Lee Marshall, ITSM Consultant, read the blog I made last week (click here for the post). The following entry outlines the second half of the conversation that ensued (click here for part I)…

What’s Missing from the Client Side?

Lee: Of course, the blame is not just with the rigid ITIL practitioners. Organizations should have clear goals and outcomes for their ITSM program before engaging the services of an ITIL consultant. But often they don’t, and this is where the services of an ITSM consultant who is a true business consultant become invaluable.

MJ: Can you expand on what you mean by, “…having clear goals and outcomes” before engaging with a Consultant? Can you give an example of a clear goal/outcome?

Lee: An example of a clear goal is: Develop an enhanced service level agreement for information and technology services, including service standards and performance targets that are meaningful and relevant to clients. With this management directive, ITIL can be leveraged to implement a Service Level Management process that meets the business goal. A goal like “Implement Service Level Management” or “Build an IT Service Catalogue” means nothing to the business.

Another example could be: Complete a business impact assessment to identify and confirm service continuity requirements for all information and technology applications and services. With this goal, ITIL’s guidance in the areas of IT Service Continuity, Availability and Capacity Management can all be leveraged. But ITIL doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Best practices in fields of disaster recovery and business continuity would also shape this organizational goal.

COBIT provides an excellent framework for linking IT processes to IT goals to business goals. I would recommend that organizations leverage COBIT when doing an assessment of their IT and identifying areas that need improving. To ensure independence, a consultant with COBIT expertise can be used, but the project should be sponsored by an internal group within the organization. Usually this would be senior management, the CIO or internal audit.

What to look for in a True ITSM Consultant

MJ: Ok good. So let’s say that we have an organization that doesn’t have clear goals and outcomes for their ITSM program. You mentioned that this is where a, “…true business consultant becomes invaluable.” What does this person look like?

Lee: A “true” ITSM management consultant or firm can provide the following:

An assessment of the current maturity level of information technology at the organization, using ITIL and COBIT as guides

• Identify areas that require attention enabling IT to focus its efforts
• Work with executives and senior management to build a roadmap
• Work with process and service owners to implement ITIL processes
• Once the areas to focus on have been identified during the assessment and roadmap building phase, then the ITSM consultant can build a team to implement the processes. And that is when an expert in ITIL process documentation will come in handy.

MJ: I love that you said, “Work with process/service owners to implement ITIL processes.” You didn’t say that the consultant him/herself implements the processes. ITIL implementations fail when the consultant becomes the process/service owner and therefore when they leave, the organization reverts back to their old behaviors. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: improving ITSM involves changing the attitudes and behaviors of the staff in an organization.

Lee: So, in conclusion, if your organization has clearly defined the goals and objectives of your ITSM program, and the areas to focus on along with the processes that need improving, then hire yourself an ITIL consultant who can document and rigidly implement processes according to your specifications. Otherwise, find yourself an experienced ITSM business consultant. You will save money in the long run and you will be closer to the ultimate goal: aligning IT with the business.“

Lee Marshall (ITIL v2/v3, COBIT 4.1) is an IT service management professional with over 10 years experience leveraging industry best practices to align IT with the business requirements of organizations. To contact him, visit his website and blog at www.leemarshall-itsm.com or e-mail him at leemarshall.itsm@gmail.com

Michael Jagdeo (SCM, ITIL v2/v3) has an extensive background as a Recruitment Consultant and ITSM/ITIL enthusiast. He has worked on placements in Singapore, Dubai, London, and across North America. As Director of Recruitment Services at B Wyze Solutions, he manages relationships with clients like Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Maple Leaf Foods, and the Government of Ontario.

You might ask how ITIL can possibly intersect with HR – and who benefits?

The short answer: release management and it benefits the bottom line and employees.

The longer version:

I was recently asked to help a large corporate HR training department figure out the best approach for providing training in support of a software implementation. We began with a exercise where small groups documented then told us all their stories of technology training they had been involved with in the past: what worked, what didn’t.

Ah, gotcha! I can read your mind. Terms like SNAFU, FUBAR and worse just flashed through your mind.
Why is that? The answers are always the same:

• “HR got pulled in too late in the project.”
• “The software/screens/interface were still changing as we tried to build and finalize the training.”
• “The roll-out schedules weren’t available till just before release and the release date kept shifting.”
• “The training lab was based on the test environment and we had no reliable way to reset all the data between classes.”

Sound familiar? Thought so. You are not alone.

So how does ITIL help?

Get your HR training contacts plugged into the Project Management Office (PMO) first. (OK that’s not really part of ITIL, but stay with me) This gives them some insight into planned new implementations and upgrades. Forewarned is forearmed.

