Introduction – Why is Change Management so hard?

 

Michael:  When organizations consider which ITIL process will make the biggest ROI impact, Change Management is usually chosen as a top priority.  However, anyone that’s managed people before knows how difficult it can be to get them to change their behaviors and habits.  Perhaps that’s why Change Management has been impossible for most organizations to implement effectively.  Most people think (whether they admit this or not) that they don’t have to work in partnership with the people that will have to change their behaviors.  They assume that their staff will simply do their bidding!

 

Bill:  You’re right; Change Management is a common starting point for an ITIL initiative. I worked for an organization that had an informal Change Management process that can be described as follows:

• Effective?  Yes.  Kind of…
• Documented?  No.
• Enabled in an ITSM tool?  No – email was used.
• Continuously improving?  No – lack of data/metrics meant it was impossible to manage and improve.
• Scalable?  No – recent organizational growth demonstrated that it was not going to be able to effectively support the organization moving forward.

 

 

Putting up a Resistance

 

As you’ve alluded to, while I realized that while we needed to implement a ‘formal’ Change Management process that was followed by the key stakeholders in the organization, the existing process was so deeply embedded in the culture that suggestions on improving the process had to be done extremely tactfully. 

 

When we mentioned that we wanted to mature the process, there was immediate resistance, particularly from the middle managers who ran it, to modifying the process. They were comfortable with how they had done things. They were afraid of over bureaucratizing, and they were a little nervous over the prospect of giving up some of their power.

 

 

Getting Everyone on The Same Page

 

We included the stakeholders (in particular, resistant middle management) into an analysis of the current process and the design of the new way we wanted to do things.  When the team began by making a model of the existing process, we quickly identified a level of Change that required the managers to coordinate with several other units. It was proposed that these complex and potentially high impact Changes could be more efficiently handled with a centralized Change Advisory Board.

 

 

Let’s Just Get The CAB Going!

 

The process of analyzing/designing the Change Management process in and of itself led our stakeholders to form a Change Advisory Board.  Keep in mind that this CAB was formed in the absence of a formal, documented Change Management process. 

 

We began with a very narrow focus. The CAB was formed to make an immediate improvement in handling high impact Changes. Initially, it was composed primarily of the functional managers who previously were responsible for coordinating the Changes their units undertook.

 

 

The Proof is in the CAB

 

The initial meetings were met with some skepticism, and there was much to learn and figure out as we moved along. However, it was not long before the CAB came to be appreciated and embedded into the culture of the group. It provided a structured place to bring Changes and ensured proper discussion and coordination.

 

But it didn’t happen overnight.  It took about six months before the CAB became the obvious way of doing business. In short, it made preparing for complex and high-impact Changes much easier and more predictable.  The CAB also provided a layer of legitimate ‘cover.’ If a manager was unsure of something she now had a predictable place to vet the issue. The CAB would discuss and bring to senior management if necessary.

 

 

The Spirit of Change Management Drives Enthusiasm for Formal Change Management

 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the CAB’s relatively quick success provided a proof of concept that drove the adoption of a full, mature Change Management process.

 

The formation of the CAB allowed everyone to get used to the idea that approval for complex and high impact changes was necessary and formal. Therefore, it was a natural next step to extend the process and to define ‘Normal’ Changes (changes that needed formal approval but didn’t need to be on the CAB’s formal agenda).  It was still hard work, but the path had been cleared for the definition of Normal and pre-approved Changes and to enable the process in ITSM software.

 

 

MJ:  I love it!  What you’ve described is adopting Change Management best practices in a way that builds momentum for all stakeholders.  Instead of becoming mired in process definition and the bickering that inevitably ensues about who owns what, you focused on implementing the spirit of change management, which is letting everyone know what’s changing so that any red flags can be brought to light! 

 

Do you have any other suggestions for anyone else trying to adopt Change Management?

 

Bill:  Most organizations have some level of change management, or change coordination. If you have more than one server in your machine room, or even if you manage more than one application on your one server, there must be some level of communication to avoid conflicts and collisions. Think about whether and how you can leverage the existing patterns of behavior. Rather than start with a radical overhaul, the path to a complete mature Change process may be shorter if you begin by formalizing what you currently do. There will still be bickering, but you just might be able to minimize it and make faster progress.

