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Showing posts with the label Agile Service Management

Upskilling Your Service Management Office (SMO)

By Donna Knapp and Jeff Jensen Let’s answer the obvious question first. What is a service management office (SMO)? ITIL® describes an SMO as a “group or department that functions as a center of excellence for service management, ensuring continual development and the consistent application of management practices across an organization.” So given that service management is a “set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services”, it is the SMO that helps the organization to develop these capabilities. A SMO can be formalized and have significant authority to drive service management in the organization, or it can be less-formal teams focused on continual development of the organization’s management practices. In some organizations, the SMO provides a management structure for the various practice/process owners and managers to report into. This also allows for a roll-up of enterprise metrics and reporting, and in some cases provides

Virtual Classrooms WORK for YOU - the LEARNER!

Considering an Instructor-Led Virtual Classroom for your next class?  Online Instructor-Led Virtual Classrooms allow YOU the learner to immerse in material that is presented in a fun, practical manner. Try it! I promise you won’t be disappointed.  Virtual Classrooms are available for Certification and Non-Certification courses including: Agile Service Management   DevOps ITIL CX and XLA Training Value Stream Mapping (VSM) This is NOT a Webinar! This is NOT an e-learning self-paced computerized course.  You are not on your own!  Instructor-Led Virtual Classrooms Allow YOU to :  Learn online with a live experienced instructor. Interact in group discussions and activities with others in the class. Engage your instructor with ongoing Q and A throughout. Listen to or share real-world examples. Participate in analyzing sample exam questions with the instructor.  Collaborate with chat, open mic, polls, and other interactive tools – VOIP or phone!  Learn f

Up YOUR Game – Become a Certified Process Design Engineer!

I find that there are many people that do not understand WHAT a Certified Process Design Engineer (CPDE) really is (be sure to scroll down on the page and then download the free whitepaper for surprising details). The CPDE role is likely much broader and deeper than you might think! Time and Money?! Yes, but not at the expense of quality and stability!  The role of a Certified Process Design Engineer is a critical skill set for all IT service  providers. There are many frameworks and standards that  define practices and methods for achieving success; ITIL 4 , Agile , Lean , DevOps , COBIT, ISO, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) are only a few. My point is that while each describes processes and controls (what to do), they don’t provide clear, step-by-step methods and techniques for designing, reengineering and improving processes (how to do it).  A Certified Process Design Engineer equips managers and staff at all levels to lead the organization to do t

Shifting Sands - Minimum Viable – What is it Really?

For high performing IT providers, the sands are shifting. If you are getting certified in ITIL 4 , DevOps , or Agile Service Management you hear that we have to “Think BIG and ACT small!”. Minimum Viable Products and Minimum Viable Processes (MVP) are on the move. Historically, IT organizations delivered products and processes into production with huge batch runs or the big bang approach. This method is fraught with issues, escalations, and constant firefighting. These large releases are tightly managed, governed from the highest levels, and require participation from all parts of the organization. The days of large batch runs that take months to create and war rooms staffed 24×7 for weeks before and after the release, have given way to small incremental deployments. In comes Minimum Viable Products/Processes:  High performing organizations know that deployments that deliver value to the consumer fast are required. The idea is not to stage, stage, stage until you have a huge batch

ITIL 4 Guiding Principles - Keep It Simple - Take Two

If there is a way to make something complex it seems like we as IT Service Providers have that technique down to an art. Last week an ITIL 4 Foundation student asked, “Why is that?" The human brain is an intricate organ weighing on average about three pounds. There are about eleven billion neurons and one hundred trillion connections in your brain. The brain is the command central of everything that we think, everything you say and yes, of every solution that we might come up with. Our brain is thirsty for information. The more information we allow in the more eager our brain gets. This cycle generates a demand for stimulation. The more complex something becomes, the more stimulated our brain becomes. Hmmm, this might explain why so many become addicted to tech!     This guiding principle “Keep IT Simple” is just that… SIMPLE! The difficult task is going to be how do we ensure that we have “Just Enough” process and governance moving forward but also how do w

