Service Management Best Practice is as relevant today as it was a decade ago.  Some would argue that it is even more relevant.   Increase in demand, dynamic requirements and varied silo’s and cultures within an organization demand some semblance of management control.  Failure to do so results in just that …..“Failure”.   Following ITIL Best Practice allows service providers to align IT with the changing business requirements.  Sounds Great!  What does that mean exactly? Business requirements are consistently evolving and changing.  This creates a DEMAND that generates a workload for capacity.   The service provider must anticipate this demand and gear their service assets accordingly or consumers will not receive the value that they have paid for and expect.   We can anticipate demand by monitoring and measuring specified patterns of business activity and then adjust accordingly.  Think of a NEST thermostat.  A NEST thermostat learns what temperature you like by learning

Often, when we talk about implementing IT Service Management we refer to one of the Founding Fathers of the Quality Management movement, Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Most people focus on the Deming Cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. Perhaps lesser known but just as important is the fact that Dr. Deming spoke of the changes needed within an organization’s culture to make the Deming Cycle work to its greatest effectiveness. Dr. Deming wrote and spoke of Seven Deadly Diseases that infect an organization’s culture and prohibit it from truly succeeding in achieving quality for the customer. Lack of constancy of purpose: You must remain focused on doing the right things because they are the right things to do for your customer and to achieve quality. ITSM is not a fad it is a way of behaving. Emphasis on short-term profits: Cutting costs can bring short-term profits and are easy to achieve. But cutting costs can only go on for so long, before you have cut to the bone and have nothing left to cut.

It is official.  All service providers are or soon will be going through some form of digital transformation. As you begin to transform be sure to take into consideration the Values of DevOps, Agile Service Management, Lean and ITSM.  They each have beneficial results and each dovetail together to ensure that the service provider can move fast, change on a dime to meet dynamic requirements, and also be able to deploy into an antifragile stable environment.  Business transformation can appear to be daunting.  Sometimes it is somewhat of a labyrinth, involving a constant need for collaboration and engagement between customers, business partners and Information Technology functions. All are required for proper strategic vision and operational execution. That is likely not news to you.  We KNOW that is required and yet there are many service providers that still today need to bridge the gap between Business, Development and Operational teams.  When setting expectations for a Digital tran

(DevOps VALUES revisited) We used to talk about the rate of demand for change and how that was forcing service providers to change course.  Service Providers are the current Titanic.  Many believe that they are invincible.  The iceberg today is multifaceted. It is not only speed and quality but the challenge of dynamic business requirements, complexity of new services and rigid silo’s. These all add to the depth and potential threat of this new iceberg.  To avoid sinking, Service Providers must consider the DevOps values and stay C A L M and Share!  There are five DevOps values that will help us avoid the iceberg.  These values include: C - Culture A rigid, “We have always done it this way” culture will break your capability to steer the ship in the direction that you must go to avoid the iceberg.  A Cultural shift will steer your ship in the right direction.  Those shifts include Shift Left Culture – Getting representation for change, compliance, security and operations

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

What are the challenges that every CIO, CEO or service provider faces? EVERY Service provider today must move BIGGER, BETTER, MORE… FASTER than ever before and do it at the LOWEST COST possible! We used to speak about the rate of change and yes that is still increasing. The rate of change is only one of many aspects that present challenges that must be considered, others include: Dynamic Business Requirements - We do not even get started with the deployment and the requirements are changing. This can no longer be an excuse for overruns. The service provider must expect this and have the people, process and technology in place to respond quickly to these expected changes. Transformational Change – A transformational change is designed to be organization-wide and is enacted over a period. Transformational change and this culture shift will result from a change in the underlying strategy and processes. This includes strategic transformations for DevOps initiatives, Agile or the

Customers are empowered and connected. To stay relevant many organizations are asking “how can we evolve with the digital era?” To lead the change, we must understand it.  It is likely that in the next one to five years your organization will focus on digital transformation in three or more of these areas: Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Defined as the study of " intelligent agents " on any device that perceives or learns its environment and takes actions toward success at a specified goal. The Internet of Things (IoT) The IoT refers to the connection of devices (other than typical computers and smartphones) to the Internet. Today things like cars, kitchen appliances, and even heart monitors can all be connected through the IoT. Who would have known that we might need to add items such as drones to an asset registery and learn how to manage them? And as the IoT grows in the next few years, more devices are and will continue to join that list. (Editor'