 

 

Bill Cunningham (PMP, ITIL Practitioner) is an organizational change agent focused on improving operations through ITSM.  He is on the board of the itSMF Higher Education SIG and frequently presents on ITIL/ITSM.

 

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

Michael Jagdeo is a Director at B Wyze Solutions. In this blog, he describes an experience creating a modular ITIL v3 education plan to drive Service Desk improvements in a bare bones, non-certification driven, practical way…

Story Highlights:

• Problem: The client needed a way to encourage their Service Desk Analysts to suggest and operationalize Continual Service Improvement (“CSI”) initiatives before the end of the year. They also needed to train them on ITIL v3 best practices relevant to the Desk’s 18-month plan.
• Modular ITIL v3 education: Instead of having them attend 2-3 day Foundation courses, or even have them go through an entire eLearning course, we work with the Team Lead to choose the relevant ITIL v3 function/process modules.
• Instructional Design: Instead of throwing the training at the Analysts, we devise a detailed, practical strategy to get them actively involved in the training, in a timely manner, and promote active thinking around CSI initiatives.

 
SITUATION

• 5 service desk agents taking 20-25 incidents per day.
• 1,200 end users at the corporate office
• All of the analysts have been working on the desk for over 1 year.
• None of the analysts have a background with ITIL best practices.
• They are short-staffed, and so taking time away from the desk is next to impossible.

TASK

Each staff member in the company must come up with one continuous improvement initiative by the end of the calendar year. Therefore, we needed to encourage the analysts to identify and implement CSI initiatives by providing them with training relevant to:

1. Their role.
2. The 18-month Service Desk Plan as set by management.

Notice that the task is not, ‘Get them ITIL Foundation certified’ or ‘Have them take a 2-3 day course.’

The goal, now and forever, is to improve the service that the service desk provides to the end user community. All activities that the desk engages in must be aligned with this goal in mind.

ACTION

A. Initial Assessment

I met with the Service Desk Team Lead on Thursday, July 9^th 2009 thinking that, at the very least, the analysts should go through our Service Desk, Incident, Problem, and Change Management eLearning modules given that they were so busy. I felt the analysts would be more engaged in learning that related to processes that they carried out every day (as opposed to learning about the intricacies of other processes like Demand Management).

B. Additional training priorities

After discussing the Team Leader’s goals, we realized that Configuration Management, Access Management, Service Catalog Management (and therefore Service Level Management), were other relevant eLearning modules given their 18-month Service Desk Improvement Plan.

C. Instructional Design

Now that we decided which ITIL v3 process training would encourage the analysts to come up with CSI initiatives, we had to design the delivery of the learning to ensure that CSI initiatives were suggested and operationalized before year’s end.

We came up with the following strategy:

• We created a briefing session for the analysts, which included a(n):
  • Overview of the ITIL v3 modules they’d be specifically focusing on.
  • Emphasis on the ultimate goal: to provide them the training they needed to suggest and implement CSI initiatives.
• We instituted dated milestones for each module (i.e. finish Service Desk and Incident Management in the first 15 days). To simply tell the analysts that they had X number of days to complete the course was out of the question. We couldn’t afford the training to take more than 45 days because the CSI initiatives had to be suggested and implemented before the end of the year. Keep in mind that they Analysts would be doing the training on their own time.
• We created a simple document with two columns to encourage the analysts to actively think about how to apply the knowledge. On the left-hand side of the page, we had the name of the process/function. On the right side, the analyst had space to jot down CSI initiatives/ideas that popped into their mind based on what they learned in the module. I cannot stress this enough: this training would prove ineffective if the analysts didn’t operationalize these best practices by changing the way they did their job AND suggest ways to improve the service desk as a whole.
• Agreed to have multiple staff meetings after the training to consolidate the list of suggestions, prioritize/schedule the ensuing tasks/projects, and get a feel for the ITIL v3 ROI.

RESULT

To be determined (this meeting occurred on Thursday, July 10th 2009 and I wrote this on the Friday!)

