What do you think would happen if everyone who attended an IT service management (ITSM) class – ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, MOF – went back to work and talked to the person who sits next to them about how their organization could apply best practices? Or, what if everyone shared their ideas with just the people in their work groups. Those organizations would see tremendous benefit. Even small steps – think plan-do-check-act – can reap large benefits over time. But why stop there? Many organizations have people in different departments and locations, perhaps even in different parts of the world, who must work together to realize the true benefits of a consistent, integrated approach to ITSM. A community of practice can be used to bring these people together. A community of practice (CoP) is group of people who are bound together by similar interests and expertise. Members are active practitioners who come together to share information, experiences, tips and best practices. Members prov

Techniques used to measure employee satisfaction include informal one-on-one discussions, focus groups and periodic surveys. As with customer satisfaction surveys, for accurate and reliable results, employee satisfaction surveys should be created with care by people who understand how to develop questions that produce unbiased information. In other words, ask your HR folks for help! So what questions should you ask? "How satisfied are you with your job?" is a good place to start. A question such as: "Compared with a year ago, how would you describe your overall job satisfaction?" can provide additional insight.  You can also ask employees to rate their satisfaction with areas such as: Reward and recognition programs Career development and advancement opportunities Education and training  Supervision, coaching and feedback Teamwork Availability of resources needed to do the job Ability to contribute to organizational goals  And in the spirit of co

I have often been asked about how to implement a good design coordination process.   My response is have you ever thought of implementation of a new process from a CSI approach?   First let’s understand what the purpose and objective of a design and coordination process should be.   Ensuring that the goals and objectives are met by providing and maintaining a single point of coordination and control for all activities and processes within the design stage of the lifecycle.   If we approach this from a Continual Service Improvement perspective the first question to ask is: What’s the vision?    Come to an accord among key stakeholders about what it is you want to create and what the underpinning critical success factors should be in support of the defined goals and objectives of the organization.   Will they ultimately support the long term mission and vision of the business leadership? Where are we now? Set that baseline starting point about the current condition of where yo

Implementing the guidance provided by ITIL is very much like cooking. If you have ever cooked something using a recipe (even if it is the directions from the package) you know that although you can vary somewhat from the recipe or directions, you cannot change the recipe substantially and expect the stated results. When cooking cakes or sweets, if you add too many eggs or too little oil or too much sugar or leave out an ingredient, what will result will probably not be what you intended. Recipes (and package directions) are best practices just like ITIL. Package recipes especially have been formulated to achieve the optimal results each and every time you make the food. But we must follow the recipe to get the results. This is not to say you cannot adjust (or “adapt”) the recipe based on your own tastes or even serving suggestions from the package. Adjusting or adapting does not mean rewriting the recipe or completely ignoring the package directions because you do not agree or like

ITIL has always emphasized the need for clearly defined roles for Process Owners and Process Managers. ITIL also speaks to the role of Service Owner, an individual who is accountable for and represents the the end-to-end service.    Within each process, there may also be roles that are designed to carry out certain process activities. Successful service management dictates that specific individuals are assigned to specific roles with specific responsibilities for one or more processes.     But what about the rest of us?      Where do we fit into the service management program?   What role do we play?   ITIL defines a key role for anyone that executes any activity within any process – the Process Practitioner.         The Process Practitioner Carries out one or more process activities Understands how his or her role adds to value creation Works with other stakeholders to ensure contributions are effective Ensures inputs, outputs and interfaces for activities are c

In order to create a successful foundation for our implementations of ITSM and ITIL® we can take lessons from the study of languages. The foundation of the service management best practices is a language that needs to be understood, mastered and used, just like you would learn a foreign or native tongue. When learning a new language there are two basic approaches one can take. You can study the grammatical theory and structure or you can do immersion learning. Language experts tell us that both are necessary actually to master or become fluent in a language. Immersing yourself in a language (such as ITIL) provides a conversational or daily usage basis. Think of this as having insight as to “how” the language works. Studying the theory and structure of a language (such as ITIL) provides for an understanding and knowledge basis. Think of this as having insight as to “why” the language works. Without theory there would be no usage since you would be unable to form new sentences, only

Over my years of teaching and training I have found that some of what I once knew and learned has slipped away due to age (as it does to most of us!) and due to learning new pieces of data, information, knowledge and especially wisdom (D-I-K-W). So many years ago I began to put together a collection of D-I-K-W that I thought was excellent to keep but just could no longer store in my brain. I bought a sturdy, blank, lined journal to begin putting together what has become my “Wisdom Journal”. I began to collect techniques, approaches, bulleted lists, terminology, tables, tools, methods and anything else that I thought might be useful at some point in the future. I did not really seek out particular information I simply “collected” it as I came along it in my research, class preparation or reading. Examples of the D-I-K-W I collected included information on paradigms, requirements gathering, RACI, organizational change methods, business process re-engineering, reasoning (induction