Spring Cleaning

Sub zero temperatures, sleet and the return of British Summer Time. Yes, it is an English spring and time to think about a clear out, and to ask yourself:

 Do we really need all those consultants cluttering up the corridors?

Now obviously I think consultants are a good thing, after all consultancy is what I do for a living, at least in theory. And that, actually, is my point. A lot of consultants are employed doing work that isn't actually consultancy.

In my own case I have to point out the reason I don't spend my whole time doing consultancy is because relatively little of my time is billable to TCS clients, instead my focus is on building long-term relationships between TCS and our clients.

On the other hand there are those consultants who are primarily driven by what we in the trade call afterwork. Afterwork is where big consultancy firms make their figures. Afterwork is where they place under skilled junior staff to fill up every empty desk in your workspace. Now there are lots of consultants, especially those in large consultancy firms, quite happy to take your money and run. Equally there ae many who will question what they are getting out of the engagement.

The question you need to ask yourself is very simple:

What value am I getting from employing a consultant?

To answer that question you need to consider what the alternatives are. Could you take on an interim manager? Should you skill up your own team? Could you shift to a lower level of consultancy firm? Could you exploit the consultancy capability of your technology vendors? Alternatively are you under-exploiting the consultants you currently have on site, and gradually reducing their ability to influence where you are going?

My rule of thumb is that if a consultant has been on site every week for more than three months then you need to start asking some hard questions of yourself. 

Them and us - again

Just over a year ago I wrote a blog about about how unhelpful and judgmental some of the perceived divisons in the ITSM world are.

Sadly as 2013 begins it seems that  it is once again open season on consultants and our contribution to the ITSM community.

Oddly I'm finding that most of this criticism is couched in language that sounds more  like consultancy speak than anything that I've heard from any consultants over the last year. As a result I must admit I'm finding it hard to understand what exactly it is we stand accused of, apart from not being practitioners not talking about things that practitioners perceive to be of immediate use to them, and generally dominating the conversation.

Whilst I do understand some of the frustration,  perhaps it is time for a bit of a reality check, or at least a more balanced point of view.

I'll admit I have limited time for "consultants" who fall into the category of instant expert., and that some of the criticism has them in mind. It might be the company I keep, or just that I avoid Linkedin discussions, but I don't see as many of them as I used to.The majority of consultants who have high profiles in the ITSM community aren't of that sort. Neither are they pure blood consultants who came straight in to a mainstream generalist management consultancy  before the ink was even dry on their MBA. The majority of the ones I know have all spent time at the coal face. Not only that but having become consultants doesn't mean they are no longer involved in real world ITSM. Moving from client to client and solving ITSM problem after ITSM problem they probably see more of the wider real world than the average practitioner. Trust me, not many ITSM consultants spend their days getting called in to have cosy chats about blue sky thinking with CxOs over tea and biscuits.

I have to come clean and admit that I did spend several hours this week doing the blue sky thinking, but it was with analysts, not CxOs, it was challenging in a good way rather than cosy and there certainly wasn't time to grab a garibaldi. Don't forget that I'm lucky enough to work for a company big enough to absorb the overhead of sessions like that; many consultants in smaller companies or running their own companies effectively have to do all their non-client specific thinking in their own time and at their own cost.

Meanwhile my teams were getting their hands dirty......

....you see, that's the other problem. I can't tell you what my team have been doing for two very important reasons. The first is client confidentiality and the second is protection of IP. Those limitations are very, very real. So there is a whole raft of stuff I could have shared with you over the last three years that I'm just not going to. Again this is even tougher for those in smaller companies where clients are more readily identifiable and IP is hard won.  In the early days of the itIMF, before the second I got substituted with ans S, I was amazed at how often people expected to get free advice from consultancy companies just because they had made the inquiry via the itIMF office rather than directly.

So since I can't talk about what my teams are doing, let's get back to the blue sky thinking.

I get the feeling people think that debates about whether a process is right or wrong is akin to debating how many angels can dance on a pin. And if at the moment you are at the bottom of a deep, deep hole with your budget slashed, your staff unhappy, your customer screaming  and a service desk tool  that isn't fit for purpose I can understand why you feel like that., and why some of the discussions might look more like a display of competing egos rather than anything of practical importance.

Be kind, rewind. As I said most of the consultants I engage with in public have a background as practitioners, but with the luxury, and it is a luxury, of being to step back a little to take in and analyse the big picture. We see people blindly following a process workflow just because it happens to be in a book, and not questioning if it is right for them, or even  if following it comes at a net cost. We see people implementing "silver bullet" solutions, and we see people looking for that sense of comfort that comes from doing what everybody else is doing, Above all else we see people doing these things and not even realising it is what they are doing.

And we see what happens as a result.

