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3 Ways to Improve your Relationship with ITIL


 

ITILYour Relationship With The Methodology Counts

"I am often cautious when using the term ITIL," Pat Musto of Column Technologies said to spur on the roundtable discussion at Decembers Chicago itSMF LIG meeting.

I was not surprised with the responses, which included a spectrum of experiences up to the banning of the term ITIL, the widely accepted approach to IT Service Management, within some organizations after bad experiences and failures.

I have seen similar rejections of methodologies. After Six Sigma took off at Motorola a number of organizations followed suite and at times found their investment outweighed the benefits. Today, ERP is coming under criticism as best in class solutions challenge the be-all package.

At Nokia we addressed the cost issue of Six Sigma by training general management staff to recognize an opportunity to use Six Sigma and a small team of experts to the black belt level that would consult on the most impactful projects.The application became as important as the methodology itself. The key is understanding your relationship with the methodology.

The 3 ways to improve that relationship with ITIL include:

  1. See ITIL as it is
  2. Make people accountable not tools
  3. You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe


 

1. See ITIL as it is

For example, Taija Engman, Good Sign CEO, and myself came across a LinkedIn post about ITIL asking if a particular defect was an incident or a problem. Despite the fact that definitions exist for the terms incident and problem, the answer to that question doesn't really reside within the method, it resides within an individual company's policy.

Companies can, at times, absorb the cost of correcting issues without addressing the root cause problem because they don't want to invest in correcting the underlying problem as a priority. That is a business decision.

Maybe a better way to describe this challenge is a quote from Mark Twain, "There are lies, damn lies and statistics."

A methodology, such as ITIL, represents best practices that, through experience and research, has proven to reliably lead to a desired result. Reliability is a psychometric. It doesn't guarantee a result. Depending on circumstances it may be best to follow, adjust, or wholly ignore a best practice.

Contrast a methodology to a fact. Math fact: 4+1=5. It will always be true under all practical conditions. There is a right answer. The challenge in using methodologies within information technology is exacerbated by the very practice of IT whether coding, database design, web design etc. each requires that there is a correct answer. It may be more or less elegant in it's design, but if it doesn’t work, it is broken. Not so with methodologies.

Tools as a means to an end, not an end itself

Last year, ServiceNow added Kepner-Tregoe's Problem Management troubleshooting functionality to its IT management solution portfolio. They are adding yet another tool that may or may not have the correct answer. I have seen organizations struggle with other disciplines from cost estimation to forecasting. Managing ambiguity and the associated risk is crucial. See tools as a means to an end, not an end itself.

2. Make people accountable not tools

With the array of benefits including minimization of service disruption, optimizing customer experience, and reducing costs, it is easy to make implementation of ITIL the goal. These benefits, however, are contingent upon the processes and supporting tools working effectively. It is, therefore better, to stick to business oriented S.M.A.R.T. goals and key metrics:

  • By the end of 2nd quarter, reduce incidents by 20% by implementing and executing an effective root cause problem identification and solution process.
  • By end of year, improve marketability and improve utilization of services of 15% by ensuring a complete service catalogue of IT offerings that is meaningful and accessible to end users. And, by the way, set practices for IT service management and/or other tools can be part of the investment.

Effectively manage business change and improvement.

Those types of goals can be assigned to individuals and teams and they can be held accountable. All things else remaining the same, the only way to realize significant business improvement is to approach business challenges in new and innovative ways. Additionally, by setting clear business goals, stakeholders can really gauge how important the goal is in relation to their needs and objectives. So the goal also acts as a communication tool, something to be shared, not buried in the annals of some performance management system.

Success or failure is not a function of a particular tool, but of the ability to effectively manage business change and improvement.

3. You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe

If you are managing any type of service management organization including IT operations, you are executing some Information Technology Infrastructure Library processes already today.

Since methodologies are based in experience, this may seem a statement of the obvious, but what isn't obvious or easy, is the decision on how to reconcile the extant processes, terms and memories with the new. Having worked in global organizations that cross multiple cultures and languages, I have seen large business dictionaries. Even in the smallest of organizations, some terms may be used to differentiate the value that they bring to customers. Marketing tone often trumps exactitude or simplicity.

Make sure the language is common

The best advice I've received for these types of situations comes from my studies in design and information management with John Berry, founder of Design West Michigan, “Always define."
 
What do you mean when you say change management? When you say capacity management do you mean just computing power, or other bottlenecks as well?
 
Through the questioning process insights emerge that break through acronyms and assumptions and gets to the clearest and most essential qualities and facts of a process or activity. Another way to uncover details is to ask why and if it is not clear, why again. Five iterations has proven to be the best number to get to the details.
 
The key is not necessarily to define the language, but to make sure the language is common. It takes leadership to enable a comfortable environment for this type of elicitation, but the payback is clarity that improves an accurate assessment of current state, prioritization of any necessary changes and an improvement in organization flexibility.


CONCLUSION:

ITIL can be a powerful resource for your organization. Whether the investment is worth the results really depends upon you goals for you organization, your ability to use the tools at hand, and the way you enable teams in your service management organization. 

To learn more about how Good Sign can free up your resources for operational improvement, dowload our value proposition for service management automation.

Service Management Automation

 



 

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