreed with, some of Isabel's comments and thoughts were very interesting, but also in our view some statements made ITIL look like a heck of a lot bigger and more complex that perhaps it 'has to be'.

Latest Resources (June 2006).

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO/IEC 20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan, implement, deliver and improve your ITIL environment.

Visit the IT Service Blog

New! Learn the Step-By-Step Proven Strategies for Successfully Implementing ITIL. Free Audio and E-Book Downloads - Plus Special Bonus Resources.

Visit Ask The Service Expert

The seven Sources Of Problems #5 - "User Error"

2005-10-05T07:01:00.000+01:00

The people who use your IT Systems to deliver Service to your true end-customers are also a key source of Problems, writes Robin Yearsley.

Your business folks are often under tremendous pressure to deliver ongoing results within their business lines. They have no time, little patience and absolutely no sympathy for technology or IT Systems. Therefore when things go wrong (as they sometimes do!) they like to circumvent the usual support processes – like calling the Service Desk to report a fault, waiting for technical assistance and providing valuable information to assist your support services people.

I have painted a rather gloomy picture here already and perhaps that’s a little unfair. Within call center environments, where people spend tens of hours calling customers, users are only too happy when their systems fail – they get to do other work or take an early break! Remember – there business line is effective suffering from downtime and I’m pretty sure their boss won’t be happy with the situation.

So, against this background what are the typical reasons why Problems can occur with “User Error”?

User Education – or rather the lack of it! Often within the project delivery lifecycle, testing and education are some of the first activities to be cut back. This means that due to over-runs in the design, build and (sometimes) testing stages – there’s little time to actually education end-users on their forthcoming new IT system. As well as reducing the businesses ability to actually realise the benefits of the system – it leads to users making mistakes, “tinkering” and finding their own amazing “shortcuts” to get the end results that they require. There is really no substitute for quality education. It helps to prevent end-users circumventing how they are supposed to use their systems. Things you can do here are: maintain linkages with the IT education team, determine just how much education end users have received and make education a mandatory requirement on the business side of your system SLA’s; also ensure a local ‘escalation’ procedure (where education gaps are apparent) to let end users raise questions and receive answers for new queries is known and in place.

Purposeful Documentation – users guides, cheat sheets, ‘what to do if this happens’, ‘where to get help’, ‘what to expect from IT Support’ – are all examples of local documentation that can be carefully placed on or near the end-users desks to prevent “tinkering” and ingenious workarounds being applied. For example one Guy we knew in a customer service function actually created his own set of highly complex report writing tools within Excel, because he didn’t know that the report writing suite was only limited to his manager. He told his manager (to her amazement she didn’t appreciate HOW he was producing these reports) who immediately granted him access to the Report Suite. (Ironically, the Excel version did everything the team needed – so it stayed!!)

The delivered systems “fails to meet specified requirements” – This is more common than you perhaps realize. The system, as delivered manages to get through testing, user approval and is accepted into production – however for some reason the system doesn’t do something that it’s supposed to do. Some the end-user community find an ingenious way around this. In my experience this is usually something relatively complex about importing data and processing it against key dates, or exporting files between systems because the overnight automated routine keeps failing and the system cannot automatically recover. Users finding their own workarounds is fine in the very short term, often only lasting for that particular working day, however this is very temporary. Workarounds like this are often “triggers” for Incidents that are lying there, waiting to happen. To try to overcome this common situation, you must try to determine where the system fails to meet requirements and understand how this will be remedied.

Validation, robustness and ‘self-healing’ – It makes sense that the ‘stronger’ a system is (in terms of handling weird occurrences) then the less likely that you will see Problems with it further downstream. With the advent of object orientated coding methods, the ability of modules to self-correct and maximise the availability of the system is excellent. Take action during the design stages of new systems to ensure that the levels of robustness are where you would expect it to be – when balanced against the required level of systems availability by the business.

Some more ‘top tips’ to bear in mind with Source #5:-

1. Ensure there is really a problem to eliminate – be careful not to expend large amounts of resources on ‘red herrings’!

2. Ensure education is not ‘axed’ – Stand up for quality education. Not only does it help to maximise the benefits of a system – but it prevents Problems too.

3. Ensure systems are ‘fit for purpose’ – Check out the test results, work with user QA groups, get a good ‘feel’ for the forthcoming system before it enters production. Influence the quality of the final solution BEFORE it enters production.

4. Testing should include destructive tests that satisfy curious minds – It’s guaranteed that once a system goes live it will be absolutely hammered with every possible combination of data/keyboard presses and all sorts of eventualities that were never thought of during testing. To this end, some up-front destructive testing should help to find some of the more serious conditions that might occur after go-live. You do destructive testing, right?

5. Implement a ‘super-user’ programme – best of all – maintain an excellent relationship with the business user community. Form partnerships with key folks who act as ‘super users’ for different systems. They will help you to differentiate between real problems and ‘red herrings’ as well as help you get access to the right people and information should a real problem arise.

Tomorrow, we examine the penultimate source of problems #5 – How Production is Executed. In this source we explore how you run your environment and look more closely at internal controls and the effectiveness of your Problem Management process.

World's Largest ITIL Conference

2005-10-05T05:47:00.000+01:00

World's Largest ITIL Conference Celebrating 10th Anniversay At The Bellagio, Las Vegas. Monday, February 12 to 15, 2006.

Pink Elephant Preparing To Bring The ‘Best Of ITIL’ To Milestone Event
TORONTO, ON – Pink Elephant, a global leader in IT service management consulting, education and events, today announced 10th anniversary plans for the International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition – the premier event dedicated to ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library).

The 10th annual conference, set for February 12 to 15, 2006 in Las Vegas, will feature a full line-up of experienced practitioners, industry gurus and special keynotes.

Exciting new tracks will include:-

Leading Change – Based on the eight steps for leading change by Harvard’s John Kotter

ITIL Service Support and Delivery – Two distinct tracks zeroing in on core ITIL processes

Pink University – In-demand ITIL seminars taught by Pink’s own expert consultants

Another popular track returning to the program is IT Business School, taught by respected North American business school professors.

Other highlights will include an entertaining sketch, ‘What’s So Funny About IT?’, from the LaughingStock Comedy Company; the ITIL Awards, recognizing the best ITIL projects in the practitioner community; and the Exhibition Showcase, featuring a wide selection of ITIL compatible products and services.

ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management and was originally developed by the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC). It is a non-proprietary set of books that outline a consistent and coherent set of best practices for the provision of IT services. Pink Elephant is recognized as one of the foremost champions of ITIL, and was the first to bring ITIL to North America in 1997.

“Year over year, we have noticed an increasing interest from global organizations that not only want to learn ITIL theory, but also want to understand how they can adapt the framework to tackle top IT issues such as governance and security,” says Pink Elephant President and CEO, David Ratcliffe. “Over the next ten years, Pink Elephant will continue to lead the way and create dynamic programming at the Conference that equips IT professionals with the most essential and up-to-date information.”

While the main focus of the ten-track, 100-session program for the 2006 conference is ITIL best practices, inspiring keynotes will also explore how to adopt best practices in other areas of life. Expert political consultant Allan Pease will share his tips for effective interpersonal communication; and Jim Murphy, formerly of the US Air Force, will explain how business professionals can apply the ‘Flawless Execution Model’ used by fighter pilots to improve team performance.

The 10th Annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition is taking place at the luxurious Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, rated among the world’s top ten hotels.

Pink Elephant is offering its best ever Early Bird Special price of US$1,000 to guests who register and pay for the conference by October 31, 2005. The regular price is US$ 1,695. For complete program details and to register, visit http://www.pinkelephant.com/ or call 1-888-273-PINK. About Pink ElephantPink Elephant is privately owned and is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with operations worldwide.

Pink Elephant works with organizations, including many companies listed in the Fortune 500, to improve the quality of IT services through the application of established best practices, such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). For more information, please visit www.pinkelephant.com.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Ann LamanesAssistant Manager, Marketing Services – Communications
Pink ElephantPhone: (905) 331-5060 Ext. 295
Toll Free: 1-888-273-7465
E-mail: a.lamanes@pinkelephant.com

ISO, ITIL and Cobit: What's the difference?

2005-10-05T05:42:00.000+01:00

ISO, ITIL, And COBIT: What You Need To Know, from CIO.com (www.cio.com)

"The three different best practices frameworks cover different domains:-

ISO 17799. This international standard — of which International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) released a revised version in June 2005 — aims to improve the practices and organizations around information security. It defines a global approach to security management that touches the responsibilities and organizations responsible for security as well as the policies, critical asset classification, and risk management. It is best used when security certification and overall definition of all security processes — logical and physical — is needed and basic rules for security defined.

ITIL. Originally created by the UK government, ITIL summarizes best practices for the implementation of IT management processes. ITIL defines the processes to be implemented to deliver and support IT services (most of the time, IT services today equal applications) focusing on the business (IT’s customer). The ITIL philosophy revolves around the service desk as a communication platform and the configuration management database (CMDB).

COBIT. COBIT compiles an up-to-date international set of generally accepted control objectives for day-to-day use by business managers and IT managers. It addresses IT governance and the key performance indicators associated with process improvement. At first glance, COBIT seems to overlap considerably with ITIL, but COBIT has clearly been influenced by problems raised by the insurance industry. Mergers and acquisitions, unification of processes, outsourcing and audits are main chapters of the COBIT framework.

Here are the strengths and weaknesses of each:-

ISO 17999 provides security controls. It does not provide implementation guidance and does not specifically address how these processes fit into the overall IT management processes.

ITIL is strong on delivery and support processes. It describes how to structure operational processes but is weak on security controls and processes.

COBIT is focused on controls and metrics. It also lacks a security component but provides a more global view of IT processes at the IT organization management principles than ITIL.

ISO, ITIL, And COBIT: Complementary Or Overlapping?

Looking at these three frameworks, we reach the conclusion that they do in fact complement each other: you can supplement the IT operational process strengths of ITIL with the critical success factors (CSF) and key performance indicators (KPI) of COBIT, and both can make good use of the security processes and controls defined in ISO.

Examples of complementary elements between ITIL Service Support, COBIT, and ISO are:-

Incident management. Defined as an ITIL service support process, it has an ISO complement in case of security incidents as well as a COBIT delivery and support chapter.

Problem management. The COBIT delivery and support chapter defines incident and problem management processes that complement the ITIL problem management process.

Change, configuration, and release management. These ITIL processes have a direct complement in COBIT’s change management and configuration changes as well as in ISO’s operational change control, controls against viruses, and third-party security requirements.

COBIT and ISO also provide guidance, key indicators, and controls for the definition of service-level agreements, capacity planning, availability management, and business continuity, which complement ITIL service delivery processes."

Full Article Here

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

Leveraging Cross-Silo Base Lines To Accelerate ITIL ROI

2005-10-04T07:58:00.000+01:00

John Worthington, IT Service Management Consultant at www.MyServiceMonitor.com, has produced a special white paper and made it available to Dr. ITiL readers. We'll let John do the talking...