REVIEW & ANALYSIS

Applied Science – one of the theories behind this approach

Applied Science states that learning occurs when behavioral change is realized. The steps to realizing behavioral change are as follows:

1. Teach the Learner the material.
2. Ensure Learner comprehension.
3. Let the Learner test out the material/ideas in the real world to see if they work or not.
4. Have Learners participate in a Community of Practice where they share what worked, what didn’t, and what they would modify.
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 until the desired result is smooth and frothy ;-) .

When we talk Education, ROI is realized via Behavioral Change

ITIL education is not about getting certified. It’s not about going to a 3-day course. It’s about changing the way we deliver service to the business in a way that supports their initiatives.

Folks, let’s get back to training 101.

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

MJ:  Pete Wilder is the former Head of ITSM for the Asset Management division of a global Investment Bank.  This is Part 1 of a 3-part blog documenting his journey.  Part 2 discusses Outsourcing and Part 3 discuss a Tool Deployment and ITIL Adoption.  I should note that while we are a provider of ITIL in-class/online education, I did not edit any of Pete’s answers with respect to the value of ITIL education.  Skeptical?  Feel free to contact him! 

 

Story Highlights:

• I’m the Head of Service Management – Now What?
• Let’s Begin!  Kind of… – I still have my old job
• ITSM Education – The decision to get ITIL v2 Manager certified
• ITIL V2 vs. V3 Education – Starting off with what ITIL does best
• Educating Staff on ITIL Best Practices – Not everyone needs ITIL foundation training, let alone certification
• Profound Support from Senior Management

 

 

I’m the Head of Service Management – Now What?

 

After a reorganization at the Bank I found myself labeled the new, ‘Head of Service Management’ for one of the three business divisions.  Pretty cool, eh!?  Now the fun would start!  Or so I thought…

 

You see, nobody really knew – or agreed to – what this role would entail. 

 

Senior Management came up with a blueprint for the IT organization and were rolling it out across the organization.  So here I was, ITIL Foundations v2 certified, 15+ years of experience in Service Delivery, with a passion for service.

 

This is how the journey began for me.  The following is the part one in a series that will describe how we achieved a cultural shift in the way that we supported the business.

 

 

Overview

 

Broadly speaking, my journey involved the following:

1. Part 1:  ITSM Education
2. Part 2:  Outsourcing 
3. Part 3:  Tool Deployment
   • ITIL Implementation/Adoption
   • Metrics and the Ensuing Behavioral Change

 

 

Let’s Begin!  Kind of…

 

For the first few months, I was still dealing with legacy responsibilities.  Nothing really changed and everyone was still doing the same job as they did before.   Sure, they may have had a new job title, a new department name, or even a new line manager.  But they were still doing the same activities day in, day out.

 

In fact, the only difference was that I moved to a new department (the one I used to provide services to).  And hey, Pete?  By the way, your old role doesn’t exist anymore, but the work still needs to be done, so you get to do your old job and the new one.  And hey, Pete?  Another thing:  if a project or activity even so much as alludes to the idea of ‘service’ you’re taking the lead.

 

 

ITSM Education

 

So I made a decision – I wanted to do the ITIL Manager’s Certificate training and get my Red Badge.  That way, at least one person would know what the role should entail.  Luckily, I had an understanding manager who approved the training without hesitation.

 

MJ:  Can you flesh out why you thought it was necessary to get ITIL certified?

 

Peter:  I was passionate about service delivery and got excited when providing customer delight.  ITIL struck a chord with me because it seemed to align with these interests.

 

Throughout my IT career, I was aware that the IT Department’s customer satisfaction ratings were consistently low.  Colleagues would refer to customers as ‘clots’ or ‘dummies’.  It was as if they expected business users to be as proficient as they were at IT.

 

They didn’t seem to understand that the customer just wanted something that worked when it was supposed to and an explanation when it didn’t.  When they submitted a Service Request they wanted to know how long it would take, how much it would cost, and who had to approve it.  They also wanted to know how the request was progressing, who was dealing with it, and who they could contact if the SLA was breached.  IT departments seemed to be largely populated with techies who sometimes treated the customer as an annoying interruption, interfering with their quest to develop more and more gadgets using bleeding edge technology.

 

After taking the V2 Foundation training, I was converted.  I worked in an organization with 10,000 people in the IT department plus 3^rd party service providers.  ITIL made so much sense in this kind of highly complex, globally distributed computing environment.  If nothing else, ITIL provided a common language and terminology.

