Post Pink Ponderings

It seems that many of us who were at Pink14 this year have been in a reflective mood since returning, and that those reflections have some common themes.

Sophie Danby has been questioning what it means to be an ITSM Community whilst Charles Araujo has been putting into words an overview of the discussions we had about the future of SMCongress. Those of us who were in the Pink Think Tank are thinking about how we can make the content we discussed useful to a wide audience,   and there has been a wider debate on the Back2ITSM group and on Rob's blog  about how itSMF International can be reinvigorated by giving people access to material that is currently hidden in plain sight.

I think these different discussions are extremely important for the future of both ITSM and ITIL. Not because I believe the future lies in crowd-sourcing but because I believe the future depends on getting three things right:

• A career structure that keeps people engaged with ITSM in the long term
• ITSM approaches, including ITIL, being driven by market needs
• A professional body for those working in ITSM in whatever role

This actually mirrors pretty much what I experienced many years ago when Internal Audit began to develop as a profession in its own right. Of course being IT people we would much rather reinvent the wheel than look outside IT for guidance.

How does this relate back to those post-Pink discussions?

We might as well start with the Pink conference itself. I've said many times that all the events we go to have their own sweet spot. Pink probably has several sweet spots. It manages to reach out to a wide range of participants, delivers a variety of content, and, perhaps this is the key, it actively reaches out to engage with participants, speakers, and , thanks to the streaming of keynotes and the encouragement of independent SocMed content it even reaches out to those who were not in the room.

There is a reason that so many of  us believe that Pink is the once-in-a-lifetime-must-go-to-event-for ITSM and to be honest it isn't because they get the best speakers and have the best programme. It is because they encourage an environment in which networking and the discussion of ideas, both theoretical and practical is not only encouraged but actually hard to avoid. Compare that to the many conferences I go to where in  all honesty the audience remains un-engaged and unchanged.  I'm not recommending this, but you could go to Vegas the week is Pink is on, checking in on the Saturday, enjoy all the attractions of Vegas during the daytime and then in the evenings sit in on the discussions that take place in the two piano bars and you would take away an awful lot of ITSM goodness.   

Despite of, or perhaps even because of, Pink's commercial nature it actually feels more like what I used to experience at conferences for Chief Internal Auditors.  This is a meeting of professionals who believe in what they are trying to achieve, who are open to learning in many forms and who are given the resources and support to help them do things better when they go back to the office on Monday morning.

The ITSM chattering classes on SocMed that are such an easy target for Rob's blog love talking about the ITSM community. I think there are some good reasons for that, not least because the nature of ITSM means that it attracts people who, mostly, genuinely care about other people and want to share not just knowledge but also emotional support. However I believe that it is a red-herring. We won't make progress until we stop thinking

How do we engage the wider ITSM community?

and start thinking

How do we make ITSM a profession?

So, how do we make ITSM a profession?

You'll find lots of definitions out there but let me suggest a few things from my days as a professional internal auditor.

• A professional body membership of which is effectively amnadatory
• A career path that includes multiple options 
• A body of knowledge
• Exams that are controlled by the professional body
• Professional standards that allow an outsider to judge whether a professional is acting in accordance with good practice
• Support from higher education
• A code of ethics and a disciplinary body 

Perhaps here we have a role for SMCongress. Perhaps it should be the catalyst for the switch to becoming a true profession?

I await your thoughts.

Is ITSM a Profession?

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