It’s ITIL, but not as we know it!

You would assume that, giving myself the name of the ‘ITIL Zealot’, I am a big fanboy of everything ITIL and I am … to a point. I am fully aware that ITIL fell somewhat out of favour in the mid-2010s, mainly when organisations, after several years (or decades even), had not yet found the benefits they were hoping for.

From my zealot perspective I would have told you that this was mainly because organisations and people had not ‘implemented’ ITIL correctly. For starters you don’t really implement it at all, ITIL has always been a description of best practices around service management and as such it has always been more behavioural than a thing/product to get and use.

But I have to admit that, by then, ITIL (version 3 at that stage) was not making life easy for itself, focusing on the documentation, flow and terminology of detailed processes. But now there is ITIL 4; and this is not a simple next version that is basically the same thing in a new, shinier coat. No, ITIL 4 is almost brand new, built from the ground up with the modern (digital) organisation in mind and the service management requirements that go with that.

In this article I want to discuss three ‘movements’ in a changing world over the last years, that have made the previous versions of ITIL less practical, and where ITIL 4 has come up with a new approach:

1. It’s more than IT

Now, ITIL has never been about IT (although we do like to make the joke that without IT, ITIL would just be ‘IL(L)') and for years we have used analogies from other service industries to explain the ITIL concepts (such as hotels, restaurants or public transport). But it was born in the IT world and that’s where it gained its traction to become the ‘de-facto’ service management standard (at least in the 1990s and 2000s).

Thus, the success (or failure) of ITIL is directly linked to the ability of the IT staff (who know ITIL) to convey the concepts, terminology and practices in non-IT environments and this is part of the issue. See, in the early 2000s we were still talking about IT alignment to the business and as any mathematician can tell you: 2 lines that are aligned are parallel, but still separated.

So, the movement here is the increased need for organisations to no longer look at IT as a simple, black-box provider of services, but rather as an integrated part of the business, necessary for success. And this view immediately elevates service management to a business discipline and not just one of the ‘dark arts’ used in the IT department.

ITIL 4 embraces this development, and whilst there still is a grounding in IT (and it is highlighted in necessary elements such as the technology practices and concepts like High Velocity IT) all its main concepts, such as the 4 Dimensions, Service Value System and -Chain, Guiding Principles and even most of the Practices, are just as applicable outside of IT than within it (if not more).

OK, there is still the challenge of how you get the business to pay attention to ITIL 4, but once they do, they should easily understand and accept the service management concepts, without feeling it’s an IT derivative.

2. Agile over waterfall

For the second movement we have to go back in time: ITIL v1 (which was never called v1, it was the one, the original) was created in the IT department of a mainframe environment. In those days, changes were large-scale projects and they were big and risky but reasonably well defined. Moving forward a decade and ITIL v2 brings us into the 90s and the LAN/WAN, PC environment but projects were still mostly technical/warranty focussed with little concern about bespoke functionality/utility (the users got whatever IT would give them!). As such projects followed the waterfall method with the emphasis on preparation, definition, design and testing, so that the implementation could happen ‘in one fell swoop’.

Fast forward again to the 2010s and ITIL v3 and we see a number of developments that start undermining the usefulness of the defined, regimented waterfall project approach. Firstly, projects more-and-more involve software and functionality/utility aspects and thus more user/consumer involvement (and that is even before we branch outside of IT as discussed previously). In addition, our environments become more complex with more and more devices, software, interconnections, dependencies, stakeholders etc. All of this makes it much harder to ensure all aspects, requirements and elements are considered in the preparation.

But most importantly, there is a desire to have things available faster (instant gratification) or actually there is a genuine need from the organisation for this speed: decision cycles get shorter and new features need to be available quicker to obtain a greater value to the organisation … even if it is not perfect! And therein lies the biggest difference: the waterfall project approach was based on the philosophy of do it once and do it properly. But this is no longer realistic, so an agile approach embraces the concept of doing ‘something’ quickly, as good as possible (but not perfect) and then iterate and improve from there: speed is more important than perfection (also because perfection is practically impossible).

And ITIL 4 has embraced this too. I could argue that agility and speed were always a part of ITIL (for instance in the use of change management’s minor or standard changes), but now it has been put front and centre, in the Guiding Principles (Progress Iteratively with Feedback, Keep it Simple, Focus on Value) but also in concept such as High Velocity IT, complexity thinking, safety culture, safe-to-fail experimentation and the general approach to perfection vs failure.

3. Heuristic over algorithmic

This neatly brings me to the last movement I want to discuss, which is that everything has become so complicated, fast or rather … unrepeatable. ITIL v1 was mainly to instil best practices in IT staff to ensure there was measured, managed, reliable and repeatable activities (words I have often used in training). This almost eliminated the people-aspects (who were reduced to mere drones following process again and again). This even more so when ITIL v2 moved into the LAN/WAN decentralised, personal computing era where ‘cowboys’ could cause major pain through individual actions.