John explains,

"This paper was written after attending the recent itSMF USA Conference in Chicago, Illinois on September 19th, 2005. With a significant focus on the CMDB and the Service Support processes, I wanted to look at how Service Delivery can also help improve ITSM efforts and the customer’s bottom line.

Indeed, the essence of IT Service Management - a services-oriented approach to the management of IT - must Begin with the End in Mind; a thorough understanding of what’s important from the Business’ perspective.

Once this critical step is completed and management has ‘bought-in’ to the improvement program, the focus is (or should be) quickly directed to acceleration of the gains associated with implementing best practice.

For many, this has been focused heavily on Release & Control processes (i.e., Change / Configuration / Release Management). When the CEO and/or CFO is threatened with jail time, as in the case of Sarbanes-Oxley, risk reduction becomes the order of the day!

However, Release & Control processes take time to implement and neither the CEO nor the CFO intends to take the pressure off of IT to continue to reduce costs. In fact, the pressure to reduce risk could actually increase costs; further stressing already overtaxed IT organizations.

John Heller’s opening keynote, IT Service Management Improves the Value of IT to the Business included a statement on how supply chain challenges increase the importance of ITSM, and other session topics at the recent itSMF Conference including ITSM & Distributed Sourcing: It’s not a question of "If" but of "How" suggests that cross silo performance data will be increasingly important in ITSM implementations.

This paper will describe how one tool (there are others) is enabling companies to leverage real time performance data in IT Service Management deployments to provide performance base lines for critical business services that provide vital context for their associated configuration base line."

In addition, the paper is complemented by an excellent site, where we learn...

A driving force behind MyServiceMonitor is to find ways for clients to leverage emerging technologies and tools on a subscription basis as they implement IT Service Management best practices .

Currently, MyServiceMonitor provides customers with an easy, low risk, and rapid way to establish end-to-end, cross-silo service infrastructure performance base lines, leveraging a unique software technology from eG Innovations which provides the following benefits:

-Quickly provide an end-to-end infrastructure performance baseline for any critical IT service
-Accelerate your staff’s paradigm shift from silos to services
-Improve Time-to-Fix by up to 30% or more
-Rapidly migrate to Proactive Problem Management

By providing these capabilities via a consulting engagement, customers can immediately obtain value, minimize risk and help focus and accelerate deployment of IT Service Management best practice.

As an independent consultant, MyServiceMonitor provides flexible, affordable consulting and accredited ITIL® certification training. Call for a free consultation today!

For more information, contact:
John M. Worthington (201) 826 - 1374

jmw@MyServiceMonitor.com

Access the full white paper here

Learn more about MyServiceMonitor here

The Seven Sources Of Problems #4 - Your Vendors

2005-10-04T06:20:00.000+01:00

The Seven Sources of Problems #4 – Your Vendors. By Robin Yearsley.

The Service and underpinning capability offered by your Vendors is critical to the overall Service you provide to your business.

In most cases the texture of the support landscape is an interesting blend of internal support, outsourcing, traditional support contracts and a shared services methodology. Add into this mix the fact that each Service you provide is supported in a different way, by different folks, with different levels of Vendor support – and you can see how complex an area it is.

The fact is – Vendors are human too – and are prone to the exact same Seven Sources of Problems like any other IT Service Provider.

In this, our fourth instalment of the Seven Sources of Problems, we consider “Vendors” but we re-orientate ourselves and look at Problems from their ‘internal’ perspective: the challenges they face, how they are structured, how they work internally to provide their outside service to you and how well they recognise and close down each of the Seven Sources.

We also approach this article from the perspective that YOU are “leading the way” with instilling the “Seven Sources” model into your Vendors psyche, organizational structure and ultimately in the way they deliver their service into your organization.

[Note - all the other six sources absolutely apply to your Vendors too. Please review the previous days articles and then continue to check-back, to ensure you know about the remaining Six Sources].

So, the focus of this article is about how you can work effectively with your Vendors to ensure that they are taking the appropriate internal actions to prevent the sources of problems from occurring.

Know Your “Vendorscape” – who does what, when, how and for who?

Oftentimes, there is a prevailing attitude that will immediately challenge the premise of working more closely with your Vendors. It usually comes from the CIO and it goes something like this, “I pay for a Service and I expect it to be delivered – therefore I do not care how they deliver it – just so long as they do”.

Now, this is perfectly acceptable and pragmatic, especially in a heavily outsourced Service Operation where the vendor has the lions share of the delivery responsibility and the internal IT / Service provision capability has already been considerably diminished. However, in my experience, there is always a lead influencing role that can be played by the internal Service Provider (or Vendor Manager).

This person, after all, is responsible for the quality of Service provided to the internal business units, and therefore has a responsibility to take positive action on every situation, issue and problem that occurs. Therefore the partnership approach where the Vendor is asked to take preventative action against a particular source of problem is recommended here.

Bear in mind - Vendors are human too.

The quality and relevancy of contracts.

- Contractual agreements should contain enough scope to allow the recipient of the service the option to ask for internal processes to be improved/re-engineered in light of problems experienced.

- Using the Seven Sources Model as a basis for discussion with Vendors can prove highly beneficial. There are three (albeit a bit tongue-in-cheek!) stages of Vendor enlightenment:-

[1] Every Problem is tackled separately and distinctly, limited view of trends, costly!

[2] Aha! These Problems are related to a particular root cause – we can tackle one root cause and eliminate multiple problems!

[3] Eureka! As well as tackle the root cause, I can go ‘upstream’ and tackle the underlying reasons of the source of the actual problem, using this model, and drive down the potential for new problems to occur.

- By carefully prioritising which sources and which aspects to eliminate, close-down or prevent a lot of problems can be prevented.

SLA’s and Vendor Relationships are the major differentiating factor

- There’s an old saying, “You get what you pay for”, but with Vendors you should not ‘pay’ for what you get. Therefore you need to ‘get’ the flexibility, co-operation and buy-in to be able to work with your Vendor and make a difference. Review all your contracts and SLA’s for relevancy - go out to tender to secure a better deal where you find a lack of co-operation, if possible.

- Look for opportunities to influence your Vendors to work more like you do. Invite their key players to your internal briefings, offer to provide some 1-2-1 education session on new techniques, share initiatives (such as excellent Change Control), show the positive results these can have on minimising downtime, increasing people’s active hours on projects and reducing costs of overtime.

Implement a Vendor Scorecard Programme - measure Vendor performance

- Scorecards sound like a real load of hassle and time but a simple and effective scorecard bolted onto your weekly/monthly Vendor Service review meeting can really make a difference.

* How to create a simple, low over-head scorecard that works:-

a. Make a list of, say, six key topics that you wish to review with your vendor.

b. For each of the six topics, list up to 10 key questions that you want answering each week/month.

c. Prior to your review meeting - ask the Vendor to rate themselves and provide background explanations/evidence as to why they answered like they did - and bring this information along to the review meeting.

d. During your Vendor Services review meeting walk through the answers together and discuss the evidence and provide immediate feedback – rating or re-rating the Vendor as you go - using a scale of "0 - no evidence" through to "5 - World Class" and the varying degrees in between!

e. By the time the meeting’s over – you will have a more comprehensive, factually based set of results to guage Vendor performance

f. You can then summarise your ratings in a formal e-mail to record performance. Use these scores and the average over the previous few meetings to form the foundatino for the next meetings discussion. Remember - you are trying to drive improvements backed by sound evidence.

Note:- Ensure that one of the key topics is Problem Prevention and Elimination (not Problem Management – anyone can ‘manage’ problems, the goal is to prevent them!)

Integrate with Vendor’s processes

- For the more advanced Service Provider, how about integrating your processes end-to-end with your vendors so that there is a smooth flow through of information and activity. Roles and responsibilities are known across the process flow. Target times to perform activities and key performance indicators are mutually agreed (and could underpin the Contractual agreement)

- Such levels of integration are only possible with the right relationship, contract and culture – however they are THE most effective in helping your organization prevent problems.

Involve Vendors More

- Final point for today, but a key one. The more Vendors are embraced and made an active part of your organization – the more they will ‘feel’ the responsibility of problem prevention. For example, do your Vendors attend your daily/weekly Incident Post-Mortem meetings? Do they attend your Problem Elimination meetings? Do they actively suggest new approaches to preventing problems? A significant culture shift is often required to enable such a participative approach but the benefits are huge.

Join us tomorrow for Source #5 - "User Error" and learn about how to help your business users 'help themselves' to minimise new Problems.

Can Tools Help You Know Your Customer Better?

2005-10-04T01:15:00.000+01:00

Customer relationship management (CRM) – from a service perspective.

One of the best ways to improve service to your customers is by knowing them better. The ability to accurately profile your customers in Servicom Service Management Software will keep you one step ahead and help you to better manage customer relationships.

Servicom tracks complete information about your customers, which allows you to provide better service management to customers than ever.

Servicom Service Management Software allows you to track multiple service locations for a customer, and for each location you have comprehensive information at your fingertips, including work order history, installed equipment, service agreement information, notes, contacts, directions – in short, everything you need to know about your service customer.

Work order processing made easy.

Taking new work orders in Servicom Service Management Software couldn’t be easier. Convenient drop down lists allow you to input a new work order using pre-defined lists with just a few mouse-clicks. And user-defined drop-down lists and custom fields allow you to tailor the work order process to your business. Dispatching and scheduling toolsServicom Service Management Software provides a number of tools to assist you in scheduling and dispatching work orders.

In addition to the traditional dispatching list, Servicom provides a color-coded schedule board that allows you to see your work graphically displayed in a row and column format. Mapping and paging tools allow you to increase the productivity of both dispatchers and technicians dramatically.

Billing—fast, flexible, and tailored for the service contracting business!Billing is specifically tailored to industry standards for service and specialty contracting businesses, including time and material billing, quoted job billing, and “flat rate” billing, using popular industry pricing services.

In addition, special pricing and discounts are automatically applied by Servicom, saving you valuable time and ensuring consistency.

Take control of your inventory.

Servicom inventory allows you to track items—parts and equipment—in as much detail as needed. You can track inventory at a detailed level, including truck inventories, serial number tracking and standard maintenance lists, or you can just use the item catalog to track description and pricing information.

Service agreements.

If your business relies on service agreements, you know that they can be a major task to ensure that you are providing the maintenance and granting the discounts or special pricing required by the contract. Servicom makes the entire process easy by reminding you when service is due, allowing you to automatically schedule planned visits, and automatically applying discounts and special pricing that you have specified in your service agreements.

Comprehensive reports help you manage your business.

With over 100 standard reports, Servicom helps you to analyze and manage every aspect of your service operation. You can easily apply “filters” to your reports to see just the information that you need, and you can quickly display report results to your screen, to your printer, or both.

Built on Microsoft SQL Server database technology.

Underlying the Servicom product family is Microsoft's high performance database engine, Microsoft SQL Servertm. SQL Server is a robust, enterprise class database manager that is designed to handle the needs of a single user or the largest, multi-location service organizations with hundreds of users.

