Previously, I have delivered several articles on the
challenges that IT organizations face in trying to balance opposing goals and
objectives especially in light of the fact that in every organization, the one
constant is change. The focus of those
pieces described the tension between the perspective that IT is a set of
technology components (Internal IT view) and that IT is a set of services
(External business view). They also
spoke to the fact that, no matter how well the functionality of an IT service
meets stake holder’s needs, it will be of little value if the IT infrastructure
is unstable causing instances of unavailability and inconsistency in
performance levels . Of course we
(IT/Service provider) must be able to do all of this at the same time as providing
services that deliver acceptable levels of quality while efficiently utilizing
the organizations resources.
So to reiterate, this struggle can be broken down into four
general imbalances so that an IT organization can identify that they are experiencing
an imbalance by leaning more towards one extreme or the other. At a high level it can provide the service
provider with the opportunity to develop some guidelines on how to resolve
these conflicts and move towards a best practice approach in resolving these
discrepancies.
· Internal
IT view vs. External Business view
·
Stability vs.
Responsiveness
· Service
Quality vs. Cost
·
Reactive vs. Proactive
The one we will focus on here is the tension between being
reactive and proactive. A reactive
organization is one that only acts when it is prompted to do so by some
external driver. In this type of
organization this is the basis of the strategic position to ensure that
services are highly consistent and stable.
This has the tendency to discourage proactive activities by the
operational staff. Additionally this
tends to prevent investment in proactive efforts and technologies, further
increasing the risk to the stability of those very services the IT organization
is trying to deliver in a consistent and stable manner.
A proactive organization is one that is continually looking
at ways to improve the delivery of services by constantly improving the
effectiveness and efficiency of their ITSM processes and the utilization of
their IT infrastructure. This strategic
position tends to be encouraged as it leads and organization to maintain a
competitive advantage in a changing market space. However being too proactive can be expensive
and can lead to the staff being unable to maintain a stable environment because
of the constant change that is taking place.
These imbalances tend to result from an organization being more or less
mature.
While being proactive is usually viewed as a positive
attribute, there will be times where reactive capabilities will be needed. The role of the IT organization is to achieve
a balance between these two strategic extremes.
To ensure that we can accomplish this balance there are some things that
need to be in place.
· Formal problem and incident management processes
integrated between service operations and CSI is critical.
·
The strategic plans must include the ability to
prioritize, diagnose and repair technical faults within the IT infrastructure,
applications and services. At the same
time changing business needs must be addressed by continuously reviewing what
and how services are being delivered to the customer.
·
Service asset and configuration management must
be able to provide accurate and up to date data and information to all
processes, projects and programs.
·
Ongoing involvement of SLM in operations and the
continuous review and update of SLRs, SLAs, OLAs and contracts.
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