Agile Service Management ensures that ITSM processes reflect Agile values and are designed with “just enough “control and structure in order to effectively and efficiently deliver services that facilitate customer outcomes when and how they are needed.  We accomplish this by adapting Agile practices to ITSM process design.  Implement service management in small, integrated increments and ensure that ITSM processes reflect Agile values from initial design through CSI. By being able to incorporate a variety of tools from many practices, the Certified Agile Service Manager (CASM) can engage both the operations and development sides of the organization when defining and documenting processes, engaging in a major project or just move through these steps as part of an improvement project.   By incorporating these DevOps principles along with the CASM role, we can begin to incorporate the idea of process and functional integration much earlier in the development lifecycle.  It allows

To survive in today’s competitive business climate organization’s must respond quickly  to their customers’ evolving needs and desires.   How many times have you heard that? We know from experience that an agile culture where agility is gained through people, process and tools can enable organizations to gain market share and competitive advantage.   And still, more organizations than not silo agile principles to software and product development. Ever wonder why, as an industry, we are not getting the types of returns that are expected from our efforts? Agile software development alone will not get us there!  Other factors include: Ability to quickly respond to customer feedback and needs – Customer engagement. An understanding that the customer and business requirements are dynamic and that we must have agile processes in place to respond to them. (Not only agile development) Sustained innovation and speed from idea to end of life for the service and processes. Incre

The “Best of the Professor” blogs will focus on one unique individual topic and will be followed by links to papers with more in depth information.  DevOps initiatives are supported by three basic principles. In his book “ The Phoenix Project “, Gene Kim  leverages the Theory of Constraints and the knowledge learned in production environments to describe the underlying principles of the DevOps movement in three ways. These principals are referred to as The First Way, The Second Way and The Third Way.    This segment of “Best of the Professor ” will focus on “The Second Way”.   The Second Way                In an earlier “Best of the Professor” paper we discussed “The First Way” and how this DevOps principle was all about the flow of work from left to right.  “The Second Way in contrast is all about the flow of work from right to left.  It is reciprocal. How do we take all of the knowledge and learnings acquired and create feedback loops to the previous s

The “Best of the Professor” blogs will focus on one unique individual topic and will be followed by links to papers with more in depth information.  DevOps initiatives are supported by three basic principles. In his book “ The Phoenix Project “, Gene Kim  leverages the Theory of Constraints and the knowledge learned in production environments to describe the underlying principles of the DevOps movement in three ways. These principals are referred to as The First Way, The Second Way and The Third Way.    This segment of “Best of the Professor” will focus on  “The First Way”. The First Way Workflow.   "The First Way" is all about workflow or the flow of work from left to right. Generally referring to that flow of work between the business and the customer.  Work that is flowing from development to test and then test to operation teams is really only work in process.  Work in process really does not equate to anything until value is realized on the other

This is the year to shatter the silos.  Consider any best practice, method or standard that you have or are thinking of implementing.   In any DevOps, ITSM, ISO or Lean initiative the biggest challenge that any CIO or organization as a whole will have to address is how to meet the rate of demand and the dynamic business requirements.  Dynamic business requirements are a norm not an exception and the service provider will need to ensure fluidity throughout the value stream.  Shattering Silo’s will be a prerequisite to achieving end-to-end workflow and agility.  Functional Silos When talking about silos most practitioners immediately think of integrating departments or functional teams.  One of the more obvious silos to address here is the division between development and operational teams (DevOps).  While there is a lot of buzz in the industry on how to bridge that great divide, the real chasm that hinders efficiency and optimization is that between the business and IT.  Bus

Historically there has been a divide between the Systems Administration (Operation folks) and Software development (Application folks). This divide often results in services being released that only partially meet customer/business requirements and leaves the organization with the perception that operations is often inefficient and ineffective. This riff is not of our own making. In the past it has been caused by a combination of conflicting goals, objectives, processes, and tooling.  Development-centric people tend to believe that change is good. As a matter of fact it’s the thing that they are paid to realize. The business depends on them to be agile to the changing business environment. Because of this correlation, they are often rewarded to create as much change as they can and do it as quickly as possible. Operational people on the other hand, have institutionalized the belief that change is the nemesis of who they are. The business depends on them to keep the lights