But with ITIL v3, the aforementioned inclusion of more software/utility/consumer aspects, the increased complexity of the IT infrastructure and -as mentioned- the integration with business services, this is no longer the case. The strict, rigid process approach was no longer working or even desirable. Again, I could argue that ITIL never advocated this meticulous focus on following procedures but alas in many organisations this was how it was interpreted and ‘implemented’.

We’ve already discussed how ITIL 4 has embraced the more agile approaches to work, to progress iteratively. But what is even more significant, in my opinion, is how it also changes the expectation of the people working in a service management environment. In the 4 Dimensions (in Organisation & People) the need for an appropriate culture is discussed, including trust. And there is the safety culture concept I mentioned earlier, and my absolute favourite: intelligent disobedience (breaking/bending the rules but doing so with applied knowledge). Modern, digital service staff is no longer expected to follow predetermined process without question, but they need to be able to assess a (complex) situation and if necessary take a novel, unproven and thus inherently risky course of action in order to provide value, even if this is not perfect (and then use future iterations to further improve on this).

The former, rigid, documented form of working is referred to as ‘algorithmic’ as indeed it follows a predetermined, calculated path. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a place for this, including processes, procedures, checklists and templates, but … more and more we’ll see this kind of work being automated or being replaced with the new way of working which is described as ‘heuristic’. Heuristic activities are used when there is no predetermined path (or when doing the ‘usual thing’ would not provide the desired outcome). In that case we put more onus on the staff, their knowledge, expertise and experience to come up with an alternative, new way forward.

 

This fits in well with the agile way of working discussed earlier, as well as the increased scope and complexity of the service management space (which makes less things repeatable). VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is the new normal and new, modern practices need to understand that failure is not only an option but almost a certainty. It is now important to manage the level of failure and the develop the ability to learn from these failures: resilience and adaptability. These traits are not embedded in process and structure but need to be at the heart of the culture, management and behaviours in an organisation.

What this means is that service management, and ITIL 4 specifically as the topic of this article, needs to focus more on people within a service management environment rather than the technology or processes used. Not really much different from ITIL from way back and I certainly have always tried to explain that ITIL is about understanding WHY something should be done, and not necessarily HOW. But now it is defined within the theory (and the certification): we need to understand the 4 Dimensions of an organisation (including the people and culture), we need to know the Guiding Principles (including the Focus on Value and Progress Iteratively) and we need to apply the Practices with a HVIT mindset (a ‘need for speed’), within a safety culture and understand the heuristic approach to achieving outcomes.

It is not really a new approach and it is not even really new for ITIL, but with ITIL 4 it is now made obvious and we all have to approach service management with this in mind. And for many that is quite different from how they looked at ITIL (v3), and that surely is a good thing?

 
Simon Dorst 
Kinetic IT Pty.Ltd., Australia (www.kineticit.com.au)
 

 

Service Management trends (or challenges) for 2019

Two things happened recently that inspired me to write this blog.  This despite the fact some people loathe ‘another prediction’ or how those same predictions are often considered to be ‘doomed’ from the start, if nothing else because of the incredible speed with which our landscape is changing.

Why bother?

Well, initially as I was honoured to be named one of HDI’s ‘Top 25 Thought Leadersin Technical Support and Service Management for 2018’ and noblesse oblige (I’ll let you google that one 😉), so I felt I needed to show my thought leadership by projecting forward into 2019.  This was then quickly followed by my participation in the ITSM Crowd on ‘Trends for 2019’, which not only forced me to prepare for this and think a bit more about this topic, but it left me, after the webinar, with some thoughts ‘left unsaid’ (although, in fairness, this was mainly due to the brilliant contributions of the other experts involved).

And thus, with all the requisite apologies and disclaimers …  (drum-roll) … here are what I think will keep us service management professionals busy in 2019:

1) At a high-level Enterprise Service Management (eSM) is the big trend

It seems everybody is talking about enterprise ‘anything’, and if they are not enterprise then the next-best-thing is digital transformation.  In both cases, what we are referring to is the integration of IT with the business (rather than the alignment of IT service delivery to the business).

Unmistakably a trend, although arguably the trend was already there in 2018 (or even before).  I guess what I am saying is that this will remain a hot topic that most of us will encounter in 2019.  In my opinion the real question with enterprise service management (or digital transformation or business-IT-integration or …) is how much organisations are approaching this from a top-down, organisational perspective, rather than as a technical point solution (often nothing more that the automation of business forms, frequently in areas such as HR where there are many defined processes and forms).

VeriSM (and the new ITIL 4) show us the way in terms structured enabling practices, which are applicable outside of IT, but as always: it’s not the size of the practice but how you use it that makes it relevant.  So, if this trend or challenge is in your path for 2019, I urge you to familiarise yourself with these frameworks\practices to learn more about modern, non-IT, agile service management models that can assist with this.

Personally, I am excited that even in the SIAM world we see enterprise (eSIAM) activities, applied across multi-organisational-provider ecosystems.  This means building a SIAM ecosystem, not exclusive to IT, but including IT as well as other functional areas of the organisation (perhaps worthy of a separate blog at some point).

