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Dr. Deming's Cycle

Many of you have probably heard of Dr. William Edwards Deming. But how many of you really know who he was and why he is so important to IT Service Management and ITIL? I mean going beyond the contribution of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle to Continual Service Improvement? What was the most important contribution of Dr Deming and why should we care so much about his other efforts? According to Wikipedia, Dr. Deming (1900-1993) was a statistician, professor and consultant by trade, hailing originally from Iowa. He went on to earn degrees from the Universities of Wyoming and Colorado, and a Ph.D. from Yale University. One interesting fact of which most people are not aware was his relationship to Walter Shewhart, the originator of the ideas of statistical process control. In fact the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle was originally an idea generated by Shewhart (and is sometimes referred to as the Shewhart Cycle, rather than the Deming Cycle). We must remember though, Dr. Deming’s contributions go m

The Beginning of Good Process Implementation

Many organizations that I meet with often are struggling to implement best practice processes into their environments.   They sound completely overwhelmed and often I hear “Where do we begin?”   I smile and usually respond with “At the beginning of course”.   The beginning of good process implementation of course is “defining and analyzing your customer’s requirements”.   I once read that to provide good services a service provider must have good customers.   I think this statement also holds true for processes as well.   Good customers / employees must: Understand the process Understand the expected results of the process Know where they fit into the process Understand how they and others contribute to produce the expected results When your employees understand the processes within your environment they can easily identify new customer requirements and positively respond to rapidly changing customer needs.   This is the basis for making it part of the service culture within you

Resources for Business Relationship Management

A student recently asked for resource references for about Business Relationship Management (BRM). BRM is emerging as a critical process in several prominent service management frameworks and standards.   Recently, BRM was formalized in the 2011 edition of Service Strategy as part of the core ITIL library.    This is a significant addition since many believed that BRM and Service Level Management (SLM) were the same process.     While similar, BRM strategically focuses on the relationship between a service provider and it’s customer (more like an Account Executive) where SLM operationally focuses on the negotiation and achievement of service performance. The ISO/IEC 20000 standard has mandatory requirements and suggested guidance for Business Relationship Management.   Even if your organization is not considering ISO certification, the standard does define the minimum essential activities for each process, including BRM.     Put together with ITIL 2011, it’s a powerful com

The Purpose and Value of Business Impact Analysis

When discussing Service Design I am often asked the purpose and value of a Business Impact Assessment (BIA).   The purpose of a BIA is to quantify the impact to the business that the loss of a service would have.   It is a valuable source of input when trying to ascertain the business needs, impacts and risks that the organization may face in the delivery of services.   The Business Impact Assessment is an essential element of the overall business continuity process.   It identifies the most important services to the organization and therefore will help to define the overall strategy for risk reduction and disaster recovery.   At a more granular level these assessments enable the mapping of critical service applications and technology components to critical business processes.   It is an invaluable input for Continuity Strategy, Availability Design, and Capacity Management.   The BIA’s strategic purpose is to show which parts of the business will be most affected by a major incident

ITIL 2011: Strategy Management

The publication of ITIL 2011 has brought several new or revamped processes to light. One of those is the Strategy Management for IT Services process. This Strategy process is not actually new. It represents the formalization of best practice guidance for managing strategies contained in earlier editions of the ITIL publications. The purpose of this newly minted process is to use a company’s perspective, position, plans and patterns to ensure better management, governance and control of the IT services an organization provides to support the business outcomes. The basic principles of the Strategy Management process include helping to identify the overall business strategy and then tie an underpinning IT strategy (including an IT service strategy) or manufacturing strategy to the business outcomes through integration and alignment activities. Once an IT strategy emerges in relation to the business strategy, the organization can then decompose the IT strategy into IT tactics and

Major Incidents and Problem Records

The other day someone asked me if a Problem Record should be opened for all Major Incidents. Not necessarily – the goal of a Major Incident is still to restore service when a major event occurs that has significant impact on the business. Incident Management is not necessarily looking for a permanent solution but for some level of regained productivity. If viable and necessary, raising a Problem Record will engage the necessary resources to find the root cause (if not already known) and find a permanent solution to remove the error (if one is available). However, sometimes the root cause of a Major Incident is immediately known and a permanent solution not viable at the time. Here is a practical example – we have hurricanes in Florida that can cause massive power outages. We know the root cause and the permanent solution is to repair the power lines. This will likely take some time. Do we need a Problem Record to capture that information? Maybe, if there is a need to document th

Reasoning for Problem Management

When it comes to Problem Management two things should come to mind: Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and finding a permanent resolution. How often have you thought about what it takes to conduct these aspects of Problem Management? An important underlying aspect of conducting a Root Cause Analysis and finding the permanent resolution are the reasoning approaches used. Three types of basic reasoning approaches are: Inductive: Reasoning from specific examples to general rules Deductive: Reasoning from general rules to specific examples Abductive: Reasoning to the most likely answer Each has its own uses and can be applied to problem solving and Problem Management at different times and for different reasons. However, when performing the Problem Management process we should be open to using all three reasoning approaches. They all complement each other with Inductive and Deductive reasoning forming two ends of a spectrum while Abductive thought looks for the balance between the other two a