Prince2 and ITIL working together – Case Study from BMP

Click here for a detailed case study  by Noel Scott, discussing co-existence of Prince2 and ITIL Frameworks to achieve business requirements

CMDB or CMS

Glenn O’Donell writes in his blog on ComputerWorldUK. Please click here to read more…

Official list of ITIL Processes in ITIL V3

Taken from Pink Elephant’s blog…

Service Strategy – 4 processes

1. Strategy Generation
2. Financial management
3. Demand management
4. Service Portfolio management

Service Design – 7 processes

1. Service Catalog Management
2. Service Level Management
3. Availability Management
4. Capacity Management
5. It service Continuity Management
6. Information Security Management
7. Supplier Management

Service Transition – 7 processes

1. Transition Planning and Support
2. Change Management
3. Service Asset and Configuration Management
4. Release and Deployment Management
5. Service Validation and Testing
6. Evaluation
7. Knowledge Management

Service Operation – 5 processes

1. Event Management
2. Incident Management
3. Request Fulfillment
4. Problem Management
5. Access Management

Continual service improvement – 3 processes

1. The 7 improvement process
2. Service Measurement
3. Service Reporting

IT Service Management Starts with?

According to Mark Schouls, the three processes that IT Service Management starts with are Change Management, Configuration Management and Release Management.

Release Management – Proper release management, which defines the process of building and releasing software, results in a greater success rate in the provisioning of software and hardware to the business, and perhaps more importantly, results in a perceived improvement in the quality of service. Bringing consistency and documented processes to software and hardware releases minimizes downtime, reduces support costs, improves resource utilization and increases confidence across all levels of management.

Configuration Management – Enacting configuration management processes gives organizations a single view of all corporate assets, including their dependencies and interrelationships. Having one federated repository as a point of reference ensures accuracy and eliminates time-consuming duplication of efforts.

Change Management – Codifying change management practices helps organizations better align IT services to business requirements. With rigid processes in place, they eliminate rogue changes, thereby reducing risk and improving user productivity. To undertake change management initiatives, businesses must first accurately assess risk, understand the impact due to any change, analyze resource requirements and make adjustments to align resources as required. At that point they can enact a formal method for approving changes.

Read more of this article on ITSMwatch here.

I would also put Incident Management in this list. IT has to exist in the organization in some form or the other right from the start. Incident Management is one of the key bridges between the IT and its users. It gives a first hand information about the issues which are being faced by the users and would be a key driver for a lot of changes that would be done to restore services.

Relationship between ITIL Processes – 1

Basic! yes! very! But don’t be surprised if there are people who have been managing these processes and still do not completely understand these relationships.

This diagram however cannot be termed complete and there is a lot that can be added to it. Will write about the process relationships in detail in the next few posts!

BMC Survey : Top Priorities through 2010

What will be most important to IT organizations over the next 12 months? It’s probably no surprise that cost control or reduction in spending is the key priority. Based on a recent survey of more than 400 enterprise-level IT management personnel and their teams in Europe and the United States, reducing IT costs is the number-one priority out of 15 objectives. The second most critical priority is addressing regulatory compliance issues. Improving the availability and performance of business services is the third most critical priority on the IT “must-do” list.

Download the whitepaper here.

You can’t improve IT, if you are not measuring IT

 

The 7-Step process in CSI phase of ITIL has identification of what needs to be measured as one of the steps.

There is no way of improving a service or a process, if we are not measuring. Measurments allow us to do two things

1. Know where we are

2. Help determine where we want to go

Often in my experience, we take the standard set of metrics and put all of them on a dashboard for various stakeholders to review, irrespective of the relevance of these beautiful looking graphs. I would in this post and in future try to put together some  tools which help in identifying what needs to be measured. One of such tools is GQM – Goal Question Metric Approach. In some of the next posts, I would write about illustration of the GQM related to ITSM Processes.

Read more about the GQM here and here.

 

Black and White of Configuration Management

A term mostly used either with printing or photography, but I use it to today in Not Just ITSM to link to two very different thoughts on CMS or Configuration Management System as most would know it!

In the latest DITY newsletter,  Carlos Casanova has written about A-FIRM structure for CMS and mentions CMS as a successful IT System. A-FIRM stands for

A – Architect: Architect and map out your ascent before actually setting out on your climb. If you do not do this, you will be lucky to reach a base camp from where to launch your serious climb.
F – Federate: Determine which camps may already be well established along your climbing route and which you can leverage on your ascent. These are components that you must factor into your long-term solution and are vital to any success you achieve.
I – Integrate: You will not be able to carry all your supplies on your journey so seek out others who can provide insight and assistance. Be on the lookout for those who may have already succeeded in partial ascents and can work with you to reach the peak. There will be times where you will have to leverage these for short periods of time until you can find a more sustainable long-term solution to accomplish that portion of your climb.
Compared to Federated components, these components are ideally just short-term solutions. They may be able to mature into a long term-federated solution, or they will need to eventually be replaced by a different long-term solution.
The key is to recognize which of these two categories they fall into. Wrongly assess a short-tem stopgap measure as a long-term solution, and you may die on the mountain during your climb because of faulty or incomplete data provided by them.
R – Reconcile: This will likely be one of your most challenging tasks because you will undoubtedly face many situations where you need to make a critical decision armed with less-than-ideal data. These decisions will make or break your entire ascent. Choose the wrong data and your team dies on the climb; choose the right data and you have a chance to succeed. Notice that there are no guarantees of success even if you choose the correct data.
M – Merge: Over time, you will identify situations and groups that you can combine to provide more reliable data and/or support you on the next leg of your ascent. You need to carefully execute these mergers to ensure you do not negatively impact the value you are seeking to achieve. Eliminate the wrong data or people, and you endanger the entire mission. Do it properly and you reach the peak faster, with less risk and at a lower cost.

Read the newsletter here or download a pdf here.

On the other hand, Rob England, the IT Skeptic writes at length about CMDB and CMS being an Industry created myth.

These two are masters of their trade, and have very different views on the same topic. In my limited experience with CMDB, I cannot help but agree with both of them right now. Also I feel that CMDB is a term that is very loosely used by many without realizing or knowing the content that should go in there… For a lot CMDB is the solution to all their problems, and now CMS is the solution to all their problems. I, however, think that CMS or CMDB being the solution to a problem is just a hypothesis, which needs to be proven right or wrong after the roll-out. Small or big, simple or complicated, CMDB or CMS, would NOT work, if one is not aware of what the objective of creating it is for the organization and what we want to achieve from it.

ITIL V3 – Structure and Certifications

Though it is expected that most people know about this already, however ITSM in my opinion is about revisiting the importants, refreshing the memory and keepings things in radar. Here is a good summarization of  the certifications related to ITIL v3 and what roles do they fit in, written by Rick Lemieux on DITY!

Click here to download the pdf.

OGC to withdraw ITIL V2 support

According to a recent article on ITSMWatch, OGC is withdrawing support from ITIL V2 expected to be complete by 30th June 2011. Specifics of withdrawal are :

v2 Foundation to cease 30 June 2010

v2 Manager to cease 31 August 2010

v2 Practitioner to cease 31 Dec 2010 Foundation Bridge to cease 31 Dec 2010

(All of the above will be available for re-sits until 30 June 2011.)

Manager Bridge to cease 30 June 2011

Service Support and Service Delivery publications will be removed on 30 June 2011

I could not find anything on the OGC website about this though!

I think its the right thing to do, ITIL V3 has been around for a while now (its popularity can still be questioned), and two sets of certifications would create more confusion and a gradual phase out of the V2 was required.