ITILigent Service Management articles

Succeed in the CLOUD with Service Lifecycle Management

JoshuaBrusse — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 02:19:38 GMT

It is no illusion that the cloud is changing IT forever. The question is will it spell the demise of the enterprise IT department as we know it, or will it be a catalyst for the rebirth of IT as a more strategic, innovative, and service-oriented business function?

Cloud has ended IT traditional monopoly; however that does not have to be a threat. On the contrary, it can spark a transformation towards a more valuable and relevant business resource. It is clear that – with the democratization of IT – such organizations must shift its business and operational model from “sole provider and builder” to a model that enables the orchestration of a mosaic of service providers in one – ever changing – value network. This way, IT can become an agile business partner rather than a rigid slow moving DIY shop.

Where is value realised in Service Management?

DavidWheable — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:58:33 GMT

Whether you are an organisation implementing Service Management or a supplier delivering Service Management services to a customer there is always one important question - how do you show value? This isn't easy to answer. We know there is value but what can we show and how do we show it?

5 ways to motivate people for higher performance

JoshuaBrusse — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:36:00 GMT

You hear the cliché all the time: People are our most important asset. But let’s actually look at that statement. If people are so important to your organization, how is that “asset” performing? Is it contributing to the objectives of the company? Is the performance of your human capital driving better business outcomes?

Why a service integration and management strategy is essential for IT

JoshuaBrusse — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:23:57 GMT

I spend a lot of time helping clients transform their IT organizations into ones that are ready for the future. We may talk about consumerization and cloud and how they are affecting IT. But what’s really happening is the democratization of IT. That is, IT doesn’t have the monopoly anymore. Businesses can go anywhere to buy IT services.

This leads to an urgent problem for traditional IT. Information services are absolutely necessary. But who will deliver them? Think of this as analogous to the restaurant business. The need for food will never go away – it’s integral to survival. But if you as a restaurant will not provide the right food, your customers will go elsewhere. In the same way, there’s no company in the world that can survive without information services. But the worst-case scenario is that you close your IT shop because the business is buying information services somewhere else.

How to be an effective leader for change

JoshuaBrusse — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:10:15 GMT

I’ve worked for years helping CIOs and organizations transform their organizations. And in my experience leadership is the #1 thing that’s important if you want to achieve any form of change. This includes (large) ITIL implementations. If you don’t demonstrate leadership, people won’t actually change.

Communication isn’t taken care of, even when you think it is

JoshuaBrusse — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 04:00:12 GMT

Communication isn’t taken care of, even when you take care of it. Nowadays, many organizations have this culture expecting that “when I have sent the email or the newsletter through a mail-blast” everybody is informed. But many employees do not read email to much…or read them (too) late; simply because they get to many emails and most of them are deemed not relevant, just FYI. Thus they form this habit of “seldom reading emails”, definitely when it comes from the same (level of the) sender. Or they scan through it and for certain miss information or mis-interpretate it. Even when they read it, it isn’t sure they have internalized it!

Delivering Services comes with an agile workforce.

JoshuaBrusse — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 02:26:48 GMT

In my honest opinion, improving service delivery and implementation of new / changed services is many times about changing competencies. No matter what the change is about, it always changes competencies whether this is on an organizational level, a team level, an individual level or all of the above. Hence, a improving services levels or successfully implementing a new service in production is only successful when new competencies have been internalized by those who have to deliver these services.

ITIL 2011 edition published

Stuart_Rance — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:30:11 GMT

The 2011 edition of ITIL was published today. As the author of ITIL Service Transition, 2011 edition this means that a very major commitment has come to an end, and I will now have considerably more time to spend with my family.

This edition is not a major update to the concepts behind ITIL, but a refresh of the content based on a belief in continual service improvement, informed by feedback posted to the ITIL Changelog.

Some of the changes to ITIL Service Transition include:

How to architect a Service Management System? The Implementation View...

