Core ITSM

Kodak Moments

2012-01-31T21:17:00.000Z

It seems apt that in the same month Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Rob 'IT Skeptic' England should unleash his views on the irrelevance of social media and other transformational technologies. After all Kodak is a perfect example of a successful company derailed by not understanding the implications of transformational technologies, and don't even have the excuse that they were slow to adopt because the technologies weren't invented here. Kids, that thing strapped to the side of it is what we used to call a cassette tape.

Many of you will know that I'm a passionate amateur photographer, but not so many of you will know that had I gone done down another trouser leg of time I would have trained to become a professional photographer instead of going to university. It was a tough choice to make. Like many wage slaves there are times when I still think about leaving ITSM behind and running a bijou little gallery in an English market town, so I try and keep in touch with the industry.

And that explains why Skep's arguments sounded strangely familiar to me, because I've heard it all before in the world of photography. Now that isn't to say I'm dismissing all of Rob's argument, but I do believe that he is ignoring is the cumulative impact of individual changes on the whole ITSM eco-systen. When you look back on the story of digital photography that is what you see, but of course it is an awful lot easier to see things with hindsight. For instance with hindsight you can see that quip I made about the cassette tape wasn't just an arbitrary comment - imagine where digital photography would be without the parallel development of new storage media like SDHC cards. Do you begin to see what I mean about the cumulative impact?

The Historic Contemporary Perspective

Photographers, like IT nerds, are renowned for their obsession with the latest technology, so you would have thought they would have jumped at the possibilities offered by digital imaging. Some did, but many didn't. Many, many letters pages in photography magazines have been filled by those determined to convince others that film is good and digital is evil. To some extent the debate still takes place, though now it is a little easier to guess that the authors of the letters have been dipping their nibs in green or purple ink.

To be fair there were reasons why digital didn't look too great to start with. The technology was expensive, and tended to become obsolete very quickly, whilst the quality wasn't that wonderful once you removed the rose tinted glasses. That's a long way behind us now though. New cameras might come out all the time, and to some extent manufacturers, and consumers, are still intent on outdoing each other in terms of mega-pixels but the truth is you can go out and buy even a relatively cheap digital camera today that produce incredible results under conditions where you wouldn't even have bothered to lift a film camera to your eye, and you can still be using the same camera in five years time. In fact the sector where film is thriving is the artistic plastic fantastic area of over-priced cameras that were once sold as toys, their imperfections now being seen as features. That won't sound familiar to any of us in IT, obviously.

There were two other related arguments professional photographers leveled against digital. The first was that it removed their hard earned status as professionals and their ability to make a comfortable living, because amateurs could compete on an equal footing. As someone once said

"If you buy a camera you become a photographer. If you buy a clarinet you just become a man with a clarinet"

That highlights the other part of the argument, that digital technology has taken the skill out of photography.

The first b&w picture I took, developed and
printed myself some 30 odd years ago.

I'm not without sympathy for those viewpoints. Having said that I'm extremely grateful I've been able to replace a chemical darkroom for a digital one. Chemicals and I weren't a good combination. I actually believe that the quality of the average professional photographer has improved massively as a result of the digital revolution, and also that the true professional still has their place. I just don't think we need as many of them as we used to and that they might need to find a new place in the market.

Behind a lot of the antagonism there were both conscious and unconscious feelings at play. After all there were photographers who had made a lot of investment, both in analogue technology and in developing the skills needed to exploit it who now saw their livelihood and their status slipping away. Again, far be it for me to suggest that similar fears might be driving some of the thinking around potentially transformational technologies in IT.

The Perfect Storm

Regardless of all the above Kodak and Polaroid wouldn't have got in a mess if other parts of the digital jigsaw hadn't been in place. Very quickly ,those pieces started to appear on the table, and like any jigsaw one of those pieces that didn't appear to have any relevance to the picture on the box turned out to be the most significant in bringing the big picture together.

I've already mentioned the importance of development in solid state media, but what about the development of the software to provide a digital darkroom, be it top end products like Photoshop or open source products like Gimp, and don't forget the need for cheap home printers able to match and exceed the quality of mail order and high street film processors. All these had their part to play in ensuring the ascendancy of digital.

In IT the transformational technologies - and actually I believe Rob has has been disingenuous in using that term to summarize all the changes that are below, at, or just above our horizon, depending on which part of the globe you are in - include a shift to various cloud based models, a shift to multi sourcing and service integration, the increased use of official BYOD and the unofficial usage of mobile devices as an integral part of business processes. No one element is going to trigger monumental change, but the combination will. I don't know exactly how yet, because I think just the edge pieces of the jigsaw are in place.

The Missing Piece?

By one of those amazing and not at all contrived coincidences the missing piece in both the completed digital imaging jigsaw and the half completed future of ITSM jigsaw turns out to be the same piece: Social Media. Watch this space.

Review of the Year

2012-01-24T21:36:00.003Z

OK, normally I'm notoriously late, so I thought I would get ahead of the game and post my review of the year early. What do you mean it is still January? Really, so much seems to be happening.

Well, a few things, anyway.

First of all some clear patterns are now appearing in the Service Integration market place, which is keeping me and the team busy. I guess it is time that I finally blogged on the subject.

A couple of my posts have had interesting consequences. The post on 2012 predictions has led to Aale and I burning the midnight oil to put together a Brighttalk presentation on Service Desk 2.0 Yes it shows that we threw it together, but we are putting a more detailed paper together. It seems to have resonated with a few people, and also to echo what other people, like Maff Rigby are saying.

The second is a less recent post on social media that the IT Skeptic has just got round to picking up on in his inimitable, and in this case highly skeptical, way. Now whilst I agree that there is a lot of hype around social media I can't help thinking that Rob is being a little reactionary. I also think, though he doesn't, that geographical differences are affecting his perception.

The most exciting development has been around Back2ITSM There is now quite an active Facebook group but what I've been most exited about is the offers of support we've had from the itSMF UK, SDI, and the Service Desk and IT Support Show. We are still trying to clarify how we can provide a structure to encourage collaboration and minimize the amount of control needed to produce high quality, vendor independent collateral, but we are very close to releasing an initial charter.

ITSM Predictions for 2012

2011-12-30T12:30:00.000Z

I know what you are thinking.

"How come this blog is suddenly so active, he must be going through a quiet patch over the holidays"

Nothing could be further from the truth.

They say that if you want a job done you should give it to a busy man, and at the moment my team and I are very, very busy and the blog is getting written as relaxation in those short periods between client presentations, meetings and teleconferences. Given the global situation that isn't what you might expect, which only goes to show making predictions is a mug's game. So here goes:

1. Service Integration

Expect this to be the next big thing in ITSM. It is already a central concept behind most of the mega outsourcing deals currently being negotiated in the UK and you can expect to see it filter through to smaller organisations, job adverts for Service Integration Managers, and tool vendors bigging up their support for it. OK I head up the Service Integration consulting team in TCS, so I would say that wouldn't I, but think of it the other way round

Why do you think TCS has a Service Integration consultancy team in the first place?

You don't know what Service Integration is?

Now isn't the time to enlighten you, but we probably need to talk.

2. Service Architecture

You can't take a service integration approach without having a deep understanding of how your systems and IT services map on to business value networks. The various varieties of uber technical architect and frameworks we've seen to date haven't cracked this one yet. Expect to see a higher profile for OBASHI and the emergence of a new breed of top down architect. If you think I'm talking about SOA then you are a lost cause.

3. Service Design

No, not in the ITIL sense, in the real sense that others are using it. Hand in hand with this will come a realization that Ian Clayton was right all along, and ITIL really isn't an Outside-In approach. Oh yes, a bonus prediction: Expect to see the term Outside-In misused and reduced to a meaningless cliché by those who don't get it.

4. Shadow IT 2.0

Not really a prediction because it is already happening and on many levels: BYOD, cloud, SocMed. The difference in 2012 is that IT departments will wake up to the fact is actually happening rather than just threatening to happen. The savvy CIO will think carefully but then act quickly.

5. Service Desk 2.0

The Service Desk has been at the heart of ITIL for so long that perhaps we've all started to take it a little bit for granted, but there are some real game changers out there. Self service, support for Shadow IT, the use of SocMed for support purposes, a renewed focus on the softer skills. Service Desk staff are living in interesting times.

6. Soft Skills

Here's a little insight. Research shows 80% of those who tell you that "People are more important than tools or processes" don't believe it themselves. 90% of those who say it don't practice it.

In 2012 people will become a clear differentiator between service providers. When times are tough you turn to those you can trust to see you through the hard times.

By the way, I made those statistics up.

7. Hard Facts - Hard choices

IT in 2012 is going to have to be able to objectively support every spending decision it makes There are going to be some very hard choices made as a result. There will be real pressure on internal IT to demonstrate how it is adding value, and a shift towards outsourcers providing the bulk of utility IT services on a wholesale basis. Remember though, like quality, cheapness comes at a price.

8. ITIL is so 2011

Don't get me wrong, ITIL remains a useful resource, but people won't find the answers they need inside its pages. Some will be seduced by the lure of alternative frameworks "Yeah, we used to be an ITIL shop, but now we are Lean/Agile/whatever" and find too late that that they aren't the solution either. Expect to see successful ITSM practitioners looking for answers from their peer groups around the globe and to take charge of their own destiny. Expect them to make new demands on the ITSM training market, tool vendors and conferences.

9. A New Kind of Event

There are incredible pressures on budgets for training and conferences, and a nagging doubt in the minds of many over what value the current offerings are really delivering. Don't expect to see an out and out revolution in 2012, but do expect to see some of the established ITSM events asking some hard questions of themselves and making a real effort to adopt to new realities with more interaction, more ways for those who can't attend in person to participate. Above all else expect them to deliver more real world takeaway action points that people can apply in the office on Monday morning. If they don't, then let people know and don't waste your money next year.

10. Same Old Same Old

Stephen Mann's blog will continue to be insanely popular. I will continue to say "I think" and "What's really interesting" far too many times on every single ITSMWPROW podcast. Service Now will still be thought of as the exciting new kid on the block whilst getting the bulk of corporate sales. The majority of ITSM practitioners will continue to believe that quick wins are the key to success rather than facing up to the need for fundamental changes. THE event of the ITSM year will be the Pink conference in Vegas, even though my invite must have got lost in the post this year.The ITskeptic will still be scaling the walls of Castle ITIL, even though he's been given the key. Someone, somewhere, will realise that all that time and money they've spent on building a CMDB has provided zero benefit and a week before Xmas 2012 a major high street name will have a major outage that will be traced to a change.

Remember if these things don't happen in 2012 it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

It just means I'm still ahead of the curve.

Episode 11: A Little Gentle Prodding

2011-12-29T20:17:00.001Z

At the end of Chapter 10 Brandon Lane CIO and Jimbofin, Ghost of ITSM Present, are in a lift with Wysiwyg, leader of the ITIL Imps. Read on.

"Is it just me or is it a little stuffy in here?"

Whilst Brandon appeared to be addressing no one in particular it was no coincidence that rather acrid smoke was beginning to emerge from Wysiwyg's ears.

"He can't help it, it is a natural reaction of an ITIL Imp when they come into close proximity to the business. We suspect it is caused by the frustration they have that the business can't see that everything the ITIL Imps do is for the good of the business."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh you know, arcane and long winded change management procedures, management reports that don't tell the business anything they didn't already know, service catalogues in which the business doesn't recognise the names of any of the services, service desks that won't take your call because you haven't logged it on the self-service portal, capacity plans that..."

"OK, I get the point. Most of those things get me steamed up as well, but does he really think doing all those things is what the business wants?"

"Oh yes. Though I should warn you he's never actually met a CEO before. In fact we don't think any ITIL Imp ever has. We aren't really sure what will happen. There is a danger he might explode."

"Do you mean Wysiwyg or Hans?"

The lift jolted to a halt.

"I don't know, let's find out shall we?"

Brandon was used to waiting outside Han's office until called for, but Wysiwyg and Jimbofin marched right in, Jimbofin with the confidence that comes from knowing where the bodies are buried, and Wysiwyg with the confidence of someone who doesn't mind adding to the bodycount themselves. In any case Hans was oblivious to their entrance. He was obviously still trying to get someone on the service desk to take some sort of action, though he was now less concerned that the action was to fix his Blackberry* than that the service desk agent take some action involving a peculiar and possibly impossible feat of human contortion.

Wysiwyg prodded him with his trident.

"What the **** was that?" He looked up and for the first time seemed to see his visitors, or at least two of them. "And Brandon who the or what the **** is that?"

"Erm, this is Wysiwyg"

"Does he work for you?"

For someone going through as much as Brandon had been going through over the past few days, whether in reality or in his dreams, he still retained the quick thinking of an auditor.

"You wanted your Blackberry fixed, so I thought I would bring our best ...person....up to help you."

"That's your best person?"

"If you recall Hans, I haven't actually been CIO long enough to recruit my own team."

"And how did you know my Blackberry wasn't working since I can't get through to your so called Service desk to report it? Owww"

Wysiwyg had prodded him again. And this time he spoke.

"Well you are wasting your time ringing the service desk."

"Yes, I know that thank you, they are useless."

"No," said Wysiwyg, "You misunderstand. Blackberries are unsupported VIP devices. The Service Desk won't take calls about Blackberries."

"What do you mean unsupported, it was IT who got me them in the first place, eventually. Oww, stop doing that."

Wysywig looked genuinely hurt.

"But I was just trying to remind you that you AGREED to them not being supported when we agreed to get them for you."

"Just for the record, because I'm sure someone is keeping it, Brandon, let me point out that IT didn't agree to anything. Do you know why? I'll tell you why, because IT doesn't have any authority to agree to let me have anything or not. I tell IT what I want and you get it, with the money I let you have. At least that is the theory."

Brandon was wise enough to realise this was not the moment to say "Yes, but if I could just point out...."

"Yes, but if I could just point out"

Apparently ITIL Imps aren't quite so wise.

As the confrontation escalated Jimbofin tapped Brandon on the shoulder.

"Well, I'll be off then, though you'll be seeing me later, in real life, meanwhile enjoy the show."

"You aren't leaving me here with these two are you?"

"I'm afraid so, I'm needed elsewhere, but don't worry, the Ghost of Future present will be coming to help you soon."

And with that he was gone, but no sooner had he left than Brandon noticed the office becoming darker as a shadow fell. Hans and Wysiwyg seemed not to notice, so immersed were they in their full and frank discussion. Brandon turned to look at the doorway.

It was filled by a giant of a man with a flowing mane.

"BRANDON LANE, I AM THE GHOST OF ITSM FUTURE, BUT YOU CAN CALL ME IAN"

Letting Go

2011-12-28T19:37:00.004Z

Probably the happiest days of my life were those spent as both a student and a lecturer at the UK government's Civil Service College. It saddens me that, now known as the National School of Government, it is scheduled to close in March. There is something deeply ironic and tragic in an institution set up to promote intelligent thinking amongst senior civil servants falling foul of an inherently flawed PFI deal.

Obviously the imminent closure has been playing on mind recently because last night I dreamt I was back there and running an updated version of what I always considered the most enjoyable course I ran -

An Introduction to Computing for Internal Auditors.

Yes I know it doesn't sound sexy, but I loved being able to remove some of the mystery about computing for an audience that was intelligent, inquisitive and scared to death of the subject, and seeing the scales fall from their eyes during the week, with the apprehension replaced by growing confidence.

I suppose it must be over fifteen years since I last ran that particular course, and a few things have changed. So how had I updated the course in my dream? I think my opening statement in the dream was something like:

Everything we used to teach was right then but wrong now

Even by my own standards that is quite a generalisation, but underlying it there is a genuine truth. Back in the time the course was first written IT was mostly delivered by in house IT departments operating to very strict and rigorously enforced standards. We included a session on timesharing and bureau computing but only because it was still on the exam syllabus, not because we expected the students to ever come across it in real life except for the processing of specific large batch jobs. There was a very tight coupling between physical and logical security as well; essentially if your data center was physically secure then so was your data and your code.

Then there was the thorny issue of the business trying to prise control of IT away from the IT department. This was a two pronged attack - one element was making the CIO report to the CFO, and the other was the purchase of their own PCs and software.

Obviously this had to be stopped.

After all you couldn't have the business deciding how to make the best use of It, could you?

If to some of you that feels like a somewhat antediluvian response then bear in mind we had good reasons to be cautious. The early days of end user computing were littered with examples of undocumented unsupportable, unmaintainable and un-auditable systems built by "experts" in the business using unsuitable platforms. Inevitably it was left to the much maligned in-house IT department to sort the mess out.

Shadow IT 1.0 was not a good thing

Shadow IT 2.0 : This Time IT is personal

Look at the IT world the business now inhabits. The in-house technically skilled IT team on tap has gone, to be replaced by a retained organization that might know ITIL and contract law but can't relate to a fourth normal form. At a user level we've locked down their desktops but they've got BYOD and web based services, and at a corporate level they can buy SaaS and PPU solutions.

Maybe this time around they aren't using these tools to build the ultra-complex and business critical liquidity model with arcane macros and calculations, but that doesn't mean what they are using it for is any less critical.

So lets stop it right now, right? Just walk away from the ipad and no one gets hurt.

Or then again, perhaps not. Perhaps this time around the business centric outside-in IT department is mature enough to face up to the challenges and to see the value of adopting an enabling role. Along the way perhaps that means letting go not only of some very old ways of thinking but even some recent thought patterns around CMDB, the service catalogue, SLAs and the Service Desk. Perhaps it is time for us to do some serious re-imagining of ITSM. I don't believe the answers are to be found in the pages of ITIL 2011 Edition, because I don't think the questions have even been asked yet, but here is a clue:

If you want to know what Service Desk 2.0 might look like, just take a walk down to your local Apple store

Episode 10: Xmas Present

2011-12-23T08:39:00.001Z

We left Brandon Lane CIO at the end of Episiode 9 in the company of Jimbofin, AKA the Ghost of ITIL Present dealing with the prospect of explaining to Hans, the CEO, why no one on the service desk was answering his call.

"Tell me, Ghost of ITIL Present, this is really a dream isn't it?"

Jimbofin, Ghost of ITIL Present, paused briefly from his tuneless humming.

"Yes, of course it is, why do you have to ask?"

"I suppose I'd imagined you'd have just winked or something and we would have been in the CEO's office, rather than being stood here waiting ages for a lift, knowing that he's getting angrier and angrier that no one from IT is answering his call to the Help Desk"

Jimbofin looked at his watch, in the way that consultants do to remind themselves however dumb the question is they are still getting paid for answering it, or, for that matter, for not answering it.

"I'd like to look at your question from a number of different angles. First of all, just a little point, but ion the industry these days we no longer call it a Help Desk. we call it a Service Desk."

"Why is that? It just sounds like consultancy speak to me ."

"It is supposed to be because they provide a single point of contact for a wide range of services, but frankly it is because the users never find them to be much help. As for waiting for the lift, trust me it will become clear that this is part of the dream. For instance why do you think we are waiting so long for it?"

Jimbofin paused a beat.

"Actually don't bother thinking about it. You are still an auditor at heart and you'll be thinking through a nice rational explanation based on the heuristics the lift designers build in to optimise wait times across the floor of the building. Normally you would be right, but since this is a dream the explanation is much simpler: This is a lift designed and maintained by the IT department."

"Why on earth would an IT department design and operate the lifts?"

"Ah, apparently they've been reading that Business IT Alignment is old hat, and IT now is the business. So in this dreamworld IT have taken over running the business and the building. Don't worry, I'm sure it is probably safe."

At that moment the lift arrived, and after several aborted attempts the doors finally opened to let them in. The interior of the lift was unlike anything Brandon lane had experienced. He made sure to stand away from the wires that were most obviously sparking.

"I'm told the voice recognition system is state of the art, but apparently they had to abandon it after Barclay Rae got stuck in it for a week because it wouldn't recognise his Scottish accent. Anyway the Muzak is good...."

"What Muzak, I can't hear any"

Jimbofin gave a panel a strategic nudge with an elbow and the loudspeaker burst into tinny life

"Welcome to ITSM Weekly.....the Podcast......"

"You know it is amazing how quickly that becomes background noise, though I would hate to have to listen to it for more than twenty minutes. I'm quite happy the Lift Operational Options Project Imitative who designed this lift haven't adopted Ian Clayton's Outside In thinking: Not being good with heights I don't fancy having to cling on to the outside of a lift, even in a dream."

"Who is Ian Clayton? Does he work for me?"

For a second a look of panic came over Jimbofin's face, the look you see on a consultant's face when they realise the client has actually read the PowerPoint stack and so the big reveal at the end is going to fall flat.

"Er, no, but you will be meeting him quite quickly, I erm, suspect."

By now the lift was moving, but Brandon was perplexed.

"We seem to be moving quite quickly, but the floor indicator says we haven't moved"

"Haven't you been involved in any IT projects like that? Lots of apparent action but nothing actually happens. As it happens we've arrived...no don't bother getting out we are just picking up at this floor."

Had Brandon wanted to leave the lift he couldn't have done, because as soon as the doors opened two suited and fragranced men pushed in and pushed Brandon and Jimbofin to the back of the lift, then they turned and took up the inimitable stance of the alpha dog and the wannabe alpha dog.

Jimbofin and Brandon looked at each other and said in sync:

"Management Consultants!"

Well, actually they said

"******* Management Consultants!"

As soon as the lift doors closed the two identikit consultants relaxed a muscle or two and started to discuss the case. However hard he tried, and despite how loudly they were talking, Brandon couldn't quite make out what they were actually saying. He looked quizzicallyat Jimbofin .

" There's no point asking me what they are saying, they are proper Managment Consultants from ********. I am but a humble ITSM consultant unworthy to carry a bag for them. All I do is go in and clean up the mess they leave behind. Don't worry by the way, it works both ways so we can say whatever we want. Or at least it isn't that they can't understand us, it is more a case of us literally not existing in their world. Not only that but they've pressed the down button to go to the lobby, and we'll just have to go along with them."

"I can tell you what they are talking about though. They've just come from a presentation to senior management, in fact Hans, the CEO, was chairing it. Do you want to guess what they were agreeing?"

"Let me have a wild stab - the new IT Strategy?"

"Yep got it in one. I'm sure Hans meant to invite you as the CIO."

Brandon loosened his tie.

"Is it just me or is it getting warm in here and we seem to be going a long way down to the ground floor."

