For over a decade, ITIL has been the leading ITSM framework adopted by enterprises across the globe. So, what is driving a rapidly increasing interest in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) as a service management alternative? In its own words, Google refers to SRE as its approach to service management: “The SRE team is responsible for the availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response and capacity planning.” In traditional ITSM terms, the role of the SRE is responsible for service level, change, availability, event, incident, problem, capacity, performance, infrastructure and platform management. While the operational practice areas may be similar, there are significant differences in how the practices are approached. ITIL4 Framework Compared to SRE Released in 2019, the newest update to ITIL4 remains a complex governance model with four dimensions, seven guiding principles, a Service Value System and 34 processes (now renamed as p...

These “Three Golden Keys” are powerful! They can unlock the power of your ITIL 4  Qualification and will accelerate your journey in the right direction as you achieve one goal after another! Believe in Challenging the Status Quo With ITIL 4  Get out of the box. It is a new world. Leaders and teams will succeed by creating an environment to challenge the status quo. You are free, to give yourself permission to question the status quo of your organization and invite others to join you. We must stop doing the same thing over and over again and yet expect a different result. Use the idea of a Service Value System, Value Streams, and the four dimensions and apply the ITIL Guiding Principles as you “Challenge The Status Quo”. Real change begins with YOU!  Keep The Momentum Going!  Getting your ITIL 4 Qualification is a huge milestone in your learning and career path. Once there, the real journey begins. Be sure to get the most value from your accomplis...

Testing starts with the first line of code!   It is NOT a downstream activity. DevOps testing has a critical role to play in a Continuous Delivery Pipeline. Without integrated testing DevOps simply will not work!   With the advent of DevOps and the movement to breakdown silos between developers, QA, security, and operations, it becomes critically important that all members of an IT team - regardless of what tools they use, or role they play - understand the essentials of testing. Every member of your development team should also integrate to ensure Compliance and Audit outcomes!   It is a new world.   In this new world, we can leverage from existing but must be open to walking through new doors of opportunity. Understanding traditional test strategies is helpful but when and where, and most importantly how we proceed with our test strategy must shift.   Knowing how to code is not enough, Quality Assurance in and of itself is not enough.   We canno...

According to ITIL 4 best practice, Service Continuity focuses on events that would impede business operations so drastically that it would be considered a disaster. Other events that have a less significant impact on the business might be considered incidents to be managed through the Incident Management Practice or the Major Incident Management Practice. This means that there are different levels of importance and that the distinction between what is a normal incident, major incident, or one that might require disaster recovery must be predefined and agreed upon. Documentation then must include clear thresholds and triggers to provoke the appropriate response and recovery into action without delay and additional risk.  There is no question that your organization is increasingly dependent on services that are tech-enabled. The need for resilient solutions is critical to success. A combination of business planning as well as being proactive with security, incident, and problem ...

To Understand Why and Why NOW, I will use some of the “Guiding Principles” that are the golden chords steaming through all practices defined in ITIL 4. These guiding principles are themes throughout the concepts and precepts that were discussed in a recent ITIL 4 Foundation certification class. Practitioners and thought leaders gathered together from all over the world to discuss and learn more about ITIL 4 best practices There are seven guiding principles discussed in ITIL 4. I will begin with these three to answer the question: Why and Why Now? Focus on Value ITIL 4 is a holistic approach to managing value. Based on the Service Value System and the integration of dimensions that tie together practices, ITIL 4 enables speed to value for all service providers. Value is the result of all of our people, practices, and technology. Value is what we deliver. ITIL 4 stresses the need to co-create value with all stakeholders none more important than with the customer. If we are going ...

For every system that is utilized to provide a service, there are four dimensions of service management. If we are to think and work holistically that means that every practice, and every aspect of service management for services need to be considered in light of these four dimensions. Organizations and People The aspects of the organization and people dimension are all related to the creation, delivery, and improvement of services. To improve these aspects, everyone in an organization must understand its objectives and how they contribute to those objectives. It is not uncommon to see organizations restructuring in an effort to reap the benefits of Agile, Lean, and DevOps practices. Organizations are increasingly forming cross-functional teams or product teams in an effort to break down silos and enable more effective collaboration. None of this can be accomplished without understanding how powerful the culture is in terms of its influence on organizations and individuals. Fo...

Stronger alignment between IT and the business: Historically IT has not been a participant in helping to create business strategies, it was normally in the role of supporting them. Recently, with the speed of innovation impacting businesses position in the marketplace, IT has been playing a greater role in helping to develop that business strategy. The ITIL framework enables IT to act as a service provider and become a core and more strategic part of the business. Pre-defined processes and best practices from the ITIL framework enable businesses to react quickly to today's rapidly changing technology landscape, focus on innovation and ultimately keep customers satisfied. Improved service delivery and customer satisfaction: Event, incident and problem management processes included within the ITIL framework enable businesses to review performance, perform root cause analysis, resolve issues and through problem management, prevent future incidents from occurring and allows us an...

Originally posted on The AXELOS Blog - by @itsm_Donna In IT service management (ITSM) education is critical: it helps organizations get a shared understanding of terms and concepts and a proven body of knowledge such as ITIL® . The IT industry is rife with buzzwords carrying varied interpretations, so education helps get everyone on the same page. But while ITSM professionals may well understand the “what?” and “why? – for example why to minimize risk or restore services ASAP – today it’s the how that needs to evolve and change. And while there is always value in education, achieving certification creates a different level of engagement: people get involved and – critically – seek to understand. Getting certified allows you to represent your competence and understanding of the concepts you’ve learned. After that, you need to get out there and apply them to benefit your organization and add to your credibility and your baseline of experience. Today’s hiring managers are looking for th...