That is why we debate some of these things. We would love to tell you some of the specific experiences that have led us to think the way we do - but that would mean revealing things about past and present clients and that wouldn't be professional. If what we are saying seems to conflict with your own pet theory it might also be worth checking whether we've seen other people try and put that theory into practice.and seen what happened next. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

Peter Brookes posted an interesting quote today

"The wise do at the beginning what fools do at the end.":

I'm not accusing anyone of being fools, but sometimes people are saying things that aren't obviously important or useful to you today, but might come to be highly significant down the line. 

Do consultants dominate the ITSM SocMed channels too much? Almost certainly.We aren't paid to be shrinking violets and we are passionate about what we do. We do hate silences , so if there is a gap in the conversation ti is likely to be a consultant who rushes in to say the first thing on their mind.  That's probably why I don't get invited to so many parties these days. Equally though we are passionate about uncovering and encouraging new voices from the practitioner community. 

In fact I briefly considered writing a section about what ITSM consultants would like to see practitioners bring to the SocMed table, but I think that would be to misunderstand the community every bit as much as the blogs criticizing consultants. Instead I'll just say this:

Practitioners give what they available to give, just as consultants do. 

Remember, recognise and respect our differences and we'll all get along just fine.

Ten ITSM Articles that you haven't read

For the simple reason they are still in my drafts folder.

1.The Road to Hell : Why pundits who with the best of intentions dumb down advice and distort reality for those starting out in ITSM ultimately harm us all.

2. The Enemy Within : The danger from ITSM trolls in the community and in your organisation

3. Slafail: Brandon Lane discovers the pitfalls of SLAs as a silver bullet

4. Warm Bread Roles: How your customers really judge service and easy ways to impress them

5. A Passage to India : An insight into the culture of Indian based IT suppliers

6. ITIL Isn't Theoretical Enough : Why ITIL would benefit from an underlying set of precepts and application of the scientific method.

7. I Had a Dream : We are surrounded by non-IT paradigms for ITSM but prefer to try and re-invent the wheel

8. Mr CMDB Imperative: The night I met Glenn O'Donnell

9. Knowing Me Knowing You : The importance of constantly rediscovering your customer

10. The Only Way is Ethics  : Philosophy and ITSM

ITSM Predictions for 2013

Last year’s post on my predictions for 2012 turned out be very popular. So I guess it is worth taking time to look back and say where I was right and where I have yet to be proved right. 

I’m going to make a smaller set of new predictions for 2013 because in some ways I think we’ll see more evolution than revolution.

So how did I do last year?

1. Service Integration

I predicted this to be big in 2012, and it was.

If you didn’t notice this then it is probably because many of the deals that were done in this domain remain under wraps for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that a lot of SI is being driven by commercially sensitive big business changes within the organisations that are adopting it.

I’m glad to say that TCS, and my team in Europe in particular, have been at the forefront but the reality is that SI remains relatively immature within the industry and so my follow on prediction for 2013 is that you will begin to see collaboration across suppliers to develop a standard framework for SI to make life easier for suppliers, third party advisers and for customers.

2. Service Architecture

My prediction was that we would see a realisation of the fundamental importance of understanding of how systems and IT services map on to business value networks and a higher profile for OBASHI and the emergence of a new breed of top down architect.

This was certainly backed up by my experience of the year as it unfolded with many of the deals I worked on being built around a joint ITSM and Architectural transformation. OBASHI has certainly become part of the IT lexicon even if many of us haven’t yet reached a final conclusion about its usefulness

3. Service Design

Sadly this was one of my misses. ITSM seems intent on remaining resolutely inside-out with the customer experience bolted on to the solution rather than driving the solution

4. Shadow IT 2.0

Perhaps it is just my perception but as the year has progressed I’ve seen a real shift away from “we won’t support BYOD” and towards “BYOD is a reality, so how do we support it?”

We’ve also seen a rise in consumer orientated cloud solutions which I suspect will have far-reaching implications for commercial use of the cloud.

My 2013 prediction is that we will see an increased number of SI deals where both the provisioning of the service and the business involvement in the management of services will be key factors , and a lot less fear and denial.

5. Service Desk 2.0

There is no doubt in my mind that 2012 is when self service came of age. It was notable at this year’s SDITS show that there had been a real sea change in people’s attitude towards it. It is also clear that it is very high up on the business customers’ wish lists.

In the UK the SDI seems to be going from strength to strength and becoming a much more authoritative and innovative organisation, building on the excellent foundations that have been established in recent years.

There is still a lot of work to be done in freeing up preconceptions and constraints about the role of the Service Deck that belong to the last century.

My 2013 prediction is that this will prove to be painful for the ITSM community and for individuals working in the Service Desk, but ultimately will prove to be empowering.

6. Soft Skills

I argued that in 2012 people would” 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.”

Again I can only speak from my own experience but time and again prospective clients echoed this message.  Not only that but I suspect several incumbent suppliers have had a wake-up call as they have lost  out to suppliers prepared to put effort into building relationship.

It was interesting as well to see the positive response Matt Burrows got whenever I saw him present on SFIA this year .

My prediction for 2013 is there will be a real focus on non-IT professional skills within the Retained Organisation, such as vendor management.