Plug HR into the Release Management process. They already knew the project was underway (see above), so now they are getting regular updates and may even be able to provide insights. They are also very likely to rub elbows with the software vendor, who just might have some training materials, tools, and best practices.

Ask HR if they have access to Rapid e-Learning development methodologies, like the ones used by our sister company MindMuze. There are solutions that allow for those last minute changes to the application to be reflected in the training.

Pilot and update the course. Strip out the material that isn’t required and make sure to integrate the process and tool training.

Yes, IT is from Mars and HR is from Venus — but space travel is possible. Let’s meet on earth shall we?

Lee Marshall, ITSM Consultant, read the blog I made last week (click here for the post).  The following entry outlines the conversation that ensued…

I’m Upset

Lee:  Over the past fifteen years as an IT service management practitioner and consultant, I have found that ITSM consultants, generally, fall into two categories:

• Those who use ITIL as gospel and are excellent at rigid process documentation, but fail to understand the needs of the business. Hence, their excellent documentation sits on a shelf or network drive and no one looks at it or uses it.
• True management consultants who use ITIL, and other Best Practices, as a guide in achieving the goal of IT service management: aligning IT with the business objectives of the organization.

Unfortunately, the latter tend to be in short supply and the former are what the majority of organizations are getting when they engage the services of an ITIL “consultant”. And it upsets me that ITIL may be getting a bad name because of this. Too many failed ITSM implementations are causing organizations to reconsider ITIL when they need it more than ever to compete in these difficult economic times.

For example, I was once engaged by an organization to implement an IT Service Catalogue. Naturally, I wanted to see what other ITIL processes were in place, as these processes would complement the services and service levels defined in the service catalogue.  The ITIL practitioner at this organization proudly showed me the Incident Management process binder complete with colour Visio diagrams that went on for pages, RACI charts, definitions, etc. And they had produced dozens of these ITIL manuals that sat on various shelves across the organization. However, when I interviewed the lead service desk analyst, who had been there for years and dealt with IT’s customers every day, they were not even aware that the process or the binder existed!

MJ:  It upsets me to no end, too.  Imagine if companies stopped considering implementing six sigma best practices for TQM because of failed implementations!  It’s funny, because when I first heard that they were coming out with ITIL v3, I said, “I hope this doesn’t confuse the industry!  Most organizations don’t have v2 up and running yet!”  I held back on doing my ITIL v3 certification for 3-4 months for this very reason.  It turned out that when I did break down and take the ITIL v3 eLearning course we built, there was a lot of valuable information, i.e.:

·         The Lifecycle of SSàSTàSDàSOàCSI

·         New topics like Demand Management

·         More ITSM-relevant treatments of areas like Security Management

Individuals shouldn’t necessarily look at failed projects and say things can’t be done.  That said, I completely understand why failed implementations can skew the perception of the ITIL value proposition.

Lee:  Absolutely! The fundamentals of service management and ITIL are based on the collective experience of practitioners worldwide, backed up by solid research and science.  The Service Strategy book in v3 attempts to cover some of the science behind service management, such as utility vs. warranty, and I’ve found this has confused many people. But project management and the PMBOK are analogous to service management and ITIL.  Just because some organizations have failed to implement project management doesn’t mean the principles behind the PMBOK are not sound.

Stay tuned for Part II!

Lee Marshall (ITIL v2/v3, COBIT 4.1) is an IT service management professional with over 10 years experience leveraging industry best practices to align IT with the business requirements of organizations.  To contact him, visit his website and blog at www.leemarshall-itsm.com or e-mail him at leemarshall.itsm@gmail.com

Michael Jagdeo (SCM, ITIL v2/v3) has an extensive background as a Recruitment Consultant and ITSM/ITIL enthusiast.  He has worked on placements in Singapore, Dubai, London, and across North America.  As Director of Recruitment Services at B Wyze Solutions, he manages relationships with clients like Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Maple Leaf Foods, and the Government of Ontario.

[ Update May 29 2009 at 5:22pm:  I should mention that, after some consideration, I should have used the term ITIL Zealouts rather than Practitioners.  I'm referring to people that blindly advocate by-the-book ITIL processes and turn a blind eye to business need when implementing ITIL. ]

Henry Mintzberg, world-reknowned management guru, wrote one of the most influential books on management entitled, “Managers, not MBAs.”

[In it], Mintzberg claims that prestigious graduate management schools like Harvard Business School and the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania are obsessed with numbers and that their overzealous attempts to make management a science are damaging the discipline of management. Mintzberg advocates more emphasis on post graduate programs that educate practicing managers (rather than students with little real world experience) by relying upon action learning and insights from their own problems and experiences. (Wikipedia)

I submit that ITIL initiatives, aimed at aligning IT and the business, suffer from the same issue.  Somewhere, somehow, implementing ITIL became formulaic and rigid.  Process templates became king, documentation became more important than behavioral change, and ITIL Foundations training for all became mantra.