Servicom add-on modules.

You can extend or customize Servicom with the addition of several add-on modules, including:

-Servicom Dispatch Paging-dispatch automatically to alpha-numeric pagers
- Servicom Purchasing-field purchasing made easy.
- Servicom Mapping-integrate Servicom with Microsoft MapPoint to visually display dispatch information on a map
- Pricing links-import parts and flat rate pricing information from industry leading pricing services.
- Accounting links-link to most popular accounting software.
- Additional featuresServicom has a wealth of additional features for the service contractor.

To find out more click here.

Announcing: The IT Manager Success University

2005-10-03T16:07:00.000+01:00

Designing and delivering service is a seven by twenty four hour task and it's one that often means making sacrifices.

Unfortunately working in our industry this often means a poor work/home balanace and a lack on ongoing development and education opportunities.

In this day and age though, why should your personal development have to suffer?

Within the entire IT Service Industry there is a very strong need for a fast, simple and electronically delivered education package that cuts through the hype and delivers something lasting, meaningful and practically effective in the workplace.

The IT Manager Success University course has been designed to take any manager, executive, director, or professional to the PINNACLE of IT Management SUCCESS.

With proven and award-winning methods, tactics, strategies, tips and secrets, you will have no where to go but to the top.

Which of these could you use?

- Secret Success Principles of The Service Elite
- How To Bring Order To Your Life Quickly
- How To Get And Stay Out Of Reactionary Mode Permanently
- How To Get Control Of Your Department
- How To Control Your Future And Destiny
- How To Set And Accomplish Your Goals Correctly & Quickly
- How To Get Management And Staff As A Raving Fan
- Learn Top Business Language, Key Topics and Buzz Words
- And So Much More... in fact, this list just barely scratches the surface!

Click through to www.it-manager-success-university.com now for more information.

Evergreen Systems Launches Assessment & Roadmap

2005-10-03T16:06:00.000+01:00

Evergreen Systems, Inc. Launches ITIL Assessment and Roadmap; Offering Includes Standard Assessment of Organizational IT Processes and Process Framework Action Plan within 45 Days of Engagement STERLING.

Evergreen Systems (www.evergreensys.com) , a leading IT technology and process consulting firm, today announced a new offering, the ITIL Assessment and Roadmap: a fast-track program that includes evaluation of IT infrastructures, and development and implementation of a client-specific ITIL framework within 45 days of engagement.

The launch comes as organizations throughout the U.S. are increasingly contemplating implementation of ITIL standards to achieve superior IT infrastructure and process management, and to deal proactively with new oversight resulting from passage of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.

CIO Magazine recently reported that a Gartner survey shows increasing awareness and adoption of ITIL in U.S. corporations; of those surveyed, ITIL adoption increased from 31 percent in 2003 to 41 percent in 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Evergreen's ITIL Assessment and Roadmap includes:-

- A standard assessment of the maturity of an organization's IT
operations in the areas of
- Service support, including incident, change, release,
configuration and problem management; and
- Service delivery, including capacity, availability,
financial, service level and continuity management.
- Evaluation of an organization in three areas critical to the
success of an ITIL initiative, regardless of size and scope:
- Organizational readiness;
- Technology enablement; and
- Measurements, metrics, and key performance indicators.

Within 30-45 days, Evergreen will also provide clients with the
following:-

- A Gap Analysis: Through a series of interactive workshops, and discussion groups, Evergreen will analyze an organization's current state of IT operations, comparing them to ITIL best
practices.
- Leveraging an assessment approach based on the Capability Maturity Model(R), Evergreen will rank organizational readiness and maturity to help clients understand the gaps that exist in their current infrastructures; and
- A Roadmap and Action Plan: Using results of the Gap Analysis, Evergreen will develop a comprehensive recommendation plan with actionable steps clients can take to immediately begin
addressing identified issues.

Working with client teams, Evergreen will develop detailed action plans that:-

- Document specific steps for making immediate improvements
in processes;
- Identify necessary changes to organizational structure;
and
- Better leverage current technology investments.

"Evergreen is launching this service in response to the growing adoption of ITIL as a governing structure in the US," said Evergreen CEO, Don Casson.

"With its singular focus on IT, ITIL is ideally suited for enabling organizations of all sizes to maximize process and investment in IT infrastructure, as well as better preparing them to meet regulatory concerns more effectively.

Evergreen believes it is crucial that we be on the leading edge of providing our clients with a turnkey assessment solution that helps them to move forward with strategic implementation more quickly and efficiently."

For more information or to inquire about receiving an ITIL assessment, please contact Amy Mergler at amy.mergler@evergreensys.com.

About Evergreen Systems.

Evergreen Systems is a highly specialized technology consulting firm focused on helping complex global organizations simplify and optimize the way their IT organizations work. From strategic planning, to policy development, through execution, Evergreen makes sure that what gets planned gets done.

The Seven Sources Of Problems #3 - Upgrades/Patches

2005-10-03T05:31:00.000+01:00

In this third instalment of “The Seven Sources Of Problems” we take a closer look at a specific category of change – namely, “Upgrades and Patches”.

The first question that needs answering is, “Why have you separated this out from the last source (New Changes)?”, writes Robin Yearsley.

The answer lies in the fact that, in our experience, is deserves a special category all of it’s own because “Upgrades and Patches” are:-

- A key part of maintaining the health and supportability of Infrastructure (which drives Service)
- Frequent, technical and often challenging to apply
- Driven by Vendor Technology roadmaps
- Require special consideration (e.g. When to apply? How to test? How to back-out? Etc)

When you think about the entire Infrastructure that enables your IT Services – think through the sheer number of components. Then, multiply this by the number of bug fixes, OS patches, PTF’s, Hot Fixes and any other essential upgrade that they need – just to maintain their “maintainability” within the letter of the law within your support contracts with Vendors.

Falling behind can lead to you being ‘forced’ to perform an upgrade just to remain within the terms of your support contract. Moving too close to the latest release can lead to you suffering from “first fault found” syndrome. There is a delicate balance to be maintained between “leading edge” and “bleeding edge”. For each It Service you should use your configuration maps to determine what strategy to apply to upgrades and patches for your underlying Infrastructure.

Do you have such a process in place today? If you do – great! If not, how can you really assure the ongoing availability of your Service, given that it may or may not be error prone or out of contract?

Let’s consider some of the lower level details with this potential source of problems. There are several factors to consider:-

1. Being “aware” of a patch/upgrades actual existence

- This sounds a bit simplistic but part of the challenge in maintaining the correct balance and level of upgrades/patches is actually knowing what’s out there and available to install in the first place. Different vendors provide different levels of service and your contract will also differ depending on who signed the maintenance agreement, when the system was installed and what tools you have in place to search/validate/upload/test/install your upgrade/patches

- Most Technology Vendors use the “post it – and they will come if they need it” approach. This does three things. It enables the Vendor to say, “Go and download this patch and try it in your test environment” (so the bucks with you). It also means that you have to keep up with what’s out there and perform the validation and risk assessment yourself. Thirdly, it provides the Vendor with another revenue opportunity, in that they can offer to do the ongoing risk assessment and validation for you – for a fee – on top of the maintenance contract that you already have with them. (nice money if you can get it!)

- You need to develop an excellent “radar” on a per component, per Vendor basis. For each of your vendors and the components they provide map out exactly how, and how often new patches are released. Ensure that you have an automated alerting system to advise you of any new critical patches.

2. Finding the right balance between ‘unmaintained”, ‘leading edge’ and ‘bleeding edge’

- As mentioned above, the priority and agreed availability levels (within your SLA) should assist you here. For those higher rated components you will need to be more “bleeding edge”. Where installing a patch represents an operational risk (above what you would normally expect, say, you’re the first company to use this patch) then this should be performed with everybody understanding and agreeing to these risks.

- Try to determine the inherent “stability” level of the component in question. If the component is complex, new or highly dynamic then more frequent and closer inspection of it’s patch status should be undertaken to protect your environment.

3. Maintaining your organizations overall adherence to recommended upgrade/patch schedules

- Create a chart (from your CMDB and Vendor Schedules) that drives validation activity.

- Carry out spot checks from time to time. This is good from an audit perspective and often reveals interesting nuances in the Vendors release policies

4. Having the physical capability to actually test the next upgrade/patch (install and back-out!)

- Have you got a physical environment where you can test the new patch without breaking Service?

- Does the test environment enable you to ‘load’ the system, like production, to test for how the component works in reality?

- How easy is it to back-out the patch, once installed? “Bleeding Edge” patches are sometimes recalled or superseded.

- Have you a formal interface in place between “Patch Management”, “Incident Management”, “Problem Management” and “Change Management”?

5. Managing Change through your Change Management Process

- It goes without saying that installing new patches still fall within the control of Change Management, but time and time again, due to the complexities of patches, technical support folks often seem to have created their own ‘fast path’ for these types of changes where certain steps in the procedure are ignored or not subject to controls. This is dangerous and should be reviewed immediately.

6. What to do if you are ‘forced’ to accept a new upgrade/release in a critical (service down) situation

- It happens. You suffer from a problem and in order to eliminate the root cause the Vendor recommends that you install their latest patch. Trouble is - you’re the first in the world to receive it. They cannot guarantee, because everyone’s environment is different, that it will eliminate the problem – but it’s the best you’re going to get for now. You have been issued a ‘fait au complete’ (sometimes known as a ‘hospital pass’!) In situations like this – you need buy-in from Senior Management and you need to form an overall opinion based on current services pain V’s the risk of something else going wrong! Sometimes it’s tough in Service.

7. The resources and skills you absolutely require to pro-actively protect your environment

- One recommendation that I like to make – is to ensure that you have the right skills, capability and attitude leading the technical upgrade/patch function

- It’s often a monotonous chore validating the availability of new patches against the Infrastructure estate, but one that can significantly protect your environment from new problems. It needs to be correctly resourced.

To wrap up Source #3 “Upgrades/Patches” let me finish off by saying this… as in most things in life… it’s a bit of an art, rather than a science. No two environment are ever the same – so Vendor are incapable of testing all eventualities on their test systems. So, prioritise, automate alerts, resource correctly, interface to other key areas, perform spot checks and maintain the “expect the unexpected” mindset.

Tomorrow, we’ll move onto our next source of Problems #4 – Your Vendors. Interestingly, ALL Seven sources of Problems can apply to your Vendors, but more about that tomorrow.

If you have any thoughts about this post – please have your say – create a comment below…

The Seven Sources of Problems #2 - New Changes

2005-09-29T18:12:00.000+01:00

We continue our tour around the clock today with a look at the next source of Problems - "New Changes", writes Robin Yearsley.

Please note - I have deliberately separated out "upgrades and Patches" as the next Source of problems which we will cover tomorrow.