Jimbofin smiled.

"I wondered when you would notice. I told you this was a dream, and it isn't all bad."

The lift stopped,

The door opened.

The management consultants walked forward

Disappeared from view

and screamed.

A strange red colored, clawed hand appeared around the entrance to the lift, followed by a horned face. The appearance would have been much scarier had it not only been ten inches tall. It gazed malevolently at Brandon and Jimbofin before breaking into a wide grin

"Ow we doin boss, awright? Cor blimey you should ave seen their little face when they realised where they were. And the lads say hats off to you sir for thinking of that little touch of diverting their mobiles to an IVR saying "Press 1 if you want to speak to the CEO....I'm sorry all our executive leadership team are busy doing a proper job" was sheer genius"

"I do my best. Brandon let me introduce you to Wysiwyg , head of the ITIL Imps and guardian of what Kelly would call IT Hell. Don't worry, you and I are only visiting, for now at least. And now we really must go and see Hans."

With that the doors closed, though rather quicker than Wysiwyg was expecting, leaving him trapped in the lift with them.

"Well this is a jolly, sirs, I don't get out of that lower lower basement much, and isn't it lucky I just had time to grab my red hot trident. I know how much CEOs love being prodded to do something by IT people."

Brandon looked at Jimbofin in despair.

to be continued....possibly before 2012

The 3 Secrets of ITIL Success

2011-12-06T09:48:00.001Z

One of the most talked about blog posts this year has been Stephen Mann's Top 50 ITIL Adoption Mistakes. I don't know why I've even bothered to put the link in, because you've almost certainly read it already.

The bulk of those 50 mistakes are symptoms of ITSM failure, not the root causes. Not making those mistakes doesn't necessarily guarantee success.

Looking back on my twenty odd years of experience in ITSM it strikes me that what is really interesting is the truth of a statement Ivor Evans made many years ago.

"There are only a few ways to succeed with ITIL but many ways to fail"

When I look at the ITSM initiatives I've seen succeed they have all had the same three basic characteristics in common.

So what are they?

Timing and Context

The secret of both great comedy and great ITSM is timing. The secret of many great ITSM initiatives is that they were launched at just the right time to exploit favorable tides and winds in the life of the organisation. Conversely many projects that were essentially sound have floundered because the time wasn't right. So what is the right time?

Here are some pointers:

There is a burning bridge such as a merger/de-merger - preferably one with direct implications for the whole organisation, not just IT
The organisation is in a period of positive disruption, for instance following the appointment of a new CEO
Key stakeholders are already pressing for change, especially customers and suppliers
Senior management have a bigger agenda that ITSM happens to align with.

Don't believe the "We succeeded because we got senior management buy in" line, the number of ITSM projects that can really claim to have created that senior management buy in can probably be counted on one hand. What the successful ITSM initiatives do is latch on to agendas that senior management have already bought in to.

People and Partners

Without exception the successful ITSM projects I've seen have owed a large part of their success to one or more key individuals who:

Understood the organisational culture
Managed according to the real world needs and resources not a fictional project plan
Remembered they were employing consultants and tool vendors because of their past experience and listened to their advice rather than using them as a bottle washer.
"Got" ITSM but without being ITIL bores
Cared, but made hard decisions when they had to

The same criteria could be applied to their key partners in the business, in their suppliers and their advisers, whether consultants or tool vendors.

And the third?

Training? Useful but not essential
New ITSM tool? Useful but not essential
Consultants? Useful but not essential
Having me on their team.....pure coincidence, I'm sure*

There isn't a third. That's it. But no one would read an article on "The 2 Secrets of ITSM Success"

*for my US readers I should point out this is an example of self deprecating British humour.I like to believe that having an adviser like myself who can inspire new ways of thinking, bring an external perspective to break up endemic group think and challenge well intentioned but flawed ideas is actually pretty much essential to success. I'm also grateful to Ivor for pointing out my spell checker had replaced "deprecating" with "depreciating" and for providing me with the exact wording of his quote.

Tinker, tailor, soldier...vendor

2011-12-04T15:31:00.001Z

For all the faults it might have the ITSM community is generally a rather nice place to be. I believe that in comparison to the wider IT community we are much more welcoming of diversity and of influences from outside our own little world. We even have a good word to say about the users.

Just occasionally though I become aware of a little bit of lazy "them and us" thinking, as if the ITSM world is divided into three classes:

Practitioners, Consultants and Vendors

This always reminds me of this famous Marty Feldman comedy sketch. Once upon a time I'm sure trainers would have been mentioned in the list, but for some reason they no longer do, which I suspect is more of a comment on the general view of the current ITIL training scheme rather than on the trainers themselves. As for analysts....

Whenever I hear someone split the world into those three categories I can always hear a silent judgment being made in the background.

Practitioners think consultants swan around the world coming up with great but impractical ideas, and that the vendors are out to shaft them whenever possible in search of a sale.

Consultants think practitioners have a blinkered view of the world and the memory of as goldfish, and that the vendors are out to shaft the entire industry.

Vendors just wish they had more friends.

Seriously we can't help stereotyping both companies and individuals, but it is a dangerous view of the world. Whilst this article is, mostly, meant to be humorous in intent the catalyst for it has been some of the debates around #back2ITSM.

Let us get a few things straight first of all. At a company level the ITSM industry wouldn't be where it is today without a lot of support form both consultants and vendors. Some of it might be well publicised, like the sponsorship of major conferences, but a lot of it goes on behind the scenes with the commitment they make to committees and the IP that they release to the community via ITIL, COBIT and ISO 20k. When I made the original comment to Stephen Mann, which prompted this blog, and in turn led to #back2ITSM, about taking into account vendor contribution it was because I was aware of how many tool vendors do give back, not because of a concern about the number who don't.

What they bring to the ITSM table is of immeasurable value. I was about to get all Bladerunnerish but the truth is both consultants and vendors get to see an incredible range of real life ITSM experiences. Let me emphasis the real life aspect. It is out in the real world that we make our incomes, both as companies and as individuals. And not only do we see things, we are intimately involved and invested in them. Yes I have started saying "we" because ... no wait, I'll get back to that point later but yes I am a consultant.

At this point I'm sure the practitioners will be jumping up and down saying "What about the contribution we make?" and justifiably so. On #ITSMWPROW it is always a true privilege to have guests from practitioner organisations, and presentations from practitioners are key to the success of both the itSMF and SDI. Just like consultancies and vendors many practitioner organisations generously allow their staff time to do some of the boring behind the scenes work.

Consultants and vendors don't have a duopoly on IP, either. Charlie Betz' first edition of Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobblers Children written when he was a practicing IT architect stands out as both an incredible example of practitioner IP and an incredibly long title. The link, incidentally, should take you to the current edition which really is a must read book.

I want to change track slightly here. So far I've mostly been talking about organisations, but mention of Charlie reminds me that I really want to talk about the danger of labeling individuals with these artificial titles.

The truth is that many of us move seamlessly between these worlds, often without anyone noticing. The practitioner might find themselves working on an ITSM project and in effect takes on an internal consultancy role, or they might develop their career by moving to work for a consultancy or a vendor. Don't make the mistake of thinking that traffic is all one way, either. I know plenty of people who've moved from being consultants or vendors to return to the coal face as practitioners. Heck, I did it myself a few years ago when I moved from QuintWellingtonRedwood to a financial services company.

Why do people make that sort of move? Well I would argue it is often because they still have a thirst to make life better for customers and users and to make a real difference to the way IT is delivered. But, leaving that aside, the reality is that many consultants spend considerable amounts of their working life doing a "real job" as interim managers or on a body shop basis. Likewise many vendors have staff who spend most of their time on site with clients. You don't need to spend long talking to the likes of Don Page, Pat Bolger and Ian Aitchison , for examples, before you realize how deeply embedded their experience is in the real world and the lives of practitioners.

From a very personal perspective I might have the word Consultant on my business card, along with a lot of other words but I also represent an outsourcing vendor, and just because I'm not a practitioner anymore doesn't mean I've forgotten what it was like to be one, or that I don't still get my hands dirty whenever I get the chance. In fact, like all of us who do so much to make ITSM work, I could say

"I am Spartacus"

Making Back2ITSM Work

2011-11-18T09:03:00.003Z

A while ago Stephen Mann used his Forrester blog to launch the concept of Back 2 ITSM.

He summed it up as a call to:

Recognize that we are a community and a community that often struggles with the same issues (particularly with ITIL adoption).
Offer up our time to help out others (and often ourselves).
Identify where our efforts need to be applied (for example with the creation of a set of standard (core) ITSM metrics and benchmarks).
Deliver on our promises to the ITSM community.
Never stop trying to improve our collective ITSM capabilities and the quality of delivered IT and business services.

I would like to think that these align very closely with the ethos this blog has always had.

To get the ball rolling he launched the Practitioner Health check which is being hosted by Hornbill and at the itSMF UK Conference this year we used our recording of the ITSMWPROW podcast to formally launch the Twitter hashtag #Back2ITSM and we will continue to use the podcasts to spread the message.

Stephen has set up a Linkedin but most of you know my opinion of Linkedin groups. We've also just established a Facebook page and group as an experiment.

So, all very laudable, but will it work?

I'm a practical kind of guy. No really, I am, despite what my wife says. So the theory sounds good but good intentions aren't enough. We need actions. I'm also an auditor, so I have a somewhat cynical view of human nature, so I worry that some might subvert the concept to their own ends. You don't need to be an ITSkeptic to imagine a vendor labeling a sales pitch with the Back2ITSM label.

Making it Happen

So here our my ideas, and I stress that that is all they currently our:

Branding - We already have the hashtag but it would be useful to have a logo vendors, conferences and blogs could use to show both their support and that the content is in line with the ethos of Back2ITSM

Quality -The branding needs to be backed by some form of community enforced quality control. That probably means having a very simple set of guidelines and requirements , for instance requiring content to be published under a Creative Commons licence.

Accessibility - The content needs to be easy to access, perhaps via a central hub web site.

Co-operation - Where solutions already work they should be exploited rather than re-inventing the wheel.I don't, for instance, see Back2ITSM as competing against itSMF or SDI, but perhaps I foresee those bodies putting event on that would have Back2ITSM branding. I'm glad to say both SDI ansd itSMF UK have already made offers of support.

Making Connections - For me what lies at the heart of Back2ITSM is people giving their time, skills and experience to help others. Only so much of that can be done on paper. How doe we facilitate this? Social media is obviously one channel but I believe that a Back2ITSM conference, or unconference might be a jolly good idea, whether as a standalone event or as part of an existing event.

Well, those are my initial thoughts, what are yours?

The Usual Tumbleweed

2011-11-17T14:46:00.003Z

Quiet here, isn't it? Not a lot of action since my Week in Provence, which seems like a lifetime ago.

Needless to say a lack of blog activity actually means I've been ferociously active elsewhere, so here is a quick update.

First of all I do have a day job, and recession or not TCS continues to do rather well for itself, and I'm pleased to say that my Service Integration and IT Governance team is no exception with great year on year growth. Of course that does mean I sometimes actually have to do some work. Unfortunately the two big developments I've been working on will have to stay under wraps a little longer, but watch this space for announcements.

One TCS initiative that I can tell you about is that we were privileged to have Mark Toomey deliver an ISO 38500 Masterclass to our team. As far as I know we are the first major consultancy to make such a public commitment to this relatively new standard. Delivered in Mark's inimitable style the course generated a lot of debate and a lot of great ideas.

Needless to say I've continued my ranting on the ITSM Weekly Podcast Rest of the World edition. I got extremely animated about metrics, and at the live recording (sic) we made at the itSMF UK conference I voiced my concern at the lack of a sense of urgency or any call to arms from within the industry during these interesting times.

Despite my rant the conference itself was a good event. As well as the live show we collected material for two other podcasts including a "vox pops" of delegate impressions.There is no doubt that the new location is much better than Birmingham in nearly all respects, except possibly the exhibition hall. It was good to meet up with so many people, though as usual I came away not having managed to speak to many of those I wanted to. I'll repeat something I've said before and which was echoed by others - if you see any of the so called ITILuminati wandering around at these events do feel free to introduce yourself and chat to them - most of them they don't bite.

There were a number of highlights for me. Sharing a table at the gala dinner with the likes of Ivor Evans, Phil Montenaro and John Groom brought back memories of the early days of ITIL and Stephen Mann's session on Value was a timely reminder that we can't chose to avoid key topics just because they are difficult. Hopefully I'll be contributing a guest blog for Stephen on how my pet topic of service integration can help make the value proposition more explicit.

Bright-talk ran an interesting on line summit on Service Catalogues this week, and all the sessions are available for off-line listening. I took part in the panel debate with Chris Dancy, Charles Betz and Charles Araujo. We had got some interesting questions from the audience, and some equally interesting mixed feedback. Clearly from some of the comments there are people who still think there are simple answers to very complex questions that lie at the heart of service management - like "What is a service?"

Chris again raised a point that I made after Pink11 which is that there are some very different perspectives on ITIL and ITSM on the two sides of the Atlantic, reinforcing the idea of two nations divided by a common language. The reasons for this deserve a post of their own.

And finally.... and probably the main reason I've been too busy to post...and as Stephen Mann has just reminded me, the ITSMWPROW News Poodles, Daisy and Darcy, produced four little news poodles. Say hello to Roxy, Digby, Dougie and Ruby

A Week in Provence - Part 1

2011-09-28T19:29:00.003+01:00

Grignan

I've been threatening to write about cycling analogies and ITSM for some time. I've just returned from my annual cycling trip so this seems as good a time as any to do so. In this part I'll talk about he links to ITSM initiatives, in Part 2 I'll look at the links to everyday ITSM delivery.

A sensible pace

Strictly speaking I should say I'm currently retuning from it, since I'm writing this on the TGV between Montelimar and Paris at 320km,which is a lot faster than we've been cycling all week.

The TGV at Montelimar

We've been cycling at a steady touring pace, all thirteen of us maintaining the same basic rhythm and going at the right speed to get to our destination at round about the right time. If it looked like it might start raining in the afternoon we've speeded up a little, if we wanted to take in the scenery a little we slowed it down. What we haven't done is to set off at break neck pace and found ourselves exhausted by lunchtime and struggling to continue after lunch.

ITSM initiatives need to find the right pace. It is better to be consistent than to rush ahead chasing the low hanging fruit only to find the imitative runs out of steam after the first eighteen months

The Chain Gang

Of course if you threw a random thirteen cyclists together the chances are they wouldn't all want or be able to cycle at the same pace. Our group isn't random though, having first met over ten years ago we've self selected from a wider gene pool so that we end up cycling with a group who stay together from the first day of the holiday.

The team in action near Les Baux

That wasn't always the case in the early days. Typically the end of the first day would find us stretched out across the countryside in various states of health. We would still wait for each other but it wasn't very efficient. The reality is that even now we have variations in pace, for instance I'm never going to be the world's fastest climber, but I can set quite a pace on a flat road for long periods. Overall it all balances out.

Here comes the ITSM lesson:

ITSM works best when the teams and improvement initiatives delivering it can work at a similar speed and don't have to play catch up. Too often an imitative in one area gets delayed waiting for the other areas to catch up with them, and often by the time the others have caught up any benefits from the first teams effort in achieving an early delivery has been dissipated

Just Getting Along

Lets talk about the team for a bit. We have a lot in common, but there are also intrinsic differences that are inevitable when you bring together Belgians, Brits, Canadians, Minnesotans, New Yorkers and the Swiss. To get on we have to make compromises, and we have to accept our differences rather than pretending they don't exist. Needless to say humour plays a big part in keeping us a cohesive unit,even if our humour differs as well. There is also a language issue, made worse on years like this one where we ware cycling in a country foreign to all of us. For my part I spent less time perfecting my French than in improving my colloquial New York expressions, though pronouncing “Howudoin” remains beyond me.

Humour,compromise and making an effort all make ITSM more effective, as does recognising that teams, and the business have different but legitimate agendas.

We had two new team members this year. One will be invited back, one won't. Lets call the one we won't be inviting back: Carping Cathy. You know the type. Egocentric, constantly finding fault , unable to adjust to the mood of those around them and passing on information at critical times that is either irrelevant or out of date. How do you cope with them?

In the short term you ignore the whiners, and leave to the people who brought them on to the team to deal with them. In the long term you remove them from the team. If you don't you'll lose other good people I've seen far too many ITSM initiatives founder as a result of trying to bend backwards to keep those sorts of people happy

Food

Some objectives are inherently hard to reconcile. I go cycling to lose weight. In Ireland that's easy, but in France, where I got to eat well, it isn't so easy. This year is the first time I've come back weighing more than at the start of the week. On the other hand few things are worse than cycling when you are hungry, or getting to a town at the end of a day to find there isn't a decent place to eat.

Pistou - the local soup

Maintaining morale and energy is vital but you also need to balance the different objectives. Another common mistake in ITSM initiatives is mistaking the kudos of accepting an ITSM project of the year award as the main objective, not delivering continued QoS to the business.

Don't Climb Every Mountain

Our route passed the foot of Mt Ventoux, one of cycling’s most famous climbs and the the site of the death of one of Britain's cycling heroes. As reasonably fit cyclists, who the previous day had done a 350m climb before lunch, It would have been very tempting to fit in an attempt to cycle up the 21km route with its constant climb and several sections of 1:10. Tempting but silly. None of us had been in training for a ride like that and we were using rented bikes that weren't really suitable.

That is yesterday's ride in the background

Just because a goal is in front of you doesn't mean it is a good idea to go for it. Of course you could spend a lot of time and effort implementing a CMDB, but do you really believe the effort would meet with success and merit the effort and pain involved?

It is all about the bike

Those of you who follow me on twitter will have picked up that as a non car driver I own a variety of bikes. Each has a purpose and each has limitations. On this occasion we were riding heavy hybrid bikes. They had the gears to get us up any hill, eventually whilst carrying a heavy load, but they aren’t the kind of bike I ride at the weekend when I want to cover 80km before lunch. The tools you have often dictate the path you take.

My steed for the week

If you want to do something different you might need a different tool, but you should expect that to have limitations in turn.

Its not all about the bike

If you aren't au fiat with cycle racing it is hard to get over how fit racing cyclists are. The best bike in the world ridden by an overweight forty eight year old is still going to struggle going up hills. Then again on the last day, having left the 350m climbs before lunch behind, we were cycling through the dead flat marshland of the Camargue and it was hard to stay excited, especially since the pink flamingos remained elusive. Needless to say we compensated by upping the pace considerably.

An exciting road in the Camargue marshes

As with the equipment side of the equation you have to adopt what you do to the capabilities of your team. At the same time a team that isn't being stretched is going to get bored so you need to make sure their personal and team capabilities are enhanced

Dealing with Novelty

I love my American cycling friends dearly, except when it comes to roundabouts. They just aren't used to them. Cycling in the UK roundabouts are an unwelcome and dangerous occupational hazard. Cars cut you up, it is hard to match your speed to the traffic flow, and all I want to do is get off them as quickly as possible. And to add to that on the other side of the channel I have to remember to cycle around them anticlockwise (With great timing as wrote that last sentence the Eurostar I'm now travelling on entered the Channel Tunnel ). On the other hand my American companions appear to have no conception of giving way to traffic already on the round about, and see roundabouts as as nice place to have a stop and chat about the scenery.

You say rest stop, I say roundabout

It is easy to underestimate the risk inherent in novel situations. The team need educating in new ways of behaving. Old ways of behaving run the risk of leading to a Darwin Award for removing yourself from the gene pool.

Changing direction

Even when we are highly skilled we can find external circumstances forcing us to do things we hadn't planned. In my case it was a lorry coming the other way down a very narrow road. Essentially I had tow choices. I could have braked hard or I could have swerved onto the gravel. Unfortunately I was day dreaming at the time and made the mistake of trying to do both things at once. The result was I skidded hard, jammed the rear brake on and lost my chain. The side of my leg also made contact with the side of the bike which wasn't a pretty picture the next day. The moral?

When you have to change direction quickly prioritise actions and try and keep your reaction as straightforward as possible rather than trying to change everything at once

Which way do we go?

There were lots of great things about this trip but the standard of the road book provided wasn't one of them. One of the team members provided an excellent translation of them from French into English, but the problem was that the original French instructions were incomplete and inaccurate. Remind you of anything? OK that link was a bit obvious even by my standards.

What would have made life a lot easier would have been a good map on which we could have plotted our route in advance and clarified any discrepancies between the instructions and the map. It goes without saying that we could have used Google earth or one of the specialist cycle route mapping tools to do that – if we had had access to them in the mountains and if the data roaming charges weren't so excessive.. Unfortunately high tech solutions often let us down when we most need them

Don't take the quality of frameworks like ITIL for granted and make use of other frameworks like COBIT, ISO 20000 and ISO 38500 to provide a wider context

Where Next ?
Here I am at the peak of my fitness regime for the year. I can look back on a successful trip with well earned satisfaction, but if I sit back and do nothing for the next twelve months I'll be flabby and unhealthy. So it is important that I keep my cycling routine going, even through the winter months when the sun of Provence will be a distant memory. And what better motivation can there be than planning next year's trip when hopefully we will be returning to Ireland for the masochistic pleasure of hills, rain, wind, cold and over priced Irish cooking.

ITSM doesn't finish with the end of an implementation initiative – that's when the really hard work begins

Farewell to France

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/45343784

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/52380862

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/52382350/

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/52390246

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/52392274

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/52444862/

Episode 9: Downtime is Forever

2011-09-09T13:04:00.003+01:00

Brandon Lane CIO blinked. He was still recovering from the visit of the Ghost of ITIL Past, and now the Ghost of ITIL Present stood in front of him. The blinking having not worked he tried a heavy sigh.

Jimbofin, for such it was, raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Eventually Brandon gave in.

“I guess I’m still dreaming?”

Jimbofin smirked.

“Of course you are, but you are in good company. Look outside your office door.”

Brandon got up and looked outside the door. He was greeted by the sound of loud snoring and the sight of his IT department slumped over their desks. Everyone that is except the help desk staff, they were still hard at work answering calls. Jimbofin and Brandon walked up to them. Brandon spotted Kelly walking towards them and was about to ask her if she’d noticed anything odd, when she walked right through him.

“I don’t get this” said Brandon, “What’s going on?”