 

Obviously, I recognized that ITIL would do more than that.  It provided a framework to measure and manage IT.  I’m not saying that I thought ITIL was a panacea for all evils, but it was the best we had given our challenges.  Furthermore, it was being adopted and providing beneficial results to organizations we respected.  This widespread adoption only added to the allure/value of ITIL.  It made no sense to go down another route while the rest of the world was ITILizing.

 

Getting back to your question, I wanted to improve my knowledge and get qualified.  I was proud of the position that I had, I enjoyed the challenge of evangelizing ITIL and I felt it could only enhance my credibility if I completed the Manager’s Certificate training.

 

 

ITIL V2 vs. V3 Education

 

MJ:  If you had to do it all again, would you have gone down the ITIL v2 Manager path?  Would you have pursued training other than ITIL certification?

 

Peter:  Yes, I would have gone down the same route.  I have no regrets about the ITIL training that I took.  In fact, I would thoroughly recommend it.

 

When I took my training, V3 wasn’t available.  However, I think V2 is a good starting point for most organizations and a challenge in itself to implement.  I believe V3 is a definite improvement and provides a more refined view of IT services but I think it is appropriate to deploy the mature aspects of V3 in mature organizations.  I wouldn’t recommend ‘leapfrogging’ over what ITIL does best, namely Incident, Problem, Change, and Service Level Management. 

 

MJ:  FYI, for those who would like a better understanding of the differences between ITIL V2 and V3, click here.  The focus of V2 was on Incident, Problem, Change, Service Level, Capacity and Availability Management.  V3 wraps all processes/functions into a Service Lifecycle, which consists of Service Strategy, Design, Transition, Operation, and Continual Service Improvement.

 

 

Educating Staff on ITIL Best Practices

 

MJ:  Now the thousand-dollar question:  did you educate your staff on ITIL best practices?  If so, how did you do it?

 

Peter:  When I joined the Asset Management division as Head of ITSM, the training department asked me for my training requirements.  I made sure that ITIL education was a priority for those individuals delivering services to end users.  That said, I certainly did not believe everyone needed to be ‘certified’.

 

To ensure that my staff was adequately trained on ITIL best practices to help them provide better service, broke up the training as follows:

1. Half-day ITIL awareness sessions for everyone.
2. Two-day condensed ITIL Foundation classes for those that needed it.
3. One-day ‘practitioner’ level training for Incident, Problem, and Change Management given to those individuals that required more advanced education.

 

If a staff member wanted to get certified, it was up to his/her line manager to get the certification exam approved and funded.

 

 

Profound Support from Senior Management

 

MJ:  Was the ITIL education program supported by senior management?

 

Peter:  Absolutely – so much so that the Global Head of Infrastructure produced an introductory video seen by every staff member taking the training.  In the video, he personally talked about the importance of ITIL training and the adoption of ITIL best practices in the organization.

 

 

Click here for Part 2:  Outsourcing

Click here for Part 3:  Tool Deployment & ITIL Adoption

 

 

Pete Wilder is a certified ITIL V2 Manager (Red Badge) ITSM professional with extensive cross industry experience covering Financial Services, Construction, Utilities and the Public Sector.

Results oriented and client focused with a long proven track record of service delivery and client satisfaction.  He is currently seeking a challenging opportunity to demonstrate his passion for providing service excellence and customer delight.

 

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

MJ:  This is part 2 of my talk with Pete Wilder, former Head of ITSM for the Asset Management division of a global investment bank (Part 1 discusses ITSM Education and Part 3 talks about a Tool Deployment and ITIL Adoption.  In this entry, Pete talks about the trials, tribulations, and lessons learned from migrating to and working with an outsourced, offshore Service Desk…

 

Story Highlights:

• The Set Up:  An audit shows that the Service Desk isn’t up to par.  The decision is made to outsource.
• Initial Turmoil:  End Users are frustrated that they can no longer pay a visit to Joe Helpdesk to get what they want.
• How I addressed these Issues: SLM and an Incident Management Portal.
• CSI:  Via the creation of an End User Forum.
• Lessons Learned:  Pay close attention to how the outsourcer is encouraged to act via the chargeback model!

