Around ITIL in 30 Analogies

This week I received acceptance of my presentation proposal for the itSMF Australia national conference LeadIT 2013 (in August, in Canberra). My topic of choice is ‘around ITIL in 30 analogies’.

Yes, I’m realising that these details will make it possible for you to discover my identity as I have submitted the above under my own name (and will not be on stage dressed in a black robe). However, after all this time it now is time for me to ‘dis-robe’.

Anyway, back to the topic. I love analogies, I think that analogies are just about the best thing since sliced bread (is that an analogy in itself?). When it comes to training there is no better way than to quickly explain a concept than to relate it to something already (and/or easily) understood by the participant.

This is not a matter of ‘dumbing’ things down or ‘populising’ a concept, but a valid way to provide a better understanding. And let’s face it: the ITIL theory is full of concepts and whilst they may claim to be ’common sense written down’, sometimes common sense isn’t common (and it doesn’t always make sense either).

My favourite analogy is that for a service. After all, this is the most basic concept of ITIL Service Management. The official definition of a service is “A means of delivering value to Customers by facilitating Outcomes Customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific Costs and Risks.”

True of course and there are many things to be learned from just slowly reading the definition and looking at the keywords. Apart from analogies, another technique I use to explain concepts is to bring them down to one or two key expressions, in this case value.

I then boil it down to that fact that for the customer the service is a ‘black box’: a guaranteed, fixed-price, repeatable, managed & measured delivery of value.

Or rather this is what it should be, never forget that ITIL is descriptive and that not all of us can do all of it, all at once. If ITIL is maturity-level 100, and you’re at 25; it is not required to reach 100 in one step, but rather use the ITIL guidance to reach 30 (and then 40, 50, …).

See, there is another analogy to explain the use of the ITIL theory in practice.

But, to put the concept of a black-box service into perspective I normally use public transport, particularly the bus (rather than the more commonly used analogy of a restaurant).

When you take the bus, you go to the bus-stop and wait for the bus. Now I keep mentioning ‘bus’ which really is a kind of technology. But, as a user or customer of this service you are perhaps unaware or at least not overly interest in the type of bus: petrol, diesel or natural gas powered, articulated, double-decker, new or old … it doesn’t really matter (you may have a preference, but you wouldn’t not go on a bus because it is not the type you like\want) … black box.

When you get on the bus, you pay. In my area we have smartcards and you pay per ‘zone’, currently $1.45 for 1 zone. Now this is $1.45 every day, unrelated to the price of fuel, the salary of the driver, the depreciation of the bus, the costs of maintenance … fixed price.

The bus will take you to where you want to go (into town in my case), within a certain timeframe. You don’t have to worry about this and can read the paper (or play Angry Birds on your phone as I do) … guaranteed & repeatable.

Sure, the ‘guaranteed’ part is relative: the bus could have an accident, break down or a major traffic jam could delay it, but these are fairly big/high-level risks. All the smaller (technical) risks are covered by the bus company and more-or-less invisible to me as a passenger.

So services do not defer ALL costs, and\or ALL risks, but make them more predictable and higher-level. More importantly, as services support the business in their outcomes, it is the business who is responsible for defining them. 

In my case this is getting to work. Now note that if I arrive late, I cannot blame the bus (or at least not all the time). As a customer it is my responsibility (or accountability really, but more on those two some other time) to select the appropriate service provider and negotiate the required service levels: instead of the bus, I could have driven my car in (faster, but more expensive to park), or taken a taxi (faster, more expensive), my bike (slower and harder to take stuff with me, not to mention my inadequate level of fitness), private helicopter …

Analogy and lesson 1: Customer define the services, but then expect fixed-price, black-box, repeatable and guaranteed delivery.

the ITIL Zealot
March 2013