How ITIL 4 and SRE align with DevOps

In the early days of DevOps, there was a lot of debate about the ongoing relevancy of ITIL and IT service management (ITSM) in a faster-paced agile and DevOps world. Thankfully, that debate is coming to an end. ITSM processes are still essential, but, like all aspects of IT, they too must transform. Recent updates to ITIL  (ITIL 4), as well as increased interest in site reliability engineering (SRE), are providing new insights into how to manage services in a digital world. Here's a look at ITIL 4 and SRE and how each underpins the "Three Ways of DevOps," as defined in The Phoenix Project, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford.‎ What is ITIL 4?  ITIL 4 is the next evolution of the well-known service management framework from Axelos. It introduces a new Service Value System (SVS) that's supported by the guiding principles from the ITIL Practitioner Guidance publication. The framework eases into its alignment with DevOps and agile through a bi-mo

Calling All ITIL Experts

What is an ITIL Expert?  An evangelist?  A champion?  A coach? D.    All of the Above .  Holding the ITIL Expert designation (or being an expert in ITIL) means that an individual has a broad and balanced understanding of ITIL concepts and is able to effectively apply and integrate that knowledge to the benefit of an organization. So, what happens when ITIL evolves? ITIL 4 has been introduced and now it’s time for ITIL Experts to evolve their knowledge as well. But that doesn’t mean simply expanding their knowledge of ITIL. ITIL 4 provides the guidance organizations need to address changing service management challenges and to utilize the potential of modern technology. This includes integrating Agile, Lean and DevOps concepts and understanding how these concepts influence new ways of thinking and working. So how do we bring these concepts together? Agile Service Management describes how to adapt Agile and Scrum values and practices to ITSM process design and improve

DevOps and ITSM Required

Organizations adopting DevOps culture and practices are able to deliver high-quality products faster and therefore the business can deliver value to customers faster. You sometimes hear that DevOps and ITSM aren’t compatible . An IT professional attending the ITSM for DevOps course said “Everything would be OK if we could get change and compliance people out of the way!” Sound familiar? The reality is that high-performing organizations aren’t achieving success without ITSM processes. In today’s digital world organizations are performing ITSM processes Understanding Agile Service Management is key to ensure agility across the entire lifecycle. These high performers streamline, integrate and automate the process into the DevOps pipeline so that people don’t even realize that they are executing ITSM processes. We can not optimize DevOps without them and we can not accelerate our ITSM processes without DevOps. In an enterprise, DevOps doesn’t eliminate the need for controls and data. Re

Golden Keys to Unlock Agile Success

Communication and Education before Collaboration  An engineer attending a recent DevOps FND class for certification said “OMGosh! I have been trying to do DevOps and I really did not understand what it really was!” He knew that a self-organizing team was defined as a group of motivated individuals who work together toward a goal, have the authority to take decisions and readily adapt to changing demands. Solutions are derived from inter team collaboration. Innovation is the name of the game for digital transformations. All true but … “authority” without ability is dangerous.  Let’s not forget that before these teams are able to recommend innovative ideas for improvement that we must communicate the strategy and outcomes that deliver value. Also true is the fact that we must educate teams to continuously enhance their skills.  Challenge: During your next virtual or face to face meeting with staff, ask a few questions to validate that all are on the same page. You could as

Tips & Resources for Passing a DevOps or Agile Service Management Exam

Learning the principles and practices of DevOps or Agile Service Management or learning how to become an Agile Process Owner are great, but having the credential that validates that you are certified could be a game changer for you in your career path.  There are many certification courses available from the DevOps Campus so be sure to browse through to find those that are best suited for your or your teams career path or job role function.   If you are just getting started there are a lot of free resources available to assist you on that journey. Two free whitepapers that I found helpful were: What is DevOps? - This is an in-depth overview for DevOps with a lot of good information .  It’s a great getting started and study guide. What is Agile Service Management? – Agile Service Management (Agile SM) ensures that ITSM processes reflect Agile values and are designed with “just enough” control and structure in order to effectively and efficiently deliver services that facili

Flow of Work

Agile Software Development is very well known and practiced in most organizations today in order to respond quickly to the ever increase in demand for IT Services.  Many of these organizations, while making some improvement, are not seeing the outcomes they had expected.  Why is this?   We are applying Lean methods, cycle time is increasing and yet, unplanned work, delays in deployment and unstable production environments remain. Consider the time from idea to delivery as the “ Value Stream ”.  Through this Value Stream, we want to increase the “Flow of Work”.   We will never see the type of optimization that is required unless we look at this Value Stream as a whole.  Applying Agile, Lean, and even tools in development without integrating Change, Security and Operations will break down and decrease the Flow of Work. DevOps helps with this idea.  Many companies, both large and small, are attempting to integrate the development and operations teams.  We have cloud services an