Part of the role of the Certified Agile Service Manager (CASM) is to ensure that ITSM processes engage and reflect agile values and that they are appropriately designed with “just enough” control and structure in order to effectively and efficiently deliver services that facilitate customer outcomes when and how they are needed. The goals and objectives of Agile Service Management include: Ensuring that agile values and principles are embedded into every service management process from design through implementation and continual improvement. Improving IT’s ability to meet customer requirements faster.  This includes process and process integration, capabilities, knowledge transfer and the use of appropriate technologies for automation. Being effective and efficient (lean).  It also means ensuring that we don’t bias too far in one direction.  I can be very effective but not efficient. On the other hand I can become too efficient but impact my effectiveness.  Either of these s

If a product backlog is growing faster than you deploy, if it cannot be prioritized properly, and business outcomes suffer, are your “Agile” efforts really working?   Agile software development is a group of software development methods in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams . It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. A broken product backlog is only one of many symptoms that something is broken. If there are bottlenecks in change, delivery and deployment than what real value can evolutionary and faster development bring to the business?  It is time to consider “Agile Service Management”. Agile Service Management ensures that agile principles and methods go beyond software development t o ensure the product backlog is in control and that we, as service providers, can meet the s

Most of us are aware that Agile can be used to improve the effectiveness and efficiency needed for software development.  Agile core values and principles are defined in the Agile Manifesto . But wait!  There is more! While there are many techniques, methods and frameworks that can be utilized to ensure agility within your organization, what is important to note is that they can and should be expanded beyond software development.   Agile Values are realized via many different techniques and methods including: Continuous integration - A software development practice where: Members of a team code separately but integrate their work at least daily Each integration goes through an automated build and test to detect errors and defects The team collectively builds the software faster with less risk Continuous delivery - Continuous delivery does not infer that you are deploying every day or every hour. It means that you COULD release when needed.  It is a softwar

Agile Development is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental de velopment   methodologies.  In order to achieve Agile Development, organizations will adopt frameworks and methodologies such as SCRUM and LEAN. Being Agile and using SCRUM, LEAN and other methodologies in development is good!  What happens when development starts adopting this culture and becomes more agile and begins to move faster and leaner than ever before, only to come up against laborious and bureaucratic change management and Service Operation processes?  One example that I heard lately is that it is like pushing more and more paper into a printer and expecting it to print faster!   It doesn’t work! The Agile Principles and the  Agile Manifesto  are applicable beyond software development. Therefore, service providers not only need Agile Development we also need to adopt Agile principles throughout the entire Design, Transition, and Operation lifecycles.  Agile Service Management (Agile SM)

“Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy”, leadership guru Peter Drucker states in his   Management Challenges for the 21st Century . So what is a self-organizing team?   In many situations teams will be comprised of a group of people working together but not really dependent on what the others do to complete their individual tasks.   Teams should have four main qualities: Collaborative tasks to fulfill a  defined mission . Tying it to the overall vision, mission and strategy. Clear boundaries  in terms of information flow and alignment with other organizational teams, resources or decision-making policies. Roles, responsibilities and interfaces must to be defined. Authority to self-manage  within these boundaries. Must adhere to the overall organizational governance. Stability  over some defined period of time. Possibly defined in a project lifecycle or some other overarching documentation. In addition to these qualities, five essential

Underlying and supporting the  Agile Manifesto  are the twelve principles that help to bring the Agile philosophy to life. The DevOps movement encourages us to adopt and adapt these principles into the ITIL lifecycle not to reinvent it, but to allow us to make it spin faster.  Let’s take a look at them individually and interpret them from an ITIL, operational and support perspective. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer.   We do this through early and continuous delivery of the proper utility & warranty. Welcome changes, even late in development, by using well defined and nimble change, release and deployment management, teams and models, allowing our customers to remain competitive in their given market spaces. Deliver updated working services frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale. OK that one I modified a bit. We’ll   be Agile about it. Business people and IT must work together daily and collaborate

ITIL is turning 25 this year.  In honor of this milestone, AXELOS commissioned a study ( The Importance of ITIL® – A Global View – 2014 and Beyond ) to provide a global and independent assessment of the current perception of ITIL, engaging nearly 400 C-Level and medium tier service managers in key international regions across a range of industries. One of the stated reasons that the study was commissioned is because ITIL’s benefits are being questioned in light of factors such as cloud computing, more advanced automation, and agile. The results of the study reaffirm ITIL’s value, particularly in the eyes of IT executives. In fact, according to the study, just under 70% of executives indicated that ITIL is becoming more important in light of these trends. Some interesting results include: 71% of those surveyed view ITIL as playing a tangible role in supporting the move to DevOps and Agile  ITIL 2011 adopters are more likely to see ITIL as growing in importance   40%