2) Another trend in 2019 that is continuing from 2018 is DevOps thinking & the application of Agile techniques

More buzz-words here and it is important to make a distinction between DevOps and Agile, although I am aware that there is no unifying definition of either and different people have different opinions and thoughts about what they consider DevOps and\or Agile to be.  For me, DevOps is a culture (hence my use of DevOps ‘thinking’) that promotes the integration between developers and operations (i.e. developers being responsible and involved in the operation of their creation, and operations staff involved in the various development & implementation stages).  This can be easily combined with (Lean) automation, autonomous teams and so on, to bring rapid & continuous change.

And whilst this thinking or culture is certainly present in the Agile Manifesto, for me Agile is ‘just’ a bunch of very practical techniques that can be used in such a DevOps environment: daily stand-ups (for multifunctional & autonomous teams), Kanban boards, sprints, minimum viable products … all incredibly useful to quickly and agile-y deliver change.  In my opinion there is more specific, tangible Agile (techniques) that enable DevOps (thinking).

There is a lot of activity in this area (and not just for 2019, or even 2018 … it has been happening for some time), but this is often still restricted to either a specific project or only involving developers.  I think the 2019 trend is to further embrace, implement and adopt this, across the enterprise (i.e. true Dev+Ops, including non-IT functions).

But … this will mean involving the business, and also involving operational IT service management to integrate and therein lies my trend or challenge for 2019 (perhaps utilising VeriSM or ITIL4 structures and concepts, for instance the excellent VeriSM Management Mesh!).

3) An unknown for 2019 will be the adoption of ITIL 4

Before the ITSM crowd I had a small twitter ‘battle’ with the excellent @AndieKis who correctly propositioned that ITIL4 can never be a trend.  For one as it is a product (and a product in itself is not a trend, but rather what it stands for) and secondly as so little is known about it (and will not be released until the 2^nd half of 2019).  Of course, I have to bow to Andie’s superior knowledge and accurate observations but let me explain why I’ve got ITIL 4 in my ‘trends’ for 2019.

From what we do know about ITIL 4 (with the Foundation manual released last month), it is forgoing the sometimes rigidly implemented service lifecycle and processes, in favour of a more ‘agile’ (yes, there is that word again) service value system, service value chain and generally applicable practices.  All much more applicable in this modern, agile, enterprise, digital environment and in fact, not dissimilar to the VeriSM methodology for digital services, which was released more than a year prior.

But unlike VeriSM, ITIL has numerous certified practitioners around the world, as well as many organisations who have implemented some of these ITIL processes and are utilising service management tools based on the ITIL concepts and terminology.  And these practitioners and organisations (and tool vendors) are sooner or later (but most likely in 2019) going to have to pay attention to ITIL 4 and make a choice …

Either they ignore it, stay with their ITIL v3 investments and basically … not change (which doesn’t seem like a long-term solution).  Or, they are going to use the ITIL 4 guidance to modify their service management operating model and make it more service stream focussed (see also my previous two trends).

For ITIL this may be a make or break year, whereby (as a product) people\organisations either accept and adopt it, or leave it by the wayside and move on without it.  However, it WILL be a challenge that we will face in 2019, and it COULD trigger a trend of changing operating models from lifecycle\process to service stream focussed methods.  This is of course complicated by the fact that most of ITIL 4 (i.e.  anything above Foundations) is still vapourware: announced but unknown in terms of content, detail and applicability.

4) A trend for people is the requirement to become T, A or some form of multi-capable

For this prediction, I’m leaving the realm of best and enabling practices, operating models and the like, and instead have a look at the people at the heart of this.  Once again this is not something new to 2019, but increasingly more relevant and a consequence of the continued integration of IT with the business.  This means staff will need to be able to ‘talk the talk’, not only within the IT department, but when working with other organisational functions.

And combined with the proliferation of Agile techniques, staff will more-and-more need to work in temporary, flexible, multi-functional and cross-provider teams, requiring them to be ‘a jack of all trades, master of one’ (or a ‘T’).

Key is the combination of technical expertise, with ITSM practices in a business context.  To a degree, this means not being a ‘one-trick’ pony like an ITIL expert or Scrum master, but have a working knowledge of multiple practices, their pros and cons, and how to apply them in specific situations, or ‘merge’ them (again the aforementioned VeriSM Management Mesh may be a tool for this).  But, this needs to be combined with a working knowledge of the business and its practices and most importantly communication or even organisational change management (OCM) skills to bring enterprise, agile service management to any team.

5) And my last trend is technical and is everything, everywhere … but secure

Now, this is not my particular field of expertise, but certainly cybersecurity is very much ‘in vogue’ or rather in focus of many organisations.  Whilst IoT, AI and all other technical advances will continue in 2019 to bring more IT services, to more consumers, in more locations, on more devices … the underlying security is increasingly paramount for both consumer and provider.