7. Hard Facts - Hard choices

I said “ 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.”

So just substitute 2013 for 2012 and it will hold good for next year as well.

8. ITIL is so 2011

OK, I’m not sure if when I wrote this prediction I knew quite what Aale Roos had in store for us with his approach to Unlearning ITIL, or as he might say

“Älä kuuntele kaikkea tuota hullua ITIL juttua”

Nor did I see the violently emotional reaction this would provoke, primarily in those with British blood and of a certain age. I’ll be honest I don’t think it showed us in a good light, especially when other countries seemed to get where Aale is coming from.

I’ve inadvertently become a bit of an apologist for Unlearning ITIL. Unfortunately I think many who are criticising it are not listening to what is actually being said, and are defending aspect of ITIL based on what they would like to be true about ITIL rather than reality itself.

That reality is that ITIL, and the current official ITIL training, isn’t really that useful to those who most need it. That is those who are just starting out on the ITSM journey and need sound basic advice, and those faced with new ITSM challenges associated with new technologies and delivery models.

My predictions for 2013 in this are that we will see more ITSM activity that pays no more than lip service to ITIL, increased interest in COBIT5, and some increasingly angry comments from people who really should be worrying about their blood pressure these days.

9. A New Kind of Event

My prediction was “ 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. “

I always find it hard judging ITSM events in retrospect. As I’ve said so often on the podcasts I’m very aware that I’m not the target audience for most conferences, but I think this came partially true. 

The big new event, at least as far as the ITSM social media community was concerned was TFT12, which did indeed set out to be intrinsically different and it will be interesting to see where the concept leads.

10. Same Old Same Old

Oddly enough if I messed up anywhere with last year’s predictions I think it was in this section, except that Stephen Mann’s blog remains very popular and yes we had some major outages in the run up to the holidays.

New Predictions for 2013

Notwithstanding what I’ve said about Stephen Mann’s blog I think we are seeing the death of the individual consistently influential ITSM blog. There is still some very high quality material being pushed out on blogs, but day to day ITSM reading for many will be based on the ITSM communities with blogs only attracting interest when a post is particularly important.

I have a suspicion, and it is no more than that at the moment, that cost models capacity management and contract management will be hot topics.  I’m also tempted to suggest that 2013 will be the year of IT Governance as a truly mainstream topic.

And  remember if these things don't happen in 20123 it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

It just means I'm still ahead of the curve, for yet another year.

For two alternative views of 2013 I recommend Stephen Mann's Challenges for 2013 and the musings  the ever amusing IT Swami shared with Rob England.

Episode 13: A New Beginning

In the last episode of Brandon's Dickens and ITSM fueled fantasy he met Ian Clayton, the Ghost of ITSM Future and was sacked by the CEO. There is, of course, no connection between these two events. Now read on...

"TO BE HONEST I WAS EXPECTING YOU TO BE A LITTLE MORE DISAPPOINTED, AND PERHAPS JUST A LITTLE BIT SHOCKED"

"You are forgetting that I'm an ex-auditor"

"AH YES, AUDITORS"

(For those who haven't yet got it the character of the Ghost owes much to Terry Pratchett's anthropomorphic personification of Death, who ALWAYS TALKS IN CAPITALS and doesn't really get on with the Auditors)

"So first of all I'm rational enough to know that this is still a dream sequence in which all my anxieties about taking over the role of CIO of a dysfunctional IT organization are playing out "

"THAT IS GOOD. SEPARATING THE FANTASY FROM THE REALITY IS A RARE SKILL IN THE ITSM WORLD. IT WILL SERVE YOU WELL"

"Probably not quite as well as my second point, which is that being the ex Chief Internal Auditor I know where all the bodies are buried, and might even have stood at the graveside and passed Hans the shovel on a few occasions. So I know he wouldn't really sack me when he could just promote me. Again."

"CYNICISM WILL ALSO SERVE YOU WELL, BUT NOT AS WELL AS SKEPTICISM OR  AT THE MOMENT, THE CARDBOARD BOX I MENTIONED"

"Referring you back to my point that this is a fantasy I think we can dispense with the cardboard box. Especially since in reality I spent most of the weekend lugging them around moving office. Also, by the way, if your constant references to the cardboard box are a feeble attempt to set up a punchline about 'out of the box thinking' then I can do without it"

The Ghost looked slightly crestfallen.

"ACTUALLY I WAS GOING TO SHOW YOU MY FAVOURITE SCIENCE BASED CONJURING TRICK. IT IS QUITE A WELL KNOWN ONE BUT I SUBSTITUTE A SERVICE CATALOGUE FOR AN ACTUAL CAT ON THE BASIS NO ONE KNOWS WHETHER ONE OF THOSE REALLY EXISTS OR NOT EITHER"

"Anyway, I've read my Dickens so I'm guessing this is only a possible version of the future, not the inevitable one. So rather than packing up and giving up I want to learn from it. First of all can you show me how this is impacting other people?"

