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Digital Transformation – Pro ITIL?

Some IT executives and practitioners still believe that Agile is the way to success for transformation.

Some IT executives and practitioners will argue that ITIL is the way to go.

Some will say LEAN should be the approach to ensure success.

Oh, you say, “they are all wrong?”  Perhaps you think DevOps and Continuous Delivery is the silver bullet?

Well guess what?   You are all right.  The truth of the matter is that no one best practice or method stands alone.  There are far too many examples of how this trinity of LEAN, Agile, and ITSM enable DevOps for digital transformation. 

ITIL’s Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Approach - Iterative ongoing continual service improvement is at the core of every Service Management Principle. The concept of ‘adopt and adapt’ involves adapting best practices to an organization's circumstances, needs, goals and objectives. Using Agile and Scrum will help increase your velocity. LEAN will help to remove waste to help with the ongoing ITIL Continuous Service Improvement approach.  And let’s not forget DevOps for an integrated approach all the way through.

ITIL’s Metrics and Measurement Best Practice - Key to good metrics and measurement is ensuring that what we measure is linked to the needs and goals of the organization.  The use of the ITIL vision to measurement trail is part of both metrics and measurement and the CSI approach. To move from “Where Are We Now?” to “Where do we want to be?” perhaps it would be good to use LEAN to get rid of all the irrelevant metrics and reports and then use Agile/Scrum to gradually improve and evolve for new never before thought of metric systems.   All along ITIL Best Practice and the ITIL Practitioners “Nine Guiding Principles” will help to keep you on target.

ITIL Practitioner Nine Guiding Principles

·      Focus on Value
·      Work holistically
·      Be transparent
·      Design for Experience
·      Progress iteratively
·      Collaborate
·      Start where you are
·      Observe directly
·      Keep it simple

Consider the culture of your organization and its use of ITIL’s CSI Approach and these principles.  You are not likely get the results you expect from any one methodology without them.  Feel free to respond to this and tell us your ideas and examples for how Agile, LEAN, DevOps and ITIL can dove tail together to optimize efforts for ongoing service evolution. 


And… Don’t forget to Educate and Inspire!

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