From a governance perspective, legislation like the GDPR (or changes to legislation in Australia around reporting of security breaches) will provide continued pressure on organisations (and not just the IT, but corporate).  And in return this means that IT security is becoming more-and-more a (enterprise) reputational risk: what is the damage to the organisation (, the brand, public opinion, customer loyalty) of a security breach?

Add to that the fact that consumers are becoming more aware of privacy & security (or rather the lack thereof) and have increased expectations in this field (for instance, in my part of the world we’ve just had a major discussions surrounding online health records and whether or not people should be opting out of having this kind of information centralised).

Therefore, cybersecurity needs to be integrated in all our practices, operating models and be a primary focus of our development and operational teams (as well as our cross-provider ecosystems, contract structures etc.).

So, there you have it: my top 5 trends for 2019.  

And maybe they aren’t really trends by the definition of the word, but I do think that these 5 will be challenges or concerns that professional service management practitioners will have to deal with in the coming period.  Of course, as long as you have an enterprise service management operating model, based on the ITIL 4 -or VeriSM- concepts, incorporating a DevOps culture and utilising Agile techniques with multi-(T-)capable staff that has cybersecurity in the forefront of their mind … you’ll be fine!

Become a Champion Thought Leader!

Earlier this month I had the great honour to be awarded the itSMF Australia ITSM Champion of the Year and the Thought Leader of the Year Awards (the latter together with my indomitable colleague @mmg9898).  Now, as thrilled as I am with this recognition and as much as I think it is a reward for my activities and commitment, it also got me thinking how we need more champions and thought leaders, in all organisations, at all levels!

Champions

I need to clarify that the word ‘champion’ in this context is not about being a winner (although on the Industry Awards night I certainly felt like one), but rather about being an advocate (i.e. ‘to speak or write in favor of; support or urge by argument; recommend publicly’- source: dictionary.com)!

In order to be a champion\advocate, firstly there needs to be an audience otherwise you are just ‘shouting in the desert’.  But, a champion provides a reminder to that audience about what (in this case) service management is, its correct application, new developments and other noteworthy aspects.

During the conference it was frequently mentioned that organisations need a kind of ‘Service Management coach’ (similar to an Agile coach etc.) to guide an organisation in its use of the many different service management practices available these days (as well as the staff applying them).

But … it goes further.  A champion is not necessarily a person with expert knowledge and capabilities or seniority, but can be ‘merely’ that one person in a team who is motivated about the practices in use, and advocates, encourages, guides, supports and influences the team members around them (regardless of hierarchic position).

We need those champions: from a global expert perspective, but also as an organisational coach or an operational enthusiast … BE A CHAMPION!

Thought Leaders

Apart from Champions, we also need more Thought Leaders.  I think sometimes people expect our ‘thought leaders’ to be exceptionally brilliant people who amaze the world\industry with creative and original ideas …

Far be it for me to say that this isn’t true for some luminary colleagues, however, I reckon that most thought leaders do not necessarily have all their original thoughts themselves.  Instead they observe their environment, the community they operate in and collect individual challenges, opportunities, thoughts and solutions.  They engage and interact with the community to gather and this information and proliferate, expand, share it in a novel & structured way that is recognised as ‘leading the way’.

It reminds me of the ‘Dancing Guy’ video from Derek Shivers, whereby the ‘lone nut’ is the person with the original idea but indeed is only a lone nut, until the ‘first followers’ validate the idea and start the movement.  Thought Leaders are these first followers who recognise and validate the potential of new ideas.

And with this comes the concept that ‘Continual Service Improvement’ is at the heart of any (service management) operating model and culture.  We need to question the status quo, we need to judiciously apply new practices and methods and constantly measure the value of our outcomes. 

Thus, if thought leaders do not need to be exceptional thinkers, and we all need to be thinking about bigger and better ways of operating … BE A THOUGHT LEADER!

Why do we need Champion Thought Leaders?

Now, all of the above has been true for some time, but I think that in this current day and age it is even more important to have Champion Thought Leaders.  First and foremost, as Service Management is a community that is fed by individuals contributing to the collective wisdom (as well as organisations, commercial or otherwise).  The more people that contribute, the larger the collective wisdom available to the community is.

I can see three current developments that increase the need for Champion Thought Leaders today:

1. Relevance

Unfortunately, a reality is that the field of traditional service management is losing its relevance.  Not so much in real terms (as in contributing to business outcomes and value) but in terms of the attention it gets (from the business, management but also prospective staff).  It is just not ‘sexy’, and definitely not when compared to agile practices or artificially intelligent technology!

I think this is partially because we view service management as operations only (i.e.  day-to-day, business-as-usual), rather than seeing the full scope of it, of the complete service lifecycle including strategy, design and transition.

And, regardless of whether this is true or not (and: it’s not!), service management is here, it’s not going away and all those agile projects, all those smart, connected technologies still need to be part of a service that delivers value to the consumer and need to be operated (and improved, and … well: managed).

Thus, we need Champion Thought Leaders to not only keep service management in the forefront of people’s thinking, but also to look for improvements & new practices (and that way linking service management to the more sexy agile, lean and innovation\transformation activities organisations are paying attention to).