"I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. LET US BEGIN WITH THE BUSINESS"

 --------

Afterwards both the Ghost and Brandon agreed that probably hadn't been the best idea. The party to celebrate the demise of IT was still in full swing when they left.

"ARE YOU NOT CURIOUS TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO THE REST OF YOUR CAREER NOW?"

"I have to say that I am a little curious, though also a little fearful....."

--------
"WELL THAT WASN'T WHAT I WAS EXPECTING!"

"No, it turned out rather well for me didn't it? A partnership at that management consultancy firm, the start up cloud based service management tool company, the brilliant moment where Hans approached me asking for a job...."

"YES, OK, YOU'VE MADE YOUR POINT"

"But what about my people? What about my team, what happened to them?"
-------

They stood outside the building and watched them leave. Not only the IT staff but even the ITIL Imps came skulking out of the lower basement . It struck Brandon that in daylight some of the imps actually looked quite Elvish.

Initially he was quite surprised to see Dmitri, the Head of Development, and Maarten, the Head of Security leaving the building along with the others. They and their teams had always been the survivors, adept at ensuring the blame always landed in someone else's in box.

As if reading his thoughts the Ghost spoke

"THEY NEVER UNDERSTOOD THAT HANS COULD ALWAYS SEE THROUGH THEIR POLITICAL GAMES. HE NEVER CARED FOR ALL THE INTERNAL SQUABBLING WITHIN IT."

Next came Jake, the young techie Brandon had met only that morning. Brandon noticed he was carrying one of the largest cardboard boxes, stuffed in roughly equal measure with manuals and sci-fi memorabilia.

"Where's Richard, the Service Desk Manager?"

"HE'S IN A BAR DISCUSSING HOW IT WAS EVERY BODIES FAULT EXCEPT HIS. MOSTLY IT WAS YOUR'S, APPARANTLY"

"And what about Kelly, I don't see her here at all"

In a blink they were back in the Service Desk area. It was deserted. Where Kelly normally sat there was just a dusty abandoned headset lying forlornly against a blank screen.

"I've seen enough. Is there somewhere I can go to find out how to stop this all happening? Somewhere where...."

----------

"Hi Brandon"

"SOMEWHERE WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME?"

They were in a piano bar. It could have been any time of day or night, which was the first clue Brandon got that they were in Vegas.  The  person who'd just greeted him by name was the piano player, though he didn't look like your typical piano player and the Scottish accent was unexpected. He was playing a cover version of Sarah Vaughan's 'What's so bad about IT' which Brandon thought a touch insensitive.

They were sat in a circle of empty chairs. A second man walked up to them, sat down and said

"Hey Brandon, Älä kuuntele kaikkea tuota hullua ITIL juttua."

This, thought Brandon, is going to be interesting.....



"

Episode 12: The Ghost of ITSM Future

A quick recap, because after all it is exactly a year since the last chapter appeared. I've been busy, so get over it. Brandon Lane CIO fell asleep whilst waiting for his first Monday morning team meeting, and has been visited in turn by Ivor Evans, the Ghost of ITSM Past and Jimbofin, the Ghost of ITSM Present. Now, as he finds himself in the office of an increasingly irate CEO with Wysiwyg, the ITSM Imp,a third ghost has appeared; that of ITSM Future or Ian Clayton as he is otherwise known.

Now read on,:

"Oh ghost of ITSM future, I fear you most of all" Declared Brandon, in what he himself would admit was an overly melodramatic tone.

"AND SO YOU SHOULD. THE GHOSTS OF ITSM PAST AND PRESENT HAD NO POWER TO HARM YOU BUT THE FUTURE HAS"

Pause for a beat

"BUT IF IT IS ANY CONSOLATION THIS WON'T TAKE LONG"

"But will it be painful?"

"NO, NOT AT ALL. IN FACT I MIGHT FEEL A SLIGHT PLEASANT SENSATION OF I TOLD YOU SO BUT OTHER THAN THAT I'LL FEEL NO PAIN AT ALL. OH SORRY I MISUNDERSTOOD YOU. YES IT WILL BE."

By now Wysiwyg had transferred his attention from Han's to the new ghost and was busy trying to prod him instead. The Ghost  bent down and picked the imp up by the scruff of the neck.

"SO WE MEET AGAIN WYSIWYG, BUT NOT FOR LONG YOU MISCHIEVOUS IMP FOR I COMMAND YOU BY THE POWER OF THE MIGHTY USMBOK TO BE GONE."

Where there should have been a dreadful shriek and a flash of lightning leaving behind nothing but a foul smell there was nothing, apart from the foul smell that lingered like references to ITIL v3 over a year after the release of 2011 Edition.

"Hello," said Wysiwyg "It seems I'm still here."

"WILL YOU NEVER UNLEARN THE ERROR OF YOUR WAYS AND STOP TORMENTING MY PEOPLE WITH YOUR SUB-OPTIMAL, UNPRACTICAL, UNLEAN AND EVIDENTIALLY LACKING HERESIES?"

