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Showing posts from April, 2010

Achieving ITSM Balance

In speaking with colleagues and practitioners, I have found that one of the greatest difficulties for companies to overcome in a Service Management implementation is the desire to be more complex and unbalanced than is absolutely necessary. One of the most basic and underlying elements of good Service Management is the achievement of balance in how we approach the delivery of value to the customers and users through services. Balance helps us to find an equitable point that brings value to the customers and users without throwing out the efforts and actions needed to keep IT going. When I speak of balance, I am referring to finding the middle ground between extremes. These include balances like the amount of time and effort spent between Incident Management and Problem Management; or perhaps the balance between flexibility and stability; or even the challenges of being proactive versus reactive; customer/service-centric versus technology-centric. There are a multitude of these types

Enterprise Glossary

As a Professor, I realized long ago how important words can be. Not just the words themselves but also the definitions and contexts in which those words should be properly used. When we think about the vocabulary of ITSM (and it is quite an extensive technical vocabulary) we must remember that it is vital that we are all using the terminology in the same way. To help us get on the same page for the language of ITSM, one thing an organization can do is to create an enterprise glossary. Such a collection of terms helps people to use terminology and vocabulary correctly and in its proper context. Common usage of terminology also leads to consistency of thinking and action. A glossary is defined as: A list of words relating to a specific topic with the definitions of the words provided. An enterprise glossary is therefore a collection of words used throughout and across an organization or enterprise to help establish consistent definitions wherever the vocabulary might be used. A single