Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I experienced my first lesson in “best practices” as a young boy growing up in Sydney, Australia. I built a dog house that, well, to be kind to myself, was not fit for a dog. To prevent similar failures in the future, my father gave me advice that I’ve called upon throughout my life in many situations: “Measure twice, cut once.” With some imagination, this adage, which sounds much more scholarly than its sniveling cousin “Better safe than sorry,” can work everywhere—from counting change, to checking to see if you left the coffee pot on, to making sure that your blog is sufficiently proofed before posting. It even works in the context of ITIL® V3.
I recently spoke with an ITIL practitioner in London who mentioned that V3 was launched at the perfect time for his retail organization. Having leveraged ITIL for several years, his organization was already quite mature in the service support processes. They had successfully implemented incident, problem and change, and, with software asset management under control, were almost through configuration management. After implementing the service support disciplines, they attempted to implement Service Level Management. That’s when they discovered that, while a very significant number of metrics were being collected, they were not measuring all the components and activities that contribute to IT and business alignment. Therefore, SLM could not be implemented without significant additional changes to previously “completed” processes. Alas, measure twice, cut once.
The ITIL V3 Glossary of Terms defines Service Level Management as “the Process responsible for negotiating Service Level Agreements, and ensuring that these are met. SLM is responsible for ensuring that all IT Service Management Processes, Operational Level Agreements, and Underpinning Contracts, are appropriate for the agreed Service Level Targets. SLM monitors and reports on Service Levels, and holds regular Customer reviews.”
The V3 definition differs from the V2 definition in that V3 places more emphasis on the inclusion of Service Level Management (SLM) metrics, which are gathered and incorporated into the design phase. V3’s emphasis on the service lifecycle calls for a logical process to developing services with the end objective being the integration of IT and the business. Investments made in the decision process would be more than offset by the reduction of work at the back end.
Measure twice, cut once.
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