"Nope, why change a winning strategy?"

Actions, it is said, speak louder than words. This particular action on the part of the Ghost of ITSM Future involved an elegant drop-kick that propelled Wyswig out of the window without having the chance to open it first.

"NOW, TO BUSINESS...."

Hans stood rubbing his ankles where Wysiwyg had been stabbing him and survyed the room. Since Wysiwyg was an intangible being the window was still intact  and the Ghost of ITSM Future being a figment of Brandon's imagination  the main thing Hans found to survey was Brandon.

"IT is a complete and utter mess in this organisation. You keep asking us to invest in new technologies and new ways of running IT but the end result always seems to be the same.  Well from now on things are going to be different. From now on we will be investing in technologies directly, and doing things differently ourselves. I've just been meeting with the management consultants and we've agreed the new IT strategy is to move everything to the Cloud."

Hans, The Ghost and Jimbofin pronounced in unison the holy words that mention of the Cloud required:

"Whatever that means"

"What it means, Brandon, is that you are fired."

"THERE, I TOLD YOU IT WOULDN'T TAKE LONG. DO YOU WANT ME TO HELP YOU FIND A CARDBOARD BOX?"

(to be continued....?)

Ban The SLA

At the recent itSMF UK conference in London one of the more controversial slides was Mark Smalley's "Ban the SLA" which got a round of applause in the room but unleashed some pretty emotional debate afterwards and on the podcast.

I asked Mark to expand on his thinking for this blog, and this is his response. Before anyone posts a particularly inflammatory response I should say there seemed to be some sort of eventual consensus at the conference that the slogan has to be seen in conjunction with the concept of a Service Charter, as Mark suggests.

Ban the SLA

Business people just don’t get it.

This strange stuff that we IT folk force-feed down their throats.

Like SLAs.

All very high-ceremony, with formal procedures for this and that, most of which seems inside-out if not inside-in. Subtle differences between incidents, problems and service requests.

"I REALLY DON’T CARE – JUST HELP ME GET BACK TO WORK INSTEAD OF ME WASTING MY LIFE TRYING TO WORK OUT HOW TO AVOID DEALING WITH YOU."

They only play along with this SLA nonsense because they know that it’ll cost them even more time and energy to get us to change our ways. So then we get into discussions about response times and resolution times with us saying

 “No we can’t possibly guarantee a resolution time because one of the widgets is out of support”.

And they say “Yes but all I want to know is what kind of a delay will I have when there’s an outage”

… “Oh, we couldn’t possibly say – it depends on so many variables” …

 “But you’ve been doing this for years, surely you know what to expect?”

And so it continues, ending up with both sides adding preconditions and exceptions and penalties. This reminds me of the build-up of nuclear weapons half way through the previous century. And the Ban the Bomb movement and nuclear disarmament.

I believe that the time has come for the Ban the SLA movement leading to an Anti-Ballistic SLA Treaty and a Strategic SLA Limitation Treaty (SALT), leading in turn to Service Level Agreement Termination (SLAT) and SLA disarmament.

An interesting alternative to SLA’s is the Service Charter. Not the same Service Charter as defined by ITIL 2011 as “A document that contains details of a new or changed service” but a high-level document that sets intentions and general expectations. Deakin University in Australia has a good example and, strangely enough, most service charters seem to be used down-under. It’s only fair to state that that a service charter is not detailed enough replace the contract between business and IT, but it is certainly a more fitting instrument to lull them into a false sense of security before launching our all-out service level attack.  

We Need to Talk About the Service Catalogue

Back in 2009 one of the first posts on this blog was a link to an article I wrote with Michael Jagdeo about how much rubbish is talked about the Service Catalogue. Since that article is no longer available, and taking into account some of the recent heated discussion on Twitter and Back2ITSM perhaps it is time to re-visit the key points.

The sad thing is most of what you read or hear about the SerCat has little relationship to the real world. Of course there are people who want you, or convince themselves, that it is the most important thing ever. Usually this is because:

• They can charge you a lot of money for their product
• They can charge you a lot of money for a year's work helping you create a service catalogue
• Having spent a lot of money on a product and consultancy they aren't going to admit it didn't achieve anything - so if nothing else they'll claim it moved them to ITIL v3

Myths

Before talking about the truth I guess we need to address the  two big myths,

"The service catalogue was the big innovation that distinguished ITIL v3"

Funny that, because back in 1993 we were teaching about the service catalogue on ITIL courses and you'll also find it referred to in PD0005, the BSi guide to Service Management published in 1998.

To be fair back then the guidance was so vague that you were pretty much on your own. The examples we used to hand out on courses were orientated towards sales and projects - so a new external customer or a new project starting up could be made aware of the options available to them in choosing new services. In the service catalogue you might find the gold, silver and bronze contingency options, and whichever one the customer chose would end up in the SLA.

The other thing to point out here is that much of the utility that  ITIL now attaches to the service catalogue and portfolio would still have been done under previous versions of ITIL but under different headings. For instance we preached that CMDB and the cost model needed to be tightly coupled .Services were a "virtual CI" and output cost units equated to services. We also recognised that portfolio management was going on within the wider context of the IT department.

