Customers are empowered and connected. To stay relevant many organizations are asking “how can we evolve with the digital era?” To lead the change, we must understand it.  It is likely that in the next one to five years your organization will focus on digital transformation in three or more of these areas: Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Defined as the study of " intelligent agents " on any device that perceives or learns its environment and takes actions toward success at a specified goal. The Internet of Things (IoT) The IoT refers to the connection of devices (other than typical computers and smartphones) to the Internet. Today things like cars, kitchen appliances, and even heart monitors can all be connected through the IoT. Who would have known that we might need to add items such as drones to an asset registery and learn how to manage them? And as the IoT grows in the next few years, more devices are and will continue to join that list. (Editor'

I have been instructing ITIL classes now for almost ten years and wow have things changed in our industry over those ten years.  Many new tools, concepts and practices have been introduced along the way.  Yet somehow, I still get excited about teaching ITIL Foundation even after presenting it a few hundred times.  The material has changed somewhat, my presentation techniques have gotten better and my jokes and stories still seem to be timeless, kind of like me (Lol). I guess part of what is amazing to me, is the fact that there are still many people out there in the world of ITSM that have not been formally introduced to ITIL best practices but yet participate in them.  So I take very seriously the responsibility to not only educate the learners, but hopefully to inspire and excite them to really want to utilize these practices in their everyday activities;  to see the value in these practices and not view them as just something else they must do. Given the number of times that I

ITIL advocates that IT services are aligned to the needs of the business and support its core processes. It provides guidance to organizations and individuals on how to use IT Service Management (ITSM) ­­­as a tool to facilitate business change, transformation and growth. Some are believing that ITIL has run its course.  In truth I believe the opposite is true.   In the past, and still today, many organizations believe that Best Practice and ITSM processes are focused on the Service Operation Lifecycle.   Implementation, process design, and ITSM tools have had a very heavy focus on processes like Incident, Problem, Change and Configuration Management. Few have yet to recognize or have not seen the value in the guidance for Service Strategy and Service Design processes and roles.   How did these get overlooked? In the last three or so years I have seen a bit more buzz about “Business Relationship Management”.   Less so for “Demand” and “Strategy Management” for IT Services. Few are

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

The systems, the processes, and the culture that worked for IT service providers 20 years ago will not work in today’s environment.  No big news here!  Most IT support staff will agree. The truth is that the same could be said for systems or methods that service providers used five years ago or even last year.  The dynamic and rapid change of business requirements demands that a service provider be dynamic and continuously adapt to evolving business needs and outcomes. When you get into your car and turn the key or push the start button, most would expect that the car is going to start.  You might also expect that it has wheels, an engine, and all the elements necessary to drive this car, right?   This is the same expectation that a business operation expects.  When a service is provided the business expects that service is going to have all the working elements to ensure that it does what they need. The customer expects that the service is available and secure for day to day oper

Each organization will have to define what their quality goals are for integrated testing based on the business and customer requirements for speed and outcomes.  The fact is that these goals must be quantified or in other words measurable. If you are not measuring your testing activities in alignment with the strategic goals then success becomes subjective and it will be very difficult to show value for your effort. Some examples of measurements might be in the form of Run-To-Plan and Pass-To-Plan. Run-To-Plan (RTP) is the number of the total planned tests that have completed and typical goals are to have 95% RTP Pass-TopPlan is the number of tests that have passed and a typical goal for this metric is to have a 90% PTP The criteria for determining when testing is complete is agreed by all stakeholders.   It will be impossible to have all stakeholders on the sprint team, but certainly input and validation from key stakeholders will have to be included before acceptanc

 Success in modern technical endeavors absolutely requires multiple perspectives and expertise to collaborate. (1)  When I ask managers attending my classes if their organizations practice ‘agile’ they hesitate and say something like we kind of do but not in all areas of the organization. Further questioning usually uncovers that most of this agility starts and ends with the software development teams. When asked if these practices have been introduced to the business units there is a long uncomfortable pause, and then I hear 'we don’t usually talk to those groups'. Over the last couple of decades, a new set of major management philosophies have been developed and are now being adopted to ITSM. These new ways of thinking enabled manufacturing, software development and others to analytically realize both disciplined execution and continuous innovation, something that was thought to be mutually exclusive and impossible to accomplish with traditional management methods. Over

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

When we think about what services we are going to offer we immediately think of the Service Catalog.  We must also consider what agreements go along with the delivery of those services.  What levels of utility and warranty are going to be expected over the life of our services?   What about services that will be supplied by external service providers; who is going to manage those?  Let’s take a look at which ITSM processes we will need to engage to ensure that we are able to strategize, design, deliver and maintain services that will meet our customers’ needs over the lifetime of the services. In Service Offerings and Agreements (SOA), we look at Service Portfolio Management (SPM), Financial Management (FM), Demand Management (DM) and Business Relationship Management (BRM).  These are all processes within the Strategy stage of the Lifecycle.  We also explore Service Catalog Management (SCM), Service Level Management (SLM) and Supplier Management (SM) processes within the Design st

Timely and effective communication forms a critical part of any service improvement project. To transform an organization and move people and process from just thinking about Continual Service Improvement (CSI) activities to actually allotting time to be able to performing CSI activities, it is critical that all stakeholders are informed of all changes to the processes, activities, roles and responsibilities. The goal of the communications plan is to build and maintain awareness, understanding, enthusiasm and support among all stakeholders for the CSI initiative. A communication plan is much more than just sending out one notification on what is about to happen and should be a series of notifications and meetings to keep people engaged, informed and passionate while incorporating the ability to deal with responses and feedback from the targeted audience. First, we must design how we will communicate and then we must define what and to whom we will communicate. The pla

Here is an article I thought you might find interesting.  It was first published in itSMF USA's Source EJournal, April 2017.   The State of ITSM: One Company’s Assessment! By Keith D. Sutherland and Lawrence J. “Butch” Sheets Educators and consultants operating in the formal practice of IT service management (ITSM) have largely been doing so since the mid-90s. Even though the best, codified practices of the IT service management framework, ITIL®, is now just over 30 years old, there remains a large number of organizations still in initial adoption of ITIL.  And of those service providers with longer histories of using ITIL, many still have a significant need to increase maturity, or more fully implement their ITIL practice. The need in these companies for structured education, assessments, and roadmaps still abounds, even while multiple approaches for these practices are available for each. Beyond ITIL (and in many cases, alongside), are the many other evolving a