Strictly speaknig they are - and should be - classed as "New Changes" but for reasons we'll go into tomorrow we have created a separate 'source' for them. Please bear in mind that these criteria for "New Changes" also apply to "upgrades and patches"

So how do Changes cause Problems?

Well, strictly speaking they don't!

Failed changes cause incidents, incidents are resolved - with service restoration taking place - then the underlying root cause is assessed / analysed and then eliminated through Problem Management.

Great Changes don't cause problems. They enable improvement.

Now, we won't get bogged down with the strict ITIL workflow here but we're going to focus on what you can do to prevent (or minimise) the ultimate source of problems: "New Changes".

There are several key reasons often cited, we discuss each one here...

Lack of approval:-

The change did not receive the appropriate level, duration, depth or quality of review prior to approval. The result - the change is (often unwhittingly) mis-approved. Think of it as a time-bomb. It's now been approved (armed) and it's heading for your production environment. It should have had some aspect of it validated or raised as an objection during a CAB meeting or senior level approval meeting - but this didn't happen. So, some impact is going to happen as a result.

Tackling this challenge is best done through your CAB meetings, but you can also create special "advisory" groups who pre-approve forthcoming change packages prior to it going into the full CAB for final approval. Such advisory froups will generally focus on specific elements of change such as the "Technical Design Group" or the "High Availability Group". You should aim to create several of these groups but tag the responsibility onto a group that already exisits to avoid internal warfare/politics about the (alledged) resource utilisation of your Change Process.

Remember - all change involves some degree of risk. You will NEVER be able to consider all possibilities - you just need to ensure that your Change Process and the people who facilitate and approve changes are provided with the best information and the best opportunity to mitigate any risks prior to implementation.

Poor testing:-

It amazes me how often poorly (or un-tested) changes are approved to enter production. One classic reason for this is because the CEO shouts loudly and wants some new functionality in place ASAP! Everyone beneath the CEO suddenly cuts corners, moves mountains and drives the change through in double quick time - missing all the appropriate check-points. There's not much science here: poor testing = higher risk change. It's that simple. Plus - CEO's shouting loudly will not alter this risk factor. Ask yourself the question - How loud will they shout if all your systems fail and your organization takes a massive 'hit'? You need strong IT leaders to stand up, be counted and present the risks in the correct way. Reasoned discussion leads to reasoned decisions.

Another factor lies within the testing methodology itself. Are the right skilled resources carrying out the testing, are the testers allowed enough quality time to implement a fix to any given bug, are testers influenced by teh business to much? The list goes on... but the consideration is simple - the quality of your testing function is directly proportionate to the quality of the change package that you are expected to implement.

Poor implementation planning:-

Do your changes come attached with a thought out and walked-through quality implementation plan? If the change is of any reasonable size - have the implementation team walked through it with the Change team to review the key stages and ensure that all appropriate support activities are in place? There's no substitute for great planning. It prevents the pain of production issues.

The best Change teams ask difficult questions, especially "What if this happens...", type questions. If it's badly planned and thought through - don't let it in!

Poor execution of implementation plan:-

The ironic thing is - the best laid plans, poorly executed, are a waste of time. The best laid plans also need to be flawlessly executed. If things go wrong, as they often do, small implenmentation workarounds and fall back positions should have already been identified and documented read-to-go.

The best advice I can give about plan execution is this - have the best person for the job in charge of ensuring timely and accurate progress against the plan - but if things fall away too fast - that person knows when to effectively 'pull the plug' on the change and restore normal service. The best person will not carry on regardless.

Impact of another (concurrent) change:-

Mmmm, do you really know everthing that's going on?

For example will the facilities folks be testing the UPS systems over the weekend and therefore when your technical guys try to implement their new system - there's no power available!?

For Change Management to be really effective - you need to have what we call, "One complete version of the truth".

All change programmes should ultimately 'come together' into this one version - preferably onto one high level change plan. This activity can actually drive up the quality of Changes too - since it means IT and Technology folks have to talk regularly with their change business counterparts - about change!

I've lost count of the number of times Change teams have identified 'risky' change going on elsewhere when the IT folks were also planning a change.

So, what else can we do to prevent "New Change" being the sources of Problems.

Well, there are two final prevention items that can be employed:-

1. Your acceptance into production criteria.
- Did the change pass all pre-production criteria?
- Did the change get approved by the right folks?
- Did the change implementation plan get walked through (or did it sail through?)

2. Playing it tough.
- Learn to say 'no'.
- If you can't (or are un-empowered too) - get someone on your side who can.

The bottom line with this particular source of Problem is this:-

If the change is in bad shape - it enters production at your peril!

Tomorrow, we'll move onto look at a very special sub-set of Change: "upgrades and patches", which we believe deserve it's own special Source number (#3).

In the meantime, if you have any comments about this article, please feel free to share by posting a comment below.

The Seven Sources Of Problems #1 - Acceptance Into Production

2005-09-28T06:42:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, we looked briefly at the Seven Sources of Problems and went 'around the clock' to get a general feel for what each source means.

Today, we begin to work our way around the clock starting with source #1 - Acceptance into production.

The multi-colored arrow is deliberatley multi-colored to represent the fact that any of the other 6 sources of problems could actually enter via this route into production and therefore cause a new problem.

The arrow is also 'broken' (left hand side) to represent that fact that generally most advanced IT Service Organizations have installed several "Quality Gates" to perform various checkpoints (say at design sign-off, or at the end of testing).

Such "Quality Gates" are meant to prevent poor quality systems and badly produced support documentation in the first place.

The ultimate aim here is to ensure that when the system reaches the final gate for introduction into production - it is known, supportable, the people are ready to begin supporting it and the services to maximise the value of the system for the business are in place and functioning correctly.

As we know all too well, quite often these types of tasks are either sacrificed if projects begin to run late - or - performed at the very last minute giving the impression that the system is "thrown over the fence" into production. This places undue pressure on Service Organizations and creates a reactive support environment. This, in turn, actually drives up the likely volume and frequency of problems due to inherent instabilities and inherent weaknesses in support capability. Service Level Agreement penalties are also prevalent.

So, what's the bottom line here? More problems occur when the support services for a new system (in the widest context) are not in place, rehearsed and the people present are capable of delivering that service.

So, what can we do about this situation?

Lots!

Here is a summary of some proactive actions that can be executed during the forthcoming system/service introduction - to prevent the above chain taking place:-

Known Errors:-

- Ensure that the Problem Management team have full visibility of all known errors way before the system goes live.
- If you can, allocate resource to proactively work with system and service testers to enable a better picture of the types, volumes and possible impacts that known errors might cause. Have that reources work dilligently with the testing folks to drive out as many known errors as possible.
- Use a risk/impact/exposure matric to ensure that the highest known errors are being tackled in the correct priority.
- Inevitably there will be some known errors that have to be accepted into production - but the key message is that they should be KNOWN, documented, service restoration workarounds already in situ as well as the support folks are per-educated to execute the restoration procedures.
- Finally all known errors should have a follow-up plan stating when their root cause will be eliminated and what resources/timescales are involved in doing so. Essentially, everything must be KNOWN.

Single Point Of Failure (SPOF) Analysis:-

- Involves identifying the weaknesses in a system or service design and either rectifying that weakness of eliminating it altogether.
- There is obviously a cost involved in installing highly resilient/redundant Infrastructure. Sometimes the business case doesn't fly with lots of expensive duplication options - so single units are opted for instead.
- Often the single points of failure are much more suble. They can be single filesystems that drive a new application, as opposed to actual hardware. SPOF's can also apply to human beings too!
- Think through if you have any single pojnts of people failure or single points of knowledge failure. Is there just one person who knows how to restore service for a given system?
- First identify your SPOF's, then risk assess them, then work to eliminate or reduce them to an acceptable level.
- If the resulting overhang is still looking risky - make sure that any SLA's you sign up to reflect the level of risk - in particular if it could impact availability.

Unsupportable Components:-

- It's often the case that many months after a system has gone live there is a component failure that no-one can fix anymore.
- Probably because the support resource has left the company or moved on, but also because the Vendor (with whom you have an underlying contract) has subsequently removed it from it's support portfolio.
- Even more subtle than this - is how Versions and Releases of components fall off a Vendor's support portfolio. Once again - list all components, ensure their supportability, keep a special calendar for upgrade paths and when certain version fall off the Vendor's support portfolio.
- This may seem like a lot of work and it is. However the overhead is made much easier when this approach is integrated into your Configuration Management Database structure. Each component CI should have these items recorded and tracked. Validating unsupprotable components then becomes as easy as producing a report.
- Where unsupported components ARE found - you need a supportability plan to execute against it. - If it's in production - it must be capable of being supported.

Testing Evidence:-

- Ensure that your Service folks get a good chance to review the results of any tests - before teh testing cycles complete. Getting a feel for the types of failures in testing and the remedial work necessary to overcome these bugs will provide a general indication about what types of problems can be expected later on.
- Keep in mind there will always be surprises!

User Acceptance:-

- Spending quality time ahead of implementation with your user community can also pay dividends.
- Get a feel for what kinds of bugs and issues your users are identifying

Does not meet (business) requirements:-

- If the end system does not do what it's supposed to do, say for a menu sub-option, and it's managed to creep it's way through testing and UAT, then it's going to hit the Service folks as a problem at some stage. Ensure via testing and user acceptance that the forthcoming system has been signed off and approved, in as many aspects as possible, by the business.
- Not meeting requirements also leads to a high level of early changes (post implementation). Such high volumes often lead to change failure (see source #2)

Education / User Knowledge:-

- Gaps in user education and knowledge oftne means that end users will quickly find local ways around overcoming the shortfalls in their new systems capabilities
- Such Gaps are often overcome in two ways: The use of excel spreadsheets (to manipulate data and perform calculations) and manual data manipulation. Both can cause considerably challenging Problems where the output produced does not match the desired business outcome or does not adhere to the business process/rules
- Gaps are important and should be closed as far as possible prior to acceptance into production

Finally, to wrap up today's post on source #1 - acceptance into production, we leave you with two guiding principles:-

(i) Implement a strong and well adhered to "Service Introduction" Process - to prevent poor quality and unsupportable systems entering production in the first place

(ii) Ensure Leaders have the strength of character to be able to say, "No", to new systems implementation - when there is enough evidence that an unnacceptable level of risk to the current operation will be introduced IF the new system is implemented.

In the next post, we will learn more about source #2 - Changes.

In the meantime if you have any comments or just wish to share your thoughts on the above topics - please post them below.

Spicing Up ITIL Reports - We're Only Human.

2005-09-26T18:08:00.000+01:00

ITIL is big on reporting, as you well know, because you've read the books. There are scores of reports that could be produced across each service process.

The 'trick' (in this e-mail crazy day and age) is to obtain your fair share of Senior Management / CIO 'mindspace' by utilising a number of canny illusions to get the results that you're looking for.

Let's take Change Management as the example throughout...

