ITIL QUESTION OF THE DAY?

What is the future of ITIL?

Post your comments here...

How to Keep ITIL Project Momentum

Here's the quick and dirty from a consultant's perspective:

• Establish specific and realistic goals with milestones
• Don't get too ambitious
• Identify project sponsors with skin in the game
• Create awareness of project objectives
• Identify and achieve project quick wins
• Provide context for the project
• Teach rather than do

Consultants, often out of frustration with organizational culture and politics, wind up completing the entire project themselves. I've seen this happen so many times. It is mostly due to the lack of leadership or clearly defined project roles and responsibilities from the client organization. Instead of providing advice and guiding a customer, the consultant will take over the detailed project tasks just to be able to complete a project and move on.


Rather than this, the consultant should play the role of advisor, providing guidance to the client throughout the project lifecycle. At times, the consultant will lead the team through various workshops and exercises as a learning tool but the consultant should never take over the project. Our jobs as consultants should be to teach the organization how to keep going long after we've left. This message should be clear from the outset of the project and should be reiterated thought the entire project.

• Create a team of capable and willing participants

There is nothing worse than trying to move a project forward with the wrong team members. This would include team members who haven't a clue what the project is about and have nothing to contribute as well as those who are able but who resist change at every turn with constant complaints or excuses.


In short, if the project is important (as every project worth doing should be) be sure to carefully select core team members who are both willing and able to contribute to the success of the project.

• Set regular face to face meetings with team members

With advancements in modern technology, distributed or remote project teams are becoming the norm. This allows for an organization to reduce costs and leverage the expertise of individuals at different locations around the globe. The downside, of course, is what is lost when there is little or no face to face communication. Face to face communication is essential when building project momentum. It makes it easier for team members to feed off of the energy and ideas of others.


Besides setting regular meetings, our recommendation would be that whenever possible, assemble all team members together in a room for the duration of the project phase. This facilitates idea generation and problem solving and keeps the project on track.

• Break the project down into bite size mini projects or phases

This is important to prevent the project from seeming like never ending drudgery. If at all possible, it's also a good idea to try to replace a few of the core team members at the beginning of each new phase. This prevents burn-out and brings a fresh perspective. Have you ever tried to maintain excitement for a project that lasts more than 3 or 4 months?

• Don't do projects that have no benefit to the organization

This is the hardest of all for consultants to follow because, after all, we're in business to make money. However, there is no way to win on a project that has no clear benefits to the organization. How do you measure success? Who determines whether the project was worthwhile? Most importantly, these types of projects are the prime candidates for loss of momentum. After a while, every loses interest because it becomes evident that there is no greater purpose. Everyone eventually realizes that it is a waste of time, money and resources.

Lastly, the consultant's reputation may be jeopardized by their involvement in a meaningless project. A consultant most valuable assest is always his/her integrity. This should not be bought and sold for any sum of money.

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4 Components of A Successful IT Strategy:

1. Develop long-term, simple, clear, measurable and agreed upon objectives.

2. Gain a profound understanding of your IT customers.

3. Develop an objective and rational understanding of your internal resources and capabilities.

4. Develop a plan to effectively implement strategic intentions.

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Outsourcing Leadership - Article - The RFP Pricing Template: A Tool for Provider Selection, Negotiations and Contract Management

Outsourcing Leadership - Article - The RFP Pricing Template: A Tool for Provider Selection, Negotiations and Contract Management

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What is Service Availabiltiy?

The following is an excerpt from a comment posted on a TechRepublic forum in 2008. The topic, however, remains relevant:

By now, we should all be aware that Availabiity should be measured by Service. This means that if there are several systems necessary to deliver a service (email, internet access), we should measure the average uptime of all system components required to deliver that service. In doing so, we can arrive at a predictable level of uptime.

This is the baseline used to determine the improvements necessary to meet customers requirements and expectations regarding availability. If a higher level of availability is required, then additional components (bandwidth, storage, memory) can be added to reach the desired level of availability.

Additionally, availability is always relative to the timeframe in which it is measured. This means that a service that requires 99.999% availability between the hours of 9-5 (M-F) may be much different (in terms of architecture & resource requirements) than a service that requires the same level of availabilty 24/7. Thus, not every service requires the same level of availability.

