Implementing ITSM

Management of IT is undergoing a major change. The role of IT has now changed from engineer-to-order to service integration. What IT traditionally engineered, built, owned and operated can now be bought from many sources more easily in the marketplace. This can be done without inheriting the specific costs and risks of owning, supporting, building and managing an operating infrastructure. The traditional IT operating model of delivering IT to the business in the form of capabilities and assets (commonly referred to as technology silos) no longer works in an age of cloud computing, on-demand services, virtualization, outsourcing and rapidly changing business delivery strategies. The IT executive that cannot clearly articulate the services they deliver, the IT spend for those services, and how those services are consumed by the business is essentially running a commodity operation that will be forever whip-sawed by business demand and will never been viewed as nothing more than an overhead cost to the business. In addition, IT organizations that continue to operate this way will see their budgets and services eroded away over time as business customers drift towards outside providers that operate with service-driven approaches and practices. Pushing this further are technology vendors with new forms of IT Service Management (ITSM) tools and solutions. The latest generation of tools cannot be implemented successfully without an understanding of the services to be delivered, how information flows and how it is communicated throughout the IT support organization. This information is now baked into how technologies are customized to work effectively creating efficiencies throughout the support organization. That IT organization itself is also changing with a major transformation away from leadership by engineering to leadership by service. Accountability for end-to-end service is becoming the new norm. Gone are finger pointing across technology silos that used to place service integration activities in the hands of IT executives. This new accountability is now being pushed down lower into the organization and helping middle managers cope with this change is one of the key challenges to overcome. Many IT organizations still have a long leap to take in this transformation. It is the goal of this book to provide specific guidance to IT organizations undertaking this effort. That guidance is based on many years of front line experience helping many IT organizations around the world effect this transformation. This chapter gets down to the nuts and bolts of how to move your organization forward towards implementing ITSM solutions and building an IT service culture aligned with where the business is headed. It focuses on the entire transformation effort from a 50,000 foot view. The goal is to orient you with the big picture first. The chapters that follow this one will then address each Work Stage that is presented here in much more detail. The approach presented is based on practices and methods actually used at other companies. At its core, it follows two major lines of effort: building a solid ITSM foundation core within your organization while at the same time taking key actions to overcome service issues and deficiencies that will be noticed and recognized by the rest of the organization. Guiding Principles have been used in pulling the transformation approach together. For the purpose of this chapter, the Guiding Principles presented here are very high level general statements about how an ITSM implementation effort should proceed. These have an impact on how the approach was organized and pulled together. The Guiding Principles and rationales used were as follows: 1. The goal is to transform to an IT Service Management culture and operation, not implement individual processes or improve a process maturity score. ITSM benefits lie in how the processes, tools and organization interlock and work together to meet business needs. 2. The ITSM transformation effort should occur in waves with achieved benefits at the end of each wave. Each wave should not last longer than 6-9 months. Projects that run beyond that duration are harder to control in terms of scope, keeping personnel motivated and management interested. Corporate management has little patience for major efforts that span multiple years before any return on investment can be seen. If you cannot show results within the first wave, there is a major risk that the entire ITSM program will suffer a drop in funding and priority within the organization. 3. The effort must be driven by a Program of Organizational Change. ITSM represents a major mind set change towards an IT Service Culture. Processes do not happen by design and documentation alone. While IT is historically very good with implementations of technology, the real benefits will come from operating the processes with a set of service behaviours, not implementing new tools. 4. The effort must balance strategic efforts with short term gains. Short term gains are necessary to achieve some immediate wins, but you cannot lose sight of the longer term goals. If you do, you run the risk of developing point solutions that are disorganized and not ready for future business needs. The above Principles have been highlighted here because they truly guide the strategies and solutions discussed later on. The entire transformation strategy and program organization have been built with them in mind. You will discover that the approaches recommended are targeted to provide initial wins without sacrificing long term strategy. They are targeted to maximize acceptance of the solutions being developed.