“Well, let us start with your help desk first. They can’t afford the time to dream, but they are so busy dealing with the reality of the impact of poor service on the users they also can’t afford to take any notice of management. It is as if you don’t exist to them.”

There was a commotion as one of the help desk agents collapsed at their desk.

“I thought you said they were too busy for dreaming?”

“They are, he’s not dreaming, he’s just collapsed from exhaustion. It is a totally different phenomenon. You know it is funny, but it can be hard to tell two things apart that look similar but underneath the surface are totally different. Look at this for instance...”

Jimbofin had wandered over to the desk of Richard, the help desk manager, who unlike the rest of his team was clearly dreaming. Jimbofin was pointing at a large pile of books on Richard’s desk.

There was something both familiar and strange about them. “What are they?” Brandon asked.

“Behold ‘ITIL 2011 Edition’ in all its weighty glory. Richard never stops telling anyone who shows the slightest sign of interest that this is an ITIL v3 shop, if you could see into his dreams you would see him standing up in front of an audience at an itSMF conference telling the world how this is the first organisation to become ITIL 2011 Edition compliant thanks to his initiative”

“Really? That’s....interesting...what would it mean?”

“On the basis that the difference between v3 and 2011 Edition is that all the inconsistencies and mistakes have been taken out then someone as literal as myself might suggest it would mean you’ve stopped being inconsistent and blindly following what ITIL says even when it is mistaken. In reality of course it means nothing at all, especially since your department can’t get the basics right. For instance, what did you ask Richard to do when you spoke to him earlier?”

“I told him to get out here and find out what the issues with the changes to the MFD IP addresses were.”

“Did you? That sounds sensible. I’m sure he dashed back here and set up an online conference to get to the root cause of it all, having stopped only to brief the helpdesk team on a consistent message to give out to callers. Shall we have a look at what is on his screen?”

Brandon leaned forward to look. Then he stood back and looked up to the heavens, before looking back to Jimbofin.

“What should I do?” He asked, “It is so much worse than I realised.”

“Oh I don’t know, I think he did quite well to get ten euros for his old ITIL books on eBay.” He paused. "Perhaps it was unfair of me to use your account to make the bid."

Brandon glared at him.

“Oh don’t worry, it isn’t like we are in real time here. We are in the IT department time-zone, things are different here. For instance down here if there is an hour’s downtime one week time heals itself so that the IT department forget about it as long as they still meet their SLA at the end of the year. Not in the business though, up there that one hour becomes indelibly etched into the corporate memory and stretches into an infinite perception that the systems are always down”

“Well thank goodness that this is just a dream. It would be dreadful if whilst everyone was dreaming down here the rest of the organisation was trying to get on with its normal business.”

“Yes that would be quite awkward wouldn’t it, er, yes. Did I actually say that? Remember what I said earlier about the help desk being too busy to dream? Perhaps you’d better listen in on one of these phones...”

Brandon raced to the desks and picked up the first headset he could find

“AT LAST. CAN SOMEONE DOWN THERE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?”

Brandon sighed. He would recognise the sound of the CEO’s voice until the last syllable of recorded time.

To put it another way....

2011-06-28T12:45:00.005+01:00

In my post earlier today I linked to the self congratulating page of reviews for ITIL 2011 Edition.

James West tweeted that

"If ITIL v3 was so hard to read in the first place, as these comments infer, why wasn't it called a draft?"

Good point James, so why don't we turn those comments around to refer to v3.0:

'ITIL lacks clarity and consistency amongst the five books , is difficult to read and hard for users to understand.'

'The first edition contains many inconsistencies to be removed .'

'Although these are a great set of books there is content that needs clarification or correction, and other topics I wish had more coverage!'

'ITIL publications require an astounding improvement . The language and descriptions are not clear and concise, and don't give the reader a clear appreciation of the processes and stages of the ITIL lifecycle.'

'ITIL is a useful resource but not an essential one.'

'Strategy is not accessible. It doesn't flow, it doesn't link up to the other stages of the lifecycle .'

' ITIL Service Strategy is not an easy read. it is too theoretic and not practical.'

'Service Design. is like a 'jigsaw' puzzle without the picture on the box.'

ITIL Service Operation ' is ambiguous, and inconsistent especially around roles and responsibilities, particularly in technical management, IT operations and applications management.'

'The inclusion of proactive problem management and additional analysis techniques [in ITIL Service Operation] would be of great value.'

'Service Transition has many confusing aspects. SKMS, CMS, CMDB is a mystifying and unhelpful maelstrom.'

' Service Transition lacks synergy making it hard for the reader to locate like-for-like content across the process areas covered. More practical application and alignment more closely to real-world experience would be useful'

Now, aren't you glad you spent all that money on the v3.0 books and training?

ITIL 2011 Edition

2011-06-28T09:23:00.006+01:00

As I write this the ITSM community is ~~eagerly~~ awaiting the release of ITIL 2011 Edition due on 29th July.

Many of us have no real idea what to expect from it except the crumbs of information provided by the FAQ and the self-congratulating review page. This is in stark contrast to the approach taken by ISACA who ensure that drafts receive a wide audience before publication, a point picked up on by several blogs.

As you would expect Rob England has a few thoughts on the subject, and so does my colleague Stephen Mann from the ITSM Rest of the World Podcasts. Like most of us they have not seen any of the content, so their comments refer mostly to the process around the revision.

It seems like only five minutes ago that v3 was launched with much hoo-hah, but like Stephen I wonder what change it has really brought about at the coal face. Also like Stephen I have still to see what I consider an ITIL v3 implementation in the wild - I think his blog post accurately reflects the reality that many who claim to have moved on to a v3 paradigm are still struggling to effectively deliver in areas that date back to v1.

I can't help feeling cynical about the new edition. However it is being dressed up this new version has been required because there were major mistakes in the way v3.0 was delivered, such as a lack of consistency and accessibility. Hopefully those two issues will largely have been addressed in the new version, and if so it is to be welcomed.

So what are my concerns going forward? I have three major ones:

The first is that ITIL continues to lack a central set of principles and propositions to guide ITSM design and delivery. Until it does so it will remain, as Ian Clayton would put it, Inside-Out rather than Outside-In. If the only answer to "Why should we do it this way?" is "Because ITIL says so" then ITIL remains broken.

Secondly I'm concerned that the ITSM/ITIL industry will hype up the significance of the changes to promote yet more training and ancillary publications of dubious value.

Thirdly I suspect the world portrayed in the ITIL books will continue to be a long way removed from the reality that most of us recognise in our workplaces. When I look back to the v1 books - and I do - I find them grounded in real life as it then was.

In the run up to the launch I intend to cover all three of these points in more detail. You can also expect to hear them, and more, debated on the podcasts.

SDI 11

2011-06-16T13:30:00.002+01:00

I've just returned from an exciting two days at this year's Service Desk Institute Conference and thought I would share a few thoughts with you post event.

Before going any further I have to thank the SDI for providing me with a free pass for the two days so that we could record an ITSMWPROW podcast there. More of that latter.

Being an inveterate people watcher I found the mix of the audience interesting. This is very much a grass roots service desk practitioner event and that was reflected by the people in the room, but all were unified by an overwhelming enthusiasm for what they do - not because they think it is interesting, but because they believe it is important to the people they serve.

I'll call out, perhaps unfairly, two teams for special mention. The Kent Council IT service desk have recently retained their SDI 4 star rating, and talking to Paula and Emily on the first of the two SDI11 podcasts we recorded it was clear that they are driven by a desire to go on improving the service they provide whilst acknowledging the constraints the UK public sector is currently working within. They also echoed a common message among attendees - addressing customer satisfaction mechanisms is a real challenge.

The second team I'm going to call out have addressed that challenge head on. TNT Express, the well deserved winners of the Large Team Award. They get close to the customer by sending team members out to experience "a life in a day" of their customers, which means helping out the delivery drivers on the road wearing overalls and safety boot. Again we will be featuring them on an upcoming podcast and I really urge you to listen to what they have to say.

The great thing about a conference like this one is that the technology stays firmly in the background and the spotlight falls on people. This was certainly reflected by the messages of most of the speakers. I'm sure that for a lot of people Catherine DeVrye's sessions were inspirational.

James West picked up an interesting theme about the role of ITIL at the event, which I think reflects what we are hearing at other conferences as well, and the theme was also evident in some of the comments made by various industry gurus on Barclay Rae's ITSM TV.

Having put in a lot of links to Twitter accounts in this article I should mention Frieda's session on social media. It still seems to be the case that Twitter is under used at UK ITSM events which is a real shame, especially for those who cannot attend in person.

So there you are. We will be covering a lot more from the conference in the upcoming podcasts, but a heartfelt thanks to Howard, Emma Tessa and the rest of the SDI team.

Putting Social Media into ITSM: Part 3

2011-05-17T14:32:00.000+01:00

The Big Payoff

In Parts 1 and 2 I tried to give a general overview of social media and the issues around it.

The crux of the matter is though there is a lot of talk about social media and ITSM, but not many ideas for how it can be used in reality, either now or in the future. So here is my very own set of ideas. Well I might have borrowed one or two of them, after all you can't have social media without plagiarism.

Intelligence Gathering
Trawl external and internal social media to get a feel for what people are saying about you and your competitors. Whats that, you say you don't have competitors? Trust me if you work in IT you do. Don't fall into the spy mentality though. And if your customers and stakeholders aren't saying nice things about you think long and hard about how to react.Of course gathering intelligence is no use unless you can turn it into actions...

Incubating Innovation
Don't just lurk on social media, use it to try out ideas with an audience that is generally going to be on your side, but also has a tendency to be brutally honest. Thinking about changing service desk hours? Ask what people think. Better still ask them for ideas, like that unified new starter process that combines HR and IT requirements. After all it is all about....

Communication
Perhaps this is too basic to even mention? Social media is all about communication and communication is a two way process. Ask and listen. Listen and ask. In time you will....

Build Relationships
An issue many of us face in IT is that our relationships with customers are asymmetrical and skewed towards certain kinds of interactions, often ones where the customer isn't happy. Use social media to build relationships with the user and customer community.In fact why not...

Build a Community
Corporate attempts to plug into the knowledge, ideas and energy of the workforce are notoriously prone to failure. Trust me, I've seen the state of far too many internal ITSM Wikis.Make use of the self-organising nature of social media to promote communities, and if possible to build bridges between communities to create highly connected "small worlds". Get your super users together, they might even help you....

Educate Users
People listen to their peers, or those they naturally respect. So why not use peers to educate other users? This is especially useful when uses face issues that are around a mixture of IT and business process, not pure technology issues. Another way to get both users and support teams engaged is...

Gamification
DARPA have turned what was a game into a way of crowd sourcing how an autonomous sub-hunting vessel should search for its prey. OK, actually I got bored after playing it for half an hour, but the concept is good. So how about a "game" where support staff score points for solving issues they haven't come across before, or for visiting users at their desks? Don't forget the game isn't over until you've killed the boss.

Putting Social Media into ITSM Part 2

2011-04-25T22:53:00.002+01:00

In Part 1 I talked about how some of us are using social media to build a wider ITSM community. In this post I was going to talk about the much more interesting issue of whether we can use social media as an ITSM tool in the real world. Before I go rushing of into blue sky thinking though it is worth thinking about the ITSM lessons we can learn from those organisations that are using social media well. And lets first poke fun at a few people who just haven't got the hang of it yet.

You Can't Bury Your Head Deep Enough in the Sand
-or "In the Twitterverse everyone can hear your scream"

Whether your organisation has a social media strategy or not your people and your customers are out there using it to talk about your organisation. It could be someone complaining about their boss on Facebook It could be a dissatisfied customer complaining baout poor service. And it could be someone trying to tell you what makes you great.

I just did a search on Twitter for the first company I could think of. It happens to be a British high street retailer. Actually, since the comments were almost all positive I'll tell you it was W H Smiths.Now if I was in marketing with them there would would be a while load of conversations I could be opening up with people to build on that good basic vibe.

@WHSmith_UK follows 18 people and has tweeted 6 times. The last was in December.
@WHSmithLtf follows no one and has never tweeted.

Do I need to tell you about @WHSmithPLC, or can you guess?

OK that is a company, not an IT department, but you get the point.

Just because you aren't part of the conversation doesn't mean people aren't talking about you.

Now just do a quick Twitter search for "IT Department" and see what the ratio of negative to positive comments.Better still, try this Twitter search:

helpdesk :(

Another classic comes to mind here. @Patb0512 was waiting int he queue for breakfast at the Bellagio and tweeted an "observation" about the length of the wait and the probable quality of the breakfast if he ever got to eat it. The original tweet was quite amusing, but it was funnier still to see the Bellagio had a robot hard at work re-tweeting any tweets containing the hotels name, whether positive or critical. Incidentally based on Pat's tweet I didn't even bother joining the queue.

A word of caution here. What to one middle aged manager might appear a foolish approach to social media might actually be a very savvy approach as far as the target audience is concerned. For instance in the SDITS11 panel discussion someone joked how ludicrous it is that packets of Pampers diapers/nappies have a suggestion that you should follow @pampers. Yet why on earth is that ludicrous? Look at that Twitter account and you'll see a fair share of marketing messages, but you'll also see near real time interaction with customers, dealing with their real life problems. In fact what you see emerging is something @barclayrae described in that same panel session as "an authentic persona"

The Secret of Success is Sincerity - Once You Can Fake That You've Got it Made
- Jean Giraudoux

Personally I believe Barclay is spot on with his observation of how important projecting an authentic persona is, and also in going on to say that in the multi-threaded world of social media authenticity becomes hard to fake.Those organisations that use social media well recognize that, but it is a warning to IT departments with our tendency to hide behind technology.

In Part 3 I will finally get around to addressing specific ideas for the use of social media for ITSM, but for now let me leave you with

Finisters' Rules of Social Media.

Listen to what users of social media are saying - but in conjunction with traditional means of marketing and communication
Listening means reacting in a way that makes the customer feel they are being listened to. My personal pet hates are automated DMs* from Twitter accounts with thanking me for following them.
Talking of DMs, consider when to respond privately and when to respond publicly
Remember in social media land everything becomes public
Despite what Meg Ryan told you, there are some things you can't fake
Be aware of the difference between tweeting as a company and tweeting as an individual, but recognize that it is a soft boundary. Don't use a personal account to constantly promote your company, but don't hide the fact you have a commercial interest either.
Use humor, but use it appropriately
Remember the large part of your customer base that isn't currently using social media
Use different tools for different jobs. What works on Facebook won't work on Twitter but...
...use different mediums in combination, so for instance use Twitter to promote a YouTube video

*DM - Direct Message - a tweet sent privately that only the recipient sees.

Putting Social Media into ITSM Part 1

2011-04-22T00:16:00.001+01:00

One factor that led to the great success of the Pink Conference this year was the use made of social media, primarily Twitter to create a buzz before, during and after the event. The use of social media by an active sub set of the ITSM community has been growing rapidly over the last two years, so I guess it is time I wrote a little about it, especially since it managed to simultaneously be a hot topic and a non-event at this weeks Service Desk and IT Support show in London, England. See you can tell I'm writing for an international audience these days.

It was a hot topic because there were several well attended sessions on the subject, but a non topic in that the use of social media in the show itself, and the nuts and bolts of how it could support ITSM were largely lacking.

But hold on, before I go any further I suppose I should do a sense check. One of the sessions at SDITs began with the chair saying:

"Everybody knows what Social media is..."

Now I happen to think that is a massive presumption.

My mother has a Facebook account and uses it to keep tabs on what the family is doing, but no way on earth could she be described as understanding social media.You'll find me on there as well, and I guess I understand it reasonably well, but only within the bounds of what I use it for. Then there are my children who interact via Facebook in ways that I don't get, and probably don't want to know about. Yet those same Facebook savvy youngsters genuinely do not get the way I use Twitter. Not only that, but there are other Twitter users who have a totally different take on what Twitter is about. Where I see it as a tool for multiway interaction and communication the vast majority of Twitter users actually make very few tweets themselves, but dumbly follow celebrities.

A few of us tried to get Google Wave. What does that brief experiment tell us about social media? I suspect there is a book waiting to be written about that, and I also suspect that ideas Wave introduced will reappear in some other guise.

What else comes under the catch all title of social media? Blogs like this one, webcasts and podcasts, even wikis can all be considered part of the rich and ever changing mix.

So how are we using social media in the ITSM world?

It is a strange aspect of social media that it can both expand and contract your world view. You can feel involved in a social drama taking place on the other side of the world whilst ignoring what is happening in your street. I say this because what follows is almost of necessity based on my personal experience which is shared with an active, but still proportionality small, part of the global ITSM community. It is also hopelessly opinionated - then such is the nature of much social media.

Let me dispose of Linkedin as quickly as possible. It has its uses, but the main use it seems to have is in the self promotion of instant ITIL experts, dispensing advice to those who haven't RTFM.

There are forums and blogs a plenty. Some are better than others. Some, such as the IT Skeptic, manage that tricky act of both representing one individual's view of the world with the ability to create and sustain valuable debate.

Interestingly many of those who are to be found commenting on Rob's site, and Rob himself are also on Twitter, but tend to interact in a different way. If you are an ITSM Twitter newbie a good way of quickly working out who to follow is to start with a few key people and then watch who they interact with. Some of them have lists which can kick start the process for you. Mine, I have to confess, are a little out of date because these days I use streams within hootsuite to keep track of the different kinds of people I follow. Try searching for hashtags like #ITIL #ITSM and of course #ITSMWP and #ITSMWPROW

WTF is ITSMWPROW?

No article on ITSM and social media would be complete without a reference to Chris Dancy . As well as being an extremely active tweeter Chris also gave the world the IT Service Management Weekly Podcast. Now as far as I know there is nothing else out there quite like it, except for the various regional spin offs. In a relatively short time these podcasts have established an amazingly high regular audience

Right, that hopefully has set the scene. In Part 2 I'll look at some ideas on how we can leverage social media and in Part 3 at how to deliver actual ITSM solutions.

Service Desk and IT Support Show

2011-04-14T11:09:00.000+01:00

Just like buses, you wait for ages for one of my blog posts and then they all come together.

A quick reminder for those in the UK that next week is the Service Desk and IT Support Show in Earls Court.

I won't be speaking, in fact it is one of the shows I've never been invited to speak at*, hint hint, but I will be there for both days and we will be recording a special edition of the ITSMWPROW podcast live from the VIP lounge. So come along and join us if you can.

This year's programme of speakers looks particularly interesting.

*Following my comment to the organizer on a yet to be broadcast podcast that "the best thing about it is it is convenient for Infosec next door" it might be some time before I get an invite to speak.

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scot walk into a bar....

2011-04-14T10:56:00.003+01:00

...no it isn't the start of a joke, but a scene in the Bellagio at the start of the Pink11 conference in Las Vegas earlier this year. The Irishman was Patrick Bolger and the Scot was Barclay Rae , two of my fellow presenters on the ITSM Weekly Podcast Rest of the World Edition. The Englishman was obviously me, there to present on ISO 38500 and take part in the CMDB panel discussion chaired by Rob "ITSkeptic" England.

Pinky goes to Vegas

Running into two such great enthusiastic and ITSM thinkers right at the start really set the tone for the whole event, even if I could have met them much more cheaply without leaving the UK. In fact in the next hour we were joined by a plethora of ITSM gurus. Those of you who have listened to our post Pink11 podcasts will have realised that Pat, Barclay and I came back buzzing with ideas, and again I want to spotlight some of these over the next few weeks.(Update - those ideas have morphed into the Back2ITSM concept)

Vegas

OK, by now you will have gone away and checked the link to the conference and worked out that it took place way way back in February. So you'll have two questions.

Number 1 - When is the next Pink Conference?

Number 2 - Why has he only just got round to blogging about this?

Well there are two answers to that. The first is that I've been rather busy with the day job, and the second is that I've wanted to reflect a little before drawing conclusions.

Social Media
Not only was this a hot conference topic but it also made a huge difference to the conference experience. A lot of facetime conversations were continuations of Twitter based debates. Not only that but in the main sessions there were live Twitter feeds following the #pink11 hash tag, and that hash tag generated a lot of interest. There was also a lot of activity in the blogsphere - Barclay Rae and Matt Hooper both got very excited.

Recording the podcast. Oh the glamour of it all

Here are some of my own initial thoughts, largely focusing on the difference between this event and similar conferences in the EMEA region.

Back to Basics
I'm going to make a gross generalisation here. At UK ITSM conferences the presumption is we all know what the foundations of ITSM are so we don't bother questioning them, and the result is our thinking about the subject hasn't moved forward for years. At Pink there was an awareness that those foundations aren't as robust as we'd imagined. Some very fundamental issues, such as "What is a service?" and "Do you need a CMDB?" and "Do you really understand problem management?" were addressed. If you think they are trivial questions with answers enshrined in ITIl then I would suggest you probably don't understand the questions. Suffice to say at least one hastily conceived CMDB project was publicly abandoned following the debate on their value.

Ceiling in the Bellagio's reception

Not Being Scared to Ask for Help
This kind of leads on from my last point. At UK conferences speakers stand up and tell you what a great job they've done and that they've got all the answers. If you've read my ramblings on "The Halo Effect" and "Cargo Cults" you'll know my view of that approach. Here there was much more of a dialogue going on between the speaker and the floor, and more discussion between delegates.

Perhaps the extreme example is the overwhelming response Pink and Hornbill have had to their ITSM Extreme Makeover initiative.

Personal Highlights

Meeting so many ITSM gurus face to face, too many to mention them all
Sitting on such a distinguished panel to discuss CMDB
Listening to Captain Mike Abrashoff talk about leadership

Who says Vegas is fake?

If you've never been before I really really recommend that you make the trip to next year's show.

The Ghost of ITIL Past

2010-12-24T19:03:00.001Z

Ivor took Brandon by the hand and led him through the mists of time to an earlier IT world...

..which gave rise to the first problem, because the secure access to the data center meant Brandon couldn't tail gate him..

Once that hurdle had been surmounted they surveyed the scene in front of them.

"Isn't it idyllic to see a place for everything, and everything in it's place?" declared Ivor, the ghost of ITIL past. "Look at how the Ops Manager rules his tape monkeys, marvel as he refuses admission to any developers carrying arbitrary tapes. His word is law."

Brandon, the once and future auditor, could not help noticing various tapes lying unaccounted for outside of the tape store, or that the tape monkeys appeared to have no idea what they were actually doing.