This concept of relative availability is one that is always missing from the discussions of uptime.

What is also missing from these discussions is a definition of "uptime" and the impact of performance on that definition.

If a service is available but very slow, is it still considered "up?"

Here is where the specifics in a Service Level Agreements become very important.

The ITIL library provides guidance on these and other IT Service Management process disciplines.

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Incident or Service Request?

My 2 Cents...

We are often asked to conduct small workshops for IT organizations to help Service Desk agents to better understand the differences between Incidents and Service Requests. In most cases, once the differences are explained and a few example are provided, people start to get it.

However, there are some instances when simply looking at a list of examples is not an effective approach to the correct classification of Incidents. This is primarily due to the fact that no list can predict every possible user call to the service desk.

While it may be possible to capture, record and classify the most frequent system breakdowns and user requests, the possiblities are infinite. If there were such a rule, we could simply program a computer to do the work and save a lot of money.

Until then, Service Desk agents will have to use their knowledge of IT and ITIL to make the determination.

For example, sometimes the difference between an Incident and a Service Request is determined by the details. An error downloading software to a user workstation can be attributed to several different causes.

The user could lack the appropriate knowledge or skills (Service Request)or, the error could be related to a fault in the infrastructure (Incident). By asking follow-up questions, the Service Desk agent, should be able to determine to most appropriate classification and course of action.

The point, is that in many situations, it is "why" rather than "what" the user is unable to do that determines whether the ticket should be classified as an Incident or as a Service Request.

Understanding this helps the IT organization to produce more accurate reports about the health of the inftastructure. These reports are also useful in identifying areas for targeted improvement and user training opportunities.

This post was contributed by Danielle Baker, Managing Director of Red Engine Consulting. Danielle is a certified V3 Expert and has extensive experience in ITSM, Organizational Change and Project Management.

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Is your IT Driving Innovation?

According to MIT Sloan economist and digital-business expert Erik Brynjolfsson in his inteview with MIT Sloan Management Review editor-in-chief Michael S. Hopkins, companies that implement business processes, organizational change, and IT-driven innovation is what ultimately differentiates the leaders from the others.

Brynjolfsson further indicates that: "Rather than leveling the playing field, IT is actually led to greater discrepancies. In most industries, the top companies are pulling further away from the companies in the middle and the bottom of the competitive spectrum."

How does an IT organization help to drive innovation?

Here are a few ideas:

• Align priorities with those of the business
• Streamline processes to become more effficient
• Train IT staff to understand business timeframes and deadlines
• Develop IT Services to assist the business in meeting those deadlines
• Improve communication between key IT Staff and business customers
• Abandon one size fits all IT services
• Allow customers to select services that meet their departmental objectives
• Become more agile and responsive to changing business needs
  

Sound easier said than done? According to Brynjolfsson, changing culture is probably the most difficult challenge for any organization.

ITIL for IT Service Management can help both with the mapping of IT priorities to those of the business as well as with the management of the organizational challenges sure to arise from as a result.

Every organization should invest in retaining an experienced ITIL Practioner/Consultant to ensure the employment of the most appropriate IT strategies. The key is the use of the word 'appropriate.'

IT is not a one size fits all solution. What works best in one organization is not guaranteed to work well in another. Unfortunately, the commission driven IT vendors sales staff are not inclined to follow this rule.

Getting the most out of IT requires the leveraging of existing capabilities to create a vision for future growth. Once an organization understands its capabilites (and weaknesses), then and only then can it create a climate ripe for innovation.

Click here to read the entire article.

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Request For Change (RFC) Template

Download sample Request for Change (RFC) Template from Red Engine Consulting.

This is a sample template and should be regarded as such.

It is offered here to provide an example of some of the types of information collected and recorded as part of the ITIL Change Management process. Each organization will customize this template for use in the day to day management of changes according to their unique requirements and capabilities.

Contact Red Engine Consulting for more information on this and other ITIL related tools, manuals and templates.

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ITIL Process Implementation 101 - Getting Started

To get started with any process implementation effort, first determine:

• What best practices (templates, process descriptions, tools, etc.) are currently available in your organization?


• What best practices do you need?


• What processes do you need to be implemented?


• Where do they fit in the process description framework?
  

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