1. The Traditional Content of (Boring / Unread) Change Reports:-

-Number of change requests
-Number and percentage of changes (rejected - emergency change - in change status)
-Number of change awaiting implementation, by category and time outstanding
-Number of Implemented changes, by configuration component and service
-Change backlogs and bottle necks
-Cost per change
-Business impact of change
-Changes by business area
-Frequency of change to CIO's

2. The Results of Traditional Content of Change Report:-

-Your report flies around the e-mail system, lands into multiple in-boxes and is quickly deleted
-Your report is not read
-Therefore No action is taken
-The very next week - things are the same (if you are lucky!)

Continuous improvement is actually hindered by the lack of attention and time spent on essential reviews of management information - do you recognise this symptom?

So, what are the root causes?

-Your report is boring!!
-Your report contains too much data and not enough information
-Your report does not contain a narrative about the decisions that are taken/recommended
-Too much data by e-mail => loss of interest
-CIO says, "This is the Change teams job isn't it?"

So, what can we do about it?

3. Dr. ITiL's Prescription for Positive Change (or "things to try!")

-Produce a one-page scorecard... not a boring report (the detail can go underneath)
-Use color (red, amber, green, blue)

-Use charts with Meaningful Headings that look purposeful and make sense
-Use peoples names... make it personal - for maximum effect

-Use a powerful narrative, "This Chart clearly shows that the current statistics gave exceeded our target threshold and therefore the following action will be taken..."

- Use exaggerated color highlights where run statistics cross trendlines
-Try to produce a last week, last month, last quarter summary on one page

-Leave color copies on peoples desk once in a while rather than send by e-mail
-Hand the scorecard out once a week in the CAB meeting, discuss it before you begin the detailed stuff

What works for you? Please feel free to add your own comments / best practices / ideas by posting a comment below....

HP Buys Peregrine for $425M - UPDATE

2005-09-26T03:33:00.000+01:00

Probably the biggest news to come out of last week was HP's decision to purchase Peregrine Systems for $425M. This has effectively bought HP much closer to their IT Service Management (ITSM) Customers by purchasing Peregrine's excellent core software products including: ServiceCenter, AssetCenter and the various underpinning tools that enable self-service, auto discovery and of course, the icing on the cake, one centralised (all seeing, all knowing) integrated CMDB which works across the products.

HP's website did originally have a link embedded within their press release, which has subsequently been changed, which (to us) read like an internal briefing note - so perhaps there was a little bit of early confusion about what was an "internal" V's an "external" link. Nevertheless, the original link took us through to a Q&A page that outlined what would happen to the Peregrine products next.

Our take, here at Dr. ITiL, was that ServiceCenter's 'best features' would quickly be integrated into HP's core OpenView architecture, whilst AssetCenter appeared to be the real prize. In our view, the original link also talked postively about the future of the Peregrine team - rather than hinting at job losses.

Current Peregrine Customers are typically large scale Enterprises who already have considerable investment in either HP technology or HP's Openview - so it's just a matter of understanding the overall roadmap and how the integration of these technologies might work.

For companies that use alternative product suites to AssetCenter - it's going to lead to an interesting investment decision about migrating to the overall HP platform. The saving grace might just be the payback or ROI in Peregrine's Auto-Discovery and Centralised CMDB technology.

HP's move was a bold one - and one that has really boulstered it's position in the marketplace, as well as taken HP a step closed to more of it's existing as well as 'nearly' Customers.

It will be interesting to see how IBM react. The most natural step would be for IBM to purchase Mercury for it's Business Systems Management technology, and integrate that into the overall Tivoli suite. The 'fit' appears good, on paper at least.

Mercury have been going through a tough time though recently with them admitting that they will have to restate earnings from 2002, 03 and 04 (from the press releases we read, anyway). This has had an adverse affect on their share price. Nevertheless they have a powerful suite of ITIL related products - including their excellent IT Governance Center.

Perhaps IBM is waiting in the wings to snatch a better bargain?

Further Coverage:-

http://managementsoftware.hp.com/news/press/pr/2005/pr_0089.html

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171200367&tid=5979

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050925-9999-1b25prgn.html

Mercury to restate Earnings

Get The Edge - ITIL Exam Tips

2005-09-25T18:51:00.000+01:00

Today, Dr. ITIL is pleased to publish it's updated Exam Tips Article first published in March this year. We have added more tips and more links for further information on how to tackle the ITIL Managers (Masters) Exam.

To check out hints, tips and sample questions for the ITIL Foundation visit:-
www.FoundationSuccess.com

As well as learn the essentials of each individual process, you will beed to understand the linkages and synergies of each process. You will gain extra marks - where relevant! - for simply describing this.

Some general tips:-

- Use ITIL terminology throughout - but use it correctly.

- Answer the question that's asked. NOT the one that you think is being asked. Just because you see the phrases "Problem Management" and "benefits" doesn't always mean that's the main thrust of the answer.

Next, read the context of each question three times and ensure that you get to answering it straight away. Examiners reports always make reference to the fact that a large number of students do not read the question properly.

- Avoid explaining what hasn't asked to be explained. Just because you know all there is to know about, say Change Management, is irrelevant when you have been asked to explain how Change is linked to config. Answer what's really being asked. Examiners regularly highlight poor writing style and 'waffle' as being distracting. So my advice would be to keep it clear, concise and simple. Go for the marks!

- If you have pre-start reading time - use this wisely. Immediately eliminate any questions that you will truly struggle with. Select your strongest 3/4 questions first and think through the structure of your answer carefully. Save 1/2 questions that you can get away with listing things for, say the benefits of Incident Management. Saving list type questions will help you 'bag' some late marks when time's running out.

More ITIL Specific tips:-

- Answer your questions in the ITIL way - not the way you necessarily do it in real life. The examiner does not know your organisation but (s)he DOES know the syllabus for the examinations.

- Learn the benefits and advantages of each process

- Learn the disadvantages/challenges of each process

- Learn how to implement all of the processes

- Learn those generic items that are pretty much standard whichever process you implement, there is a pattern

- Learn the interface points, the outputs of one process to the inputs of another. Learn how - when implemented together - they generate further benefits for the organisation

- Learn the "desired results" that organisations/management are looking to achieve with ITIL processes

- Leave some space in your answers where you can fill it in later with additional supporting points

- Leave yourself some time before the end of the exam to re-read your answers - but do it from an ITIL examiners perspective

- Know the boundaries of ITIL, where ITIL effectively ends and another (e.g. COBIT, Six Sigma) begins. You don't need to know the other process in ANY detail, but simply understanding how far you can take ITIL before you need to employ the methodologies of another process is beneficial.

Running out of Time?

If you find yourself running out of time, don't panic:-

- Select the answers that score the most points!

- Use bulleted lists for maximum coverage with minimum words

- Hand your rough notes in with your answers papers - but write some "labels" on them - highlighting to the examiner that you were planning to include these points for specific answers. You may tip the balance if the examiners is thinking about giving you the benefit of the doubt for an answer

If you're sitting your exams soon - May We Wish You The Very Best of Luck- but with solid preparation and taking on board these tips - you won't need it will you ?!

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

Are You an ITIL Black Belt?

2005-09-24T17:12:00.000+01:00

Dr. ITiL presents Paul Underhill's excellent presentation on how ITIL can be implemented like a martial art!

Paul says, "We all know how difficult it is to effect change, especially when trying to implement ITIL.

Adopting the ancient lessons taught in martial arts, of balance, patience, yielding or striking only when the time is right, directing not controlling, connecting not attaching, starting something with its opposite etc, can help us all ensure success even in the modern world of IT Service Management."
“Don’t take a horse to water and expect it to drink - first make it thirsty” - exactly Paul.

Conference Coverage:- Day 3 - Lakeside Final Report

2005-09-22T17:07:00.000+01:00

Mary C. Jozsi's final Day at the 2005 itSMF US Conference:- Today (of course) was shorter, but non-the-less still filled with a lot of great information!

I attended the workshop IT Organizational Structures: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. We know we want the right people in the right place, but I wanted to know how to tell for certain if that’s what’s there.

I wanted strategies to determine whether or not it is, and options to minimize the impact if it’s not. I was not disappointed.

Elizabeth Schlier and Gary Glassman brought us through a lot of information that I will not only be able to use in the future, but also got me thinking about past organizations I’ve seen and what might have been done differently (applying what I learned).

The session ITIL – Can you scale it down? Was also very interesting. While I don’t have immediate plans to implement an ITIL framework in a very small organization, I do feel it’s interesting to explore how to implement best practices and an ITIL framework in an organization that is not the typical very large company that we’ve done a lot of talking about.

Looking at the other end of the spectrum gives us a different way to view implementing the ITIL framework so that we can be successful by implementing using processes that work for the organization we’re working with.

Again, the ending keynote was great. Ravi Nannapaneni left us with some great thoughts about why it’s great to be in IT, why IT needs to be a Service Business, and why it’s so important to do it right.

I hope everyone who attended the conference enjoyed it and got as much out of it as I did.

A final note about the facility. McCormick Place is always a great place to have a conference, but I’d like to share what just “made it” for me. As many of you already know, McCormick Place Lakeside Center (or East) is right on Lake Michigan and has a beautiful view of the lake and of downtown Chicago – especially on a nice day.

I am sitting on the lake enjoying this view as I write this. (In spite of being a life long Chicago area resident, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve done this.) This time made possible by the location selected for the conference and the nice weather we are experiencing in the Chicago area.

Mary C. Jozsi
Senior Consultant.
Delta Initiative LLC.

Conference Coverage:- Day 3 - Software Thinking

2005-09-22T13:33:00.000+01:00

Further Conference Coverage From Don Casson, CEO, Evergreen Systems INC.

Hi Guys,

I continue to be primarily show floor bound!

What I have noticed is a fair amount of innovative software thinking on the periphery of the core, established service management suites.

Areas to explore further are more intelligent approaches to automated discovery and reconciliation of IT asset information, innovation in the areas of service catalogs and general pre-packaging of service workflows, and more thinking around how to help the IT organization use (decisioning) the data that for some is now being gathered and stored consistently over time.

Another of the questions we asked on the ITIL maturity benchmark was, “Describe the speed at which ITIL awareness is rising with senior IT management (of your company) over the past 12 months.” Choices included not at all, slow, moderate, rapidly, and very rapidly.

From a quick scan of the data, 75% of the responses appear to be either moderate or rapid, with those being roughly even. Moderate is not bad, and rapid is ok too. The good news is the pace is good enough to sustain the momentum, as ultimately any grassroots ITIL service management.

Cheers,

Don Casson
www.evergreensys.com

EXTRA - Conference Coverage - Michelle Hudnall

2005-09-22T13:18:00.000+01:00

CMDB - Maximum Value, Minimum Number of Records!

Reported by Michele Hudnall, director of Service Management, Managed Objects.

Configuration management, not surprising, is central to of many of the sessions, vendor solutions and questions from the attendees at itSMF this year. The CMDB is the key that enables IT organizations (ITOs) to speak to their business units in terms of demand, capacity, usage, cost and value of services rather than technologies.