"Tell me Ivor, what have you brought me here to see?"

"I have brought you so that you might understand there was once a golden age of IT, when we knew and understood our place in the world.. It was a world where the dangerous intellectuals were turned to the right, and became system analysts, whilst those of us who were unworthy turned left and became operators. Of course there were also also those who ignored all the obvious signs and became Sysprogs"

"So what happened to the Sysprogs?" queried Brandon.

"To be quite honest we don't know, we could never be bothered to talk to them at office parties. Anyway, behold IT Narnina!"

"I think you mean Nirvana, but then again... look this is very impressive, that machine there blinking and whirring away must be incredibly powerful.."

"Indeed, behold the might 1Mb disk drive...."

"No sorry, I meant the air conditioning unit over there, but anyway, here we are buried in a silo, what I want to know is what the customers thought about IT in these days."

"They think it is very shy"

"Shy? Are you sure about that?"

"Oh yes, when I went out to meet the customers they kept telling me how shy it was."

"OK can I just check here, were the customers based in Germany, and were you by any chance a senior MOD civil servant?"

"OK, I might have been."

"And do you think that instead of saying the system is shy, sir*, they might have been saying something else?"

With that the ghost of ITIL past faded away, to be replaced with the ghost of ITIL present.

*German slang for the products of Microsoft.

Thoughts on the 2010 itSMF UK Conference

2010-11-10T12:20:00.002Z

So that's the 2010 conference over for another year.

A night's sleep, even though it involved dreaming about CMDBs and Service Design packages, has given me time to reflect on it.

So here are my thoughts.

If I'm perfectly honest I normally find attending this event a bit of a chore, but I thoroughly enjoyed this year.

First of all the venue and location was better than the Metropole, and I didn't find myself getting lost navigating between sessions and exhibition halls. I was really impressed with all the hotel staff I interfaced with, which coming from a customer service background is pretty unusual. The same applies to the conference support staff as well. I'm afraid the food at the gala dinner was another let down, but I've come to expect that.

Secondly there was the shift to just two days. I felt that made the event more focussed, and seemed to push up the attendance in the individual streams. Last year a lot of good sessions didn't get the audience they deserved.

Perhaps some thought needs to be given the timing of the first and last keynote sessions. Coming down from Coventry I only just managed to make the opening session, and the final session had a relatively small audience. If I go next year I will seriously consider coming down for the Sunday night.

Thirdly, of course, there were the people. Now I tweeted from last year's gala dinner that I was the worst networker in the room, and that remains the case, but this year social media came to my aid and I had some great conversations with @servicesphere, @stephenmann, @duncs, and @ barclayrae amongst others. It would have been nice to have had a wider tweetup, I'm not sure why that didn't happen and have a horrible feeling I should have arranged it.

Confession time, I had to grovel to the wonderful @G2G3 AKA Linda King because I kept walking past the stand without talking to them, which taught me two valuable lessons. One is that we need to be consistent with our social media persona, and the other was that it is too easy to ascribe the wrong motivation to others. I'm just naturally shy.

The only reason I mention this is that it was the theme of a lot of the "People" sessions, which is the stream I concentrated on.

We need to give out clear messages to our customers,
and make sure
we understand the messages they are giving to us.

The less said about my own session on ISO 38500 the better, because to be honest I was just trying to get to the end of it without infecting 80% of the audience with man flu. I did get some kind comments afterwards, but I can't help feeling I've not got my presenter's mojo back just yet. I suspect that is partially because I'm looking for a new, minimalist, style to call my own. Hopefully I'll have that sorted by Pink11. My ideas are evolving rapidly.

What did strike me, and some of the audience, is that some people just don't get what we are trying to do with ISO 38500.

It isn't about how we do things inside of IT.

It isn't a recipe book like ISO 20000

It isn't a rational construct like ITIL

My gut feel is we have a lot of "storming" to do in the ISO 38500 world before we can get round to "norming" and "performing"

Not for the first time I was surprised people didn't realise the financial contribution the Tata group makes to society. I got the message that as a behaviour it still matters but we keep too quiet about it.

Most presenters, including some of the authors, seemed to take the view that ITIL has become a sideshow. The big issue is how do we solve a specific issue, and ITIL rarely helps in those cases beyond providing a common vocabulary.

Final conclusions: For once I felt we have matured as a profession. There were very few theoretical/perfect world sessions. On the other hand there were few sessions that pushed the boundaries to the art of the possible.

Now, off to write my slides for Pink11....

Brandon Lane CIO - Episode 7

2010-11-04T17:57:00.003Z

Brandon Lane has a vision

(Or a slightly premature ITSM Carol)

Ten minutes before the first team meeting.

Brandon rubs his temples.If only Yssabele was here to soothe his furrowed brow.

Actually, when he thinks about it, most of the furrows on his brow are of Yssabele's doing. Even how to spell her name normally confuses him, because she changes her preferred spelling from week to week.

Never mind. You get the picture.

And oddly, now does Brandon.

A mist forms in front of his eyes, and standing in front of him is a patrician looking vision dressed in black, complete with pointed beard.

"Who the Chris Dancy are you?" Brandon enquires, whilst desperately trying to reach for the intercom on his desk.

"I am Ivor, the ghost of ITIL implementations past" the apparition announces "I, and my consulting associates, Jimbofin, the ghost of ITSM present, and Ian, the ghost of Outside-In thinking will all visit you to..."

There was a chilling stillness in the room, as the apparition prepared to make its pronouncement...

"Help you deliver an ITIL transformation project."

Brandon looked at the apparition for a few seconds before responding.

(Look, I'm writing this on an Android phone and I'm sorry but my chances of spelling "apparition" right are quite slim. Get over it.)
"Heck, I know the Netherlands is ITIL's own country, and I've smoked but never inhaled a lot of weed, but what planet are you from?"

"Well, planet ITIL, if you must ask. Anyway my task is to show you the world of ITIL past, which actually isn't that hard, because it lies just beyond your door."

Read on....

itSMF UK conference

2010-11-03T22:11:00.000Z

I don't believe in self promotion, but I guess I should point out that I'll be speaking at this year's itSMF conference in London next week.

My topic is how you can use ISO 38500 to gain CxO level commitment.

Come and listen to me if you are interested in the topic, but more importantly if you are coming to the conference come and introduce yourself and speak to me, and the other great ITSM experts who will be there. Don't be scared. we won't bite, and I would love to hear from you.

Rest of the World Podcasts

2010-10-03T10:13:00.000+01:00

Just a quick reminder that along with Stephen Mann & Chris Matchett you can catch me on the ITSM Rest of the World Podcasts.

Episode 1

Episode 2

We haven't quite reached the level of slickness achieved by our US counterparts

Flash, bang, wallop

2010-10-02T20:22:00.003+01:00

'Old it, flash, bang, wallop, what a picture What a picture, what a photograph'

Lyrics from Half a Sixpence

Have you missed me?

I've been rather busy putting together some interesting bids and delivering some exciting service catalogue propositions. I know, I'm on record as being somewhat critical of service catalogues, but that is when other people are involved, and the objectives aren't clear.

I've also been busy rediscovering some of ny hobbies, including photography. I recently took delivery of a new camera. It is an end of line Panasonic LX3. Now I have previous when it comes to buying cameras.

As I write this I have five cameras sat on my desk.

The thing is, as I keep explaining to my beloved wife, is that different cameras suit different purposes.

I have a Pentax DSLR that I love because it can take photographs that no camera I've ever owned before has been capable of, but it can be heard from a mile away when you click the shutter.

I have a Panasonic FZ18 super zoom that has produced photos at Le Mans when friends with expensive DSLRs have struggled.

I've got a little Panasonic compact which will fit in a shirt pocket, and of course there is a camera in my mobile phone.

But then there is my Panasonic LX3.

It isn't the most up to date camera, in fact I only bought it after they announced a new model and the price dropped accordingly.It doesn't have a great zoom lens, though it does have a surprisingly wide angle facility.

But what it does do it does really, really well. And that happens to coincide with the street photography that I most enjoy doing.

The ITSM conclusion?

Ask yourself what do you REALLY want an ITSM tool to do for you today. Don't worry too much about what you want to do in two or three years time, trust me, the technology will have moved on by then.

All change!

2010-06-24T08:10:00.001+01:00

I couldn't resist the title of this post since I'm writing it on a train.

Once again I've gone a little quiet .

The observant ones amongst you will have noticed a small but significant change in my vanity panel.

For the less observant of you I have returned to corporate life as a member of the TCS Global Consulting Practice .

I'm probably as shocked by this development as many of you will be. I am, after all, one of the mavericks of the ITSM world.

So what is the attraction?

It has to be their willingness to look at ITSM and IT governance with fresh eyes, coupled with a strong emphasis on social responsivility

Location : Address not available

The Hare and the Tortoise

2010-06-17T15:38:00.001+01:00

Some of you might have noticed an absence of recent posts. Some of you will have realised that this once again coincided with the running of the Le Mans 24 hour race.

What a race it was.

The Pugs appeared to unbeatable, until their engines blew up. The Audis seemed to have an impossible target, until somehow their reliability delivered a 1-2-3 podium finish.

A little bit of me felt this was a hollow victory, until I realised Audi won having covered an incredible record distance. They did not luck into this victory.

And then there were lots of interesting discussions about how a class win compared to an overall win.

But beyond anything else there was that over-riding commitment to doing the best you possibly can.

I had dinner on Sunday night with the Autocon Lola mechanics.

They had come all the way from the USA to see their car do...6 miles...less than a single lap of the Le Mans circuit.

The messages I would love to get out to you is this:

Racers get excited.Racers are driven by a motive that other people don't get.

Racers, although they are driven by winning, don't need to win.

Racers appreciate the effort needed to win, and above everything else, care about trying.

Is HR ITSM's Greatest Corporate Enemy?

2010-05-28T12:14:00.001+01:00

It was one of those late night conversations with 'T' an ex-service manager colleague when the question came up.

He'd become an ex-colleague thanks to the collusion of the office bully and an out of touch HR department. The sad thing was that any ITSM professional would have realised the miracles he had been working up to that time in a very challenging environment.

Before you shed to much of a tear for him he soon found his niche in a more humane organisation, so six months on I was chatting to him in his new role as a very successful IT Director, shortly before he was head-hunted for a new CIO role.

Meanwhile the office bully continued to convince everyone she was indispensable, right up to her early retirement, since when I'm pleased to say things have improved substantially in that particular organisation.

Up until that point I'd always thought of Finance, suppliers, and the IT department themselves as the barriers to world class ITSM. The more I thought about it though the more I thought T had a point. OK, his was an extreme, though not unique case, but there are lots of ways that HR nibble away at the effectiveness of the ITSM team. Now to be fair the blame doesn't necessarily always lie with HR per se, so much as the CIO's failure to articulate the actualities of ITSM.

Let's begin at the beginning with recruitment.

Do a quick Google on ITIL jobs.

Here's one I've just come across.

"Service Delivery Manager required to work within a leading IT Outsourcer. Working with bid and costing teams the Delivery manager will be responsible for Design and delivering large complex solutions.
Chairing meetings to discuss requirements and effective strategies to manage service proposals and to represent the company to win complex bids. Managing current relationships and developing new relationships with customers to represent the business. Working with ITIL Service Management to work effectively and efficiently within ISEB standards."

"Candidates must be able to demonstrate actual hands on Service Delivery in operating infrastructure services, ie:- a complete end to desk top, server infrastructure, to compliment the ITIL accreditation's.
Experience of leading on major high-touch bids
Demonstrable Service Management leadership expertise
ISEB Service Management Manager Certified (Red Badge)
Knowledge of Information Technology Management and functions
Customer and business orientation, with sound commercial and financial awareness
Has effective working relationships with customer's senior management as well as internal relationships

To start ASAP"

To begin with WTF does any SDM job have the words "To start ASAP" in it?

Think on that.

Possibilities I can think of include:

The last SDM gave up in disgust
A month before go live they have suddenly realised they need a SDM
They expect a masked man to ride into town and perform miracles
They believe an SDM should be judged on immediate results

I'm sorry, but everyone of those flashes up "Warning Will Robinson" to me.

Then look at those responsibilities. Is the SDM really going to have design responsibilities, or are they, as usual, going to have to make a purse out of a sow's ear. What control will they actually have over the delivery of the service? Is their job actually going to be to make endless excuses for other people's mistakes after the event?

ISEB standards? Can some one tell me what ISEB standards there are? This is an advert written in the ITL equivalent of Franglais.

I'm glad they want someone to 'compliment' the ITIL accreditations, we need more people to say that ITIL accreditations are wonderful. I'm sure you all know the peanut joke. Sorry that was underhand.

Then just look at the overall job requirements. Isn't that rather like saying a janitor should know how to mop a floor.

Look at it from the SDM's perspective - does anything make this job sound attractive?

The Triumph of the Airheads: And the Retreat from Commonsense

Yes I've suggested all these links before, and yes you've ignored them, but I still think they would be good for you. Buy them as presents for your HR Director.

HR are the vampires of the organisation, that is why they avoid holding a mirror up to themselves.

Think about it, HR can make two basic mistakes. They can fail to recruit the right person, or they can recruit the wrong person. Is there any mechanism to catch either of those mistakes, because trust me if they recruit the wrong person they won't take the blame.

I spoke at the 2009 itSMF Conference on one of the very basic mistakes HR make. Their ideal candidate is like the average candidate, only more so. They want some one who is more than averagely punctual, more than averagely presentable, more than averagely...average.

I'm sorry, but to on my ITSM team I want people who are exceptional. I want people who are different. Who are prepared to challenge the conventions that got the IT department into their current situation. I want people who understand that world class ITSM isn't achieved by trying to run before you can walk....I want born ITSM professionals, and above everything else I want people who care.

This is probably a good point to totally castigate recruitment agencies who don't know enough about ITSM to either set salary expectations or to carry out an initial filtration of candidates. For goodness sake, I've seen agencies requesting credentials that don't even exist yet.

OK, you've joined an organisation. Let's have a look at their job design. No, better not really. They are just a collection of buzz words. SDMs achieve success by their influencing skills. They fight wars and campaigns, not battles.

What about the criteria for success in the role? Have you noticed these are never contingent? Nobody ever say "Of course if the project delivers a c**p solution we won't hold you responsible for customer satisfaction."

Training. Dear HR Director, there is a reason why there are ITSM specific training schemes. And the ITSM team understand their value a lot more than you do...

OK, I could go on, but I hope I've made my point.

Brandon Lane CIO - Episode 6

2010-05-26T21:13:00.002+01:00

Richard Gets a Wake Up Call

Brandon Lane, the once and future CIO, surveyed his new office.

During his dramatic makeover of it on Sunday he had been faced with two choices. One was to use it to impose his authority and the other was to use it to signal a different way of working. He'd gone with the second choice, though now he was beginning to wonder. It was dawning on him that IT people don't do subtle.

The other thing that was worrying him was his experience of home life. He knew that however much Ysabelle rearranged the rooms there was always one optimal place to sit, and she would claim it before anyone else realised where it was. Looking around his office he tried to guess which was the best seat in the house. Was it best to face the door, or to be hidden from anyone entering the room so you could judge their reactions? What was the optimal distance to be from the coffee machine? Where were the power sockets? Which was the most comfortable chair?

Conversely, he wondered, where was the best place to put someone if you wanted to make them feel uncomfortable.

He didn't have long to wait to answer that question before Richard, the Service Desk manager came in.

"You wanted to see me?" Richard ejaculated as he sat down in the chair Brandon had just identified as the most comfortable.

"Nice of you to drop by. Do take a seat. How are things on the desk"

"I think they are OK, as a manager I try not to get involved in the day to day issues. Of course it would help if we had a new service management tool. Jacques was going to let me develop our own. I've put a paper together, I'll send it to you"

"Richard, remind me, what is the tool you are currently using?"

"It's XXXXXX. Rubbish. It doesn't let me do any of the analysis I want to do."

"I'm sure. Now just remind me of the last IT customer satisfaction survey results...no actually don't bother I read it this morning . Ah, here it is, let me quote 'They never get back to you when they say they will', 'Rude', 'treated me like an idiot', 'Explained how a system I'd designed worked in words of one syllable, and got it entirely wrong'. I could go on, but tell me, does your paper outline how a new tool would solve these issues?"

"Well that is users for you. Never happy. They don't realise how difficult our job is."

"What worries me Richard is this. Do you realise how difficult their jobs are?"

"A new tool would let us..."

"Richard. Richard. Richard. You pick up the phone. You find out what is upsetting the person on the phone, and when they put the phone down you leave them with the feeling that they don't need to worry. How is a new tool going to help you achieve that? How difficult can it be anyway? By the way how are the issues with the changes to the MFD IP addresses coming along?"

"Is there an issue? No one has told me yet."

"Richard, you are the Help Desk Manager. It is your job to know, and to make sure that other people know what is going on as well. Get out there and sort it."

"But what about your team meeting, it starts in ten minutes."

"Yes it does, but I think it would be a better use of your time to get back to the desk and sort things out."

There was an awkward pause.

" Now Richard. Now would be a good time to go and sort it out"

Lessons From Beyond the Clouds

2010-05-26T13:27:00.002+01:00

My Adventures in the world of thin client computing

We sometimes forget that IT strategy should be driven by business imperatives, and that those business imperatives don't change just because the technology does.

So when we start to look at Cloud and SaaS from an ITSM perspective we should always keep those business imperatives in mind. It also helps to remind ourselves that the problems the business want the cloud to solve are existing ones.

One of the most interesting projects I've been involved in recently replaced all the client's desktop computers with thin client devices, accessing all applications over a combination of an intranet and the internet and a mixture of internal and external hosting. The thin clients and the infrastructure were all provided as part of an outsourcing deal.

It was a fascinating experience with novel technology and as you might expect there were major hiccups along the way. What struck me time after time though was that the challenges and issues from an ITSM perspective were all old familiar friends, but seen in a new light. As the French say

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

Let us begin with what the business were trying to do, and this was very much a business led change.

They wanted:

Reduced and predictable running costs and total lifetime cost
Scalability
A stable platform to enable rapid roll out of new services

A longer term requirement was to enable their internal services to be made available to other partners and directly to their customers.

Lots of implications obviously follow from these high level objectives. Not all of them were perhaps realised at the time, and others were over emphasised during the roll out of the project at the cost of reducing the overall benefit delivered. Other objectives were also added on during the life of the project, such as integration with the business's green policy.

What about the service management perspective?

Many of these will already be familiar to you, I'm sure.

Service Transition

A major issue, as with so many projects, was that the project team made decisions with a significant impact on the quality of service that could not be delivered without seeking the approval of the service management team,

Testing

Many supposedly key aspects of the service were contractually specified as requirements for service acceptance and as targets for the service once it had gone live, but no effort was made to design and build tests during the project stage. Had an attempt been made to develop tests, and integrate them with UAT then someone might have noticed that many of the targets and service levels were nonsensical or ambiguous .

Targets

What do I mean by the targets being nonsensical? Pay attention because this is extremely important. I mean they were:

Impossible to measure. I mean logically impossible, not just difficult
Not relevant to the actual quality of service
Not measuring what people wanted them to be measuring
Not within the control of the supplier(s) to deliver

In many case these flaws could be traced back to targets being inherited from previous contracts and SLAs. Although the thin client solution highlighted their short-comings the truth is they were never good measures to begin with.

Those that were impossible to measure were often ones that were not relevant to the new architecture. For instance those measuring performance at a component level that no longer existed, or which were now hidden inside the cloud.

Often these were also measures that even if they could be measured couldn't be consistently mapped on to the customer or user experience. As an example because of the way the system was designed to dynamically reconfigure itself it could run perfectly well one day with two portal servers unavailable, but the next day just one portal server failing could bring the entire service to a halt.

A far to common failing of targets is the seemingly universal flaw in logic which goes like this:

"I want to measure X. I can measure Y. Therefore Y must tell me about X"

How stupid is that, but we do it all the time. Do you measure average call waiting time on your ACD system? What is it that you actually want to know, measure and achieve?

Write them down. Now.

Yes, I am looking at you, write down what you actually WANT to know.

Some suggestions:

"Do customers ring off because they get frustrated with waiting?"

"Does the call queuing system work effectively?"

"Do I need more staff on the help desk?"
"Do my users have reasonable expectations of the service?"

"How long does it take from a user first ringing the service desk until they speak to someone who can help?"

"How many customers are unhappy about how long they've had to wait for their call to be answered?"

"How many times does a customer call the desk before their call is answered?"

Now ask yourself if average time to answer recorded by an ACD system answers any of those questions.

A classic I came across on this particular project was that it was two years before the service desk provider let slip that they only counted waiting time after the caller had listened to the "Welcome" message. Their target was to pick up calls within 20 seconds. The welcome message typically lasted 45 seconds. Go figure.

And if you want a service delivered over the internet you can't hold your application supplier responsible for the poor transaction response time experienced by a user living on a canal boat moored in a cutting. It didn;'t stop the user complaining though.

Contracts

Something I've never understood about ITIL, especially considering OGC's wider role, is that it has never addressed that in the UK most IT services are dependent on outsourcing, and contracts are therefore key.

Where do I begin? Well to follow on from the previous section too many contracts are written with what went wrong the last time in mind, which might be wholly irrelevant today.

Secondly far too often the parties agree on the words, but not on the meaning of the words, and again I'm afraid that ITIL does not address this. We can all agree that a service change should go to the CAB, but that is of little use if we don't agree what we mean by a change to the service.

Language and the Dramadriehoek

Pardon my Dutch. Customers, users, the retained organisation and different suppliers are rather like the Americans and the British. They are divided by a common language, which unfortunately they insist on talking to each other. Those of you, who unlike me, have mastered another language will know the peril of the "familiar friend" that expression you can easily translate into another language, but then has a wholly different meaning.

Mail me for the sick joke that I could insert here but won't. It was told me by a Collector* in HMR&C**.

The great challenge for ITIL and ISO 20k has to be understanding how you map supplier terminology onto customer and user terminology throughout the value network.

The Retained Organisation

Another opportunity to spit over you whilst attempting to say "dramadriehoek" The ITIL missing link is the role of the retained organisation/intelligent customer. You need to understand what role you expect the retained organisation to fill, and you need to realise that it will change over time. The RO should not be man marking the supplier and providing support when they make mistakes. THe RO should be setting the framework for supplier/customer/user interaction.