This blog is in response to those IT Professionals who want to know what to expect f or the “ Managing Across the Lifecycle ” (MALC) class, taking the exam and receiving both the MALC and ITIL Expert certifications upon passing the MALC exam.  If you have talked with others that took this class and the exam a few years ago you will be happy to know that the format of this class has changed from what it used to be.  Classes are filled with interesting dialogue, exercises and even laughter as IT managers and practitioners with varied skill sets work together to validate competencies and knowledge for: Key concepts of the service lifecycle Communication and stakeholder management Integrating service management processes across the service lifecycle Managing services across the service lifecycle Governance and organization Measuring and demonstrating business value Implementing and improving service management capability Sounds simple right?  It's the level of d...

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 ...

Stronger alignment between IT and the business: Historically IT has not been a participant in helping to create business strategies, it was normally in the role of supporting them. Recently, with the speed of innovation impacting businesses position in the marketplace, IT has been playing a greater role in helping to develop that business strategy. The ITIL framework enables IT to act as a service provider and become a core and more strategic part of the business. Pre-defined processes and best practices from the ITIL framework enable businesses to react quickly to today's rapidly changing technology landscape, focus on innovation and ultimately keep customers satisfied. Improved service delivery and customer satisfaction: Event, incident and problem management processes included within the ITIL framework enable businesses to review performance, perform root cause analysis, resolve issues and through problem management, prevent future incidents from occurring and allows us ...

I have been instructing ITIL classes now for almost ten years and wow have things changed in our industry over those ten years.  Many new tools, concepts and practices have been introduced along the way.  Yet somehow, I still get excited about teaching ITIL Foundation even after presenting it a few hundred times.  The material has changed somewhat, my presentation techniques have gotten better and my jokes and stories still seem to be timeless, kind of like me (Lol). I guess part of what is amazing to me, is the fact that there are still many people out there in the world of ITSM that have not been formally introduced to ITIL best practices but yet participate in them.  So I take very seriously the responsibility to not only educate the learners, but hopefully to inspire and excite them to really want to utilize these practices in their everyday activities;  to see the value in these practices and not view them as just something else they must do. Give...

ITIL advocates that IT services are aligned to the needs of the business and support its core processes. It provides guidance to organizations and individuals on how to use IT Service Management (ITSM) ­­­as a tool to facilitate business change, transformation and growth. Some are believing that ITIL has run its course.  In truth I believe the opposite is true.   In the past, and still today, many organizations believe that Best Practice and ITSM processes are focused on the Service Operation Lifecycle.   Implementation, process design, and ITSM tools have had a very heavy focus on processes like Incident, Problem, Change and Configuration Management. Few have yet to recognize or have not seen the value in the guidance for Service Strategy and Service Design processes and roles.   How did these get overlooked? In the last three or so years I have seen a bit more buzz about “Business Relationship Management”.   Less so for “Demand” and “S...

At the core of ITSM is the idea of delivering services to customers, how these services will be engaged to deliver some form of value to the customer and the customer’s organization, and the value captured by the service provider.  For this to be accomplished we must first understand the key elements of an IT service and how, as a service provider, we deliver the correct set of services effectively and efficiently.   “A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks”.  This allows the customer to create the desired business outcome without having to invest in specialized tools or skills.  By linking activities performed by the service provider to the desired business outcomes the provider can be seen as contributing value, not just as a cost to the business. The value of a service is derived from what it enables someone to accomplish or what outco...

Here is an article I thought you might find interesting.  It was first published in itSMF USA's Source EJournal, April 2017.   The State of ITSM: One Company’s Assessment! By Keith D. Sutherland and Lawrence J. “Butch” Sheets Educators and consultants operating in the formal practice of IT service management (ITSM) have largely been doing so since the mid-90s. Even though the best, codified practices of the IT service management framework, ITIL®, is now just over 30 years old, there remains a large number of organizations still in initial adoption of ITIL.  And of those service providers with longer histories of using ITIL, many still have a significant need to increase maturity, or more fully implement their ITIL practice. The need in these companies for structured education, assessments, and roadmaps still abounds, even while multiple approaches for these practices are available for each. Beyond ITIL (and in many cases, alongside), are the many other ...

ITIL is not in conflict with DevOps, ITIL supports DevOps with a solid foundation by providing an up to date an accurate configuration of our IT infrastructure. This, in turn, supports the ability to accurately carry out the detection of issues and underlying problems and deliver collaborative, permanent solutions to operational deviations. Further, it engages the Second Way by “shortening and amplifying the feedback loop” to development.  Historically most IT organizations structure their incident, problem and change processes within a very confined view, typically utilizing these processes from an operational perspective and only marginally engaging them at the design stage of the lifecycle.   ITIL should and can be adapted to DevOps practices to proactively define when incidents and problems arise while still in the design phase of the lifecycle.  This means engaging both software development and infrastructure design in a way that allows us to capture these de...

What is an Agile Service Manager? The following is a definition from the University of California Santa Cruz for an IT Service Manager. “The Service Manager has overall accountability for defining the service, ensuring services meet the business need and are delivered in accordance with agreed business requirements and managing the  service lifecycle  – often in conjunction with a  Service Team ” . I also looked up some jobs offerings from around the globe that were described as Agile Service Management and took some pieces from them.  Here are a couple of examples: Has responsibility for defining and creating the global service, developing the reliability and performance of the services in line with the business requirements, and managing the overall service lifecycle within an agile environment. This includes stability, performance, capability, risk acceptance and analysis of the services. Developing a deep understanding of what is important to the servi...