I'm working with some of the ITSM Academy folks today, and I realized just how many "assets" they have for you around ITIL 4 ( as well as #Agile #DevOps #XLA #VSM #SRE and #ITSM) .  As Lisa and team always say, "Not ready for training just yet? Please use us as your resource." So I want to do a quick recap of some of the assets available to you, before (and after!) you become Academy Alumni... BLOGS: This one is a little self-serving, but there are TONS of blogs on here - since 2019 all of the ITIL blog posts have been about ITIL 4 - 🦩  LINK  🦩 POST: A business strategy, a digital strategy and an IT strategy walk into the bar and… Oh, wait they can't because of COVID-19. Now what? 🦩  LINK  🦩 WEBINARS: Since 2007, the Academy has hosted monthly “no selling allowed” webinars 🦩  See Archive  🦩 ITIL 4 GUIDING PRINCIPLES POSTER: And the best part, they made it small enough to print for your home office! 🦩  LINK  🦩  WHATIS...?: So the ladies got Serious wi

By Donna Knapp Look around and it’s likely that many of the organizations that you do business with, and perhaps the company that you work for (or want to work for), are demonstrating a commitment to sustainability. Sustainability has become a top priority for CEOs but what is it? In 1987, the United Nations (UN) defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”   Sustainability is not just environmentalism, although that is an aspect of it. Sustainability is a set of values that are shared by individuals and organizations worldwide who demonstrate their commitment to these values every day through their decisions and actions. Embedded in sustainability we also find concerns for social equity and economic development, as illustrated by the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals . In recent years much of corporate America, including many large multinationals, has signed on to support the sustainabl

Axelos/Peoplecert has released the newest ITIL Specialist course:  Sustainability in Digital & IT .   This course is designed to provide a practical grounding in the key principles of sustainability (as defined in the United Nation’s sustainable development goals ) and then uses the ITIL continual improvement model to introduce methods and models that organizations can use to improve their sustainability. In recent years much of corporate America, including many large multinationals, has signed on to support the sustainable development goals. Investors are also starting to take notice. The movement for ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing is strong and growing, driven by investor demand and regulatory pressure. So strong, that CEOs are starting to take notice. According to a 2021 IBM survey, 37% of CEOs view sustainability as a priority over the next three to four years. According to McKinsey, “In the very near future…[sustainability] will be as fundamental to doin

I really like teaching Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation course.  I find it really effective to link SRE Foundation to the learners’ needs of incorporating SRE core concepts to ITSM and DevOps (and any other framework!)  This course allows me to explain how SRE improves operational excellence and quality, a key performance measure for ITSM. It also allows me to explain how SRE improves Automation, not only with the DevOps pipeline, but also how Ops uses this data to improve the flow of work into operations, and then automate repetitive tasks by utilizing tools (e.g., ChatOps).  Most importantly, SRE improves collaboration with customers, defining Service Level Objectives (SLO’s) so that IT consistently achieves (and exceeds) customers’ expectations AND delivers VALUE for the organization.  Automated monitoring is NOT enough these days, we must include observability, using automation to manage security, and ultimately delivering improved IT service quality to the business.

Written by Greg Smith , originally posted in OwlPoint News , September 14, 2021 What is the ITIL ®  Maturity Model? The ITIL Maturity Model is a tool used to objectively and comprehensively assess an organization’s service management capabilities and the maturity of the organization’s   Service Value System (SVS) . AXELOS is about to release the new ITIL Maturity Model which OwlPoint – the most tenured AXELOS Consulting Partner in the US – will use to assess clients’ service management capabilities. Why would an organization need an ITIL assessment? There are three main reasons an organization would want to have an ITIL assessment performed: To achieve a desired level of certification and/or meet contractual obligations, they must meet a pre-defined level of maturity and capability. They have undertaken a Service Management implementation or improvement initiative and need to validate the project goals have been met. They are preparing to undertake a Service Management implementation

Originally posted on DevClass , June 22,2021 written by Joseph Martins and sponsored by Axelos 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 di

Most organizations, especially service management organizations, strive to improve themselves. For those of us leveraging the ITIL® best practices, continual improvement is part of our DNA. We are constantly evaluating our organizations and looking for ways to improve. To aid in our improvement goals and underscore one of the major components of the ITIL Service Value System , Continual Improvement .   AXELOS has updated the ITIL Maturity Model and is offering new ITIL Assessment services. This will enable organizations to conduct evaluations and establish baselines to facilitate a continual improvement program. A while back I wrote an article on the importance of conducting an assessment . I explained the need to understand where you are before you can achieve your improvement goals. Understanding where you are deficient, how significant gaps are from your maturity objectives, and prioritizing which areas to focus on first are key to successfully improving. One method many organi