In the
introduction of her book The ITSM Process Design Guide, Donna Knapp writes “In
today’s competitive business climate it’s not enough to do things right;
Information Technology (IT) organizations have to do the right things right.” Well what happens when we don’t? Remember New
Coke? Not every decision we make, every
new design or redesign we engage in goes according to plan. What happens when we fail?
One of the
most important and most deeply entrenched reasons why established companies
struggle to grow is fear of failure. In fact in a 2015 Boston Consulting Group
survey, 31% of the respondents identified a risk adverse culture as a key
obstacle to innovation. (1) ITSM
processes for strategy, design, transition, operation and CSI are all based on
efficiency and effectiveness. It’s about
being in control of our IT environments and that we must do everything we can
to prevent failures. Now this may go
against many of our strongly held beliefs but Pixar’s president, Ed Catmull, is
quoted as saying “Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil, in fact they aren’t evil at
all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new….and should be
seen as valuable.”
Most IT
organizations and people would prefer not to review the projects or changes
that have resulted in impacts or failures.
In ITSM we have valuable tools that allow us to learn from these
failures. By utilizing our processes of
incident and problem management along with SACM, change and knowledge we can
begin to use these failures as lessons learned about where our people,
processes, products and capabilities may have fallen short of our
expectations. These reviews should be
done Fast and to the point; take
place Frequently and are Forward-looking, with an emphasis on
learning. (2) By capturing these lessons, the
information and the ideas can be shared across the organization (stored in the
SKMS) so that their benefit can be amplified.
By ensuring
that we are turning these failures into improvement opportunities, they can be
more easily accepted, digested and used for our Continual Service Improvement
Strategy.
1, 2 Harvard
Business Review (May 2016) Increase your return on failure Julian Birkinshaw,
Martine Haas.
For more
information: http://www.itsmacademy.com/orgchange/
and http://www.itsmacademy.com/lifecycle/
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