A quick update: Introduced in 2019, ITIL 4 has shifted its focus from processes to holistic practices. These practices typically have multiple processes, whereas earlier versions of ITIL defined a practice area as a single process. The responsibilities of Practice Practitioners are aligned to the activities of one or more of the practice’s processes, and so the spirit of this original blog is still applicable. The role of the Process Practitioner is by far one of the most critical, and is sometimes overlooked in lieu of roles such as Process Owner and Process Manager . Don’t misunderstand, Process Owners and Process Managers are important and are keys to success, but the Process Practitioner role is where the rubber meets the road. This is the role assigned to individuals who perform the work on a day-to-day basis.  ITIL has always emphasized the need for clearly-defined roles and responsibilities and process activities. It's the Process Practitioners who carry ou...

A recent question came from an ITSM practitioner who asked “Just what is a Service Model anyway?” Within the context of service management, you will likely here reference to the “Service Model” in every lifecycle stage but none more so than in the Service Strategy lifecycle. A little background: Within the context of best practice, it is in the Service Strategy lifecycle stage that a proposal is submitted.  This proposal is a formal request for a new line of business or service and will be processed through the pipeline of the service portfolio to be defined, analyzed, approved and chartered.  This approval is the executive authorization and will result in the service being chartered.   The proposal will include a high level “Service Model” and be accompanied with a full-blown business case. Once a service is chartered it will generally move to the Project Management Organization (PMO) where the chartered project is initiated for design. Service...

I believe that a service provider can improve by choosing to follow best practices from ITIL, Lean, Agile and more.  That said I also believe that Knowledge Management will be the glue that ties in all together. Knowledge is required to deliver maximum results.  Knowledge Management ensures the right knowledge to the right people at the right time.  Think about yours or your customers service provisioning model.  How much time, money and resources is spent because of the lack of knowledge at the right time?  How frequently do we need information or access to the information and it is NOT available?  Not only is information not available when we need it, but sometimes it is replicated in many ways in many different places so that there is no real way to determine the definitive source.  It is difficult to get management control over the outcomes of an organization when the knowledge is out of control.  Knowledge Management is required througho...

Quality: The ability of a service or product to meet customer requirements and create value for that customer.  Perceived quality affects customer support more than any other element.  Products and services must attain a certain minimum level of quality.  No other components can make up for a significant shortfall on this one and the perceived loss of value this can create. In business today, “Time to Value” has increasingly become one of the most significant measures an organization reviews and reports on.  Today’s ever more progressively shorter time scales for this cannot be met without being able to incorporate such practices as continuous delivery (CD), continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD), which all are dependent on our ability to do continuous testing. As many of you have certainly experienced, this need for speed continues to be a clear and present danger in our ability to create a high trust culture where testing and learning from ...

So the election is over and we move into the transitioning of power to the new administration. This doesn’t officially happen until January 20 th 2017. President elect Trump met with President Obama and so begins the transfer of Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom. So with such a short time the transfer between the transition teams and the operational teams has to happen quickly, efficiently and effectively.  This transfer of power has happened 43 times in our nation’s history with 11 happening so far in the postmodern era and the Obama to Trump administration being the twelfth. Can you say change model? The ability to have this smooth transition rests to a significant extent on the ability of those involved to be able to respond to existing circumstances, their ability to understand the situation as it currently exists along with any options that may be available, along with the known consequences and benefits.  The quality, relevance and accessibility of this ...

This was originally published in 2016 and explains the ITIL V3 lifecycle phase "Release, Control, and Validation (RCV)." In 2024, in ITIL 4, the concepts of RCV are integrated into various practices. Please read this updated blog post for current information What is RCV? (Updated for ITIL 4 Practitioners) For a more detailed understanding, ITIL 4 Specialist courses like Create, Deliver and Support (CDS) offer comprehensive coverage of these practices in a modern context. While CDS doesn't replace RCV, it's the course that covers these concepts. RCV stands for Release, Control, and Validate. These are critical activities that are required for every deployment. Proper Release, Control, and Validation (RCV) is achieved as a result of integrated process activities. In today's dynamic business climate, service outages cause real bottom-line impact to the business. Mature processes are critical in enabling IT organizations to smoothly transition new and change...

Change is not something that you do to people, change is something that you do with people. What thoughts occur when you or your staff are notified of a significant change to a process or service?  Is it one of dread, fear or perhaps frustration?  Managing organizational change should be a required element in any or all process and service changes where significant impact for users and staff are expected.   Service providers must ensure readiness for the change and ensure that a cultural shift does indeed take place.  Organizations change for a variety of reasons that could include the need to “get better” or perhaps to “be the best”.  Sometimes organizational change management is triggered by the need to deal with a changing economy or revenue loss.  At the outset, management must be honest with workers and still able to convince them that the best way to deal with current reality is via change.  Each individual’s ability to understand and t...