Service Credits and SLAs

Welcome to a basic lesson in economics. If I set myself up to deliver service A, and you apply constraints C which have I implications on how I can D Deliver the service...

...You get ACID, which is never good.

Punishing your supplier financially only works in a narrow subset of situations. Forget the sunk cost fallacy, what matters is how you can move forward.

Forget the mistakes of your past... what is it that matters now?

----------

* A very very senior British Customs Officer

** If you want a good night out go to a Burns Night with the British customs.The man himself was a "Gauger" A well known founder of itSMF was once found lying in a hedge after one such event. I know it was a good night because after five years I finally understood every word the Scottish CFO at the Passport Office said to me. Pity I didn't understand him earlier when he was teaching me accountancy.

ServiceSphere ITSM Weekly Podcast

2010-05-25T12:40:00.000+01:00

I'm loathe to include these links, because you could argue the words were twisted from my mouth. Let us get this absolutely straight, Focus is not a swear word, even if it is beeped out.

Go ahead and enjoy

ITSM Weekly the Podcast week 15

Week 16

10 Reasons Why Your Customers Are Like Poodles

2010-05-24T11:37:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was a lovely sunny morning here in Warwickshire, so I thought the dogs would be looking forward to a walk by the river. Unfortunately I could only find one of them. Daisy, the toy poodle, had once again snuck under the supposedly poodle proof netting and escaped to see our neighbours. She was sat on their sofa being hand fed biscuits and watching re-runs of soaps on TV. It didn't matter how much I yelled "walkies" or Milly barked, Daisy wasn't moving.

Milly the elderly dalmatian and I had a nice peaceful walk, and the local rabbits were allowed to frolic without being chased by 2.5kg of kinetic energy personified.

Being me, I twittered about this. Being an ITSM peep @glennodonnell co-author of The CMDB Imperative twittered back:

Sounds like the poodle found a better customer experience at the neighbor's house!

What eventually enticed her back was providing a better experience for a different customer. As soon as I began cooking bacon for the two legged members of the Finister family she was back in our house like a flash.

As Glen said when I published the good news of the prodigal poodle's return:

See what happens when you improve the customer experience? The customer returns. There is an ITSM lesson here!

I think there is more than one ITSM lesson to be learnt, and here are 10 of them:

However hard you try and fence your customers in they will still be curious about what is on the other side of the fence.
The more you try and fence them in the more convinced they will become that what is on the other side is worth finding out about.
The customer will make the effort to find out what other suppliers are offering
The first time you'll find this out is when you see the customer cosying up to their new supplier.
You won't get the customer back by just offering more of the same.
Just because one incumbent customer is happy with your service it doesn't mean others will be.
Make a direct plea to them to come back and you face a dialogue ending rejection
Openly providing an enhanced service to another customer can attract old customers back, even, he said in full on cynic mode, if the enhanced service isn't immediately available to the returnee. Think loyalty cards, for example.
Customers defect for short term gain, they don't know they are supposed to care about total quality of service.
Don't relax. Always keep your ears and eyes open to what the customer is up to.

If you can hear a noise in the background, that's Daisy howling because she's spotted a sausage left on the BBQ.

CoreITSM 101: ITSM Audits

2010-05-20T12:52:00.002+01:00

To be truthful this probably isn't really a 101 subject, but I'm posting it here because 'audit' is a term you'll find used with casual abandon by those in the ITSM world who don't really understand what it is all about.

Not all audits are equal, and neither are all auditors

In fact let us begin with the different types of auditor, because that has a massive bearing on the type of audit that can be carried out and the value that can be derived from it.

In the ITSM world the auditors you are most likely to meet include:

The independent quality auditor assessing management systems against an ISO standard
The consultant undertaking a supposedly independent audit prior to and after an ITIL implementation
A 'tick and turn' internal auditor following a check list
A systems based internal auditor who will assess whether the system of management control is effective and/or whether Value For Money (VFM) is being achieved
A technical IT internal auditor who will be able to test and assess assess technical controls in detail

If you read some of the ITSM literature you could be forgiven for thinking that ITSM audits are mostly undertaken by the teams responsible for each process. In reality this rarely happens, though, with several caveats, there are arguments in favour of it as one aspect of the overall audit process.

So, what about the types of audits these guys and gals undertake?

The last time I checked I was a member of three BSI/ISO committees, so obviously I think ISO standards are a "good thing" If you aren't British you might want to read '1066 & All That' to get the joke. The point is that these audits do exactly what it says on the can. They do not look outside of their very specific remit, and that remit is the basic requirement of a management system. So if your IT supplier makes great play of being ISO/IEC 20000 certified be sure you understand what that really means. it does not tell you anything about the actual quality of the service they are capable of delivering. It does tell you though that they haven't just cherry picked the 'easy' ITIL processes of incident and change management. It is a great starting point, but that is what it is, nothing more.

In another lifetime, before marriage, children, dogs, cats and degus I spent a lot of my time doing audits as part of consultancy assignments. Typically we would use a pseudo CMMI approach, because clients can understand the concept of "You are here, really it would be great if you here instead, but don't worry, it is OK if you only get to here, because we can rationalise it for you" I'm actually a great fan of maturity models, and I think COBIT has done a good job of integrating them into the ITSM world, In reality though I suspect most ITSM maturity models are flawed, not least because they never explicitly address how we balance the maturity of an individual process against overall maturity. Being really really good at incident management is really really great, but it doesn't make you a mature service management organisation if you are not terribly good at request management.

And here is the killer point. The people doing these audits want to sell you things. Then when they've finished selling you things they want to sell your success. So how much do you trust their audits?

Hopefully I don't need to dwell on the outmoded "tick and turn auditor" I still have nightmares about when the manager of a major government data centre rang me up to complain that two of my trainee auditors were insisting he lifted the floor panels so they could check the voids for dust and debris, even though he had explained to them it was a solid floor.

Now in contrast ITSM could do a lot worse than invest time and effort in cultivating your friendly systems based auditor. They will ask what it is you are trying to achieve, validate that outcome, and then assess whether you are are doing the right things to achieve it. The only downside is they won't know what technology is capable of achieving...which is where your technically capable auditor comes on the scene. You can possibly sub divide this type of auditor into the one trick pony, who knows a lot about, say, security, and the technology auditor who also keeps a foot in the business world. Both have a valid role to play.

So what about this concept that ITIL seems so fond of, the self audit approach? First of all let me be very pedantic and make two points. The first is that this is not 'Internal Audit' Internal Audit is a corporate governance function and, secondly, what Internal Audit has that the IT team doesn't is independence.

Leaving that aside though I believe there is considerable value in an internal team trying to take an objective view of their own performance. After all no auditor will ask any question that management shouldn't have already asked themselves. However I think they need help to make it effective. So cultivate a friendship with the audit team, and ask them about Control Risk Self Assessment. Involve your stakeholders in the process, and above everything else make sure you focus on your ability to consistently deliver desired outcomes.

Just because it has never gone wrong in the past doesn't mean it will always go right in the future

Layers of Reality

2010-05-19T14:13:00.000+01:00

I was lucky enough to meet Mark Toomey, author of Waltzing With The Elephant,whilst he was in the UK last week, to discuss ISO 38500 . It is significant that we met at the offices of a major management consultancy firm who can see real value in getting ISO 38500 in front of the Board.

Equally significant I suspect is that the Rob England, the ITskeptic seems to have finally cottoned on to what I've been telling him about the standard for ages. It is the Board's responsibility not the CIO's.

We are talking about getting the best business outcomes from investment in IT, we are talking about controlling the environment in which ITSM operates, not about the internal management of ITSM. Hence we constantly distinguish "Governance of IT" from "IT Governance"

I'm looking forward to a really exciting debate at Pink11, and hopefully at this year's itSMF UK conference as well. Because trust me, there are issues that need debating.

Lots of discussions we have within the IT world are really interesting for us IT geeks, but not meaningful in a wider context. Take agile development for an example. Yes there are lots of pros and cons, but what I care about is does it help deliver business centric solutions that are timely and cost effective over the whole life cycle of the service.

Or lets look at ITIL. Nothing in ITIL matters unless it produces a positive business result. Do you want time to digest that?

In positing the IT governance layer encapsulated in ISO 38500 we are saying that good governance of IT adds value to the business. I suspect you are either slapping your forehead in annoyance because I've just stated something blindingly obvious, or you are cursing me because you see the standard as yet another barrier to achieving what you believe IT should be doing and which will add additional layers of bureaucracy.

CoreITSM 101: Reporting

2010-05-18T13:08:00.002+01:00

I think it was Horace who said 'I labour to be brief but become obscure"

How apt for this post. Firstly recognise that any reports we produce are an attempt to distil reality that is doomed to failure and secondly many reports lose their meaning in translation from IT terminology to business speak, or BS as some of us call it. In fact as far as the business is concerned are reports might as well be latine scripta sunt in. And of course what Horace actually wrote was

"Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio"

At this point you might nod sagely and recall Churchill saying

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Shame on you though if you think that means statistics are stuff and nonsense. If you knew your Churchill you would know the great value he placed on statistical information. It is no coincidence that operational research grew up as a discipline during WW2.

I spent a lot of my early career producing New Scotland Yard's crime statistics so I could bore you to death for hours but let me keep it very simple :

Bad reports are worthless

Good reports are priceless

What is a good report?Again, very simple: It tells you something you did not not know before reading it.

Now if I want to fill a conference session I'll speak about reporting . Whatever advice I give, l know that what most of the audience actually want is a standard list of the metrics they should produce .

Which means they haven't listened to a word I've said.

There is no golden list. What you need to report on is driven by context. A report that might hav been vital last year might be just so much noise this year.

I hate doing this, but sometimes I have to. Let me give you some guidance that will help you realise you aren't producing useful reports. If it makes you feel better these are all lessons I've learnt the hard way .

If you don't produce the figures one month, does anyone notice or care ?
Do managers just pin your graphs up to decorate their offices ?
Can you tell a story about what the figures are telling you?
You should be able to write at least three sentences:

what the figures mean
should we worry about what the figures mean
what should we do in response to the figures

Of course of you are on top of your game you will have:

Looked at individual figures in the context of what other figured are telling you.
Identified in advance the thresholds for when action is required, and those thresholds will enable you to avoid failure, not respond to it
Thought through the actions people need to take.

So today's homework: go away and assess the reports you currently produce against these criteria.

Tumbleweed

2010-05-13T20:34:00.000+01:00

You might have noticed it has been kind of quiet around here. Not so behind the scenes where a lot has been going on. There are plenty of articles in draft waiting to be published, including the latest instalment of Brandon Lane and Core ITSM 101 on reporting.

I've also been having some very interesting conversations about the governance of IT and ISO 38500.

So watch this space.

Augmented Reality

2010-04-24T15:09:00.001+01:00

I suspect I am in danger of becoming an Android bore. To keep some balance lets look at an application that is also available for the iPhone, if you are that way iNclined.

Layars lets you view the world through your camera phone and overlay geographically linked data on it. So you might use it to find the nearest pub, restaurant or place of interest. More excitingly you could use it when visiting a historic site with facts and historic views being displayed in context, so you could see the troops massed on a battlefield that today is just a hillside.

Even more excitingly, because don't forget this is, sadly, a blog about IT Service Management, imagine an engineer turning up on site and being able to view overlay wiring diagrams and the identity of PCs and printers on the floor. Perhaps they could even use Latitude to identify where their contact person is. Better still, imagine how much easier it could make life in a server room you've never been to before. By the way, if any of you at this stage have a vision of Geordi La Forge in mind at this stage go away and get a life.

I used to get really annoyed with a client's supplier because they couldn't grasp that whilst their service management system was available to them even when the client's systems failed the poor client was running blind. Hence it was no use at all to send out a standard SMS message saying that it was being dealt with as incident number xxxxxxxxx because none of us could access Remedy or Notes. Imagine if instead they could have linked the client into a lite version of Remedy, and been able to integrate their internal chat streams into an edited version that the client could access via mobile devices. This isn't exactly rocket science. The technology for all this is already in place.

Over the years I've been involved with some interesting clients. A number have been supporting users that are truly remote. I mean really remote: submarines, oil production platforms, supertankers, Alaska, ditches in Ulster and even Bracknell. To do that effectively you have to really enable the users. You simply can't send out a man in a van to ~~xxxxxxxxxxxxstan~~ or some other location that I would have to shoot myself if I revealed* Imagine how we could use new technology to do that. A user points the camera on their mobile at the back of their PC and can see instantly which cable should be plugged into which port. We send step by step diagnostic instructions to a user's phone so they know exactly what we need them to do.Our client side service manager can access the incident record even whilst all their systems are down

This is the future of service management, but we can implement it today.

*More worrying was the time I relieved myself in a ditch in Herefordshire whilst walking the Labrador and was asked very politely by a if I wouldn't mind moving a few feet further along before continuing since I was making his training exercise rather too realistic.

Mobile social media

2010-04-23T12:49:00.009+01:00

If you are reading this post it means I've either mastered the art of blogging from my phone or you've received this message in error. Or possibly in Egypt according to my phone' predictive typing mode.

Oh yes, I've got a new phone. Not only that but it is the first phone that I've not chosen because of the great camera. In fact the camera should be a lot worse than the one on my old phone. In reality it isn't, which as a lot to do with usability.

The killer feature for me about this phone, which is a HTC Desire "ifyouareinterestedbutevenifyouaren'tI'mgoingtoboreyoutodeathaboutitjustbegratefulI'mnotaniphoneboreactuallyseriouslythisblowstheiphoneoutofthewater", is the way it integrates social media.

I now have one virtual address book with SIM card, gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr contacts merged.

I can send updates to multiple sources and embed context rich data without thinking about it.

I can seamlessly access and integrate data sources . As an example I can overlay data about my location on to the view through the camera lens. Only this morning I stood in front of a village post box whilst the software told me there wasn't a post box within 1km of my location. But you get the idea, a walk to the shops begins to feel like a walk on part on Tron.

In theory this means if you are going to next week's SDI show in London on Wednesday there should be multiple ways to find me for a chat. Be my friend and switch Latitude on and I might be able to navigate to you with Google maps. On the other hand, just tweet or DM me.

Now look, isn't that scary, my phone is even telling you that I'm sat at home writing this.

Location : St Margarets Ave, Wolston, Warwickshire CV8 3,

Grumpy Old Man

2010-04-21T15:26:00.006+01:00

It's my birthday!

OK, I'm not actually that pleased.

As I get older the number of cards dwindles, the presents get less exciting, and the faculties begin to go.

On the plus side I can leave my youthful optimism aside and give in to my inner grumpy old man.

And gosh, isn't he grumpy!

I love being involved in customer service. I really do.

When I hear a story about great customer service it gets me really excited, motivated, and sometimes even tearful.

On the other hand the more customer horror stories I hear the more depressed, angry, and tearful I get.

So let me look back on the last year and remember the customer service highs and lows. You might want to do this with your own customers. In fact I recommend that you do.

So the good memories....

For a long time Orange and I didn't see eye to eye. Something to do with their conviction that I was a drugs dealer just because I lived in the middle of Bristol's red light district, didn't have a land-line, and made lots of international calls.

It still isn't a perfect relationship, but I don't wait that long to get through to them, and when I do the customer service agents have been unfailingly polite and helpful. They have never, and this is so important , made a promise they haven't kept. If I have a real quibble it is their continued insistence on layering an Orange interface onto products that don't need it.

Inchcape Mercedes-Benz made buying a car in an emergency a pleasure, and do a great job of keeping us informed of when services are due.

Dial a dog wash , fill my bowl, and our local vets all did a a great job of looking after our animals...

...and that is about it.

Now, on to the negatives.

Coffee shops. I'll just highlight the one I was most disappointed by, which was Cafe Nero. I love their ambiance, I like their coffee, the staff are friendly, but I don't understand why whenever I order a breakfast panini they leave it to burn. It didn't just happen once, it happened day after day. And here is where they really failed - they sent one of the world's greatest non-specific apology emails with a promise of both vouchers and an explanation - and then sent neither. #fail

OK I have to update this.Justina Virdee, the Head of Customer Services at Caffe Nero has just emailed me £15 of vouchers plus three free coffee vouchers. All of which I'll be sending to my step daughter so she can enjoy a modern university lifestyle And hey,Hannah's a very influential fashion blogger who gets paid for saying she just loves xxxxxxxx, so everybody wins. In my day we made do with a soggy sausage roll and nobody cared less about my opinions.

But hold on, there must have been 20 times when I paid for a breakfast panini that turned up burnt to a crisp. So does/should this restore my faith in Caffe Nero? What are your thoughts? Am I biased because I come from a customer service and process improvement background?

I know what is annoying me is there is no assurance that the same mistake won't happen again.

Jessops. If ever a camera chain deserved to fail it is Jessops. So many times over the last year I've gone into a branch of Jessops ready to spend serious money and have been so totally ignored by the staff that I've walked out again. It isn't just about how they've treated me, it has been overhearing other conversations where their teenage staff have been dismissive of customers who clearly knew more about photography than they did.

TalkTalk. The classic case of layering mistake on to mistake. So You have a customer who is getting a service well below the specified standard? Don't:publish statistics saying the service is wonderful, don't expect the customer to do detailed technical tests to prove the service isn't acceptable, and don't ring up and ask to speak to my wife's ex-husband who has never lived at this address.

I could go on. There is the Italian restaurant chain where the waitress brought a stone cold garlic bread to the table with no garlic or butter on it, and when our friend complained brought it back, still stone cold, with some melted butter poured over it.

Or there is the global IT company that provided my client with a service that averaged 1.5 days downtime a month and then complained it was the client's fault that the help desk couldn't cope with the call volumes.

Now surely I must have made that one up...

The International Perspective

2010-04-14T13:35:00.002+01:00

Have I mentioned on the blog how much I love cycling? Possibly not, but don't worry because at some point I'll blog at length about how different types of bike suit different people in different circumstances - just like services.

Cycling is on my mind at the moment because although I love the solitude of the open road, just me and my Brompton, I also love my annual cycling holiday with great friends, and my next trip to Ireland is coming up soon. Over the last day I've been getting emails from all of my cycle buddies updating me on what has been happening in their lives. The thing is I don't get to see them between trips, because they are scattered across the globe - except for a strange concentration around St. Paul, Minnesota. When we do meet up I love getting their different takes on the world. Sometimes that take makes perfect sense, sometimes it doesn't, but we are united by a common language, which is a laughable attempt at an Irish accent, to be sure, to be sure.

Now just before anyone accuses me of cheap racial stereotypes I'll just interject that I'm actually half Irish myself, and the best ITIL project I was ever involved in was for the Irish Electricity Supply Board. In fact it quite justifiably won the itSMF Project of the Year award ten years or so ago.

Where was I before my thoughts began to wander towards a snug little Irish bar with a couple of musicians and a good craic? Ah yes, the internationalism of ITSM.

Just like my cycling friends I've acquired a bunch of fellow travellers on the ITSM road from around the world. That ITIL should lose its strongly UK centric bias is great, but I can't help being protective of its Britishness. Sometimes coming across somebody else's interpretation of ITIL is like coming across an Irish theme pub run by Australians in an Italian ski resort. Yes, that is the voice of experience.

I'm now going to be hugely Anglo-centric and arrogant.

The UK has been at the forefront of developing new models for IT delivery.

Lots of things you might be sat there thinking could never happen have been a norm of IT in the UK for years. To give you an example I can't remember the last time I worked for an internal IT department that actually provided technical services rather than managing how they are delivered. Recently I revisited a business I knew well and found out that in effect the out-sourced IT department was providing services to an out-sourced front office business unit. Front office, not back office.

Then there is the issue of the ITIL hype curve. Yes I know ITIL world wide adoption has become massive. Yes I know that means you can add a couple or more 0s to how many people are "ITIL qualified" But in the UK ITIL is just one of those things IT people are expected to know about, in the same way every manager level IT job advert in the UK says you should be PRINCE qualified.

Do you want to take away one major lesson from our experience in the UK? It is this: If you think you have achieved ITIL Nirvana after eighteen months, and can let the programme wither on the vine, then you are condemned to repeat it all over again two years later when you realise you never really understood ITIL the last time around, in the same way that someone who isn't Irish will never really understand the craic.

Brandon Lane CIO - Episode 5

2010-04-13T13:53:00.002+01:00

The PA From Hell

PAs are the natural born enemy of auditors. Their role in life is to protect their bosses from the auditor by any means possible, primarily by controlling their calender. Sadly for them auditors know this, and respond accordingly. In extreme cases they have been known to get access rights to the PA's account and put appointments in for themselves.

Flattery also usually works.

As Brandon wandered towards Jacques' old office he knew he was about to face one of his most fearsome tests. Lynda was, or at least had been. Jacques' devoted PA.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no man is a hero to his valet or his PA, however reluctant. Brandon guessed Lynda's perception of him was definitely biased towards the villain side of the spectrum

As he approached his office Brandon felt her ice cold stare resting on him.

Lynda was a lady of leisure. Her husband was a property developer and they lived in a house that Brandon could only dream of, as Ysabelle often reminded him. Brandon often wondered what motivated Lynda. Normally he decided it was all about perceived power. From his perspective he always tried to leave her with the feeling that she had won, whilst also getting the vital information out of her.

As he walked towards her this morning she looked positively evil.

He smiled at her and went straight into his office and started to count.

He'd got to ten before she stormed in.

"You'll find my resignation letter on the top of your in tray"

"Will I? Well thank you for that. Does it mention terms like constructive dismissal? Oh it does, well perhaps you would like to go and read the letter from Hans in your in tray before I open yours."

She stormed out.

She was back thirty seconds later.

"I don't have much choice really, do I?"

"I think you do Lynda. You can carry on working for me as you did for Jacques, or we can promote you to manage the PAs across the organisation, with the associated targets for productivity and redundancies. What would you rather do?"

If looks could kill Lynda's probably would have done.

Brandon also realised she was finally taking in the changes he had made to the office. With Hans' agreement he had spent Sunday stripping it out. Gone were the wallpaper graphs saying that IT had achieved the 90% availability target. Gone were the green hessian walls. Most striking of all, gone was the CIO's desk.

Imagine that: A C level office with no desk in it, just some comfortable chairs arranged around a coffee table. He decided he would wait until tomorrow before getting rid of his in and out trays.