DevOps - The Basics

“Change sticks when it becomes the way we do things around here.” ~  John P. Kotter DevOps benefits the business by improving communication, collaboration and the integration of people, processes and technologies across the IT value stream. Ultimately, DevOps enables companies to deliver better software faster and more reliably by… Improving communication, collaboration and the integration of processes and tools across the IT value stream Automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes Leveraging Agile, Lean, ITSM and evolving DevOps practices DevOps – The Basics Get Involved! DevOps practices will continue to evolve through communities of practice. Seek out opportunities to collaborate with others and to share what you’ve learned. Change related to DevOps initiatives will affect organizational culture. Effective communication plans, training, and clear policies and procedures are all needed to achieve the desired performance outcome

Digital Ingenuity

It is official.  All service providers are or soon will be going through some form of digital transformation. As you begin to transform be sure to take into consideration the Values of DevOps, Agile Service Management, Lean and ITSM.  They each have beneficial results and each dovetail together to ensure that the service provider can move fast, change on a dime to meet dynamic requirements, and also be able to deploy into an antifragile stable environment.  Business transformation can appear to be daunting.  Sometimes it is somewhat of a labyrinth, involving a constant need for collaboration and engagement between customers, business partners and Information Technology functions. All are required for proper strategic vision and operational execution. That is likely not news to you.  We KNOW that is required and yet there are many service providers that still today need to bridge the gap between Business, Development and Operational teams.  When setting expectations for a Digital tran

Agile Change Management

I always hear people say ‘Don’t like the weather, wait an hour it will change’.  The one constant in our lives is change. In business today, customers, users and stakeholders all have the expectation that as IT service providers we can and should be able to handle change requests at an ever-increasing pace.  Yet they still have the expectation that an appropriate response to all requests for change entails a considered approach to assessment of risk and business continuity, change impact, resource requirements, change authorization and especially to the realizable business benefit. For us to be able to do change management in an Agile environment, does that mean we must give up those requirements for speed and agility? The purpose of Change Management is to control the life cycle of all changes enabling beneficial changes to be made.  I was once told by a very wise thought leader ‘Being agile is a state of mind.  It’s more perspective than prescription.’  Why can’t we have a

Agile Service Manager

What is an Agile Service Manager? The following is a definition from the University of California Santa Cruz for an IT Service Manager. “The Service Manager has overall accountability for defining the service, ensuring services meet the business need and are delivered in accordance with agreed business requirements and managing the  service lifecycle  – often in conjunction with a  Service Team ” . I also looked up some jobs offerings from around the globe that were described as Agile Service Management and took some pieces from them.  Here are a couple of examples: Has responsibility for defining and creating the global service, developing the reliability and performance of the services in line with the business requirements, and managing the overall service lifecycle within an agile environment. This includes stability, performance, capability, risk acceptance and analysis of the services. Developing a deep understanding of what is important to the service, you will be pri

CASM and the 3 Ways

Agile Service Management ensures that ITSM processes reflect Agile values and are designed with “just enough “control and structure in order to effectively and efficiently deliver services that facilitate customer outcomes when and how they are needed.  We accomplish this by adapting Agile practices to ITSM process design.  Implement service management in small, integrated increments and ensure that ITSM processes reflect Agile values from initial design through CSI. By being able to incorporate a variety of tools from many practices, the Certified Agile Service Manager (CASM) can engage both the operations and development sides of the organization when defining and documenting processes, engaging in a major project or just move through these steps as part of an improvement project.   By incorporating these DevOps principles along with the CASM role, we can begin to incorporate the idea of process and functional integration much earlier in the development lifecycle.  It allows

Agile Process … What?! Is That an Oxymoron?

To survive in today’s competitive business climate organization’s must respond quickly  to their customers’ evolving needs and desires.   How many times have you heard that? We know from experience that an agile culture where agility is gained through people, process and tools can enable organizations to gain market share and competitive advantage.   And still, more organizations than not silo agile principles to software and product development. Ever wonder why, as an industry, we are not getting the types of returns that are expected from our efforts? Agile software development alone will not get us there!  Other factors include: Ability to quickly respond to customer feedback and needs – Customer engagement. An understanding that the customer and business requirements are dynamic and that we must have agile processes in place to respond to them. (Not only agile development) Sustained innovation and speed from idea to end of life for the service and processes. Incre