J. Bronkhorst — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:02:27 GMT

Architecting an ITIL based Service Management System for a medium to large enterprise organization requires more than a single picture to be produced. There are typically many stakeholders to take into account and multiple views are required to understand added value, positioning, content and implementation aspects.

This is the last of four blog posts that will each describe a different architectural view on realizing a Service Management System. The last view is called: The Implementation View.

Service management is not just for IT

Stuart_Rance — Tue, 31 May 2011 06:46:05 GMT

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog article titled How do I create value, in which I talked about taking part in some filming for the HP Technology Services Experts web page. I have now seen the final cut of the video about me, and the people who produced it have done a fantastic job of capturing my rambling and turning it into a coherent account of how I create value for my customers.

How to architect a Service Management System? The Technical View...

J. Bronkhorst — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:47:24 GMT

This is the third of four blog posts that will each describe a different architectural view on realizing a Service Management System. The third view is called: The Technical View.

Strategic service management

Stuart_Rance — Sun, 08 May 2011 12:32:54 GMT

For the past few months I have been helping to define HP’s new strategic service management consulting services, which were launched last week as part of our new Strategic IT Advisory Services (SITAS). These new services are intended to help our customers match their IT strategy to their business needs...

How to architect a Service Management System? The Functional View...

J. Bronkhorst — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:31:50 GMT

This is the second of four blog posts that will each describe a different architectural view on realizing a Service Management System. The second view is called: The Functional View.

How to architect a Service Management System? The Business View...

J. Bronkhorst — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:26:41 GMT

This is the first of four blog posts that will each describe a different architectural view on realizing a Service Management System. The first view that we will take a look at is called: The Business View.

Why you need a Configuration Management System

J. Bronkhorst — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 02:34:12 GMT

My last blog post on the ITIL V3 Configuration Management System (CMS) is from 12-Dec-2007, while lots of people keep asking me questions about the components of a CMS and how that is different from and/or builds upon the concept of a CMDB.

And when I return the question "why do you need a Configuration Management System?", the answers vary from "because it is an ITIL best practice" :smileysad: all the way to "because I want to bring together data about all Configuration Items and their relationships" :smileyindifferent: Are these the right arguments? I don't think so. And here is why...

How do I create value?

Stuart_Rance — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 08:38:34 GMT

Two completely separate activities that I am involved in both resulted in me having to do exactly the same thing yesterday, and that was to stop what I was doing and think about why I was doing it and what value it created. I suspect that if we all spent more time thinking about why we do things and what value they create, we could significantly reduce our workload, improve our productivity, and deliver more value to our customers.

CMMI for Services; an alternative for ITIL?

J. Bronkhorst — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:42:16 GMT

On October 28, 2010, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University released CMMI Version 1.3, which includes improvements to CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC). And as one of my customers (suddenly) indicated that their Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for 2011 is to achieve CMMI level 3 (using ITIL processes that are automated with HP Software), I thought let's investigate this further and write a post on it. Here are the "amazing" results that I found...

Continual Improvement

Stuart_Rance — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:40:37 GMT

Continual improvement isn't just for service management processes, it is a great approach for everything we do - in life and in work.

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The updated ITIL books have just had a second round of public review. We had lots of great feedback to the first review, and after incorporating this the books were sent out for a second review. I am currently waiting for the response to the second public review of the updated Service Transition book, which should be with me today.

Service Management News in 2010

J. Bronkhorst — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:48:20 GMT

In good tradition many people take some time to reflect and evaluate what happened in the past year. Here are some of the major industry events and milestones in Service Management:

UK itSMF conference

Stuart_Rance — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:43:22 GMT

I have just returned from the UK itSMF conference where I had a great time. The main value I get from these events is the chance to talk to people, and this conference had a really good mix of practitioners and vendors with varying levels of experience...

On the Sunday before the conference we had a meeting of the authors and mentors for the ITIL update. This will help us make sure that we achieve real consistency across the publications when the next edition is published...