Business Consultants, not ITIL Practitioners

When ITIL Practitioners ambush an organization, the biggest complaints that I’ve heard are:

·         They don’t take time to understand the business.

·         They don’t understand the nuances of how the business demand for IT services have influenced how IT services have been designed thus far.

·         The deliverables boil down to pages upon pages of documentation, without any regard to the institutionalization of behaviors that help align IT services with the business.

The industry is flooded with is ITIL Practitioners.  They hold process design templates as gospel and challenge anyone who suggests that the process should be altered based on people, process, technology, or budgetary restrictions. 

Most damaging of all, they push in-class Foundations training for all instead of blended learning tailored to the individual employee in IT.  Why?  Well, at $1,000.00 a student, the money’s too good.

Our Approach

We believe in helping organizations understand what behavioural changes need to occur and then coaching them on how to institutionalize those changes.  We accomplish this by:

1.       Employing a blended learning strategy for ITIL training:

a.       eLearning overviews for those who need a high-level understanding.  (click here for a preview of the course)

b.      eLearning nuggets for those who need process understanding in specific areas (i.e. focusing on Service Desk, Incident, Problem, and Change Management)

c.       eLearning and/or in-class ITIL Foundations training for those who need this level of understanding while taking into consideration the learning style of the individual. (click here for a preview of the course)

2.       Providing coaching and mentoring for managers and process/service owners instead of jumping in as the Change Owners ourselves.  We cannot commit to promoting institutionalized change if we are the Change Owners.  It is crucial that the internal IT teams OWN the implementation of best practices and become the lead Change Agents.  Without their commitment, all is lost.

By creating small wins and coaching senior management, we can ensure that behaviours based on business need and best practices continue to be carried out when we leave.

Conclusion

I don’t necessarily believe that the current economic crisis will necessary revolutionize the ITIL industry and turn the focus on improved behaviors rather than attractive process design.  Why? 

Because behavioral change is hard.  Behavioral change is scary.  Behavioral change forces people to work in partnership with the people they dislike the most.  Scariest of all, behavioral change doesn’t necessarily equate to higher invoices for ITIL Consulting firms. 

We’re carefully building a tight-knit community of Business Consultants in IT.  If interested, simply enter a comment of, “Yes” at the end of this post and we’ll take care of the rest.

Michael Jagdeo (SCM, ITIL v2/v3) has an extensive background as a Recruitment Consultant and ITSM/ITIL enthusiast.  He has worked on placements in Singapore, Dubai, London, and across North America.  As Director of Recruitment Services at B Wyze Solutions, he manages relationships with clients like Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Maple Leaf Foods, and the Government of Ontario.

My conversation regarding why ITIL implementations fail continues with Cindy Allingham, Sr. Consultant…if you’re new to the series, click here for part 1.

Cindy:  … there is a danger in getting caught up in the improvements and losing sight of the actual operation. I call that ITIL Overload; it occurs when more effort is expended on the process than on the results.

How can we identify ITIL Overload? Here are some symptoms:

Cindy:  Excessive delegation of responsibilities by process owners

When specific process-owner duties, such as decision-making in Change Management, are delegated by middle-management to the lowest level possible, it indicates that the organization has little respect for the process. Yet this happens frequently due to resource reductions, and results in lip service to the process. If middle-management or the designated managers don’t have the time to own the process then it needs to be simplified.

Cindy:  Performance measurements don’t relate to the business, but remain relevant to IT only

When there is too much focus on ITIL process, and not enough on results or operations, performance measurements often resemble foreign languages, as far as business is concerned. If you are in a manufacturing company, who cares how many incidents were addressed within 2 hours? At the very least, measurements should be made at the application level, and expressed as impact to the business. (How often I have heard business users complain that IT told them they had provided 99% availability, but the actual application was down 20% of the time!)  If IT management wants to assess whether ITIL process improvements are making a difference, focus on impact on the business.

MJ:  Altogether now!  “The Purpose of ITIL v3 is to expand upon ITIL v3 by focusing on aligning the IT Services to the Business Needs.”

Cindy Allingham (ITIL, PMP, CGEIT) is a Senior Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in all aspects of IT. With several years at the IT executive level, she has an extensive portfolio of experiences in the financial services and government sectors. She specializes in ITIL consulting, project management, and operations improvement.  To reach her, please leave a message at 1.888.418.4230 ext. 222.

Michael Jagdeo is Director Recruitment Services for B Wyze Solutions.