Projects discussed at itSMF are not generally a "CMDB project," but rather a CMDB supporting the development, management and communication of business services and/or in response to compliance and regulatory governance.

Common themes that perplex most ITO's – especially here seem to be:
- How wide and how deep should my CMDB be?
- What precisely is a CI?
- Where do I begin building a CMDB?
- Should I have one physical database or a federated database? (See federated vs. centralized: http://makeashorterlink.com/?R454225DB
- If federated, then how do I integrate?

In breaking this topic down, the purpose of the CMDB is to illustrate "relationships" logically to understand the driving questions of governance and services in support of managing technology services balancing cost/value and capacity/demand.

The purpose is not to become a single physical database, which requires duplication of management data (problem, incident, change, availability, etc.)

The answers I’ve heard at itSMF to the questions above seem to point out that the most successful approaches are those organizations that understand the value of managing the processes with supporting technology, while simultaneously integrating across process and technologies. Leveraging technology that enables integration for relationship views (shallow), while deep process information is managed at its source.

Pitfall themes to CMDB projects seem to be when organizations go too wide (end-to-end IT services), too deep (duplication of data managed in other technologies) and do not keep to the objective of the project (service views, governance, relationship mapping). The relationship view representing the relevant pieces of data from various management technologies and sources will provide the most value.

As ITIL states, "maximum control, minimum number of records."

Recommended reading:
Network World: Configuration management databases take center stage:- http://makeashorterlink.com/?P634315DB

Network Computing: IT Best Practices With ITIL:-
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P274525DB

Network World: A closer look at ITIL:-
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z284615DB

CIO Government: ITIL Be Alright on the Night:-
http://makeashorterlink.com/?U294255DB

About Managed Objects Managed Objects is the Business Service Management Company. Business Service Management (BSM) aligns IT with the business by integrating network, system, application, end user, and business metric information into real-time business service dashboards. Through Managed Objects' BSM platform, companies effectively monitor, manage, and report on the services IT delivers to the business - services like online trading and e-commerce. Consistently acknowledged by the analyst community as best in class, Managed Objects has more BSM implementations in place than any other company. That is why AIB, Auchan, CSC, Credit Suisse, DISA, Fidelity Investments, JPMorganChase, NIH, Progress Energy, Reuters, TIAA-CREF and other global organisations rely on Managed Objects' BSM technology.

For more information, visit www.managedobjects.com

itSMF Conference - Second Day Coverage!

2005-09-21T07:52:00.000+01:00

Today on Dr. ITiL - we can learn more about the second days news, presentations and behind the scenes goings on.

If you attended the conference - please feel free to post your own additional comments.

Conference Coverage:- Day 2 - The One About Gorillas

2005-09-21T06:51:00.000+01:00

By John Worthington.

Spent most of today ‘walking the halls’, but did get a chance to see Chip Bell’s message on Partnering: The Secrets of Great Relationships.

What a way to start the day!

An entertaining and very useful keynote that really highlighted the importance of SLM and managing the customer relationship….it’s so easy to skip these critical elements of ITSM since it is very often not part of IT’s comfort zone, but it can make or break success as much as Incident, Problem or any of the core process areas…

I particularly liked his story about the Gorillas, which I’ve tried to summarize below...

Four gorillas were trained to not touch bananas when lowered into their cage, by squirting a fire hose at them. They eventually learned not to touch the bananas or they would get wet.

When a new gorilla was switched with an existing (trained) gorilla, the other gorillas would stop the new gorilla from getting a banana so they did not get wet.

Eventually, all the gorillas were replaced, even though the fire hose had never squirted them. The behavior was embedded in the group even though it was no longer necessary.

The point was, ‘how do we know when a process loses its relevance?’ A silo-ed approach to management is no longer effective, yet many (unenlightened) still keep people, process, products and partners in (often guarded) silos. Continuous improvement asks whether what we’re doing is still relevant to the business…

While I did not get a chance to see other sessions, I was able to tour the show and talk to many exhibitors. What a wealth of information!

Most of the feedback I got from both exhibitors and customer attendees was that there was pretty good focus of interests and I got the sense that the show was proceeding very much to everyone’s satisfaction.

I was able to explore more about how performance data is being leveraged in ITIL implementations and will continue this research and ‘blog it’ when I’m able.

Enjoy the show!

By John Worthington.

Conference Coverage:- Day 2 - Going Really Well

2005-09-21T06:45:00.001+01:00

Day 2 was another day full of great presenters with a lot to tell us - writes Mary Jozsi.

I started with the 7:30 Breakfast session Trends and Best Practices in Service Level management which gave us information about Service Agreements, including results on Oblicore’s latest SLM survey.

At a high level, the results indicate that a vast majority of companies have SLAs, a majority of those feel that the number of SLAs will increase next year, and over half of them claim to over deliver services to meet the SLAs. (hm, sounds familiar – I’ve seen it in practice a few times.)

Again today, I felt that I got something out of every session I attended, but I’ve got to tell you, I thought Stephanie Peterson’s session on Organizational Readiness and ITIL: how to Ensure your ITIL initiative will succeed was fantastic.

She is a dynamic presenter and kept the audience’s attention with what appeared to be no effort at all. We left with a list of questions that can be asked to assess where an organization is at. For determining if project goals are met, the recommendation is to have one measure of success that ties back directly to the business reason the project is being done.

I was able to attend both Keynote presentations today. Chip Bell was great to listen too and his lively presentation Partnering: The Secrets of Great Relationships was an excellent choice for the morning keynote.

I think we all know some of the elements of a great relationship, but his presenting the seven areas discussed today helped bring them all together and put it in reference of a business perspective. I can say that Mr. Bell’s books have been added to my must read list.

The afternoon keynote by D. Michael Abrashoff was also fabulous. His presentation was full of very clear examples of how he was able to make changes on the U.S.S. Benefold, with each example highlighting different areas that can be addressed. Some of it translates to one of my stronger opinioins, that if we hired people to do a job we should let them do it; but there was a lot more in the presentation as well.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who liked what Mr. Abrashoff said as the presentation ended with a standing ovation. Needless to say, his book, "It’s You’re Ship", is also being added to my must read list.

I approached the exhibition hall today with more purpose than yesterday, stopping by booths with specific questions to ask the various vendors regarding how they fit into the Service Management space, and how they fit into an organization.

I wanted to know how the tools get deployed and used, and how they fit in with all of the other tools in the organization. There are a lot of vendors with a lot of interesting products and services that implemented or used appropriately could offer much benefit to an organization. At first glance there seems to be quite a few vendors offering the same or similar products.

It really takes stopping by and asking the questions to figure out how the really fit into the overall picture.

I am certainly looking forward to tomorrow’s presentations.

Regards,

Mary C. Jozsi

Conference Coverage:- Day 2 - Walking the Halls

2005-09-21T06:38:00.000+01:00

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

Conference Coverage:- Day 2 - Summary of the Day

2005-09-21T06:36:00.000+01:00

Lance Alsup writes - Day 2 was another good day ending with another great keynote from the former Commander of the U.S.S. Benfold and author of “Its Your Ship,” D. Michael Abrashoff.

Mr. Abrashoff’s book is based upon his experiences when taking command and the leadership practices that resulted in a very dynamic turnaround in the crew’s performance.

He was a very effective presenter that engaged the audience throughout the presentation and ended with a standing ovation and a book signing opportunity.

Some of the key points were as follows;

· People are the most valuable commodity
· Meet them at their level
· Open the lines of communication
· Set the objectives and challenge them to determine how to deliver
· Empower your staff and side with them
· When things go wrong, look to yourself first and then focus on how to keep it from
happenning again

This was the most impacting presentation that I attend on this day.

Best Regards,
Lance.

itSMF Conference Coverage Begins Today!!

2005-09-20T23:56:00.000+01:00

McCormack Place, Chicago - Host to the 2005 itSMF US Conference.

Today, Dr. ITiL begins unrivalled coverage of the 2005 itSMF conference in Chacago, USA.

With the help of five avid roaming reporters, each from a professional service management background, we will be posting all the latest news, updates and events over the coming three days.

Special profile material will also be posted - so you can get to know a bit more about our reporters and their companies too.

Keep coming back over the next few days to check out how our intrepid reporters are doing, what they are learning and let's enjoy this conference together!!

Let the show commence...

Conference Coverage:- Day 1 - Notes from the Day

2005-09-20T15:56:00.000+01:00

This is the first itSMF Conference that I’ve attended, reports Mary C. Jozsi.

Right off, I was pleasantly surprised to find all (or most of) the slides from the sessions included with the conference material I was handed at the door.

A not so pleasant surprise was to find that the breakfast session and the breakfast were not in the same place. I chose breakfast (but hey – I’ve got a copy of the slides).

The introduction to the morning keynote session was upbeat, with a reminder that we will all get what we put into the conference. It should come as no surprise from an IT Service Management event that the introduction had some statistics.

Over 1300 people registered from 34 countries and territories; 106 speakers and 109 vendors/sponsors. I thought there were a lot of people in that room…

Like many conference attendees, I expect to leave with, not only new knowledge, but also a different perspective. And of course, reminders about what we already know (sometimes you need to hear them when you’re caught in the day to day activities).

The thing I really like to come back with though is new ways to explain the topics, new phrases to explain for others to understand. John Heller’s keynote gave me a little bit of all of that; one that I really like is his comment that we need to fully document changes to “give ourselves a chance at problem solving”. What a great way to turn that to a positive - I’ve met enough people who are not doing change management who need to be convinced.

All of the sessions I attended presented good information and I have something to take back from all of them. ITSM Metrics: Beyond the Measurement leaves me asking, “What decision can I make with this metric?” Building a Real Configuration Management Database Quickly and Accurately brought a different picture for how CMDB fits into the overall and, I’m happy to say it, confirmation about how I think this should be implemented.

During the Best Practices for “Managing the Business of ITIL” we heard a lot of good information, starting with Ian Clayton’s recommendation that we should read the ITIL books on the Business Perspective and ICT Infrastructure Management. A fellow attendee told me that the session A statistical Approach to Prioritizing ITIL Processes and Controls, which was at the same time, was excellent.

I also attended the Track 2 Panel: Moving to a New Process Architecture: All at Once or Incrementally? If all the panels are like this one, I’d recommend them. It was definitely good to hear a perspective from people who’ve been there. Great questions were asked such as; “How do you know you’ve got the right culture, and if not, how do you get there?” and “How do you justify a ‘big bang’ approach to management?”

Everyone I talked to seem to be enjoying and learning from the conference. As I am local and tied to the train schedule, I am not attending any of the extra events. I’m looking forward to seeing postings from some who do.

Mary C. Jozsi - Reporting from her first itSMF Conference.

Sr. Consultant
Delta Initiative, LLC
129 Brentwood Drive
Palatine, IL 60074
(847) 274-6220
www.deltainitiative.com

Conference Coverage:- Day 1 - Featuring The Big One

2005-09-20T15:44:00.000+01:00

Greetings from the ITSM-USA in the "Windy City" - Chicago, Illinois USA.