OK, that's a history lesson. It doesn't have a material impact on whether or not you should be implementing a service catalogue.

Unlike:

"Introducing a customer facing Service Catalogue improves the customer perception of IT"

What gets me about this one is that no one seems to ever ask the customer. Whilst I don't subscribe to the view that all of ITIL is too theoretical this is one case where I do think ITIL has lost touch with reality and swallowed the kool-aid of wishful thinking. It amounts to

"We think the customer should like it, so they must do"

So what  happens in reality? The IT department spends a year producing a two inch thick document, or an impenetrable Sharepoint site. How does the business react?

"Wow, that's fabulous, after giving you millions of pounds year after year you can finally tell us what it is you actually do?"

Right

If you are a CIO who needs a service catalogue project to identify what you do for your customers I think you should seriously consider another career. Especially when, in the majority of cases, when the business open the Service Catalogue they find it almost totally inaccessible and that it talks about services in a language that is resolutely unaware of just how "inside-out" it is.

What the business actually think is:

"Are you telling me you guys didn't know what it is that you do?"

"There is nothing in here that I recognise as a service"

"How is this supposed to help me?"

"Well I won't need sleeping tablets anymore"

Now some of you will be thinking that this only applies to a badly constructed service catalogue and that a good one would deal with all of these issues. The problem with that is I still haven't seen an example of a "good" service catalogue that stands up to scrutiny.

Hands up here, I include the ones that I've occasionally been forced to write.

At this point let me quote that brilliant Irish comedian Dara O Briain at one of his less successful early gigs

'This is awful, I am causing you more pain than you are causing me.’

So let me suggest...

What You Really Need to Do

First of all take away from ITIL the bits that are good and useful.

• You and your customers do need to know what services you offer.
• Different audiences at different points in the service lifecycle need different views of your service portfolio 
• Services are customer facing 
• Services are what you should cost and price

If your customers ask you what you do that adds value for them then you don't know your services.
The Architectural Review Board need a different view of your services to the one the HR Director needs, and that is different again from the one a service designer needs. What they all need is different from what you need yourself to manage services internally.
Database tuning is NOT a customer facing service.
If you can't easily integrate IT costs and process with the business cost model then you probably aren't costing services.

That's pretty much it really, but here are some more tips.

Understanding your services doesn't mean being able to look them up in a catalogue.  Watch how a good salesmen sells. What they understand is the customer need and how they make the customer feel that need has been fulfilled. That means being able to engage the customer in a conversation about what a service means for them.

Make sure you understand the fundamental difference between an aspirational service  catalogue aimed at customers and a transactional request catalogue aimed at users. Integrate the request catalogue with the service desk self service portal.

Understand that business services aren't simple to identify - the business operates a complex value network.

Understand how good cost models work and apply that thinking to your service model.

And most important of all...

If you are going to build a service catalogue "for the business" at least have the decency to ask them what they want it to look like and how they think they might use it.






.

  

My First ITSM Conference

To balance out my own view of this year's itSMF UKconference I've asked Andrea Kis to provide a practitioner's perspective:

" I have been always a keen follower of itSMF and its events, contributors, publications and occasionally I have even managed to get hold of the Service Talk Magazine to read too. Sadly so far I haven't worked for organisations who were members so attending the annual ITSM conference was always a very distant wish.

This year, however, thanks to an amazing offer from Matthew Burrows at BSM Impact to collaborate on an article about Business Relationship Management, I have found myself being involved with itSMF UK despite not being a member. Our article was published in the summer edition of Service Talk Magazine and later it became a finalist in the Submission of the Year Awards.

Then thanks to even more kindness and generosity by Sophie Danby of Ovum and Ben Clancy and itSMF UK I was invited to ITSM12 taking place in London.

I was incredibly excited about the conference because I believe that meeting like-minded professionals is the perfect opportunity to broaden my own knowledge, share and exchange ideas and learn a lot. As a comparative novice in the Service Management industry I was very excited to be meeting some of my ‘ITSM Heroes’ in person and I was very much looking forward to seeing the presentations of those who I have seen presenting on other conferences and I've learnt to expect good thought provoking topics from.

What surprised me at the conference was the one shade of gray of the delegate ‘pool’. There were moments when I’ve felt I was possibly in the wrong place, as if I had wondered into a Victorian British Gentlemen’s Club in St James’s. It made me wonder where are the new faces in Service Management, where are the newcomers, where are the new generation passionate service managers who can continue and build upon the established building blocks of this industry? I wonder what can be done to bring out more of the ‘freshers’ into the light?

I think I would try and reach out to more practitioners, engage with them before the conference, give platforms to more real life studies and practitioner experiences. It is the perfect opportunity for all on different experience levels to get together.