2. Complexity

The days of the de-facto standard in service management are gone (the one ring to rule us all, to repeat another theme discussed during the itSMF conference) and instead we are bombarded with a myriad of practices, each promising to do things better or rather to focus on a particular area of service management (where pain is felt, improvements can be achieved or transitions made).

So, we need global experts to create and introduce these new practices, and then organisational ‘coaches’ to find the best ways to introduce and apply them, but it all starts with ‘local’, operational Champion Thought Leaders who see existing practices that need improving and are willing to expand their scope beyond the known\available\common theory.

3. Relevance (again)

Yes, I know that service management relevance (or rather the lack thereof) was my initial development necessitating Champion Thought Leaders but this one is more or less the opposite of that first one, as there is an increasing relevance of service management in the enterprise, i.e. outside of the IT department.

Enterprise Service Management is needed for those organisations tackling digital transformations (and let’s be honest: which organisation isn’t … or doesn’t want to?) as now we no longer have IT-services, but rather technology-enabled business services.  The end-to-end service covers the technology, but also the other enterprise aspects and thus service management capabilities need to be extended into the enterprise as well.

Now, back at the same conference where we were awarded the ITSM Champion and Thought Leader awards, we delivered a presentation on VeriSM™, as one of the new ITSM kids in town, especially focused on service management in a digital age and in an enterprise setting. 

Afterwards we got the question of who would talk to the business about this (i.e.  enterprise service management practices), and the answer is: ‘well … you of course!’

Become a Champion Thought Leader!

Service management is on the praecipe of a renaissance.  Emerging technologies (cloud, IoT, AI …) make IT service management less relevant, but technology enabled business services much more so.  Digital transformation is on everyone’s lips, including of the organisational decision makers (i.e. outside of, as well as over-and-above the IT department).

And because we’re entering unchartered territory, it is not the usual channels that will bring the message.  Not the globally recognised service management guru’s (or skeptics), not the spruikers of new practices and methodologies, not even the consulting organisations and researchers, like Forrester, Gartner and the like, that are usually keen to provide an insight of ‘where it’s at’.  Rather the message needs to come from ‘within’, from those that understand the business and preferably have some real life experience in this (warts and all, good and bad, lessons learned, pitfalls and all that). 

This is where you come in.  Service management is one of the things that we have actually done quite well within the IT environment, and it is our duty -and I mean: all of our duties … including you as the reader here- to share this with the business, advocate service management practices and lead the corporate thoughts on practices and structures … BE A CHAMPION THOUGHT LEADER !

Viva la (service management) revolution

One of my favourite expressions within service management training is the concept of ‘evolution, not revolution’.  I use this concept to explain that, for instance ITIL, is not an ‘all or nothing’ proposition that should be dismissed if it can’t be achieved ‘just so’.  My explanation is that most Foundation training courses describe a perfect world situation.  However, whilst your environment may never be perfect, that doesn’t mean you can’t use the concepts to IMPROVE your current practices.  Hence ...  evolution.

The other reason is that no best practice guidance will tell you that everything must be done ‘exactly so’! If your current practices are working, or even if they are merely ‘sufficient’, there is no reason to ‘wipe the slate clean’, ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’, completely get rid of them and implement the best practice ones instead.  After all, a much-loved saying recalls that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and a common consulting approach is to start with the area where there is the biggest pain (and thus the biggest potential gain, and where it is easier to obtain commitment to change etc.).  Again … evolution.

Evolution is the gentle cycle of Continual Service Improvement (CSI) where bit by bit, step by step, we improve towards the perfection of the ‘theoretic’ practice.  So, by applying an evolutionary CSI approach, not only do we start where there is likely to be more commitment and where there is more benefit to realise (and thus generating Deming’s or Kotter’s cycle of successful change), but we are already embedding the concept of CSI into the new practices.  Pretty cool move!

But … sometimes existing practices are so ‘rutted’ in, that gentle improvement is like trying to rock a cart out of these ruts (in order to change direction).  A small improvement or motion may be observed, but relatively quickly the cart will resettle into the old ruts and continue its previous (and probably doomed) course.  In this case, the only option is revolution: thrust the cart out of the ruts, topple it, disrupt it … and then reset it on whatever new course is required.

Not an easy choice, and certainly not a popular one … but sometimes necessary.  I had a professional acquaintance whose job was just that: pushing the organisational cart out of the established practice ruts.  He would be invited into an organisation seeking to make substantial change.  As such he would basically come in, change everything and make himself hugely unpopular.  After a few weeks or months, he would leave (or was ‘made to’) and whomever followed him in the role, not only was ‘free’ of all the old practices (which had been changed and dismantled), but also was instantly welcomed after the horrendous experience the staff had just been through.  The ‘shake up’ had paved the way for the new manager to establish new, best practices with a higher acceptance and create calm where there had been chaos.

I think that, on some occasions, in service management, we have reached this position of being ‘in a rut’, ‘down a hole’ or ‘at a dead end’.  Many of us have been working with service management practices for a long time, but in some cases, have not progressed much past the operational, reactive processes.  Even then, how have we truly matured these processes to a point of excellence?  Who dares to stand up and sing the praises of their perfect change or problem management processes?

