Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Value

Happy Retirement ITIL© v3 Foundation! Passing the Torch to ITIL 4!

Retirement is a time that marks a new beginning. It’s a major transition that isn’t always easy. This is  true whether it relates to the retirement of people, or a technology, or as is the case with ITIL v3 Foundation, a certification. Like other major transitions, the retirement of ITIL v3 Foundation has sparked a variety of emotions and concerns. On a positive note, we can look back fondly on ITIL v3 and celebrate the progress that it has enabled us to make in terms of promoting the value of service management. It helped us to understand what processes are and the importance of continually improving those processes. It also paved the way for us to understand the importance of aligning service management with business requirements. Concerns, however, have started to creep in. Is ITIL v3 enough in the digital age? Or perhaps more importantly, is ITIL v3 too much when viewed through the lens of adjacent ways of work such as Agile, Lean, and DevOps? Have our processes become unnecessaril

WHY become an ITIL Strategic Leader

Guest Host Post by Jeff Jensen , previously posted on Jeff's Blog , February 23, 2021 I thought it would be valuable for me to share my own personal thoughts on what you will be able to do differently or better as a result of investing your time and money in becoming an ITIL 4 certified Strategic Leader : ITIL 4 Foundation WHY this class is worthwhile ITIL 4 Foundation introduces a brand new framework and concepts to reflect modern ways of working while providing guidance on how an IT organization can both position itself as a high-performing organization and improve its products, services, and underpinning practices and capabilities.  The class introduces the Service Value System, which is a systems thinking framework t hat is foundational for showing how an organization can visualize the end-to-end delivery for current state products and services, as well as utilize the guidance as a means to improve. This class is also the foundational basis of more advanced learning in the IT

ITIL®4 Specialist Drive Stakeholder Value: Maximizing the Consumer Experience

Originally posted on The AXELOS Blog , February 2020 and written by Christian Nissen , IT management consultant and lead author for the ITIL 4 Drive Stakeholder Value module. Back in the industrial society, goods were a dominant factor in our lives. But in the “service era” we prefer to replace ownership of goods with access to services and resources without necessarily owning them. This is happening with and without digital transformation , although the latter accelerates this phenomenon: think Uber and Airbnb. In this context, the ITIL® 4 Specialist Drive Stakeholder Value module – within ITIL 4 Managing Professional – is about the engagement and interaction between service providers and stakeholders and the conversion of demand to value via IT-enabled services. But what does this mean in practice? Previously, services were treated in the same way as manufactured goods: it was the customer’s responsibility to derive value. Conversely, the core concept of ITIL 4 is that value is co-c

IT's impact on the employee and customer experiences during COVID-19 (and beyond)

Originally posted on tsoshop.co.uk, AXELOS Global Best Practice Blog , July 2020 and written by Rae Ann Bruno , President of Business Solutions Training, Inc (BST) As it became evident that sheltering was going to be a requirement during COVID, things changed drastically and quickly for organizations. The workforce became remote virtually overnight. Information technology (IT) was suddenly 'at the table' with the business decision makers - some for the first time - to help organizations set-up a remote workforce and service their external customers. What IT accomplished for their organizations, demonstrates the value of the ITIL 4 guiding principles and a focus on the employee and customer experiences. According to PRINCE2 , a project is 'a temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case.' Project managers are empowered to chair the project team and direct them toward successf

Why We Must Transcend Silos

Survival - For a service provider to survive in today’s fast-paced delivery environment they will likely need to move away from old ways of doing things. We hear things like; "Terms matter", "Shift your thinking!" or "Shift the focus!" and "CHANGE the CULTURE!".  It is becoming more evident than ever that our organizational structure including silos could be an impediment. Structure – An organization’s structure impacts how work gets done. Structure influences the actual product and service architecture. Some organizational structures even have siloed within silos.  Structure matters. Silos can fracture the velocity of delivery and the quality of what is delivered. We can transcend silos!  ITIL 4 Foundation or the new DevOps Leader  certification classes are a good place to start learning new and better ways for the conversion of demand to value for service providers. Considerations for Transcending Silos Measurement – High performin

ITIL 4 – Why and Why NOW?

To Understand Why and Why NOW, I will use some of the “Guiding Principles” that are the golden chords steaming through all practices defined in ITIL 4. These guiding principles are themes throughout the concepts and precepts that were discussed in a recent ITIL 4 Foundation certification class. Practitioners and thought leaders gathered together from all over the world to discuss and learn more about ITIL 4 best practices There are seven guiding principles discussed in ITIL 4. I will begin with these three to answer the question: Why and Why Now? Focus on Value ITIL 4 is a holistic approach for managing value. Based on the Service Value System and the integration of dimensions that tie together practices, ITIL 4 enables speed to value for all service providers. Value is the results of all of our people, practices, and technology. Value is what we deliver. ITIL 4 stresses the need to co-create value with all stakeholders none more important than with the customer. If we are