 

 

The Set Up

 

The IT department was fairly proactive in terms of how it managed itself.  They knew that from time to time, the business would ask, “Why does IT cost so much?”  As a global investment bank, the IT budget was in excess of two billion dollars per annum. 

 

So we did an exercise internally and compared ourselves to market.  Broadly speaking, we were efficient based on our size and quality provided.    That said, it was decided that we could be more efficient when it came to End User Platforms (end user computing; desktop, desk side support, service desk, email, etc.). 

 

The investment banking division was already being serviced by an outsourcer.  They went down that path because they felt we were behind in the remote access arena.  There were new technologies available that would decrease the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for desktops.  Now it was our turn to outsource.

 

 

Important Considerations:

 

·         We originally had regional helpdesks in Zurich, Singapore, New York, and London.  They handled desk side support, small projects, and some 2^nd level support, in addition to typical level 1 incident management activities.  Therefore, we had to split out these various activities to different parts of the outsourcing organization.

·         I reduced the desk side support staff by 50% and transferred the remainder to the 3^rd party’s organization.

·         The personnel employed by the 3rd party weren’t familiar with the organization and English wasn’t their native tongue.  

 

 

Initial Turmoil

 

While the IT organization officially told the business heads that we were moving into an offshore, outsourced Service Desk, the message didn’t trickle down to the end users abroad.  In theory, it should have, but it didn’t.

 

So the end users quickly found out that the Service Desk no longer existed in the way that they were used to.  Next, they realized that they didn’t like the new Service Desk.  They were used to walking a few yards, tapping Joe Helpdesk on the shoulder, and getting immediate service restoration. Now, they had to call the offshore Service Desk, log a ticket, and let the Service Desk Analyst try to resolve the incident remotely.  Typically, after 20 minutes or so, the Service Desk Analyst would say he needed to transfer the ticket to his colleague on-site who would be along shortly to assist.

 

In addition, certain services were breaking down.  For example, there was a new Access Management portal that allowed end users to gain rights to certain documents, application functionalities, etc.  However, due to various complications, the Asset Management division wasn’t able to gain entry to the portal.

 

 

How I Addressed These Issues

 

Tactically, I had to make sure that our services were restored.  I recognized which services were having the most issues and impact on the business and brought these to the attention of the outsourcer.  In response, additional training was provided to the Service Desk Agents.  In addition, I had to work with the end user community to define/rationalize the SLA’s around the various services that they were complaining about.

 

Over time, we developed a long list of  SLA’s for typical service requests.  I also created a portal where end users could go to track the status of their incident/service request.

 

 

Driving Outsourcing Excellence via Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

 

I set up a customer survey program, where a certain portion of end users would receive a customer satisfaction survey after their ticket was closed.  This information along with the Incident Management data served as the basis for CSI initiatives.

 

Tactically, I looked at the comments and worked with the outsourcer to address problematic trends via additional training and process improvements.  After awhile, the outsourcer became proactive about addressing these trends because they knew I would hold their feet to the fire at the end of the month!

 

Strategically, I worked with the IT governance team to develop a list of services that we were continuing to underperform on.  This list was built, in part, by the institution of an End User Forum whereby members of the business community could voice their concerns and ask questions.  The governance team would then create a formal report clarifying service improvement priorities and I’d work on that list with the outsourcer.  This did wonders for us when it came to improving communication/alignment with the business.

 

 

Lessons Learned

 

1.    We should have managed end user expectations more closely.  In fact, I think that the End User Forum should have been created prior to the outsourcing arrangement so that they could have their concerns voiced and become properly informed of how services were going to change.  This would have gone a long way in improving customer satisfaction post-implementation.

2.    We should have done more work when it came to verifying the effectiveness of the outsourcers tools/systems, like the Access Management portal.

3.    I learned a lot from monitoring the outsourcer.  In the future, I’m going to spend more time defining how the outsourcer will be paid.  For example, the outsourcer was paid for every request ticket closed.  We should have created the chargeback model to address only ‘successful’ transactions.

 

 

Click here for Part 1:  Introduction & ITSM Education

Click here for Part 3:  Tool Deployment & ITIL Adoption

 

 

Pete Wilder is a certified ITIL V2 Manager (Red Badge) ITSM professional with extensive cross industry experience covering Financial Services, Construction, Utilities and the Public Sector.