Brandon could see Lynda was struggling..

"No sugar thank you, and can you tell my team that Monday morning prayers start in twenty minutes?"

So what exactly do you do?

2010-04-13T12:40:00.003+01:00

"I use TQM to build new ITIL paradigms through empowered PMBOK team dynamics. Dogbert, meet Daisy."

I rather liked Matt Hooper's tongue in cheek response on twitter as @VigilantGuy to my last post. If you remember I left you trying to explain what you, as an ITIL/ITSM professional, actually do.

The Hoop-meister's parady compares well to the actual nonsensical management speak produced recently by the CIO at News International. OK, so I guess I won't be getting any consultancy work from them in the near future*.

Back to the question in hand though.

If someone tells me they are a lawyer, or an accountant, or a nurse then I have a pretty good idea, in layman's terms, of what they do and what they know. The lawyer might go on to say they specialise in contract law, the accountant to say that they are a forensic accountant, and the nurse that they specialise in geriatric care. I would still have some idea of what they do, the value they deliver, and the relevance of their training to the job they are doing. I also know that I wouldn't want legal advice on a contract, an investigation into a major fraud, or the care or an elderly and infirm relative to be entrusted to someone who did not have relevant training and experience.

Does having an ITIL qualification mean a reasonably well informed layman, AKA a customer, will know what you are capable of doing, and provide them with an assurance that you are capable of doing the job?

Let that question hang in the air whilst I hare off in a slightly different direction.

Anyone who has gone through ITIL training in recent years will be bored stiff of being told that functions, processes, capabilities and job titles are different kinds of thing AND SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH ONE ANOTHER. Sorry, the capitalisation was a typing error, but for anyone who has done a foundation course it seems rather apt to keep it in.

At some point though, in that strange thing we call the real world, we have to put these concepts together to create an organisational design, we need to derive job descriptions from them, we need to recruit and develop staff and however clichéd it is we have to deliver value to our customers.

So what does "An ITIL expert" do, where do they fit, and how do they add value?

Can you actually be a standalone ITIL expert, or do you have to be an X+ ITIL expert. A service level manager and ITIL expert, for example?

If someone comes up to me at a party and says "I'm an ITIL expert" how should I react? What if they introduce themselves that way at a project kick off meeting? Incidentally I doubt there are more than, oh twelve people worldwide who can justify having "IT evangelist" on their business cards. The rest of you have delusions of grandeur. Sorry to break it to you here. And no, I don't include myself in those twelve.

Where am I going with this and why is it an issue?

I'm not sure about the where I'm going with it question, but it concerns me because on the one hand I'm seeing people promoting their ITIL "expertise" as if it is an end in itself, and on the other hand I'm seeing job adverts asking for the currently mythical ITIL v3 Masters qualification as a pre-requisite. I'm sorry, but that doesn't fill me with confidence.

In the early days of ITIL we were clarifying, reinforcing and enhancing existing IT roles. Along the way new roles emerged:

- Service management director
- Service delivery manager
- Service level manager
- Business relationship manager

And I guess more recently Service catalogue/portfolio manager.

Roles such as configuration manager and change manager have also been enriched by ITIL. But at the end of the day, gosh I hate that cliché, we still have to do the day job.

At the same time we can't expect a small. un-empowered, service management team to achieve miracles.

In the UK, at least, I'm seeing too many job adverts that require the applicant to wear their underpants on the outside of their body hugging costume and achieve the impossible.

Post to follow on job adverts to avoid and questions to ask your recruitment agency...

*Just a quick reminder that despite** all the horrible things I say about both consultants and ITSM I am currently available for ITSM consultancy gigs that are a little out of the ordinary

**OK, perhaps it is because I call it as it as it is.

And your specialist subject is?

2010-04-12T14:10:00.002+01:00

I get woken up every morning by my wife's toy poodle.

Daisy greets every day with so much joy I wish I was on whatever she is on.

Five thirty in the morning and Daisy is ready to face the new day.

Personally, I'm usually not.

But hey, who can resist such enthusiasm?

Now recently there has been a whole bunch of posts saying ITIL is over the hype curve, and a bunch of posts saying it ain't so... and personally I don't give a damn, because I retain my enthusiasm.

If I can be bothered I might add the links here, but currently ask yourself "Am I bothered?"

What concerns me is we need a realistic view of what ITIL is all about. So what answer do we come up with?

And at this point I refer you back to two of my earlier posts. Is ITIL a profession, and if it is, what kind of training scheme do we need to support it?

And now I ask you the killer question. You are at a party. I don't know, perhaps you've even blagged your way on to the Pink 11 VIP list. A vision of loveliness, or even Chris Dancy, comes up to you and says those magic words.

"What do you do for a living?"

You are an ITIL expert, OK, should be an easy question to answer. You do...what exactly?

Brandon Lane CIO: Episode 4

2010-03-26T15:12:00.003Z

The Road to the Corner Office

"Thanks Kelly. I want to sit in on the desk at some point and see what it is like. Can you get Richard to come and see me when he gets in. That is as soon as he gets in, don't even give him time to get his coat off."

"Will do Boss, catch you later."

As Kelly walked away Brandon's mind was racing. He was used to cursing IT every Monday morning when the systems were slow or he couldn't get in, and now it would be him in the firing line. He made a mental note not to schedule his hour on the desk for a Monday.

He wondered what the changes were that had gone wrong. Looking around the department it looked very calm, no one seemed to be running round like headless chickens. In fact everyone seemed to have their heads down over their screens. A dreadful thought crossed Brandon's mind*. You can take the auditor of audit,but you can't take the audit out of the auditor. It was time to play dumb.

He wandered a few desks away to where he was fairly sure no one had been paying attention to his discussion with Kelly, though being honest he thought he needn't have bothered judging by the number of white earphones in use.

He headed for a vaguely awake desk jockey with and tapped him on the shoulder. The reaction was as electrifying as a piece of silica aerogel

Eventually there was some sort of reaction and a slo mo unfolding of limbs.

"Thanks for joining me in what some of us consider to be reality. I'm new here. Can you tell me what you are doing?"

"Err, not really it is difficult."

"OK, is that difficult as in I'm probably too dumb to understand it, or you are too dumb to explain it?"

Brandon noticed the total absence of a meaningful pause before the DJ responded.

"No offence, but you look like you are too dumb to understand it."

"Well thanks for that vote of confidence." Unlike the DJ Brandon did understand the value of a well timed pause

.....

"So I guess you don't need me to tell you that you've got a buffer flow vulnerability in that code."

To be fair the kid didn't miss a beat.

"Oh yeah, I was going to sort that. Anything else I can do for you, only I'm busy. "

"You know there is rumour that is about to start going around that you've really p****ed off the new CIO. Oh Hai there BTW, I'm Brandon Lane, your new CIO. And you are?"

"Hi Brandon. I'm Jake."

"Jake,Is there any chance you could tell me what went wrong over the weekend?"

"Err, I think it was something to do with static IP addresses"

"Tell me more..."

"Like the MFDs all had static addresses but... did you just say you were the new CIO?"

"I did"

"Should I shut up?"

"You can.but you might as well continue digging."

"You aren't going to sack me?"

"You know, something tells me that you can't actually dig a deeper hole than you are already in, but you can start to climb out of it"

----------------
*"I bet they are all playing WoW "

.

Congratulations

2010-03-26T14:33:00.001Z

I've worked with some great people over the years. Too many to mention.

But today I'm going to single out one individual.

Scott Standen, come on down!

Scott ran the programme office for the European Central Bank's ITIL project.

I have many things to thank Scott for.

He introduced me to the best curry house in Frankfurt.

He...well, OK, that is pretty much it.

No seriously, he also came up with the best ever ITIL white paper/conference session that has never actually been delivered.

It was Scott who came up with the concept of "Walking backwards to ITIL" If you want a great practical session book him to deliver it.

It was Scott who realised that for an ITIL project to be successful you have to understand the desired end state and then work backwards to understand what you have to do to achieve it.

It was Scott who dissected the requirements of ISO 20000 to develop a meaningful project plan.

It was Scott who came up with what I think is one of the greatest ever ITSM ideas.

Here it is: Set a criteria for a service to enter the service catalogue.

Simples? Yes. Powerful? Yes.

Do not put anything into your service catalogue until you are are certain you can manage it and can deliver the specified service.

Let us call it "Scott's Law"

And congratulations Scott on passing your Service Manager's exam.

Another debate about what makes a profession

2010-03-25T09:12:00.000Z

Is cabin service a profession?

A Professional Training Scheme

2010-03-22T23:14:00.005Z

This is a follow up to an earlier post, Is ITSM a Profession?

To save you the tedious task of reading it I'll sum up what I said very briefly that as things stand:
ITIL based ITSM fails the tests that define a profession,
That isn't necessarily a bad thing

I want to expand on the second of those points at a later date. Today I want to focus on my opening statement from that previous entry.

A profession lives or dies by the quality of its training.

Having spent a long period of my life training both professional auditors and v1 ITIL service managers I have a high regard for the great work done by many in the training game, but I believe that the time is ripe for an honest appraisal. Clearly I'm not alone.

I don't intend to go on at length about what is wrong with the current training.That doesn't mean I won't, of course.

So what is wrong with it?

Tutors with insufficient practical experience
Too much focus on passing the exam
No development of practical skills
No challenges to conventional thinking
No dialogue with "Castle ITIL"
Rampant Short-termism
Questionable objectives and outcomes

Lets stop there and look at that last point. Now sadly I think there are some people who see ITIL training as nothing more than a cash cow revenue stream. That isn't really what worries me though. What worries me is a lack of clarity and realism about what those paying for the training, and those undertaking the training, get out of it.

I've just paid to put myself through the v3 managers bridge course. How did I do in the exam? Did I fail and this is just a sour grapes posting? No. I got 20 out of 20 questions right. 100%. I am, apparently, now an official ITIL v3 Expert. Sadly, if Linkedin is to be relied upon, there really are people who think that passing a twenty question multiple choice question exam has turned them into instant experts.

Leaving such self-delusions behind is the much more worrying question of what employers and agencies seem to think the v3 qualification indicates. Suddenly it seems to be a life or death necessity that you have the v3 qualification to get a job in ITSM, even if it is for a role in a company that has struggled to use v2.

All the v3 Bridge examination proves is that you know some of the terminology has changed between v2 and v3. Any notion that it indicates you are an expert in v3 is, frankly, farcical.

Of course in the good old v1 days....things weren't really that different. I'll argue the training was better because we didn't focus quite so much on the exam, and the exam was more challenging because there was a greater variation in questions, but beyond that getting the managers' certificate didn't prove you were an expert in practical service management. It showed you understood the basics and could think about how to apply the ideas. We weren't turning out course after course of fully fledged service managers even with a target audience of early adopters.

So what would a professional training scheme look like, and how far away are we from such a scheme?

Let me borrow from my audit training experience at the Civil Service College (now the National School of Government)

Training took place over several weeks spread over at least a couple of years. That allowed time for ideas to sink in, and for things learnt in the modules to cross fertilise each other. it also meant students could try the tools out in the workplace, and bring workplace situations into the classroom.

Employers were seen as an integral part of the training scheme, with a significant responsibilities to ensure the best possible outcomes. For instance they were required to ensure students undertook a suitable mix of assignments whilst being trained.

The training also depended heavily on involvement from practitioners who were doing the job for real coming along to share their experiences.

Whilst theory was a necessary element in the training the emphasis was on developing practical skills and techniques.

Qualification did not just depend on exam results but also required the completion of work based assignments signed off in a log book.

The examinations allowed for for a degree of specialism, recognising for instance that though all auditors need to know something about computer audit those specialising in it needed dedicated training and a separate examination.

The exams were designed with incredible care to ensure they were relevant, and fair but testing. Hours were spent reviewing the wording to ensure it was absolutely clear what a question was asking. Every question was on the exam paper because it tested something important, not just to make up the numbers. The presumption was that an answer that was competent and relatively complete would result in just getting a pass mark, with additional marks available for "delighting the examiner". It was expected that a set proportion of students would fail each question, and that the bulk of students would be bunched either side of the pass mark.

Are we so far away from such an approach with ITIL?

Perhaps less so than it sometimes seems.

The move towards a more modular approach means that training can be spread out over a relatively longer period.

A major rethink would be required about the role of employers and also in assessing how students are actually applying what they are being taught on the courses.Reality is that it isn't as easy to move between roles as is it to move between assignments.

Personally I believe a real weakness currently is that we have too many trainers who have been taught how to run courses parrot fashion without having an underlying depth of knowledge.

I believe considerable work would be required to change the focus of the training away from basic ITIL knowledge towards the application of ITIL and the use of specific techniques, but it isn't an impossible task. It was a feature of much of the early ITIL training, and of course several courses already make use of an integral ITIL simulation.

prISM seems to offer a way forward for how to integrate workplace experience with examination success.

The modular approach of the new exams allows for the recognition of some specialisation within the ITIL fold. Perhaps a bit more work is needed there to make the streams more recognisable to employers.

So that leaves us with the quality of the current exams. Is the effort required to maintain a professional approach to setting the exams compatible with the current student levels? Would the market accept a change in direction towards an examination process that took as read that a significant number of students would have to resit at least one exam during the course of their training?

I suspect not.

Is ITSM a Profession?

2010-03-18T20:41:00.002Z

A profession lives or dies by the quality of its training.

The training that qualifies someone to be a member of a profession must not only prepare the new professional for their role, but must also provide others with confidence that they are capable of fulfilling their professional obligations.

The question we must honestly ask ourselves is whether the current state of ITIL based training provides a sound basis for a claim that ITSM can be considered a profession.

This is a subject I, and others, feel very strongly about. I have been prevaricating about publishing this post for some time. I have drafted and abandoned several blog posts on the subject out of concern that my comments here should be balanced and fair. The catalyst for doing so has been yet another request from someone who has suffered the consequences of an ill thought out approach to ITIL training.

Before I go further let me say that I think Aidan Lawes, amongst others, has done an excellent job of raising his concerns about ITIL training with both passion and conviction.

Those who have read previous posts here will know that my original profession was as an Internal Audit. Like ITSM Internal Audit faced the challenge of becoming established as a profession in its own right.

There is an extensive literature on what constitutes a profession. Let me very quickly précis it.

There should be a distinct body of knowledge
The body of knowledge should be enshrined in a regulative code
Members are bound by a code of ethics
The governing body should be composed of qualified members
Qualification to practice is based on a combination of practical work experience and examinations.that evaluate professional competence
Exclusion of those who do not meet the required standard.

If we look at Internal Audit we can see it passes all those tests. There is a distinct body of knowledge, that is only directly relevant to internal auditors. The IIA, amongst others, has a set of audit standards and a code of ethics. Full membership of the IIA is restricted to fully qualified individuals, and to be qualified you need to pass both a challenging series of exams and log sufficient hours work across a range of areas of expertise. As for the exclusion aspect, the exams are deliberately challenging and competitive with a "good" exam paper designed to pass a certain proportion of students. This is a key point that I will return to in my next post.

Let me briefly look at how ITSM compares to the overall criteria. Superficially it does not look too good.

Whilst we have grown used to the size of the ITIL books increasing with every new version this is largely the result of ITIL embracing ideas from other distinct disciplines. Far from having a regulative code that enshrines our knowledge it seems that the dominant message amongst ITSM 'experts' is actually that you can do pretty much what you want and still call it ITIL thanks to the mantra of "adopt and adapt".

Meanwhile what many mistake for our professional body is no such thing, and nor does it claim to be. Membership is purely down to the payment of a fee, and corporate membership and sponsorship is actively encouraged.

In theory there are requirements for exam delegates to have an amount of practical experience before being entered for the exams, though I have to say I am not aware of this ever being queried or independently verified. As for the exclusivity, apart from the point already made that membership is open to anyone with a credit card it has to be said that the pass rates for ITIL exams are well above those you would expect to see for most professional exams.

If that sounds pretty damning it isn't meant to be.

ITSM does not have to be a profession to be valuable. There is nothing wrong with looking for best practice in other disciplines. A well known barrister specialising in IT cases once said "Of course I have principles. But if you don't like them I can change them." There are many highly respectable and successful trade associations and there is nothing wrong in my eyes with a training course that is designed to provide the delegates with everything they need to ensure they pass the exam at the end of it.

It just doesn't make it a profession.

The trouble is deep down in my heart I believe ITSM can be and should be a profession.

Tomorrow: A Professional Training Scheme

ITSM Weekly: The Podcast

2010-03-16T16:14:00.001Z

The ServiceSphere weekly podcast has been mentioned on these pages before as an excellent source of up to date ~~gossip~~ information on the ITSM scene. Chris Dancy, Matt Beran and Matt Hooper are the regular presenters, but this week Chris invited me to step in and cover for Hoop.

You can hear what happened here.

We covered a lot of ground. It massively increased my admiration of what the guys do every week in producing an increasingly popular and professional podcast. I know it has become a 'must listen to' for some key people in the ITSM world.

And Hoop, I think your position as co-host is safe - though Chris has some great guests lined up for future shows.

Customer Journey Mapping

2010-03-12T09:58:00.002Z

Read This!

I want to share this link to an article by Arne van Oosterom with you:

Customer journey mapping

This is exactly the type of activity that should be central to any ITSM initiative, but it never is, because IT people are so keen to hunker down in a bunker and produce MS Project plans and Visio flowcharts to deal with every possible worst case situation except the ones that occur 100 times a day and leave the user fuming on their journey home.

designthinkers

Arne is on twitter as @designthinkers

Brandon Lane CIO - Episode 3

2010-03-11T12:42:00.009Z

The Start of a New Week

Episode 1
Episode-2.

As the lift doors opened before him Brandon Lane had a brief image of herds of wildebeest, zebras and other prey animals on the African plains. He pushed his thoughts of outsourcing aside as he in turn was pushed aside. The culprit was wearing a T-shirt that was already smelling surprisingly stale for so early on a Monday morning.

Brandon had spent some time thinking about how he was going to make his first appearance as CIO.

It was a wasted effort.

His presence on the first floor was greeted with more indifference than patch Tuesday. It made him wonder why his predecessor was known for his habit of using the fire escape to get to his office with the minimum chance of making eye contact with the staff.

Wandering between the quasi-cubicles Brandon recognised the dull green coffee stained carpet as being the design that had been stripped out of the rest of the building three years ago. Although it was several years since the IT staff had been prised out of the actual basement, now given over entirely to the machines, the first floor was still referred to by others as "The Basement" and Brandon could see why.

One thing was very clear, IT didn't get the idea of open plan offices, and they clearly weren't too keen on natural light either. Not only that but... [Editor's note: The rest of this passage has been removed to avoid causing offence to any readers working in IT who believe that the business retains a stereotyped and outdated perception of what IT staff are really like.]....would all have to change, as well.

It came as a shock, as he stopped to look at yet another developer's twin screen set up with an 'interesting' screen saver, to actually be spoken to.

"Hi Brandon, what brings you down here? Lost your dongle again?"

It was Kelly, one of the Help Desk team leaders. Except he wasn't allowed to call it the Help Desk any more, it was a Service Desk. Brandon wasn't sure he'd noticed any difference since the change.

He got on well with Kelly, most people did, she was a likeable person. Brandon sometimes wondered if she had to work hard at it or if she was just like that naturally.

"Kelly, Hi. Busy morning so far?"

"Hey tell me about it. Someone put in a couple of changes over the weekend and the phones have been going crazy. So a typical Monday really."

"So why aren't you busy on taking a call then?"

"Ohh, like you are my boss now, Mr Auditor? We've got it all under control, at least my team has."

Brandon smiled, he knew Kelly could shift persona in an instant depending on who she was talking to and what the situation was, that was one of her skills. It was a skill he was about to test out.

"Kelly, just out of interest, who is your boss?"

"Richard, oh he doesn't get in until after nine on a Monday."

A glance at Kelly's face, which wasn't much of a hardship on Brandon's part, showed that cogs were whirling and pegs falling into place.

"Or did you mean Jacques? There were some odd things going on last Friday, Maarten from security was involved. Is there something I should know?"

Brandon sighed. It was going to be a long first day.

"You mean no one has told you anything about the changes? Jacques has gone and you've got a new boss."

By now every peg and cog was in place.

"No one ever tells the Service Desk anything in advance, it is Hell. A new boss could change all that"

She smiled knowingly.

"Brandon, or should I call you Boss now? .....Welcome to our Hell."

Brandon Lane now tweets as BrandonLaneCIO.

CoreITSM 101: Call a call a call

2010-03-10T21:17:00.005Z

Contract and SLA negotiation is always an interesting experience., especially when they've already been signed, which is when I usually end up getting involved.

Here is a typical scenario. The original negotiations have been intense, both side think they've got what close to what they want. The big guns have sorted out the sexy clauses. What nobody has noticed is the time bomb lying in wait. Nobody has noticed it because they think it is something they all agreed on, and anyway it is trivial and obvious what the contract means.

What is the time bomb?

It is the clause about the volume of activity that the service desk will handle.

You see for all the good stuff about service strategy in ITIL v3 it is the simple stuff that trips us up time after time. Like saying "calls" when we mean "incidents" or "incidents" when we mean "requests" or...well it goes on, and ITIL, for all the talk of providing a common vocabulary, doesn't always help.

Let me give you a couple of real world examples of the chaos that can be caused both by not using the right words and by not understanding the implications when it comes to setting performance targets and penalties.

An organisation that should know better - not least because it claims to sell ITIL consultancy - outsourced their Service Desk in a separate contract to their main outsourcing deal. The contract specified the number of incidents the Service Desk supplier was supposed to handle and the target time to answer and first time fix rate.

What the supplier did not realise was that the customer considered the number of incidents to be both a target in itself and independent of the other metrics.

Think this through.

The Service desk supplier has limited control over the number of incidents it has to handle. It has rather more control over the number of calls, but we'll save that for the second case. The number of incidents is driven by the underlying quality of the service. In this case they were also classing requests as incidents, and requests are driven by service demand, which again is largely out of the control of the Service Desk.

So we have a supplier being judged against a target that is almost entirely out of their control.

Needless to say the underlying quality of service was not there, and a rapidly changing business model meant large numbers of requests. As far as the customer was concerned this was all the Service Desk's problem.

It goes without saying that handling 25% more incidents the Service Desk struggled to meet the targets for call answering.