For some reason, it appears to be difficult to ‘elevate’ our service management practices to the proactive service design processes, let alone into the strategic arena.  In my opinion a critical factor in that is the lack of getting the business involved in these processes.  And that is not just about getting input from the business, or the business taking an overseeing and authorising role (although there are many challenges with those aspects of governance that make these common obstacles), but I’m talking about a customer that truly participates in the planning & defining activities of those processes (or services … or products).

I’ll come back to that (customer participation) later, but I think that after a more than a decade of evolution we can conclude that that is not going to get us much further with the tactical\design elements of our service management model.  We are ‘rutted’ or, to switch analogies, we’re stuck on a track that is going nowhere. 

A new approach is needed … a revolution!

And, the timing is right as, in my opinion, at this point, two developments are converging to create the opportunity to consider a revolution.

The first is the emergence of new best or enabling practices.  These new practices advocate a new approach that is arguably more aligned with the modern technical and business environments, and thus provide more suitable solutions for our current challenges.  Agile, SIAM^© and VeriSM™, to name but a few, are offering practical guidance, structure and progressive practices.  Note that these practices often align with existing, more traditional ones (like ITIL^©, for instance) and that thus -at least on the surface- perhaps a revolution would not be required (but instead we can utilise these new practices through the customary evolutionary approach, ‘splicing’ them into the old, established processes).

But, the second development currently emerging is that of enterprise service management, or business service integration.  Again, this is not something that is revolutionary on its own, and some of us have been preaching service management in the enterprise for a long time, but the business is, perhaps only now, realising that IT truly is an important business enabler, and therefore needs to be integrated within the business processes, business services and business management. 

That’s right, the keyword here is ‘integration’ and not ‘alignment’!  IT alignment is nice, but it still presents IT as separate to the business, whereas what we’re after is true integration.  Add a term like ‘digital disruption’ (or the more palatable ‘digital transformation’) and we may find a business that is receptive to adopting service management practices to improve their business model.  But these businesses may not be keen to follow established IT practices, like ITIL for example (especially if their success is contentious), but rather look to emerging practices that have the business at the forefront.

So, whilst there is still the potential to simply evolve and embrace either newer service management practices or enterprise service integration, by slowly improving and expanding your existing practices, I believe the stars have aligned to allow for consideration of a more radical approach and hit these two birds with one stone …

A revolution, which can more quickly establish new practices with the business, rather than ‘allowing’ the business to utilise and become ‘part of’ well-known IT practices.  This might be the time to design a new service operating model, from the ground up: purpose-built, with business input and participation, based on existing practices that we know that work (remember the baby and the bathwater?) but augmented with new, progressive practices to utilise their strengths (especially where those old practices failed, or at least were insufficient).

I believe that VeriSM offers a great start to approach the development of such a revolutionary service management operating model.  VeriSM outlines the need to create a model that considers Governance, Service Management Principles and the wonderful new concept of a Management Mesh.  This mesh combines the various practices, technologies, resources and the environment (market, culture, …) available to an organisation and through which it can develop and provide products and services.

This openness and flexibility is a theme that is mirrored in other progressive practices.  For instance, SIAM describes a structure which allows an integrated approach to managing multiple providers to deliver end-to-end service, focussing on collaboration and culture. It does so without prescribing the specific ‘how’ to the parties involved.  For this ‘how’ we look towards best-of-breed practices like Agile, ITIL (and half-a-dozen or more others), which can be selected based on suitability to a specific project, customer or environment and applied.  The point is that all these practices offer useful elements and indeed can and should be utilised where they will deliver benefit.  One size doesn’t fit all and it’s a case of picking and choosing elements based on a particular project, service, customer, culture or geography.

So, why not start a revolution? I believe, now is the time to ‘throw of the shackles’ of the past and seek to achieve those goals that perhaps used to seem out of reach, but which are also those that are critical for future growth of an organisation! When doing so, perhaps the following might be helpful:

• Be brave – Evolution is always a safe option, whereas revolution gives you that feeling of ‘burning your bridges’.  But ‘no pain, no gain’ and in order to make that next, quantum-leap forward you cannot keep doing what you’ve always done (see Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity -or maybe it was Rita Mae Brown-).

• Start with the business – The business is your friend and partner in this.  It’s them that need the IT integration (whether they realise it or not, remember ‘digital transformation’?) and it’s them that will push the need to do things differently (and thus will support revolution over evolution).  Start a conversation with them on IT integration, on digital (business) services, on enterprise support (automated, self-help, …) and on agile project management and product innovation practices … all things this revolution can bring about for them and which would drive true business benefit.

• Start from the top – A ‘golden oldie’, but therefore not less true.  With a revolution it is important to establish the required outcome first, before planning your attack.  Make sure the governance, service management principles and Management Mesh are in place, before worrying about the details such as which practice, which technology etc.  If you get too gung-ho and start selecting practices, rewriting processes or -worse- implementing new tools you may score a short-term victory, but may lose the overall war due to lacking direction or no ownership (see previous point) and thus no long-term commitment.