Results oriented and client focused with a long proven track record of service delivery and client satisfaction.  He is currently seeking a challenging opportunity to demonstrate his passion for providing service excellence and customer delight.

 

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

This is part 3 of my discussion with Pete Wilder, former Head of ITSM for the Asset Management division of a global investment bank (Part 1 discussed ITSM Education and Part 2 talked about Outsourcing).  In this installment, Pete talks about how an tool/ITIL/metrics implementation led to a cultural change in how IT provided services to the business…

 

Story Highlights:

·         Implementing ITIL Best Practices – where to start?  Reporting on Incident Management was harder than I thought.

·         The Town Hall – My opportunity to personally promote the ITSM tool implementation globally.

·         The Turning Point:  Our KPI Scorecard – Behavioral change!  Divisions positively battle it out for KPI supremacy.

·         Refining Metrics into Meaningful Key Performance Indicators – Aligning metrics with business need.

·         It’s More Than Just the Tool

·         A Note About Implementing ITIL – Momentum matters.

·         Culture, Culture, Culture!

·         Lessons Learned – How agile and user-friendly is your tool?

 

 

Implementing ITIL Best Practices – where to start?

 

I decided to implement ITIL.  Uhmm, where to start?  How do you go about evangelizing ITIL in a major organization?  Well, this is how it unfolded for me…

 

Senior Management wanted to know how we were doing from an Incident Management point of view.  Simple enough, right?

 

Yeah, right.  It was only when I started trying to produce Incident Management reports that I discovered problems like:

·         Analysts weren’t always logging incidents.

·         We had old-style Help Desks in Singapore, Zurich, London, and New York, and Sydney all with different ticketing systems.  Aggregating Incident Management data was a nightmare.

 

Without a single Incident Management tool, it was very difficult for us to measure, manage, and improve our performance.  Fortunately, the bank in its wisdom decided to implement an ITSM tool  across all divisions for Incident.

 

 

The Town Hall

 

I led the tool implementation for Incident & Change Management, in parallel, to 200 IT staff globally.  With parallel deployments, there was plenty of room for confusion.  To add another layer of complexity, the Change Management and Incident Management processes selected resided in different version of the tool!

 

I was asked to make a presentation about the tool implementation in a ‘Town Hall’ meeting, a global live video conference for the entire IT organization for the major hubs in London, New York, Zurich, Singapore and Sydney.  This was my chance to address everybody and give them a ‘heads up’ of what was coming down the line in the near future.  I had time to prepare my material and give a succinct presentation.  A couple of team members came up to me afterwards and congratulated me, which was nice!  It’s not often you get a pat on the back in IT.

 

 

The Turning Point:  Our KPI Scorecard

 

Again, senior management was looking for Incident Management reports.  Once the tool had been deployed to all locations, I was now in a position to start generating those reports from a single tool.  In hindsight, this was the turning point for us.  We started off with simple indicators like no. of incidents resolved/unresolved, no. of successful/unsuccessful changes by team, etc.

 

I aggregated the data to develop a 12-week rolling trend.   Picture a simple table with metrics on it, ranking each IT department against each other like sports teams on a leaderboard.  When I published the data, it got quite a bit of attention from the Team Leaders! 

 

The initial reaction from the TL’s was hostile and they resisted the data being published.  However, two things helped to ensure the initiative had staying power. 

1.    The initiative had the support of senior management. 

2.    Their performance on the scorecard would be included in their performance reviews!  

 

Instead of updating the ticketing system when it was convenient, the Team Leaders now had a meaningful reason to make sure that their staff was updating incident records every single time.  This is when the tool implementation and ITIL adoption resulted in an organization-wide behavioral change.

 

 

Refining Metrics into Meaningful Key Performance Indicators

 

Over time, I started to refine the data and produce meaningful KPI’s which helped us align with the business.  For example, instead of just keeping track of incident volumes, we started categorizing incidents based on Severity 1-3.  Therefore, we were able to show the business how well we were fixing their most important issues.  In addition, this data helped us deploy our continual service improvement forces more strategically.

 

For example, if the business was dissatisfied with the time in which we resolved Severity 1 incidents, they didn’t really care if we were meeting the formal SLA.  We would renegotiate the SLA and inject funding to meet their demands.