Result?

The customer invoked the penalty clauses against the Service Desk provider.
The customer did not renew the Service Desk provider's contract.

The tragedy is it what was a really, really great Service Desk.They were performing miracles to handle the extra calls and stay within budget - a budget that also had to take the hit of the penalty payments.

OK, I hope most people wouldn't be so profoundly stupid, would they?

Case number two is more understandable.

The customer's in house IT had always provided a good basic service and whilst the internal Help Desk wasn't the greatest on the planet it fulfilled the "log it and flog it" role quite well, and because they were good at pro actively informing the user of what was happening the ratio between calls and the combined total of requests and incidents was pretty much 1:1. Unfortunately they didn't really track the difference between incidents and requests. I'm sure you do though, don't you?

For really good reasons they outsourced both the IT infrastructure and the Help Desk to the same supplier, and combined it with a massive change in technology.

In the contract they specified how many calls the service desk should be able to handle.

The supplier did a validation exercise and agreed on the number of calls being dealt with prior to the handover.

This isn't the place to discuss why the technology shift didn't work out as planned, but it didn't.

What is important is that because in the past there had been a 1:1 relationship between calls and incidents/requests the contract only specified expected call volumes.

So what happened?

The technology didn't work, so there were lots of incidents. Because there were so many incidents the desk got overwhelmed, so any pro-active communication went out the window. As a result the number of calls per incident also shot up dramatically to something like 3 calls per incident/request.

The supplier blamed the customer for generating more requests, although they weren't tracking the ratio of requests to incidents despite it being a contractual obligation.

The customer blamed the poor quality of service and the lack of communication back to the users.

And I invoked the penalty clauses and cursed whoever had signed the contract.

It wasn't pretty.

In this case there was happy ending of sorts because a period of stability proved that the customer had specified the call volumes to be expected with a stable service and that the desk the supplier provided could cope with those volumes.

But all that pain could have been avoided if there was a clear understanding of the differences between calls, requests and incidents.

Next we will look at the use and meaning of call, incident, request, ticket, alert and event with an emphasis on their importance in producing meaningful management reports

Once more with feeling

2010-03-08T17:55:00.000Z

You might have gathered by now that I am a fan of ISO/IEC 38500. That is why I find myself torn between two different approaches. Personally I rather like dealing with a bit of tension between world views, but when you are thinking about an elevator pitch you can only nail your colours to one mast.

The first is to to promote the value of the standard by highlighting how well it dovetails with other frameworks. This route takes us down the line of mapping 38500 on to COBIT and ITIL and anything else we can think of. Of course this will work, because we can map pretty much anything on to anything and the resulting diagrams always look good. I like the idea of people not having to change direction just because a new idea comes along, and positioning ISO 38500 as a mechanism to bring cohesion to the mix has some attractions.And yes one of the first things I did when I got my hands on a copy of the standard was to start mapping it on to ITIL v3.

So why do I feel a little uncomfortable about it?

First of all I worry that mapping will lead us to try and de-construct 38500 and reassemble it from existing components as an intellectual exercise. Secondly I worry that once it has been disassembled people will be tempted to cherry pick the bits that they want, and they won't end up choosing the most important elements of it.

Anyone who has been involved with SOX will know there is a corporate tendency to sit there and think "Can we get away with not doing that?"

So what is the second approach?

I think it is about looking forwards not backwards.

Rather than thinking about how we can use ISO 38500 to validate what we have already done think about how we can use it to move beyond the limitations of the existing frameworks. In particular think about how we can use it in ways that are distinctive from the way IT normally does things.

Why don't we use it to put some heart and emotion into IT.

More to follow...

Are you too competent to give advice?

2010-03-02T14:13:00.000Z

"Trust me, I know what I am doing"

Inspector Sledge Hammer

Why do they cancel all the best TV shows? Take "Sledge Hammer!", it only ran for two seasons. Crazy.

Recently I've written a couple of posts on Instant IT Experts and ITIL as a Cargo Cult that have attracted some attention. Both of them highlight examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect summed up by their excellent paper "Unskilled and Unaware of it". For those who haven't come across it before the paper provides evidence that those who lack a skill are not capable of judging how bad they are at that skill compared to others, or how good others are at that skill. Hence they tend to massively over estimate their own ability and underestimate that of others.

I first became aware of this effect at an organizational level during my involvement with the BQF and the EFQM Excellence Model. Organizations that were new to the scheme tended to self assess themselves at a level that exceeded what you would expect from world class operations.

In the educational world a model of concious competency has been around for may years. This posits that people move through four stages:

Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Concious competence
Unconscious competence

The point I want to make in this post is that we have a responsibility to identify which of those stages people and organizations are at before we offer them advice, and the advice we give should be tailored to the stage they are at.

A lot of the "bad" advice I'm seeing out in ITILland is not intrinsically bad, but it becomes dangerous when handed out without due care and attention. I suspect a particularly dangerous kind of advice is the sort that is intended to only apply in specific instances, but which can be taken as a general rule.

And I guess most of us have fallen into that trap at one point or another. As a trainer I became very aware that a throwaway comment could often be picked up on as a guiding principle by a student who totally ignored the bit which you went out of your way to say was really really important.

Where ITIL is concerned I think it is particularly dangerous because ITIL itself does not conform to any clear sound generic principles. Hence attempts to characterize it, including my own, are probably doomed to failure. Bits of it are proven good practice, some of it might be considered best practice, other parts might be sub-optimal and yet others untried blue sky thinking. Some of it might be considered descriptive, other parts are clearly intended to be prescriptive for all practical purposes. In places it tells you the why, in others it tells you some of the how, but not always. We live in a world though where people struggle with ambiguity and want black and white answers.

There is a tendency when talking to others to take their own assessment of their competency at face value and to see their understanding through your own eyes. The less concious you are of your own ability the less you might realise that not everyone shares your wisdom and some still need to learn the basics of ITIL 101.

A physicist I know put it like this.

"At school in the lower grades they teach you that physics explains how the world behaves, but they lie to you about how it does that.

In the higher grades they tell you that how it really works is like this....but when you get to university theyt ell you that was a lie as well and how it really works is like this...

Then you become a professor, and realise nobody has any real idea about how it really really works."

The Campaign for Real Audit

2010-03-01T19:13:00.000Z

Matt Hooper recently mentioned on one of the excellent ServiceSphere podcasts that he and I have been discussing the use and abuse of audit terminology in the ITSM world. It is something I've got used to over the years, but then around the same time Matt was raising his queries my hackles were raised by someone on Linkedin claiming expertise in audit after completing just the ISO 20000 auditor's course - which actually presumes you should already be a qualified auditor, and then on my v3 Bridge Course the tutor made a throwaway comment that reminded me ITIL still doesn't seem to understand what audit is all about.

Why does this bother me? Have you ever noticed that the more familiar you are with a subject the less accurate and more controversial the Wikipedia entry for it is? Well as it says on the right somewhere I was a professional internal auditor before I got drawn into the crazy world of ITIL.

I'm actually going to leave ISO audit to one side for now. Let us just says it does what it says on the can and nothing more.

I want to focus in particular on internal audit. In fact let me say that again, slightly differently. I want to focus in particularon Internal Audit. Notice the difference? No? Oh well I guess that means you probably aren't cut out for a career as a stereotypical tick and turn auditor. You might still make it as a professional auditor though if once you spot the difference you can see the implications of it. Of course it isn't as easy as that. You'll need to do some exams, get some independently verified experience under your belt, and commit to adhere to your professional body's standards.*

If that sounds too much effort, what about reading a book?

Yes it is a little expensive, but then it does weigh in at 7.5 pounds and nearly 1500 pages.

Too busy huh?

A Brief Guide To Internal Audit

Well let me sum it up for you, though my apologies to any currently practising auditors if I'm a little out of date.

Let us begin with where audit should sit in the organization. Internal Audit should have no executive responsibilities and report to the board and/or the audit committee. In some organizations the Chief Internal Auditor can only be removed from post by a vote of the board. Why? Because internal audit needs to be, and to be seen to be, independent and objective in the assessments and recommendations it makes.

What does Internal Audit assess and make recommendations about? Systems of internal control.

In the words of Sawyer

"Control is a force, it gets things done"

A process without controls is, well, out of control.

So how do we assess the system of internal controls?

We need to understand the objective of the system.
From that we can derive the control objectives.
The control objectives allow us to identify appropriate control mechanisms.
We use techniques such as statistical sampling to check the controls are in place and working.

Just knowing about individual controls doesn't give us sufficient assurance. It might be there is a very good individual control but it can be circumvented, or is weakened because of a lack of control elsewhere. Alternatively it might be that a number of controls that are not individually effective work together to provide an acceptable level of control. That is why we look at systems of internal control.

In theory if all the controls are in place and working we can predict that the process they are controlling will be effective, efficient and economical, which has led to the concept of Value for Money (VfM) audits where we assess activity against those 3 criteria.

Some of this might be starting to sound familiar to you, especially if you use COBIT, because COBIT was first developed as a framework for auditors.

Audit and ITIL

So what are the implications for ITIL?

To go back to Matt's original question to me I don't think we should use the term audit unless the element of independence and objectivity backed up by organizational position, reporting lines and adherence to professional standards is in place.

A review of your "ITIL maturity" carried out by a consulting firm with an interest in bidding to deliver your ITIL training and transformation programme is not an independent audit. Oh just sit bolt upright and smell that scent of freshly brewed Java with a double shot.

Neither is a review carried out by a function or an IT department to assess its own capability an audit. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do one, by the way.

I said I would leave ISO certification audits out of this discussion, but I will say that if I ever employed an ex ISO auditor as an Internal Auditor I would expect them to go through the full professional training scheme. I make that point without meaning to undermine what they do, but I want an IS auditor who can do things ISO auditors don't do, such as a code review or recreating an interrogation of the service management tool..

One of the biggest shortfalls for me with how ITIL is currently understood is the willingness of professional advisor's to say IT departments have total freedom to pick and chose which elements they implement. As an ex-auditor doing a review I would have to point out that leaving out certain elements of ITIL can effectively undermine the value of an entire process, and the processes that depend on that process.That in turn exposes the organization to enterprise level risks. If I didn't point out that to a client as an auditor I would leave myself open to a charge of professional malpractice.

----------

*To avoid any allegations of misrepresentation I've used the IIA standards as an example because I find them accessible and straightforward. I will point out though that although I taught students undertaking the IIA UK examinations for seven years the professional standards I was bound by myself were those of the Chartered Institute of PublicFinance and Accountancy and the UK Government Internal Audit Standards (GIAS) . I am currently a member of ISACA and have passed their CISA examination, but since I do not practice I am not eligible to use the CISA designation.

Fore readers outside of the UK who might not be familiar with it here is a link to the real CAMRA

Training

2010-02-24T18:03:00.000Z

Just in case you all think it has gone rather quiet here after the recent flurry of action I should point out that I'm currently away on my V3 Manager's Bridge Course and looking forward to the prospect of becoming a v3 Expert. Well on paper at least. I'm glad to say my fellow course members seem equally realistic about what the course is actually giving them. It would be hugely unrealistic to expect the course to deliver expertise.

I'll blog more on the sate of ITIL training in the next few weeks. For now I'm off to take a mock exam.

Brandon Lane CIO - Episode 2

2010-02-20T18:53:00.003Z

Taking Stock

Episode 1

"It could be worse"

It seemed to newly appointed CIO Brandon Lane that he was the only person who knew how bad the news really was.

Only a couple of hours ago his deputy, Sally, had greeted the news of his sudden change of role with those same words, and now it was Yssabel, his wife, saying them.

"It will mean more money won't it, and a bigger team and budget to manage, and you like a challenge, you turned around the audit team"

It really was worrying that Yssabel and Sally appeared to be working from the same script. For a moment the thought crossed his mind that Hans might have briefed them both in advance. Only the fact that he knew they both equally detested Hans kept the thought at bay.

"It isn't the same at all as taking over the audit team. It was easy to get rid of the unqualified tick and turn auditors and bring in people who were already qualified or who really wanted the qualifications. All the team understand what we need to achieve and how to get there In IT all the teams hate each other. In IT nobody knows if anybody is really an expert or just making it up. For years Henry was considered untouchable because everyone thought he was the only person who knew how the PRISM system worked, then when it failed it turned out he didn't have a clue either."

Yssabel pouted. Brandon had to admit she was good at pouting.

"Anyway" she said, pointedly "You've got all those wonderful audit reports the sainted Sally has produced. Surely they must give you an idea of what needs to be done? You are always saying how wonderful they are"

"Well that is part of the problem. The excuse for getting rid of Jaques, apart from the slightly dubious files found on his laptop, is that he hasn't actioned any of the critical audit recommendations Sally has made in the last two years."

There was something about the way Yssabel snorted and dragged her heel across the floor that reminded Brandon of a bull about to charge.

"Oh well, that will be OK then. Sally can help you sort it out"

"Sally is going to be busy enough doing my old job, as well as her own.

"Oh, isn't that a shame."

Having made her point Yssabel softened.

"So go on then, what are you going to do? I know you well enough to know you've been thinking it through since the moment Hans told you, and you've probably had a plan in your head for the last two hours."

He smiled, and took the chance to pour himself a glass of wine. He would have slumped down in a comfortable chair but they were all occupied by the dogs, and he was feeling guilty about shouting at them when they'd jumped up to greet him coming through the door. That was the trouble with dogs. The poor things got shouted at because they happened to be there at the wrong time doing what they thought was the right thing to do. A bit like IT, he mused, everybody in IT thought they were an expert doing a great job and couldn't understand why no one else could see it. Very briefly he thought that the next few months might be easier had some one thought to have Dimitri 'done' before he'd developed his aggressive territorial habits.

"OK, yes, I have some ideas." He couldn't quite shake the image of Dimitri being taken to the vets, but he carried on.

"I need to get the balance right between telling them what they need to do, and them working it out for themselves. I need to shield the techies from the business, and the other way about as well. So I'm going to set up a proper service management team. There are a few things out there that might help. Sally builds all the computer audits around something called COBIT, but it isn't very sexy"

Brandon noticed Yssabel computing the spin to be put on his use of the of the words 'Sally' and 'sexy' in the same sentence even with negative connotations and decided against mentioning her again.

"There's something called ITIL as well. Gartner like it, and if Gartner like it Hans likes it. If Gartner and Hans like it I like it. So ITIL it is."

"So let me guess what you are going to do." Yssabel paused.

"First of all you are going to cook me a wonderful dinner, and then you are going to call in a team of consultants to tell you how to do ITIL in exactly the way you want them to do it."

CoreITSM 101: The Kano Model

2010-02-18T18:41:00.008Z

Last week's lesson was that if you do not get the basics right it doesn't matter about anything or everything else.

That is an important lesson because many ITIL/ITSM programmes focus on the more exciting prospects when putting together a business case. Twelve months into the programme it can then look like a disaster because the deliverables don't match the promises - even though the programme has actually been a success.

To see why this is let us look at t a little bit of theory. In tune with the whole ethos of CoreITSM I'm going to try and keep this a simple as I can.

This is the Kano model.

You can go away and look it up at the end of this lesson, at which point you'll realise just how much I'm simplifying things. But for now I'm focussing on what is important. OK.

The Must Do Basics
Right, using the Kano model as a tool, think about the concept of basic requirements. That's the bottom curve. These are the things that if you aren't doing right the business are going to notice and complain about.

So start doing them right and everybody will live happily ever after!

Except that isn't the case because doing them right will not have a long term impact on your happiness, or, more importantly, that of your customers.

At the end of year one people will be telling you what a great job you've done getting request fulfilment down to an acceptable number of days. User and customer satisfaction might even go up a a few percentage points.

At the end of year two people will be "like, so what."

After all you are only delivering the service they always expected. Last year they noticed the improvement, but this year they won't notice you delivering the dull old specified service. Not only that, but even if you pull out all the stops, say you get a new user account down form 8 hours to 6 hours, does anyone care if 8 hours is good enough? And you'll have to pull out all the steps, because in year one you will have delivered all the quick wins....won't you?

So what do you do? Well you can move on to address another area of service where you aren't yet delivering the basics. That is always a smart move and there probably will be another basic area to move on to because the chances are high that the pain those long request fulfilment times were causing was masking the pain of something else you've not been doing right.

The Desired Performance
That straight line running straight through the middle of the graph is labelled performance. Start doing them better and the customer will be less unhappy, carry on doing them well and the benefit doesn't stop once you've met the customer expectation. Reducing year on year IT costs for instance, or better still enabling the business to reduce year on year costs. The first couple of years you manage to do it the customer will start to rethink their opinion of IT, the third and fourth years you do it IT will be held up as a shining example.

Excitement
Here is the good news. There are some things that, once you are delivering the specified service, put a broad smile on the customers face. There's more, these are things that if you aren't doing now the business won't ne that bothered about it. This is the top curve labelled excitement. Here is the bad news, and it is two parts. The first is that until you are delivering the basic service the business won't care how well you are doing in these areas. The second is that things that fall into this category can be hard to come by in the IT services world. This is real Apple territory.

What we might be able to do though, is hit a few points on this line. Winning an award for instance, or getting a senior manager an invite to be a key note speaker at a major industry event.Chose your moment to exploit these.

Indifference
There are aspects of a service that customers and users don't care about any way. Whether we do them or not neither pleases nor displeases them. Often in IT we make the mistake of thinking the customer cares about something when it is really only important to us. Establishing a CMDB? Who cares outside of IT? The business do care, of course, about the benefits that a CMDB can deliver, but often we mistake the means for the end, and then wonder why the customer doesn't find it a compelling business case. This is the region of indifference within the circle.

The Inverse
I really don't know how to break the news to you, but there are some things we do in IT that the business positively don't like! That's the line running from top left down to bottom right labelled inverse. Things like engineers turning up in sweaty clothes, or treating users as idiots. Just stop doing those things now.

So What Do We Do Now?
Go away and check which of the Kano categories the planned benefits of your ITSM programme fall into. The best way of doing this, of course, is to speak to your users and customers using a simple triple question approach:

1. If we fell short of the availability target would you be:
A. Happy
B. Neutral
C. Unhappy

2. If we met the availability target would you be:
A. Happy
B. Neutral
C. Unhappy

3. If we exceeded the availability target would you be
A. Happy
B. Neutral
C. Unhappy

If the answers are C, B and B than Availability is a Basic requirement of the service.

Build your business case around an undestanding of what success will mean to the business, not what it means to IT.

ISO 38500 Survey

2010-02-14T14:36:00.002Z

I mentioned in a recent post that a survey was planned to look at ISO 38500.

Here it is

A survey is now open to 6th March to assess the market for ISO 38500 If you can, please identify that you came across the survey from this blog.

Thick Skinned and Ugly

2010-02-14T11:44:00.007Z

"Historians often hide from us the real path of history behind their errors, different opinions and false tales"

I have a good friend who is a doctor and a psychiatrist. She knows very little about the world of business which makes her observations on the world of management quite refreshing. To put it another way, she tends to see through the b******t and posturing. When we meet up it is usually to go to a lecture on one of the subjects we share an interest in, be it psychiatry, psychology, philosophy or pseudo-science.

Last year we got a last minute chance to hear Malcolm Gladwell speak.

It was, I guess from talking to others, a typical Malcolm Gladwell experience. An adoring audience. A wholly scripted speech that was so well rehearsed it appeared off the cuff, a gripping storyline and a lovely little moral. In this case "However well prepared you are don't be over confident because something might happen that will trip you up." It was a fun, entertaining and rather expensive fifty minutes. It was worth it though to get such a deep insight into the....no hold on this is where my friend looks at me and says "That was s**t" , despite the fact she has a mega crush on him.

The same story, the same facts about the Battle of Chancellorsville could be used to tell any number of other neat stories. You could even make a case that Hooker lost the battle because he wan't confident enough , not forgetting that you could cherry pick another battle to support another view.

Having heard the story what can I do with it? How should I change my behaviour to get any benefit from it? How do I reconcile it with other Gladwell anecdotes?

You have to hand it to Gladwell though, he speaks with confidence and whilst you are listening to him it all makes perfect sense. If you get the chance go and hear him speak.

Don't wait for a chance to go and hear the next speaker I want to talk about. Instead do everything in your power to go and hear him speak, and take as many people as you can along with you. In fact if you can arrange a speaking event for him.

Ben Goldacre is a doctor and a science journalist. He writes a science column for the Guardian newspaper, and in 2008 published the brilliant book Bad Science.

This genuinely is a book that if taken seriously could save lives. It attacks the self serving, scientifically unfounded and deliberately distorted thinking that prevents effective health care strategies from being delivered and leads to many deaths.

He is passionate about the need for evidence based medicine. You can hear him speak here about the importance of meta analysis

His talks are free.

And my friend has an even bigger crush on him

The Pictorial History of The Rhinoceros

For many years the best known drawing of the rhinoceros was a woodcut by Durer made in 1515. It was based on a description of a rhinoceros that lived, briefly, at Lisbon zoo. It was the last rhinoceros seen in Europe until the arrival of Clara in 1741 and throughout that period Durer's woodcut was considered the most authoritative depiction of a rhinoceros.

So it is a pity he gave it a horn on top of the withers, scaly legs and dragon like armour amongst other fanciful embellishments.

What seems likely is that Durer added his own interpretation of the description, and those following afterwards would not have noticed what his imagination added because it still appeared to match the description. It was armoured, and it did have two horns, for instance.

Not only that but a 1752 edition of a catalogue of Roman coins appears to depict a Roman rhinoceros looking just like Durer's. So did Durer's embellishments come from knowing what the Roman's thought rhinos looked like, or was the authority of Durer's drawing such that it influenced the person drawing the Roman coin to see details that were not there?

Why did Durer's drawing endure? Perhaps for no better reason that that people found this image of the rhinoceros attractive and it resembled what they wanted a rhinoceros to look like.

The Dangers of Second-hand Knowledge

If we hear an attractive story from someone like Gladwell, or are shown a compelling picture like Durer's woodcut we are inclined to believe it and loath to let go of it. In the ITSM world there are people who never bother to ask if the story is true, if the conclusion is sound, or if the diagram makes sense. Then they go and repeat the story and copy the diagram and tell everybody who will listen, and some who won't, that "This is the truth about ITSM"

How do they know it is the truth? They read it on a PowerPoint slide.