Reported by John Jasinski.

Nicknamed not for the weather but self-promoting politicians in the early days.

Today the wind is still blowing but the story is Service. Over 1300 people started out the 5th Annual IT Service Management (www.itsmfusa.org) Conference today with an IBM breakfast before moving to keynote presentation by the CIO of Caterpillar, John Heller and then onto a choice of 30 break-out educational sessions on a variety of IT Service topics.

My day focused on a mix of metrics, governance, Version 3 refresh and implementation. Some brief comments are provided below.

The first session covered metrics and how we could be doing better. Most interesting was the linking of heavy metrics focus to process dysfunction. Spend too much time measuring and you're likely to miss the real objective, measuring on delivery of customer requirements. The session also provided a reminder of metric focus: value, performance, compliance and quality on end-to-end internal, 3rd party and external customers. Emerging trends include the reporting approaches of exceptions vs. norms, operations vs. outcomes, action focus and cascading for teams.

Governance was my second session which covered moving IT from cost center and how ITIL relates to COBIT. The speaker began by reminding the audience that IT Finacial Management is the least used of all ITIL processes. Then he followed up with the importance of COBIT control (DS6)objectives for finance and the need for making customers aware of costs.

My next session was the big one. Sharon Taylor, Chief Architect for version 3 provided an update on progress. She explained the phases of the approach, the involvement of paid authors and consistency of content. Tony Betts, Chief Project Manager also joined Sharon for responding to questions. Of particular note is the possbility of free content on selected areas of ITIL content. Stay tuned to ITSMF news for updates.

The day finished with a quick overview of the methods and madness of implementations. The speaker emphasized fixing current problems before attemtping to set SLA's with the customer. A strategy was presented that combats over-emphasis on documentation with the use of quick reference cards and tangible quick wins.

HP rounded out the day with a keynote talk of leadership and commitment to ITIL by Services VP Mike Rigodanzo. And, thanks for PINK for a nice evening reception.

What I see in this conference is that the ITSMF has the opportunity to become a solid best practice source to help everyone in the IT Shop.

More tomorrow.

JJ

Conference Coverage:- Day 1 - Track by Track

2005-09-20T15:32:00.000+01:00

itSMF Show Notes - by John Worthington.

The show is very well attended and organized. After being a little disappointed at IBM’s breakfast being full (I got there right at start-time), and managing some last minute booth issues, however I was able to attend a few sessions… Here’s some thoughts and comments:

Welcome and Opening Keynote by John Heller, CIO – Caterpillar

You’d have to be brain dead not to be impressed with Caterpillar’s results; record sales and profits that show no signs of letting up (year over year profit increase of 85% in 2004). A reminder of why IT exists in the first place (to serve the needs of the business); my thought was I wished the room were full of business executives that could have heard the message “IT Service Management Improves the Value of IT to the Business”. Anything the ITIL community can do to get this message to the business side of the house helps us all….John was a great speaker and seemed quite committed to ITSM…

I was particularly interested in his comments about supply chain challenges increasing the importance of ITSM….(more on that in a minute)…anyway, I thought a great opening keynote.

Track 1 – From Silos to Service Management by Sanofi-Aventis

Pretty much re-enforced the keynote’s message and illustrated a real world implementation that included business case development and awareness campaigns; clearly a lot of effort and time went into this and it was well presented.

Again, what stuck with me was a comment that establishment of cross functional (cross silo) teams was “the biggest key” to success. Initial team member comments were “this will never work”….breaking down those barriers can be a major hurdle…

Track 6 – ITSM & Distributed Sourcing: It’s not a Question of “If” but of “How” by Michael McGaughey, Capgemini Energy.

I thought this was a great presentation and the slides were full of content. Interesting how critical service definition is and how distributed sourcing can dramatically complicate what is often already a complicated process.

Interesting that customers will be insisting on ITIL/BS15000 and are often requesting outsourcers to ‘show us your ITIL training'… John Heller’s comments on supply chain challenges are closely related to this ‘distributed sourcing’ and if internal silos are difficult to manage one can imagine how complex external silos are.

Track 3 – Gaps: Your Gateway to Excellence, Panel Discussion

Ended the day with a panel discussion about what hurdles clients encountered during their ITIL implementations, which centered around definition of SLAs and SLM in particular, root cause analysis and Problem Management challenges…..more cross silo discussion associated with problem review boards, etc….an interesting and informative exchange.

Overall Comments

Great information from the real world and very valuable…while I understand the focus on Change and Configuration, I’d like to explore more the area of performance management and how that plays into supply chain, distributed sourcing and cross-silo problem management.

I’ve had experience with a tool that can provide silos (inter-enterprise, distributed sourcing and/or supply chain environments) end-to-end service performance data across every layer of every component and automatically isolate whish layer of which component is the source of a problem.

I’d like to find out more how people are leveraging (or not) performance data to benefit the service support process areas. I think this is an area that can accelerate gains, and will be looking for feedback…. more tomorrow!

John M. Worthington - IT Service Management Consulting
MyServiceMonitor.

Conference Coverage:- Day 1 - Things That Caught The Eye

2005-09-20T15:21:00.000+01:00

Day 1 was a huge success that started off with a great keynote from Caterpillar CIO John Heller, reports Lance Alsup.

They key point of interest for me where around how they aligned based upon their vision, their “Key Business Activities,” and where their IT Services must stay focused. Their vision statement is, “Create exceptional customer value through common global process and systems leadership.”

Their alignment is as follows:-
· Understand / Govern Cost Structure and Value Provided
· Responsive, Effective Process and Technology Solutions
· Establish Process and Technology Stewardship
· Align Resources with Business Strategies
· Foster a Culture with Engaged Business Focused Employees
· Source for Optimal Value
· Enable Business on Demand

The “Key Business Activities” defined within Caterpillar and their IT Service focuses:-

· Product / Service Development – Quality
· Order Fulfillment – Engine & Machine Order Processing
· Sales Capability / CRM – Dealer Business Systems
· Product / Service Support – Parts & Service Support e-Business
· Other Activities (Financial, HR, Accounting, etc.) – Financial Products e-Business

The other big hitter for the day was IBM’s “The 7 Immutable Laws of IT Service management.” The laws are as follows:-

-Knowledge (CMDB & Relationships)
-Quick Wins (Simplify, build it modular)
-Sponsorship (Expect & Learn from failure, look for quick time to value)
-Recycling (Map capabilities of tools to processes & be wary of “rip & replace”)
-Automation (automate what you can, but you cannot automate everything)
-Expertise (Look for expertise with People – Process – Technology)

There is so much information at the conference, but after 3 years of experience implementing ITIL at a Fortune 50 company, these were the items that really caught my attention and I hope you can utilize them in where you are at within your ITSM journey.

Lance Alsup - Roving Conference Reporter - Full Profile to Follow...

Conference Coverage - Day 1 - HP Acquires Peregrine and Gains Stronger ITSM Foothold

2005-09-20T15:02:00.000+01:00

Hewlett Packard acquires last standalone enterprise service management technology.

Michele Hudnall, a former META Group Service Management analyst turned director of Service Management for BSM vendor Managed Objects provides an analysis of today’s big news on the itSMF tradeshow floor.

A significant acquisition announcement was the buzz today (news, more news, and analysis).

Again, a service management technology furthers market consolidation with overlapping and complimentary products. AssetCenter will be a welcome addition to HP’s portfolio, while ServiceCenter will be redundant with a large customer and service provider install base to consider.

There are tough choices facing HP – and its leadership will be defined by HP's ability to execute swiftly upon a tough plan of consolidation.

The obvious, yet difficult choice is to migrate ServiceCenter onto HP technologies and integrate AssetCenter into a complete HP Service Management solution. This will no doubt be a complex task for customers, service providers, partners and HP itself.

Speed of execution will be the key to retaining customers from making alternative choices that will undoubtedly be presented by competitive technology solution providers.

Current customers of both HP and Peregrine should be preparing their "plan B" in preparation for the acquisition’s closing. A stall in executing a swift integration or migration plan also carries a negative impact and distraction on current product development efforts. Partnerships with competitive enterprise solutions are also certainly at jeopardy from a future development perspective (e.g. Mercury, IBM).

On the other hand, technology integration solutions are better poised to offer customers the opportunity to continue forward progress on current project underpinned by a CMDB managing relationships logically (virtually) as the added complexity of ever changing supporting technology can be masked from the business in continuity of service support and delivery.

Michele Hudnall - our roving reporter from Managed Objects

Managed Objects is the Business Service Management Company. We introduced the concept of Business Service Management - along with the first software to deliver it - in 1997.

Today, the analyst community consistently recognizes our methodology and suite of software built on the Formula® platform as best in class. Our solution works by correlating networks, systems, end users, applications, and even business metrics to the services that IT delivers.

We have implemented Business Service Management more than any other company, enabling our customers to monitor, manage and report on the availability and performance of online trading, customer relationship management, corporate e-mail and many other services.

That is why Auchan, CSC, DISA, Fidelity Investments, JPMorganChase, Progress Energy, Reuters, TIAA-CREF and others rely on us.

Managed Objects is headquartered in McLean, Virginia. Our operations in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and Texas support a sales presence throughout North America. European operations are headquartered in London and Asia-Pacific operations are in Singapore. Partners support sales in continental Europe, South America, Africa and People's Republic of China.

Summary of links in Blog Article:-

MO Press Release: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z524123DB

BMC Press Release: http://makeashorterlink.com/?X214423DB

AssetCenter: http://makeashorterlink.com/?U544213DB

ServiceCenter: http://makeashorterlink.com/?O654513DB

Red Herring: http://makeashorterlink.com/?G164223DB

InformationWeek: http://makeashorterlink.com/?A294123DB

CIO: http://makeashorterlink.com/?D574233DB

Conference Coverage:- Day 1 Report - Don Casson

2005-09-20T14:51:00.000+01:00

Guys,

Here we are after day 1 at the ITSMF annual conference in Chicago. Thanks to Dr. ITIL for allowing us to post show updates.

As Evergreen is an exhibitor, much of my time is tied to the exhibit floor. I apologize in advance for my limited exposure. I understand there are approximately 1250 registered attendees.

That is a significant number for the service management marketplace, and there are a large number of software and consulting firms on the exhibit floor. Interesting to note are a few of the Big 5 and Accenture present as well. That is a strong indication of the growing relevance / size of the market.

We are running a ITIL Benchmark Study with the show attendees, and have 90 completed surveys today.

It is an update and expansion of the one we did in Q1 2005, which if you are interested you may find on our website— www.evergreensys.com

If you would like the most current benchmark but are not at the show to participate—please send an e mail to patricia.mejia@evergreensys.com, and we will add you to the distribution list.

There are 7 different tracks, and the sessions I have attended are of high quality, with real subject depth. To the Sponsor’s credit—they are giving fair play to a broader view of ITSM beyond ITIL including topics like IT Governance and CoBIT as well as others.