I love networking, and being a bit of a Miss Chatterbox [Editor’s note: We’d noticed] I really enjoyed all the conversations I had with fellow delegates. It would  be good however if delegates could have more opportunity to be able to bond and chat without having to do so on the vendor exhibition floor, on the limited space lunch area and bar or between seminars when you need to rush to the next presentation.

I was also surprised to see how many ‘theorists’ attended and how rare it was to bump into a real life practitioner, someone  who doesn't just preach the best practice theories and frameworks but actually does them. It would be great to see more presentations by practitioners to see how something can be achieved and done. I would love to hear about CSI, problem management, business and IT alignment, basically all those exciting hot topics and theories told in practice, in real life. I may be too passionate but it frustrates me if I hear or read too much about what doesn't work, how it should work or what should be done about it, yet I don't see many practical solutions and real life examples.

Because of this reason I thoroughly enjoyed Angela Wint’s (London Borough of Merton) presentation Turning Adversity into Advantage – Supporting the Council’s Transformation Strategy It was an excellent insight into the journey of the Council’s transformation agenda and how was it supported by IT.

Also I have been extremely taken by Mark Smalley’s presentation Reinvent IT Service Management and Pre-empt Occupy IT which made me realise that I am a partisan revolutionary service manager who has never been limited by thinking inside the ‘IT box’. After his presentation I was even more determined to go poke and persuade others working in IT to open their eyes and stop worrying about the so called gap between IT and the Business and between IT processes and Business processes. That gap is something we created for ourselves in a space where there shouldn't be any gap at all.

It was a real pleasure to meet Paul Wilkinson finally whose blog is a big favorite of mine since I’ve read an excellent rant about why everything is IT’s fault

I have always had a deep respect for Stuart Rance and Aale Roos so I was delighted to meet them in person. Aale’s Unlearning of ITIL and Stuart’s common sense approach to service availability is something everyone should learn from. Meeting Kevin Holland, who was weirdly kind and made me laugh a lot, embarrassing Jimbo Finister with my outspoken battle comments (he will hide under chairs when Hurricane Kis will approach next) and finally meeting Mark Lillycrop in person were other peak points of my conference experience I will fondly remember.

It was great to discover that I am not the only maniac who demands amazing quality of service and observes service processes everywhere. This discovery even resulted in inventing a buzzword for 2013 with Michael Busch (ServiceBlub) and Mark Smalley: OCSD (Obsessive-Compulsive-Service-Disorder). This is something we want to build upon and expand it’s possibilities so watch this space.

I would also like to say a few words about meeting Kathryn Howard who is a delightful, beautiful lady with a strong intelligent presence to look up to. The service management industry needs strong women so other women can be inspired to follow a career path into it.

All in all it was an excellent experience attending ITSM12. Thank you for those who made it possible for me to attend and my thanks to everyone whose task was to make the event possible and made everything run smoothly. Ben disguised as a wedding party organiser with an ear piece and organiser in his hand, the facilitators, guests and presenters alike."

ITSM 12

This year was the 21st itSMF Conference. I nearly didn't go. I'm glad I did. Some people didn't.

What more do you need to know?

The event has settled comfortably into the two day London based format and this year everything from registration through to the pacing of the awards dinner seemed slicker than ever. The two day format does come with a couple of catches. A 9.15 start makes a very long day for those of us traveling to the event  on the Monday. I had to be up at 5 am and found my bed at 1 am . Needless to say others were up much later than that in the bar enjoying the now mandatory piano sessions with Matt Burrows and Barclay Rae. With only two days and six streams the chances are also higher that interesting sessions are going to clash with each other.

What one person finds interesting might not be what others want to hear. I'm very conscious of this whenever we discuss events on the podcast  because we go to so many conferences that it is hard for us to judge their value to first time and practitioner attendees. Most of the feedback I heard was positive, and that certainly came across in the two very animated conference review podcasts we recorded and which should be out soon. I've also got Andi Kis to write a review from her perspective as a practicing service manager.

Talking of feedback I was disappointed by the low level of Tweeting going on using the #ITSM12 hashtag. Mostly it was the usual suspects, which was fine but they also tended to all be in the same sessions. It would have been good to have had tweet walls around the venue as well instead of the odd single, and often very out of date tweet going up on the screen. Whilst I'm talking of feedback the conference app was a useful tool but could do with a few tweeks to make its use more obvious.since it took me quite awhile to discover where the session  feedback button was. Perhaps I'm just a bit slow when it comes to all this technology malarkey.

So what about the sessions?

Simon Wardley was an interesting opening keynote speaker who delivered the sort of data and content rich material I like. Others in the audience I spoke to seemed to like it too. I'm not sure if any of us took in everything he said but for me it certainly kick started a conference experience that was about disruptive evolution rather than desperately trying to maintain the status quo.

Being the TCS European Lead for Service Integration I couldn't really resist Steve Morgan's session on Service Integration. It was one of many sessions this time around that I thought would have benefited from a longer time slot because SI is a big topic with lots to debate. I believe an upcoming itSMF London  and South East Regional group meeting in January is going to do just that with Kevin Holland scheduled to be one of the speakers. As for Steve's conclusions, well it is interesting to see that all of us involved with SI recognize that it is a developing area and neither suppliers nor in house IT departments are really up to speed on it yet.