Rather like the strange link between the woodcut and the coin you sometimes even have a distorted version of your own ideas and diagrams ,that you'd discarded as dated ten years ago, placed in front of you, quite innocently, as somebody else's original new great idea.

We love to have complex realities reduced to simple stories, but that doesn't make those stories either true, or useful.

And here I confess that the quote with which I started this post is extremely second hand. It comes not from some revisionist historian late in the last century, but from Sebastiano Errizo writing in 1559.

For that quote, and more on the story of Durer's Rhino, I am indebted to and recommend The Rhinoceros of The Pope

Brandon Lane CIO - Episode 1

2010-02-11T16:10:00.011Z

The New Job

Brandon Lane sat back in his chair and closed his eyes before speaking.

"Sally, it is a great report. I wouldn't say it outside of this room because I have a great department all round, but your computer audit team rocks."

Sally smiled. She'd worked with Brandon too long as her CIA to know that there wasn't a 'but' coming along the rail road track towards her with the head light on and the brakes screeching.

"But how can I sell this to the board?"

He smiled at her, and waited. They both knew he had asked the question knowing she had already thought about the answer. She waited a few seconds before answering

"I know. It is only a week since the gateway review gave the CoproLITE project the OK, and the CFO is on the steering committee."

He opened his eyes and moved forward, resting his chin on his hands. He didn't say anything, but his body language made it clear he expected her to continue.

"So how can we publish an audit report that says the project looks doomed to fail? Maybe we can still make it work. It isn't like Dimitri doesn't know what we've said in it. My team have tried to keep him on board from day one."

Dimitri was the Head of Development. Neither Sally nor Brandon under estimated him. He was a clever guy. Rather, as Brandon would put it when he knew it would never get back to Dimitri, he was a clever guy surrounded by idiots, but he wouldn't admit it. That is Dimitri wouldn't admit he was surrounded by idiots. He was very good at telling people how clever he was.

"I know, and for once I don't blame him. Everyone is to blame. If only Jacques had knocked a few heads together..."

Sally finished the sentence for him.

"...but that isn't Jaques' style."

Brandon sighed, as an auditor it was something he did a lot of.

"How did he get to be CIO? What does he actually do? Was it you who told me that in the mornings he sneaks in to his office trying to avoid anyone talking to him? I like the guy, but..."

Brandon's phone rang. He went very quiet and very serious before saying

"That was the top floor. I'll be right back. Don't go away."

As he left his corner office and walked through his team's space he couldn't help feeling a glow of pride. In four years he had turned the Internal Audit department around. Now it was staffed by professionally trained auditors whose audits reports were driven by business imperatives. The jewel in his crown was Sally's computer audit team.

Taking the elevator up to the 11th floor he was expecting the other Cs, the "Real Cs" as Ysabelle, his wife called them, to have got wind of the CoproLITE report. It didn't make for pretty reading, and it didn't take any prisoners. Despite his regard for Sally he was still thinking about how he could water it down to make it acceptable.

Brandon and Hans, the CEO, had history. It wasn't good. It was the sort of history Harold and William the Conqueror had. It is fair to say they didn't see eye to eye.

So it wasn't a surprise when Hans threw the Coprolite report at him as he walked through the door. Fortunately Brandon had instinctively ducked.

What was a surprise was Hans telling him that Jaques had been escorted from the building ten minutes earlier, and they now had a new CIO.

Back in his office on the 7th floor Brandon broke the news to Sally.

"Can I be the first to congratulate the new, and I hope, in the nicest possible way, acting, Chief Internal Auditor on her new appointment?"

Sally's jaw dropped.

"They haven't sacked you have they?"

"No, it is much worse than that.

They've made me CIO."

....to be continued.

An Aviation Variation

2010-02-09T17:57:00.001Z

A few days ago I posted about how a Le Mans racing team copes with a wheel falling off.

Here is a variation from the world of aviation with a surprising twist.

The landing gear on many airliners is unsafe for landing on soft grass in an emergency because it DOESN'T break

New Scientist blog

Whilst we are talking about aircraft there is a gem of an idea buried halfway down this article, along with a link to a great video of a 777 landing in a crosswind.

Test pilots don't just check what happens if something breaks - they also check what happens if something breaks and the pilot does the wrong thing in response!

You know, the way we check what happens if a dual power supply fails and the engineer takes out the wrong one to repair and then design a procedure to stop it happening for real.

CoreITSM 101: The Basics

2010-02-09T12:14:00.005Z

How have we managed to turn something so essentially simple as ITSM into a multi million pound industry?
Why have we over complicated it, and in doing so lost sight of the basic truths that lie at the core of it?

There was a spoof chat show on British TV, the Mrs Merton Show. Think of it as a low key predecessor of Ali G. The most famous moment in the show's history was when "Mrs Merton" asked Debbie McGee, wife of an ageing but famous British TV magician "What first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?"

So what has made us turn ITSM into a multi million pound industry? Hmm, perhaps it could be we all want a share of those millions. Heck I can't complain, it has provided me with a decent living for years. After all the market is never wrong, is it?

Don't you lie awake at night, though, thinking that you are missing something simple and obvious? Don't you occasionally cut yourself when shaving because you've been distracted by the thought that giving your ITIL project a punning name is not enough to make it successful? Oh and trust me on this, all the good names were used a long time ago, and if you think it is funny, it probably isn't.

Worry no more, though. Over the next few weeks I'll be blogging on some of those basics that we so easily overlook.

Today's Lesson - Why We Have a Job

Here is an extreme example, but unfortunately true, of how out of touch IT staff can be. I was running a workshop at short notice for a client. They were a small UK government agency with a clear remit and a reasonably high profile. The sort of agency you will find mentioned in a newspaper story on a regular basis. This is a consultant's dream because before you even walk through the door you can learn an awful lot about the client's culture, what they want to achieve and all that good stuff.

On this occasion it was just as well I'd done my homework because it soon became apparent that the IT team had no idea at all about what their users did for a living. We are talking being unable to name their Chief Executive, or being unable to pick out their mission statement from a list on a slide. It was a short list, it was the only one on it.

Why was I running the workshop? They were being threatened with being outsourced and wanted help to defend their position. What did they think their greatest strength was compared to the wolves at the door?

Give yourself five bonus CoreITSM CPE credits if you guessed that they thought it was their knowledge of their own organisation.

Simples, huh!

Now before you give yourself another pat on the back, and for double or nothing points, what lesson do you think I'm going to draw from this?

I'm going to tell you how important it is to think about yourself as part of the business, right? I'm going to tell you to forget about Business IT Alignment (BITA) because that is so yesterday compared to actually being an indivisible part of the business, right?

Can you hear that sound? That is the sound of those five bonus CPE points flying back into my pocket. Better luck next time.

Here is the lesson.

Had those guys had the nous to listen to their users, and discussed with their boss what the users' bosses were saying, they would have found out that their understanding of the business was not the issue. In fact the customer knew full well that because of European employment law they would probably be stuck with the same staff regardless of who won the contract.

The two things that mattered to the business were:

They got an IT service that actually worked
They got Value for Money (VfM)

You didn't need to understand what the agency did to know that fifteen days to process a new user request was unacceptable, or that every time a major upgrade failed senior management despaired. You didn't need to know about the business to understand that they were fed up of every IT project getting the costs wrong and asking for more money.

Having an ITIL v3 Service Strategy would not have kept that IT department in house. Sorry to break that news to you.

What the business needed was for IT to get the basics right

Controversial?

Possibly so, but with a move towards SaaS and cloud computing who actually cares what your IT provider knows about your business? The majority of IT should be a commodity service, just like the electricity supply and the telephone system. That is where we are headed. I'll talk about the value added in a later post.

You know I feel uncomfortable about taking those points away from you. I would love to say getting close to the customer and user is really really vital. If nothing else if they had been close to the business that IT department would have known that basic utility* and warranty* was what was important, and would have understood that their "delivery wasn't good enough."

So you can have the points back if you can correctly identify what film and musical stage show that last quote is from.

Homework

The next two posts in this series will build on this one by looking at the Kano model to assess ITSM maturity, and defining the basic requirements for a service desk in a contract. Look out for them over the next couple of weeks.

*Since this is a CoreITSM course, not an ITIL v3 one this translates as "it does what it should do"

You Couldn't Make it Up....

2010-02-08T17:39:00.000Z

...OK, I guess you could, and the ITskeptic did.

I guess it is a couple of years now since Rob England came up with his satirical concept of RealITSM and all the attendant fictional money making add ons. Actually despite the scurrilous intent some parts of RealITSM are more practical than they should be. Read it for yourself and find out.

You can get it from Lulu as well.

One of Rob's most ridiculously funny conceits was the vanity driven membership schemes BAPTISM and EgoITSM "especallly suited to those too tight or disreputable for BAPITSM."

And now we have prISM.

I guess Rob wasn't so far from the truth after all. Funny that.

Is ITIL a Cargo Cult?

2010-02-08T10:50:00.008Z

The Halo Effect
One of the must read management books on my list of all time greats is Phil Rosenzweig's 'The Halo Effect'

In some ways you could describe it as an anti-management book in that it debunks the claims made by most of the best selling management books to know the secrets of long term management success. "Good to Great" is still a wonderful inspiring read, but have you ever asked yourself "What happened next?" in the organizations it praises? Do we still associate Fannie Mae with greatness?

Rosenzweig likens much management thinking to what that great thinker Richard Feynman called Cargo Cult Science.

Cargo Cults

During WW2 islanders in the southwest Pacific saw troops form both sides of the conflict descend on their islands, build airstrips, install radio stations and call down aircraft to deliver supplies.

When the troops moved on the islanders built non functioning copies of the airstrips and the equipment they had seen in use, and they copied the behaviour of the troops in the belief that they too would be able to call down goods from the gods or their own ancestors.

Although the intervention of the interlopers changed their behaviour they were actually confirming a view the islanders already held - that they would be rewarded if they behaved in the right way. In fact they thought the troops were usurping the benefits that were actually meant for them.

An intelligent reader, such as yourself, can probably see where I'm going with this...

Is ITIL a Cargo Cult on an Island Near You?

ITIL qualifies as a cargo cult if::

There are people who genuinely get benefit from an ITIL approach
The behaviour of those people appears alien to the islanders
The islanders copy the form of ITIL, but not the substance
The islanders' behaviour remains consistent with their old belief that they deserve rewards

Do People Get Benefit From ITIL?

Yes.

Forget the crazy claims about absurd ROI that are fodder for Chokey the Chimp.

Here are just some of the ways ITIL has benefited organizations that I know of from personal experience:

Reduction in actual headcount - not just notional savings of people hours
75% in the time to fulfil requests
SLAs that the business believe in
Improved NFRs resulting in services designed to meet the customer need
Contracts rewritten to define the service, not the underlying technology
Changes rejected before work has started on building them, not the day before release

I know, normally I sound more cynical than sceptical about ITIL, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in ITIL's underlying value.

I could also mention the benefits it has brought to individuals, such as increased confidence to talk to the customer, higher salaries and greater job satisfaction, but I'm going to save that for a post about ITSM training.

Are These People Crazy?

Leaving aside the rather worrying tendencies of some people to go overboard in their belief that ITIL holds the answers to all questions I think there is much in the behaviour and attitudes of those who deliver benefit based on ITIL that is distinctively different., and can seem crazy to outsiders.

They seek out bad news
They use metrics and targets
They talk to customers and users
They admit what they don't know
They look for best practice outside of their own IT department
They believe that the mechanisms of ITSM matter
They don't believe the answers are to be found in technology
They use a distinctive language and argue about what words really mean
They believe IT staff should have non technical training
They adapt ITIL where the guidance is currently insufficient
They seek help when they need it

They do all these things and more

Do People Copy the Form but not the Substance?

You bet they do.

These are the people who seek out ready to use templates for SLAs. These are the people who want metrics to prove their success, not so they can see where they need to do better. These are the people who call in external consultants to tell them what they are already doing is fine. These are the people who argue endlessly over the semantics of an ITIL term without ever trying to understand what the authors actually meant by it. These are the people who think that putting in a service management tool will solve all their problems. These, above all, are the people who believe they can leave out vital great chunks of ITIL in the name of adapting and adopting it.

These are the people who think renaming the Help Desk as a Service Desk was actually important

I could go on.

Is This Consistent with their Old Behaviour and Believes?

I'm afraid that it is. These are the islander who will always latch onto a fad and copy it. These are the people who will exploit any idea if it promises to bring them rewards. These are the people who believe that they are delivering a good service and the customer should be grateful.

Why Did The Gods Deliver The Goods?

Looking at it from an islander's perspective why did the rewards come for the troops and not for them?

Maybe it was because before the troops came to the island they had already developed the capabilities and tools and lines of communication needed to build the supply chain..

Maybe they simply knew what they were doing.

A couple of links

Chokey the Chimp on Crap Factoids

The ITskeptic on ITIL as a cult

P.S. I'm sure I've seen another post somewhere suggesting the link between ITIL and a cargo cult, but the only sites I can find are about cargo cult agile, not ITIL. If anyone comes across a link that pre dates this one can you let me know.

When brands like Toyota lose their shine

2010-02-04T15:02:00.001Z

It would be a cheap trick to use Toyota to push up hits on my blog wouldn't it?

So as I throw my copies of "Toyota Culture" and other Toyota inspired management books in to the recycling bin, and reflect on the fact that the wife chose a bad week to order a new Toyota IQ, I'll try and think of a brand "like Toyota" instead.

You know, big on process and CSI.

A brand that has moved rapidly in to new geographies and launched a plethora of new products.

A brand that is in danger of putting short term gains ahead of the long term market.

Yes, you've guessed it.

I'm thinking

Is ITIL the next Toyota?

Is ISO/IEC 38500 The Cinderella at the IT Governance Ball?

2010-02-03T18:56:00.002Z

I like ISO 38500. I like it very much indeed.

Which is why I find it so hard to understand why it has been met with such deafening silence in the UK.

Is it because COBIT is already so well established?

Is it because people are not aware that it exists?

Is it because people are unsure how to respond to it?

A survey is now open to 6th March to assess the market for ISO 38500 If you can, please identify that you came across the survey from this blog.

Why do I like it so much?

I honestly believe that the standard has a lot to offer organisations, especially those that have not already been driven down the governance route in reaction to external requirements.

I believe that whilst we often talk about ITSM addressing the concerns of the corner office the truth is we rarely actively engage senior business management in delivering IT. Good IT Governance, with a focus on the interests of stakeholders can make a real difference to the relationship between IT and the business.

The benefits of good governance obviously extend beyond ITSM, it is also a sign of effective portfolio, programme and project management.

What is so great about ISO 38500 is that it can get people, and I include the business, not just IT, to realise just what their responsibilities are for ensuring IT is effective and efficient in supporting the organization. And the standard is, of course, very clear that the responsibility for IT rests at director level.

I'll end this post with a specific example of how I've seen an idea inspired by the standard make a difference even in an organisation that has yet to decide whether to adopt it wholesale.

They thought they had good project reviews, they had even adopted the concept of gateway reviews that were led by the business, but what they discovered when they compared their approach to the standard was they were only judging each project by its own internal criteria.

In effect they were only assessing if the project was on track and within budget. What looking at the standard made them realise was that they were not asking if the project was still aligned to corporate objectives, and that compromises being made within the projects were contrary to the Principles of the standard.

For instance short cuts were being taken over the acquisition of change related hardware and services that threatened to contravene the financial limits for needing to re-tender the entire project.

So what is ITIL?

2010-02-02T20:55:00.001Z

What is ITIL?

I don't mean in an ITIL 101 type sense.

I don't mean in the glib way a consultant would sum it up on a .PPT slide.

I don't even mean what does ITIL claim to be.

I mean what is ITIL in reality.

I'm not an ITIL v3 expert so I cannot give you a text book answer. Instead here is my own interpretation.

To begin with - what ITIL isn't.

It isn't a standard
Yeah, we all know this. Those of us involved with developing ISO/IEC 20000 can tell you how different it would be if it was. But hey, since we have ISO 20000 so we don't need ITIL to be one

It isn't Proven Good/Best Practice
Perhaps this is less obvious.Once upon a time it was true. V1 was very much based on what good mainframe shops did as a matter of course. There are still bits of ITIL v3 where this is true. In some areas though you are either getting blue sky thinking without any evidence to support the ITIL position, or you are getting ideas that are dated and basic. Which are which? Hmm not obviously signposted is it?

It isn't Proscriptive
Well it would have to tell you if it was, but it doesn't tell you which bits of it you HAVE to do to provide an adequate service to your customers.

It isn't a Menu from which you can Make Choices
I actually think this is the most dangerous misconception there is about ITIL, compounded by the failure to identify the things you must do to be successful. In reality there is a tendency to drop the difficult but essential bits. That's why ISO 20000 doesn't give you the option to do that. You can chose to miss out a stage of ITIL's change management process, but if you do there is a high probability your change management process will be fatally flawed.

So What Is It?

Good question. It is neither fish nor fowl., and that I think is a major flaw.

A Compass?
Someone described it the other day as being a guide or a compass. I find that quite an attractive analogy, but one of the key things about a compass is you always know which way it is pointing. I don't think there is a clear North in ITIL.

A Philosophy?
Ivor Macfarlane used to say something along the lines of "The IT Infrastructure Libary is a set of books, but ITIL is a philosophy."

I find that quite an attractive view as well, and ten years ago it is the view that would probably have got my vote. But ten years ago the ITIL community was relatively small , relatively homogeneous and relatively self organising. Most of the people involved had an implicit understanding of that philosophy. Times have changed though, and that is no longer true. We can no longer liver with a disparity between the books and what we really mean

A Statement of Facts?
This is a view that has only really struck in recent weeks. I suspect it is in part my reaction to the view that you can chose the elements of ITIL to adopt, and that you change the meaning of what ITIL says to suit yourself.

It doesn't matter what I say or think, an incident is still different from a problem. A change is a change, whether I like it or not, and I firmly believe there is only one overall change management process that can work. Marginal costing has a very precise meaning in accountancy. What makes something a contract isn't whether we call it a contract instead of an SLA.

Is ITIL a Map?
Slowly I'm coming to the conclusion that what ITIL is closest to being is a map of the ITSM world. There might be some areas of that world that we don't want to venture in to, but they are still there whether we chose to believe in them or not. There is a way of holding ITIL up against the real world that helps make sense of the real world, but we have to learn what the symbols on the map mean.

Being like a map isn't the same as actually being a map though, and most maps interpret the world through a political lens and can only be based on what we currently know allied to some more or less reasoned supposition.

What I am certain of though is that it ITIL is not to continue getting people lost in the ITSM world there needs to be absolute clarity about what ITIL actually is.

The Rise of the Instant ITIL Expert

2010-02-01T17:54:00.002Z

Back in November I presented a session at the itSMF UK's conference on getting the right people involved in your ITSM initiative. One of the key themes was how do you tell the heroes from the villains within your organisation.

There seem to be a lot of self styled ITIL gurus around these days and it can be equally difficult to identify who to trust, so here is my personal opinion about just some of the types to be wary of.

The Retrospective ITIL Expert
This one claims that they've been using ITIL for years, but when pushed you discover they've only recently been qualified and appear to know little about the history of ITIL or what it is really trying to achieve. Of course they'll then tell you that ITIL is only common sense and their practical experience trumps ITIL

ITIL by the v3 Book
This one argues everything against the specific wording of ITIL v3 and appears to be oblivious to the fact that just about anybody who was involved with v3 will cheerfully, in private at least, admit it has flaws and omissions. They rarely seem to be aware that ITIL existed before v3 or that rather like another well known book you can usually find an out of context quote to suit whatever position you chose to take.

The Flawed Theorist
Theory is good, ITSM deserves a better underlying theoretical model than it currently has. The theorist, however, is only interested in their own theory. That almost nobody else agrees with it is not an indication that the theory night be flawed but of the stupidity of everybody else in the ITIL world. The rest of us are not capable of appreciating the intellectual superiority of their idea. More often than not their great new theory rests on the type of misunderstanding the Foundation exam was introduced to counter. When pressed to prove their theory they will retort it is up to the rest of us to prove them wrong.

The Expert in ITIL and nothing but ITIL
A close relative of the believer in ITIL by the book. These days they are often to be found in the training community. Their entire knowledge of subjects comes from what they know of ITIL.They appear unaware that much of the content and language of ITIL is a sub set of other specialisms. Mostly harmless.

The Wannabe
The wannabe was once forced to attend a workshop as part of an ITIL initiative. At the time they were quite happy to tell everyone what a waste of time it all was, but hey now they are an expert, especially if it means being able to get a job in consulting or training.

The Confidence Trickster
Nothing phases this one, they have absolute confidence in their own expertise and are only too glad to share it if you attend their training courses or reply to them off list. They often award themselves some grandiose but meaningless title . It doesn't matter if you are a newbie making an innocent mistake or a true guru passing on a hard learnt lesson, the confidence trickster will treat you with equal contempt. What they are not so great at it is showing any evidence that they've actually applied ITIL any where or have any real insight.

The Good Guys
As I said in my original presentation the odd thing is that there is a superficial resemblance between the heroes and the villains so why don't we remind ourselves of what you should be looking for in an ITIL expert.

Retrospection
It really is helpful if they can see their pre-ITIL life through an ITSM lens. That includes recognising the things they would have done differently had they known about ITIL at the the time, or even the things they would have done differently in the gap between knowing about ITIL and really understanding ITIL. They'll also be able to identify the things they did right that echo what ITIL says.

V3 Knowledge
The real expert will understand what has changed in V3 and how it relates to the history of ITIL. Of course they will also know about COBIT and ISO/IEC 20000. They will be able to give you a cogent account of how v3 could be improved but won't lose sight of the benefits of the changes. Not only that but they'll be able to add real value because of their practical knowledge of integrating ITSM throughout various life cycles.

Theory
A real expert understands the need for an element of theory, but will also know how to apply and adopt that theory.

Breadth and Depth of Expertise
You don't want an advisor who only knows about a small part of the ITIL world, you want someone who can offer input across the full breadth of ITIL. But you also want some depth and a good sign of that is a previous relevant specialism.

Ambition
True experts are always willing to learn and to improve. They are confident about what they achieved on their last assignment, but are already thinking about what they will do differently next time.

Confidence
The true ITIL expert does have a certain arrogance, but it is based on demonstrable success. If they hold a strong view they will explain why.