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Showing posts from April, 2014

Next Steps

In an earlier blog I had talked about the need for organizations to have the ability to measure their processes against those of their competition or some defined industry standard.  Before that could happen, it had to be determined if your processes are mature enough to ensure that you can gather the needed data for a successful undertaking.   If your assessment calls for developing a new process, reengineering or improving an existing process a sound methodology for that mission could be the “Ten process design and improvement steps” as describe in “The ITSM Process Design Guide by Donna Knapp. The elegance of this approach is that it can be utilized to design or improve any process regardless of maturity level.   It provides the common vocabulary, tools, and techniques needed to engage all participants who would be required for these process and improvement actions.   They help to define and understand the end to end process, who the customers are and their requirements.   It a

Agile_ITSM – Ingredients for Success! Part 2

In part one of this topic we discussed the “dynamic” needs of business and also discussed how we the service provider must be “agile” to meet those dynamic needs.  Understanding of course that none of that can be done without the support of “processes and technology” and the best practices that enable them.  In part two of “Agile_ITSM – Ingredients for Success” I would like to discuss the most important ingredient for the success of all service providers: people.   People People with their skills, their diversity, their productivity and innovation are at the heart of agility and speed to deliver quality in a world where business needs and demand are dynamic. Empowerment! Trust the intentions of your people.  We have to be careful not to hobble the productivity with micro management of staff members and their effort.  When considering trust, it is not just a matter of whether a single member of the team or workgroup is trustworthy but do you trust that the team will

Agile_ITSM - Ingredients for Success! - Part 1 of 2

Dynamic We the service provider must meet the “dynamic needs of the business”! Someone recently asked me “What does that mean exactly?”   If that is what we are all chasing after and that is what we as service providers must understand and meet, then what is it?! The business demand for speed and productivity is not decreasing in any way.  The dictionary definition of “dynamic” is: Always active or changing Having or showing a lot of energy of or relating to energy, motion, or physical force This would mean that the needs of the business are constantly changing.   We can attest to that in our own experience.   So the question really becomes  "  How do we quickly adapt to that need?" Agile Being agile would mean that we are flexible so that we can adapt to change. We have to start looking at the provisioning of a service as a consumption cycle. Products are produced but a service is consumed.   Once consumed the demand for that service will incre

Roadmap

Most executives understand that a business’ performance is only significant when it is benchmarked against its competitors.   As an accepted business best practice it is expected that the functioning of an individual organization will be measured against other like type organizations. This practice of benchmarking oneself against competitors should be no different for any IT organization.   There can be no better instrument to utilize then benchmarking to insure whether the IT operation is providing a competitive product.   Without this peer to peer comparison it would be difficult at best to define if IT’s performance is weak, competitive or an industry leader. Of course in order to benchmark you must first determine are my processes mature enough to ensure that I can gather the significant data needed for this undertaking.  If not then your resources would be better utilized in first assessing your processes maturity through tools such as the ITIL Process Maturity Framework (PMF