 

I was now able to measure our performance against the targets set by the Department Head.  Within a few weeks, IT colleagues were approaching me to find out more about how to improve their KPI’s.  What was this ITIL training all about?  Where could they get it?  Imagine the smile on my face!

 

 

It’s More Than Just the Tool

 

Did the tool deployment help us track incidents in a refined manner?  Yes.  Did it promote standardization in terms of how we provided IT services?  Yes.  But it ended up doing more than that. 

 

The KPI scoreboard created healthy competition by pitting department against department.  Furthermore, the tool drove our process development and maturity.  When configuring the tool we had the chance to define/redefine our processes.  In this way, the tool helped to drive optimal processes as well as the ethos and culture of our people.

 

 

Finally, People Knew Who I Was

 

When I started out, I was just a pest bothering infrastructure about best practices for Incident and Change Management.  The Team Leaders were busy guys with production issues to attend to.  But after the metrics leaderboard was produced, I became the go-to guy for ideas on how to improve their metrics, the hub for discussions around service improvement initiatives.

 

 

A Note About Implementing ITIL

 

When deploying ITIL, I think it’s important to deliver quick wins to demonstrate value.  With V3 there are more processes and boxes to fill with obvious headcount implications.  It’s a harder sell if you’re trying to get ITIL adopted from scratch.  With more mature organizations, there’s a good chance that many of the V3 processes already exist, just by different names.  What tends to be missing is a cohesive and overarching strategy to integrate the people, processes and tools into a seamless service, all while ensuring that there’s enough momentum created to convince the business to keep funding the initiative.

 

MJ:  Did you consult other methodologies/best practice frameworks in your role as Head of ITSM?

 

Pete:  As I’ve mentioned in Part 1, ITIL is not a panacea.  I believe that project management training such as Prince2/PMBOK and business process improvement training like Lean IT/Six Sigma/BPM have their part to play in providing IT services that are fit for purpose and fit for use. Having said all that, I cannot stress enough the importance of culture.

 

 

Culture, Culture, Culture!

 

The IT department’s people and their attitude towards customers are paramount to providing a quality IT service.  It’s perfectly possible to provide a quality IT service without formal IT processes in place provided the culture is right.  It might not be possible to measure it but the customer satisfaction would definitely be there.  On the other hand, if the culture isn’t customer-oriented, you can have world class processes and tools with metrics and KPIs coming out of your ears,  but the customer satisfaction ratings will still be low.

 

 

Lessons Learned

 

1.    When an end user makes a request and it has to be escalated, he/she will want to know the status of the request.  When you have an informal, internal, old-style Helpdesk, the need to stay informed is fulfilled when the end user walks over to Joe Helpdesk and gets a status update.  However, this need was not addressed when we moved to the outsourced, global service desk.  Next time, I’ll make sure that I implement the SharePoint solution that I created sooner, which helped end users peek into our ITSM tool and find out the status of their request.

2.    I wish that we had a SAAS tool with a great GUI when we were selecting our tool.  The tool we selected  was expensive and cumbersome to update, especially when it came to defining/changing processes.  With SAAS-type ITSM tools, I don’t have to wait for a centralized IT engineer to update the tool; I can configure it myself.  The benefit of a good GUI means you can roll it out to end users and give them the option to create and track incidents/service requests (thereby promoting self-service).

3.    Without a doubt, in the future I’m going to take a bottom-up approach to the ITIL Adoption by involving the line teams/managers from the outset.  The Team Leaders were initially upset when I rolled out the KPI Scoreboard.  To avoid this, I will announce in advance the intention to gather metrics and publish reports alluding to their performance.  I want to ensure that I keep the same competitive but fun edge to the initiative.  Perhaps I’ll offer a monthly bottle of champagne to the best performing team.

 

 

Click here for Part 1:  Introduction & ITSM Education

Click here for Part 2:  Outsourcing

 

 

Pete Wilder is a certified ITIL V2 Manager (Red Badge) ITSM professional with extensive cross industry experience covering Financial Services, Construction, Utilities and the Public Sector.

Results oriented and client focused with a long proven track record of service delivery and client satisfaction.  He is currently seeking a challenging opportunity to demonstrate his passion for providing service excellence and customer delight.

 

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