Recently I asked Lisa Schwartz , "Why is the flamingo ITSM Academy's mascot?"   "Franny has a long history at the Academy . At our very first conference, we were just two ladies with a dream, traveling to Long Beach CA for an early it SMF show. The frame to our booth came - think silver scaffolding - but the beautiful art panels I designed and ordered, didn't arrive on time.   Time travel to 2023 to read about Franny's 19th birthday party in Vegas! Because we are in South Florida, our booth theme was Beach, and the giveaways were koozies, beach balls, etc. I also had ordered a somewhat sizeable inflatable flamingo, which I bought because it was 50% off.  Well, we just had the silver scaffolding, so what's a girl to do?  I blew up all of the inflatables, including the flamingo,  who we immediately named Franny.  I shoved the beach balls into the silver frame and hung Franny from the top, using a conference lanyard.* Thinking, Klassy with a K . Sadly - and

By Donna Knapp In the context of work, a role is typically defined as a set of responsibilities, activities and authorities granted to a person or team. While a role can, at times, represent a full-time job, this is not always the case. In the course of our work, many of us play different roles (i.e., we wear different hats). For example, we may play different roles within our teams (e.g., team lead or team member), or within practices (or processes) (e.g., practice owner, process owner, or practice/process practitioner), or in the context of a framework or methodology (e.g., customer, user, or sponsor; or product owner, scrum master, or scrum team member). Roles are important because they provide greater flexibility than job descriptions, which are often bound to formalized performance plans and perhaps even to contracts. This flexibility is important because organizations are increasingly adopting operating models that are more evolutionary and less structured than most companies h

Retirement is a time that marks a new beginning. It’s a major transition that isn’t always easy. This is  true whether it relates to the retirement of people, or a technology, or as is the case with ITIL v3 Foundation, a certification. Like other major transitions, the retirement of ITIL v3 Foundation has sparked a variety of emotions and concerns. On a positive note, we can look back fondly on ITIL v3 and celebrate the progress that it has enabled us to make in terms of promoting the value of service management. It helped us to understand what processes are and the importance of continually improving those processes. It also paved the way for us to understand the importance of aligning service management with business requirements. Concerns, however, have started to creep in. Is ITIL v3 enough in the digital age? Or perhaps more importantly, is ITIL v3 too much when viewed through the lens of adjacent ways of work such as Agile, Lean, and DevOps? Have our processes become unnecessaril

Originally posted on devclass.com, June 22, 2021 and written by Joseph Martins. Sponsored Experience is everything when it comes to delivering IT-enabled products and services. But it’s no longer about how many deadlines your team smashed, how often you’d exceeded service-level agreements (SLAs), or how many lines of code you’ve spat out. Rather it’s about how the services and products you deliver impact the rest of the organisation’s ability to do their jobs, increase productivity, deliver customer satisfaction and co-create value. “Experience” may be seen as subjective, even ephemeral, compared to the traditional IT metrics, deadlines and SLAs. But if you want proof of its importance, consider how ITIL® 4, the latest revision of the best practice framework for service management from AXELOS, focuses on improving user experience of digital services and how this enhances productivity right across the organisation. Ian Aitchison, VP Product Management at Nexthink, the leader in digital

Guest Host Post by Jeff Jensen , previously posted on Jeff's Blog , February 23, 2021 I thought it would be valuable for me to share my own personal thoughts on what you will be able to do differently or better as a result of investing your time and money in becoming an ITIL 4 certified Strategic Leader : ITIL 4 Foundation WHY this class is worthwhile ITIL 4 Foundation introduces a brand new framework and concepts to reflect modern ways of working while providing guidance on how an IT organization can both position itself as a high-performing organization and improve its products, services, and underpinning practices and capabilities.  The class introduces the Service Value System, which is a systems thinking framework t hat is foundational for showing how an organization can visualize the end-to-end delivery for current state products and services, as well as utilize the guidance as a means to improve. This class is also the foundational basis of more advanced learning in the IT

Originally posted on The AXELOS Blog , March 2021 and written by Solmaz Purser , Project Editor, AXELOS The past year has been tumultuous and unexpected, to say the least. Over a year on from the start of a pandemic that few ever expected, the world has certainly changed. Many people are now working from home . This was expected to be a temporary measure, but in some instances, people have been working from home for nearly a year. It would be fair to say that this is the new normal, where commutes now involve walking to a computer, and work social events are conducted via video conferencing. This brings us to ITIL® 4;: Create, Deliver and Support (CDS) and how it can be used to help you in the new normal. The components of CDS are flexible and adaptable enough to be applied to any situation, such as surviving prolonged periods at home. Relationship management CDS explores the importance of relationship management, where a service manager acts as a point of contact and liaison between

By Donna Knapp and Jeff Jensen Let’s answer the obvious question first. What is a service management office (SMO)? ITIL® describes an SMO as a “group or department that functions as a center of excellence for service management, ensuring continual development and the consistent application of management practices across an organization.” So given that service management is a “set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services”, it is the SMO that helps the organization to develop these capabilities. A SMO can be formalized and have significant authority to drive service management in the organization, or it can be less-formal teams focused on continual development of the organization’s management practices. In some organizations, the SMO provides a management structure for the various practice/process owners and managers to report into. This also allows for a roll-up of enterprise metrics and reporting, and in some cases provides