The Four Dimensions of Service Management

For every system that is utilized to provide a service, there are four dimensions of service management. If we are to think and work holistically that means that every practice, and every aspect of service management for services need to be considered in light of these four dimensions. Organizations and People The aspects of the organization and people dimension are all related to the creation, delivery and improvement of services. To improve these aspects, everyone in an organization must understand its objectives and how they contribute to those objectives. It is not uncommon to see organizations restructuring in an effort to reap the benefits of Agile, Lean and DevOps practices. Organizations are increasingly forming cross-functional teams or product teams in an effort to break down silos and enable more effective collaboration. None of this can be accomplished without understanding how powerful the culture is in terms of its influence on organizations and individuals. Focu

Align IT with the Changing Business Requirements – IT “IS” the Business

Service Management Best Practice is as relevant today as it was a decade ago.  Some would argue that it is even more relevant.   Increase in demand, dynamic requirements and varied silo’s and cultures within an organization demand some semblance of management control.  Failure to do so results in just that …..“Failure”.   Following ITIL Best Practice allows service providers to align IT with the changing business requirements.  Sounds Great!  What does that mean exactly? Business requirements are consistently evolving and changing.  This creates a DEMAND that generates a workload for capacity.   The service provider must anticipate this demand and gear their service assets accordingly or consumers will not receive the value that they have paid for and expect.   We can anticipate demand by monitoring and measuring specified patterns of business activity and then adjust accordingly.  Think of a NEST thermostat.  A NEST thermostat learns what temperature you like by learning

ITIL Practitioner - Components of a Service

At the core of ITSM is the idea of delivering services to customers, how these services will be engaged to deliver some form of value to the customer and the customer’s organization, and the value captured by the service provider.  For this to be accomplished we must first understand the key elements of an IT service and how, as a service provider, we deliver the correct set of services effectively and efficiently.   “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”.  This allows the customer to create the desired business outcome without having to invest in specialized tools or skills.  By linking activities performed by the service provider to the desired business outcomes the provider can be seen as contributing value, not just as a cost to the business. The value of a service is derived from what it enables someone to accomplish or what outcomes it enables them to

Work Holistically

I TSM best practice frequently suggests working holistically.   This is particularly true when defining a strategy and architecting a design solution but when you think about it, this holistic viewpoint should permeate every investment, improvement, and action in the entire value stream from thought to end of life for every service or product deployed. At a high-level thinking holistically involves looking at things from a people process technology perspective but cannot leave out our partners and suppliers.  No service, process, or functional team stands alone.   Changing one element of a complex system will impact others.  This is a real challenge because no one team can know everything about all aspects of the system.  Therefore, working holistically requires a balance between specialization (functions and departments) and the coordination of complex integrated process activities.  It is only then do we get a clear picture of the lifecycle of a service and any hope of managing

Utility and Warranty

If you are in the position of providing IT services to customers then you know the importance of the statement: Utility plus Warranty equals Value (U+W=V).  So when we talk about value, we must consider who determines that value and what are the components that go into making up the agreements that will define how value gets created and delivered.  The value of a service is normally defined as “the level of service that meets customer expectations” and is often measured by how much the customer is willing to pay for the service. An industry trend today that may have been excluded in the past is the ability of the service provider to be able to define and document the costs involved in providing that service beyond its core value. Services being intangible and unlike products do not have much inherent value.  This value does not get realized until the service is actually utilized and enables someone to create the desired business outcome, which means that the provider of the servic

The Best of Service Strategy, Part 1

I've been hearing a lot lately about "going back to the basics" of ITIL and IT Service Management.  So for the first half of 2013, I'm going to package and republish the best of my blogs for each lifecycle stage.  As always, I welcome your comments and questions!   ~~ ITSM Professor Utility and Warranty Equals Value Originally published October, 2012 When a service provider is developing a service for a customer or group of customers the underlying goal is to ensure that the service has value for the customers by meeting a set of defined requirements.    The value is often defined by what the customer is willing to pay for this service rather than what it actually cost the service provider to produce the service or any other essential feature of the service itself. Services themselves do not actually have intrinsic value.   That value is created by the outcome enabled by employing the service and therefore the value of the service is not determined by the provid

Adding Value - GIVE EM THE PICKLE

Recently I was having a discussion with a colleague. The discussion centered on value, what it means and how we deliver it to customers and users of IT Services. One particular part of the discussion focused on how you can easily add value in small increments that combine to bring satisfaction to customers. My colleague mentioned an interesting idea from a restaurateur named Bob Farrell, the founder of a chain of Ice Cream Parlors. He sold the chain and became a motivational speaker based on what he learned from the restaurant industry and how to drive better value and customer satisfaction. Bob had once received a letter from a customer indicating loss of satisfaction when the server was going to charge him for a single pickle slice to go with his burger. From this letter Bob Farrell derived the importance of the small things we should do for customers and users of our goods and services to ensure satisfaction.  Providing value to customers does not have to arrive in large portio