• Mix-‘n-Match – No one practice will do everything, for everyone, every time.  Surprisingly, although different practices have different strengths (and weaknesses), they are remarkably similar in principle and thus can be combined.  After all common sense is (supposed to be) common, no matter who writes it down or which perspective you take.  The revolution will allow you to pick new & best of breed practices and mesh them into your model for maximum flexibility and benefit.

Good luck!

the ITIL Zealot

February 2018

SIAM blogs

With the release of the SIAM Foundation & Professional Body-of-Knowledge, I've created a number of SIAM related blogs, shared with Scopism (where you can also download the BoKs). 

You can find the blogs here:
Supplier Management Categorization: www.scopism.com/supplier-categorization-siam.

Supplier Management: www.scopism.com/siam-supplier-management.

Framework Integration: www.scopism.com/framework-integration-and-management. 

And as an extra-special present you can find my name & photo too!

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year

the ITIL Zealot

December 2016 / February 2017 / January 2018

THE NEW STEADY STATE IS CONSTANT FLUX

A few weeks ago I read Mark Smalley’s‘Kill DevOps’ on the back of a year of increasing interest in Devops, in particularly when compared to the slow-and-steady ITIL.

Mark finished his article with ‘The only desirable steady state is a constantly evolving state of mind.’ And thus rejecting basically any system or methodology, including DevOps which embraces change like no other.

And that got me thinking: do we need stability (for which we often strive)?

Human nature often makes us conservative (maybe along the lines of ‘better the devil you know?’).

A majority of people prefer the status quo, the familiarity of the existing practices, the security of knowing how to do something.

From an organisational point-of-view stability is also preferred. Very few business models welcome surprise and change and are normally based around a status quo (which can be expanded, enhanced or sometimes just maintained).

Even CSI, which is in essence continual change, is based on improving SOMETHING that is more-or-less stable, that can be benchmarked and baselined; and from there to improve efficiency & effectiveness of the status quo.

In fact many of the best practice concepts around Service Operations, are based around BAU (or Business As Usual). By thorough design and testing we avoid any surprises in operations, thus enabling us to deliver a dependable, repeatable (, measurable), guaranteed service … day-in-day out … the same every time.

Based on the renowned Ivor McFarlane I often explain the Operations is supposed to be a boring place to work and that as an Ops Manager, if your staff gets excited … you should get worried!

Or I use a fast food chain as an example of a process based organisation, where everyone (almost regardless of past experience) can create the same quality food (using the term lightly), anywhere on this planet!

But those later ones are certainly not attractive examples of stability: boredom and fast food do not rank particular high on most people’s wishlist.

And thus despite our preferences, we are looking for change, for excitement, for new experiences, new horizons … a bucket list to work through before the eternal stability of death reaches us.

DevOps advocates rapid change and Disruptive Technology hardly preaches a dull and secure application.

So, which one is it: the security of stability or the excitement of change.

As per usual the answer lies in the middle, a bit like bi-modal IT, merging DevOps and ITIL, having your cake and eating too, having the best of both worlds.

I think chaos is change without a solid foundation, thus neither improving nor deteriorating the situation (which BTW makes chaos a constantly changing status quo … ooh, that’s deep).

Stagnation on the other hand is stability for the sake of stability causing dogmatic, micro managed often overly-bureaucratic organisations.

I can accept that change is inevitable and that potentially change is a good thing (as good as a holiday I’m often told!). But not all change and not change for change’s sake.

I see benefit in distinguishing improvement (the same but better) and innovation (different) and both will need a place in a mature Service Management organisation.

It is true that ITIL does not really deal with innovation (a bit in CSI, a bit under ‘new technology’ in Capacity Management), but neither does DevOps (or COBIT or pretty much any best practice that I know of). And where DevOps supposedly signifies the death of ITIL, Mark poses that ultimately DevOps needs to die as well to keep changing/improving/innovating/evolving.

Ultimately everything must or will change, including ITIL and DevOps, but I don’t think we need to actively euthanise either of them (just yet).

Rather (and as always) we need to apply the common sense guidance of either methodology (, framework, or whatever you want to call them) where and how it applies best; and make sure you have the right objective in mind (, business goals, value, again many terms that can be applied here). If there are ‘blindspots’ (like innovation) than make sure you augment your organisation with the necessary structures to fill these in.

For innovation specifically ‘Google time’ comes to mind (20% of time spend on ‘personal’ projects, which got abandoned in 2013), or something I picked up as 7x7x7: 7 ideas are given $7,000 to work on for 7 weeks. This keeps the wildly creative and anarchical innovation within defined time (7 weeks) and budget (7x7=$49,000) constraints and cycles.

So, let’s embrace change but makes sure we have a clear understanding of the direction of this change. After all ‘let’s go left’ only makes sense if you know where you are and where your destination is!