Speaking of Kev Holland I missed his session on Service Integration and the cloud so I had to wait until we recorded the podcast with him to discover that "What the Romans did for us" was to coin the phrase caveat emptor. I still don't know what Boris Johnson did for us though.

If I'm honest I was a little disappointed in the one practitioner war story session I went to. Angela Wint from Merton Council has been a great guest on the podcast and was a well deserving winner of the 2011 ITSM Champion award so perhaps my expectations were set too high and in contrast to Steve's session I thought the material on introducing self service was stretched out to fill the slot. Others raved about it though.

I missed out on a lot of the official conference activity over lunch and the early afternoon whilst having the sort of intense ITSM conversations that only happen at an event like this. I'm sure I'm not alone in finding  the networking and discussions that take place provide a lot of the value of attending these conferences. For me it was a personal delight to meet up with so many international speakers and visitors, especially those I hadn't seen since Pink 11. Equally it was enjoyable to broker some introductions between my connections.

It wasn't until I was on the way home after day 2 that I realized how few exhibitors I'd spoken to even though I had a long list of those I wanted to chat with. In fact I'm not sure any of them even managed to scan my badge. I also didn't get to meet many new faces although I know many were at the event for the first time. The exhibition was clearly a success with people were showing a genuine interest in the stands they were visiting rather than just killing time. APMG deserve a special mention for the mini seminars on a wide range of topics they were offering on the stand as well as some very refreshing non-alcoholic cocktails.

The real interest for me was in the first two sessions I went to on day 2.

Aale Roos and I have been collaborating for some time on the concept of Service Desk 2.0 and he has been making waves with his message that it can be useful to Unlearn ITIL. In the Nordics this has led to him being recognized as a major contributor to the ITSM industry. Having seen some of the venom that has been unleashed on him by the old guard here and on other blogs I was intrigued to see how his session was going to be received. I'd already been told there was disquiet in the iTSMF UK about its content, so I was keen to get a ringside seat.

I think Aale himself knows that the thinking behind Unlearning ITIL still needs some work. The result is that it is easy to find individual elements of the presentation to pick on and pull apart and in doing so to believe you are undermining the whole concept. I'm afraid that's exactly what one well known member of the audience did. It made for some interesting traffic on twitter.

My take-aways on the subject at the moment are:

• ITIL is claimed to best practice but  even in basic areas such as incident and problem management what ITIL suggests isn't in line with Lean, ToC, Agile, and  (non-ITIL) Service Design thinking or the best approaches to those subjects outside of ITSM
• The customer and user view of service expectations is evolving much more rapidly than the underlying ITIL operating model
• Education that focuses on what ITIL says distracts delegates from exploring how to make ITSM work in practice

I'm sure Aale will comment himself on whether that is a fair representation of his position, but I have to say reading what I've just written it makes perfect sense to me and echoes what I'm seeing in the real world.

Aale did make a point of stressing in the podcast that he isn't advocating throwing the ITIL baby out with the bathwater.

The session led to probably my favourite tweet of the conference, from Clare Agutter

Their tiny arms make it hard to tweet #itsmdinosaur

If retweets are anything to go by though I think Mark Smalley's session probably produced the most popular tweet of the event, and since I sent it I got the benefit of all the klout:

IT is Something the business don't understand delivered by people they don't trust

Mark, whose job title seems to have changed from IT Paradigmologist to Ambassador, gave an inspiring session on the reality of trying to understand the business and how BiSL might help. One comment of his that got the room clapping but divided opinion was

Ban SLAs

Let us be honest SLAs don't really capture the essence of the true service that the customer wants, and as we know metrics drive behaviours so if the targets are sub-optimal so is the service.


I spent the last two hours of the conference recording two episodes of the podcast and I really wish we'd done them as a formal session in front of an audience because the debates were really powerful. So let me thank our international band of contributors

Kaimar Karu, Stuart Rance, James Norris, Ros Satar, Kathryn Howard, Kevin Holland, Aale Roos and Ben Clacy. Unfortunately my lens wasn't wide enough to get them all in. Ben's contribution was linked to the upcoming joint venture "sale" of ITIL and his time was very much appreciated when I'm sure he had better things to do with the conference coming to a close.

I did feel that both overall attendance was down, and some sessions were very poorly attended  so I'm waiting to hear what the official figures were. I did notice some companies and individuals were noticeable by their absence, and a few people told me that with money being tight they might got to the SDI conference instead next year.

Overall conclusion? As always it was an enjoyable event and it was great that this year there were a few more sessions pushing the boundaries and leaving ITIL trailing in their wake. Will I definitely be going next year? Well that depends on a lot of factors but I'm not a very representative member of the audience. If you haven't ever been to one, or you haven't been for a couple of years then I think it is a good investment.