Published: February 25 2009, 12:28 PM | no comments
by Robert Stroud

You may be interested in listening to this on-demand webcast I recorded entitled "Next Generation Service Management" about service management trends and my views on where service management is going. You'll have to register, but I hope that won't deter you from finding out what I sound like.   

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Published: February 23 2009, 09:00 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Robert Stroud

IT Governance has been growing in momentum now for several years. In mid 2008 ISO released the first version of their standard for the Corporate governance of information technology - ISO/IEC 38500: 2008.   ISO38500 defines six principles for governance including; responsibility, strategy, acquisition, performance, conformance and human behavior.   As a principle based standard there is no prescription given in the ISO/IEC IT governance standard. To execute organizations will need specific guidance depending on their size, risk tolerance, IT investments and culture and the ITGI has a number of publications including COBIT to assist you on this journey. 

Almost daily I am getting questions on how the ITGI frameworks and other publications map to ISO 38500. You may be interested in a recently released white paper from the ITGI titled "ITGI Enables ISO/IEC 38500:2008 Adoption."  The white paper is available for a free download from the ITGI website http://www.isaca.org/Journal/Past-Issues/2009/Volume-3/Documents/jpdf0903-itgi-enables-iso-iec.pdf. I encourage you to take a few moments to read this paper.  

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Published: February 19 2009, 02:17 PM | 6 Comment(s)
by Robert Stroud

What do dishwashers, cars and ITIL v3 have in common?  Warranties!

Recently I was reading the warranty of a dishwasher and it stated that cooking fish in the dishwasher voided the warranty. Stunned, I did Google and find just such a recipe (it is below just in case you are curious).  Who'd have thunk it?

If you buy a new car you receive a warranty that covers most car parts for various time periods and mileage limits, but, as with the dishwasher and the fish, there are always exceptions, for example, wear and tear on the clutch.

In ITIL v3 we introduced the term "warranty"--not surprisingly it is one of the most misunderstood terms in the book. The definition in ITIL v3 states that the warranty is "a promise or guarantee that a product or service will meet its agreed requirements." The key term here is "agreed requirements." This is where most IT organizations make their mistakes--they forget to identify and confirm the agreed requirements up front. The results can be customers who don't value all that you've given them, and who are sure to miss what you have not supplied.

Picture the dishwasher engineer saying "How was I supposed to know they would try to cook fish?"  The lesson here is to fully understand the requirements up front for the service that you are delivering so that you can build it to meet to the user expectations.  

Here is the fish recipe.  Attempt at your own risk.

Dishwasher Salmon Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 pound salmon fillets
• 1 roll aluminum foil
• 1 - 2 lemons
• 1 stick butter
• electric dishwasher

Directions

• Place Salmon fillets on two large sheets of aluminum foil.
• Squeeze lemon juice liberally over the fillets
• Cut the butter into thin slices and place the butter on the salmon fillets.
• Seal the fillets in the foil - do not skip this step
• Place the foil packet in the top wire basket of dishwasher
• DO NOT ADD SOAP OR DETERGENT
• Set the dishwasher on the hottest wash cycle, complete with drying cycle, and let it run through a full cycle
• When the cycle is complete the fish will be cooked just right

Warnings

• Should you not seal the salmon correctly, place order for new dishwasher
• Cooking cycles may vary (you may have to try a few times to perfect)

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Published: February 16 2009, 11:54 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Peter Doherty

So how do you measure your ITIL Service Management Program? 

The first trouble with measuring ITIL is that you need a certain level of maturity to gather baseline metrics and a good deal of organisations are not in a position to capture those metrics. The second trouble is that most of the metrics they capture are worthless - as good as marks on a chart.

Where the true value is from metrics that: 

• Inform
• Support Decisions
• Prompt Action

Sadly we are lucky to see ones that mainly fit into the top category. After all, metrics are just the dashboard of the car, they are neither the car nor the destination. 

So how do you measure Service Management? Well we really do need to take a balanced score card approach. 

There is no doubt that you need to run your process metrics with a high level of governance as without this your processes could lose their effectiveness. For example; failed Changes which have lead to causing Incidents, etc. These will often only have a quantitative component to them and should roll up to an overall process conformance score.   

You also need to monitor the efficiency of the process by comparing the effort or elapsed time it took to perform core functions prior to the Service Management Program and comparing to what they take after the program. This should be rolled up as an efficiency score but you can also start doing cost comparisons based on this. These will have a qualitative component to them. 

Thirdly you need to monitor effectiveness which will be the outputs of the processes and generally defined in terms of cost savings and service availability improvements. This effectiveness metric is absolutely crucial for measuring the results of a Service Management Program. Why? Just about nearly all other metrics will give you soft savings, but you can finally put dollar figures around these metrics. These are the metrics that should be measured against the projected outcomes that were put forward in the business case. For example, if you are an ITIL V3 shop doing Service Portfolio Management these metrics will contribute to show the value to the business of the Service. 

I often blog and write about how most organisations forget about the people side of Service Management and I have a number of ideas on how we can address this. A balanced scorecard must include customer satisfaction - is it the be all and end all? Of course not but as technologists we often get caught up with delivering technically oriented Service Levels which reflect ‘reality' - at least in our minds. But guess what, most of our customers perceive value in the expectation of the service experience so you need to track their perceptions. A happy customer is  more engaged and able to be more productive! 

In ITIL we sometimes misuse metrics for our own benefit and one of my pet hates is ‘Closed on First Call'. It really tells us nothing, unless it is really high in which case it is rarely true. This is a typical example of a metric that has a quantitative but no qualitative component. So what if you close 70% of Calls on First Contact? Have they been within SLA? Is the customer happy? What about the other 30% that's probably harder and more important to the organisation? That metric simply informs you that something is happening but with no insight into how well it is being done. What decisions or actions could that possibly prompt? 

If you are asked how would you measure an ITIL Service Management Program you need to ask yourself a much more fundamental question; what are the business drivers for this Program? Have you defined those business drivers? Once you know the business drivers it is a simple matter of translating them to the business initiatives and collecting metrics to support this. And guess what? These are the metrics that I'd want to see on my Service Management balanced Score Card.  

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Published: February 11 2009, 06:32 PM | no comments
by Peter Doherty

Well its on again, CA Expo 2009, our 8th in the series and I think I've nearly been involved in all of them... wow. I'll be returning as a presenter again this year so I hope you can join me. It'll be held in June 3 (Melbourne) and June 4 (Sydney), find out more info at: www.ca.com/au/expo.

Now here's your chance to feedback into what I'll be presenting on, so comment below on what you are finding most challenging this year.

On another note, I'll be recording a new webcast on knowledge management soon which I'll share here first. What topics do you want to learn more about? Comment and let me know.

Looking for some more info around ITIL v3? I've managed to snag some select chapters from 'Foundations of IT Service Management based on ITIL v3' by Van Haren Publishers, you can access them at our ITIL eBook page.

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