As a wrap up—here’s a preview of a couple of the basic benchmark question responses from the sample so far:-

Do you have a published ITIL Strategy leading your efforts?
41 out of 90 do, for a 45% Yes.

Do you have budgeted and approved ITIL projects funded in the next 12 months?
78 out of 90, for an 87% Yes.

Both data points bode well for ITIL and other process framework disciplines continuing to be adopted. With nearly half of the respondents having a published strategy, it is hopeful that we will see a good balance of focus on business, process, and technical outcomes as ITIL progresses.

Cheers,

Don Casson

Donald D. Casson, Jr.President, CEO, and Co-founder
Evergreen Systems, Inc.

Don has more than 17 years of experience in leading, building, managing, and operating technology companies. He has led market development and technical direction of business units focused on internal and external call center solutions, network management systems, complex networks, and workflow/document management solutions. During his career, he has been responsible for building and leading multiple national sales teams.

Before co-founding Evergreen, Don was Executive Vice President, and co-founder of GMSI. During Don's five-year tenure there, GMSI grew from 3 employees to 175 employees and over $17 million in annual revenues. Inc. magazine recognized these efforts by listing the company in the top 100 on their list of the 500 fastest growing, privately held firms in the US.
A graduate of the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Don is a Certified Public Accountant.
Find out more about Evergreen Systems at www.evergreensys.com.

Two Critical Success Factors in an ITIL Implementation

2005-09-17T18:08:00.000+01:00

Any IT manager who wants to pursue the IT Service Management journey by implementing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) needs to understand two very important factors well in advance.

• The first factor is to have dedicated, trained and committed process owners.

If you want to have a successful Incident Management process which is under continuous improvement, you will need somebody who is ultimately responsible for it’s success and who can dedicate the time and focus to drive it and to make sure it actually happens.

A lot of organizations makes one of the following mistakes:-

- The process owner is non-existent which means there is nobody dedicated to drive a particular process.

- There is a process owner, but he or she is bogged down in day to day reactive activities or other "more important" business-driven projects and thus have no time for unnecessary "red tape" like ITIL.

- There is more than one process owner for a particular process (a classic mistake).

The idea of ITIL is to have a single consistent process throughout the organization and having two head cooks in this "process kitchen" is sure to mess up the cake.

Who will ultimately be responsible if there is more than one owner? Major companies who have successfully implemented ITIL have only one process owner throughout the company, even if there are numerous divisions spread across the globe. This ensures that the process is consistent throughout all divisions and helps the break down barriers between departments and divisions.

The primary problem here, is that companies do not want to spend the money on dedicate resources for process owners. Obviously a process owner can have a split role, doing other work as well, especially in smaller companies. As long as that other role is not of a reactive firefighting nature.

One person can also be made responsible for more than one process. Although these processes should be of similar focus.

The Change, Configuration and Release roles can be shared by one person in small companies for example. I believe in a large corporate these roles should be fulfilled by dedicated people, and companies who does not fill these roles are not serious enough about ITIL and is most probably lacking the management commitment.

Which brings us to the second, but probably the most important critical success factor, namely management commitment?

If you are responsible for an ITIL implementation, make sure you have commitment from the top; otherwise ITIL might just become another failed IT project throwing time and money down the drain.

And management commitment does not mean, "the manager says his committed". The manager must walk and talk ITIL and continuously show his commitment. In practical terms this means empowering staff through professional training, tools etc., appointing the right people in the right roles and managing by means of ITIL, e.g. demanding the right reports and taking action...

Kotter's 8 steps to organizational change is actually a good guideline for top management to follow.

Management commitment is probably the most important success factor for ITIL, but in my experience, probably also the most difficult to find. That is why a lot of ITIL implementations just become a black hole sucking up money.

I think there are a lot of IT managers that is under this misconception, that ITIL is a silver bullet to fix all their problems. Just install ITIL (almost like installing a new technology) and everything will be OK. What they do not understand is that ITIL is a major organizational change, including a culture change. We used to focus only on technology, but now we have to focus on the customer.

Another reason for low management commitment is also that ITIL is usually an internal IT department endeavor and not a direct requirement from the business. ITIL is a methodology for improving IT and not as such the business.

To overcome this, an ITIL project should become a business requirement and commitment is needed from all the way to the top, from the CEO.

Article by:- Arno Esterhuizen arno@itil.co.za http://itilblog.blogspot.com

Learn more about implementing ITIL here...

ITIL Terminology Guide

2005-09-16T07:53:00.000+01:00

For the ITIL officianado's (?) here is Exin's (One of Two ITIL Examination Boards) update guide to ITIL based terminology.

It's a little dated, but it's still relevant and important to grasp before we go into 2006's ITIL "refresh" that we appreciate where ITIL has come from to date.

In particular it highlights the hard work that the itSMF, the OGC and the hundreds of reviewers have to go through to ensure quality and completeness.

This guide will also be useful for Exam candidates as a glossary of terms.

Exin's ITIL Update Guide...

ITIL 'compatible' Tools - All Badged Up...

2005-09-16T07:48:00.000+01:00

With the myriad of tools and integrated toolsets out in the markletplace today, we all need some guidance and steer on what exactly works (and how well) with ITIL based processes.

Pink Elephant have a badge or seal of approval to support this requirement.

If you see the PinkVerify™ logo associated with any specific IT Service Management software toolset, it means that it has been objectively assessed according to the criteria specified by the OGC and certified by a qualified Pink Elephant IT Service Management Consultant, as meeting the minimum functional requirements to support the ITIL framework.

View the white paper and the process documents below for more background information and a complete listing of the functional requirements necessary to attain PinkVerify™ status

Which Tools Are Compatible?

FREE: Sample Proposal to Implement ITIL

2005-09-15T22:11:00.000+01:00

Today, Dr. ITiL brings you, courtesy of the University of Canterbury - New Zealand, an excellent example report entitled, "Proposal to Implement the Information Technology Infrastructure Library Framework for IT Service Management"

This report should assist you in getting started quickly with your own ITIL Implementation proposals.

The report content includes:-

1.0 Executive Overview
2.0 Introduction
3.0 Reasons for Examining this Approach
4.0 Initially Identified Requirements for Change
5.0 Scope
6.0 Objectives
7.0 Project Structure
8.0 Project Deliverables
8.1 Service Desk
8.2 Incident Management
8.3 Configuration Management
8.4 Problem Management
8.5 Change Management
8.6 Release Management
8.7 Service Level Management
9.0 Project Organisational Structure
9.1 ITIL Implementation Project Manager
9.2 Service Management Project Team (ITSM)
9.3 Implementation Teams
9.4 Steering Group
9.5 Reference Groups
9.6 Reporting Lines
10.0 Key Challenges to the Implementation
11.0 Communications Strategy and Change Management
12.0 Resource Requirements
12.1 Human Resources
12.2 Helpdesk Telephone System
12.3 Software

Even if the specific contents don't really match-up to your commercial organizations - the titles, headings, layout and benefits bullets are very credible.

This 18 page report should give you some further 'food for thought' if you need to produce a similar paper yourself.

Access the Full Report Here...

New! Visit the latest Blog from the creator of Dr. ITiL – covering ITIL Version 3 Refresh, Service Catalogs, CMDB, Foundation Exam Tips and ISO20000 Knowledge. There’s a variety of free PDF and Powerpoint downloads available to help you plan and implement ITIL.

Visit the IT Service Blog

Final Call - One More Guest Reporter Required!

2005-09-14T22:26:00.000+01:00

We are currently looking for one more talented guest reporter to cover the forthcoming US itSMF Conference next week.

*We've already got two brilliant volunteers to provide us with their thoughts and views on the conference next week... we just need one more person to complete the team*

The goal is for you to provide a brief summary of the presentations that you attended that particular day and to highlight any valuable points raised such as:-

- New ideas
- Hot tips
- Latest trends
- New Buzzwords in ITIL
- Latest Product News
- What's the audience is saying
- Any new approaches to traditional aspects of ITIL

You can e-mail me your thoughts and I'll make sure they are published on Dr. ITIL at the close of each day to share with our visitors.

It should create a real 'buzz' and energy around conference time!

Think about it - you would be sharing your words with over 15,000 people in each month across the US, Europe, Australia, Japan and China.

In return, you will get a nice free advertising slot on 'Dr. ITIL' for your companies products or services - as a special 'thank-you' for sharing your thoughts with the ITIL world via Dr. ITIL.

Alternatively, we can always make you 'anonymous' with a special identity if you would prefer.

It could be the start of your ITIL journalist/Blogging career!

So, if you are up for supporting this exciting new venture, you can email me directly here at robert@dritil.com.

Happy ITIL'ing!

Robert Ewloe
Chief Blogger
www.dritil.com

The Highs and the Lows of ITIL Adoption

2005-09-13T20:23:00.000+01:00

Today, we feature Gartner's (www.gartner.com) Teleconference presentation on ITIL adoption in the Asia Pacific Region.

In case you missed it on August 31st, it tells us:-

• Why and how are organisations adopting ITIL?
• What inhibitors are holding some organisations back?
• What approaches are organisations using to justify ITIL,
and what benefits are they gaining from ITIL adoption?
• What are key trends and best practices are highlighted by Gartner’s APAC ITIL survey?

It also reveals...

Why ITIL: It’s a powerful starting point:-

•De facto standard best practice guidelines
•Well-established, integrated and mature
•Professional and corporate certification
•Extensive supporting resources
• It’s common sense —

And Where ITIL is weak? (Dr. ITiL Comments Added '*')

• Relationship management
* Very weak, right across anything to do with people and human beings in general.
* However provides key interface points and highlights 'moments of contact' such as meetings, discussions and obtaining sponsorship and support.

• Service costing and invoicing
* Yes, but that's what accountants do isn't it??

• Service life cycle management
* OK, but the "cradle to grave" elements will be added come 2006 with the launch of the new core books; including Service Design and Service Introduction.

• Supplier management
* Mmmm, ITIL could do with some OLA standard templates, some suggested Supplier Scorecards and also - most important - the need for executable supplier exit plans, so often not in place with outsourcing contracts from the outset.

• Linking to business strategy and business service management
* Opportunities exist in the future for linkages to the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM). This will help.
* Possibility that in 2007/08 eTOM integration could also support this aspect of ITIL.

• Maturity model
* This is needed and we hope it's in the 2006 V3 material, but not based on the Software Development CMM - use the Service CMM

• Tool vendors are slow to adapt and it is impossible to judge tools “compliance”
* You can't really be compliant to a "best practice", only a standard. However, with the forthcoming change of BS15000 to ISO20000, it is likely that larger organisations will demand clear "badging" on the box that their tools are ISO20000 compliant, in terms of support the organisation obtain, and then maintain it's compliancy.

• Lack of clear development road map
* At a high level it is clear, however the lack of ongoing ITIL standard working parties (like we find with eTOM) does mean a 'start / stop' approach to ITIL enhancements.

Access the Full Presentation Pack Here...