And let’s not blame our ‘system’ or methodology for the lack of innovation but instead make sure innovation is covered within the system (and yes, that includes innovation OF the system).

Onwards and upwards!

(to boldly go …)

the ITIL Zealot

May 2016

SIAM: FAD OR THE NEW BLACK

Another month (or two), another blog. The reason for this inspiration is the recent discussion on and around SIAM. 

The King of SIAM

Disclosure here (now that my ‘secret identity’ has been well and truly ousted), I am one of the authors of AXELOS’ white paper on SIAM (‘Who is the king of SIAM?’). So, whilst I will repeat various parts of this paper, these are merely my views and thoughts on what I think helps clarify what SIAM is.

The debate seems to be raging around whether SIAM is actually something new (i.e. different from ITIL), whether it’ll last or even whether it is something relevant. This recently erupted with Jan van Bon calling it a hoax (perhaps much like ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’), which in return solicited various passionate responses.

So, let’s try again:

SIAM is nothing new?

Like all good best practices (, frameworks or methodologies … I don’t want to split hairs here) SIAM is based on common sense. And, hopefully with few exceptions, common sense is already known and in many cases described somewhere, in some way.

ITIL is the natural comparison here, addressing Service Management across the entire lifecycle and incorporating such ‘SIAM notions’ as Business Relationship Management, Supplier Management, as well as reference to governance, measuring & monitoring and ownership.

In my opinion, at its heart, ITIL does incorporate all the principles that people associate with SIAM. It is based on Service Strategy (understanding the business, defining success) and Service Design (designing outsourcing models that will deliver the value).

One could argue that in its early days ITIL (v1, v2) was written for the internal service provider, but certainly since version 3 (2007) the current ITIL practices are well and truly defined around the use of multiple, external suppliers.

So no, SIAM is nothing new. IT is ‘the same’ common sense described in ITIL (and elsewhere), but written towards the current organisational challenges. See further (in the ‘relevance’ section) on why ITIL (alone) is not sufficient.

SIAM won’t last?

This is a question that is hard to answer. I think that if we look back in history many market experts (and organisations) would have said the same of ITIL back in the 90’s. And currently we see similar discussion on whether DevOps/Agile is a reaction of the market to current practices not working or whether it is the revolutionary change of mindset that will alter the way we work forever.

Gartner Hype Curve

I find these discussions not very fruitful. Eventually everything will be surpassed and slide down the hype curve, some things faster than others. Let’s just skip to the end and see what actual value or relevance we can obtain, rather than discuss the longevity or relative, theoretic benefit (or lack thereof).

SIAM is not relevant?

Which brings us to what I think is the most important question: is SIAM relevant? And even though it is nothing new (see earlier in this blog), I think that SIAM is hugely relevant in this day-and-age.

The crux here lies in the practical application of ITIL, or rather the lack thereof. In many organisations the ITIL processes are focussed on Operations (Incident, Problem Management) and Transition (Change, Configuration Management) with only traces of the ‘higher-level’ Service Design & Strategy processes (Service Level Management).

And meanwhile, whilst organisations are struggling to get the all-of-organisation, future-focussed, business aligned ITIL processes in place; their world has become vastly more complex with multiple providers offering a myriad of services, often supported through various frameworks (ITIL, DevOps, …).

What SIAM brings to the table is a renewed focus on the alignment with the business, the definition of value and the governance and control across the various providers. Nothing new in essence, but as Michael Bulllimoria expressed (in his response to Jan van Bon’s posting, see earlier) is that no CIO wants to talk about ITIL (anymore), but they are all interested in SIAM.

So whether SIAM is new and/or enduring may be in question, but no one can deny the interest it generates. So let’s leverage that interest to reinforce the common sense concept of end-to-end, business-focussed, measured services that are (relatively) independent of technology or supplier.

That is my number one reason to be interest and even passionate about SIAM: the opportunity it gives to ‘preach’ service management at the right level!

But, in addition, I think SIAM has more to offer. Unlike ITIL (or rather: in addition to ITIL), SIAM describes service management practices, but can ‘place’ these in an organisational context thus provides a functional layer ‘on top’ of the ITIL processes and practices. This functional structure provides (more than any of the other frameworks out there) a basis for the organisation.

Extending this ‘additional’ elements such as governance, audit (quality control) and CSI can be not only defined, but assigned within the organisational SIAM structure.

SIAM model

The key here are the three layers of Customer-Retained governance, SIAM Control & Management, and Service Delivery. These three layers can easily be overlapped with other concepts such as Strategic-Tactical-Operational, Defining-Designing-Delivering, Governance-Control-Monitoring etc.etc.

Probably more a topic for another blog (as I’ll endeavour to write more, more frequently).

For now I wish to clarify that in my opinion SIAM doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table, but at least SIAM is invited to be at the table. If we cleverly use the existing practices, like ITIL, and merge them into the SIAM functional model, this interest in SIAM can only be a good thing, improving our service management processes, our business relationships and our supplier management …

even if in another year or so we’ll move on to the next big thing!

the ITIL Zealot

March 2016