Posts Tagged ‘ITIL’
September 17th, 2009
ITIL is not a set of instructions. It is a set of recommendations based on best practice. The ITIL ‘books’ describe how, at a high level, IT Service Delivery processes should be structured and interact. No two IT service environments are the same and IT service contracts vary greatly therefore it is simply not possible to have a single definitive best practice set of processes.
So what’s good about ITIL?
ITILs key strengths are its common concepts and language. Once individuals and organizations have a common understanding of what an Incident or Problem is it makes it so much more simple to be effective at providing IT services. The enormous operational and cost savings from ITIL come in where services are provided by the likes of Fujitsu, IBM, HP and others to clients. Some IT service contracts are worth billions of dollars and the complexities of the service delivery contracts is significant. When the client and service provider are ‘speaking the same language’ (i.e. using ITIL terminology), communication is immediately enhanced and complexities reduced. Of course, smaller IT service providers also benefit through implementing ITIL as many large organizations will simply not contract non ITIL aligned providers.
ITIL is Expensive to Implement
Yes, there is no denying that implementing ITIL for the first time is costly. Where many organizations go wrong however with ITIL implementations is by trying to implement a full set of mature ITIL processes at the ‘get go’. Because ITIL is a framework it should be implemented and the processes designed in a way which benefits the organization most. Processes, as in any quality management framework, take time to mature; by attempting to design and implement mature ITIL processes on first ITIL implementation will be a very costly exercise for any organization (and will certainly fail). Processes, and the organization, need time to mature and discover what works best.
Implement and Relax
Decision makers often look at a mature ITIL aligned organizations and decide that a quick ITIL implementation is all that is needed to become a world leader in IT service delivery. Unfortunately, not only is a rushed and initial mature process attempt at ITIL implementation bound to fail but process improvement is an ongoing activity. Customers, organizations and external forces are constantly changing so even the most mature ITIL implementations require ongoing process improvement. All significant Quality Management frameworks (e.g. Theory of Constraints, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma etc.) stress ongoing improvement.
Should I implement ITIL?
Whether to implement ITIL may be best answered by this question ‘can your organization afford not to implement ITIL?’. For some small IT service providers there may be little to no benefit in implementing ITIL. For medium and large size IT service providers it is becoming increasingly necessary to be ITIL aligned in order to win new business.
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April 22nd, 2009
Well done to Telstra on ‘winning’ the ten year $1bn contract to provide Managed Services to Commonwealth bank of Australia (CBA).
Telstra Share Price
This is obviously a very large contract especially given the current challenging economic times.
Telstra is making significant effort to mature its ITIL processes further which will benefit CBA and other Telstra Managed Service customers.
Here is a copy of the media release Read the rest of this entry »
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March 25th, 2009
Google is an awesome search engine and leaves Yahoo and Live far behind. Today Google is even better with the introduction of even better search. Google has, in the past few hours, introduced new search capability in that the search term, or terms, is searched within the entire content of a web page and related terms are also returned. For example, if I were to search on “theory of constraints“, relevant results with “quality management’ may also be returned (The Theory of Constraints is a Quality Management process/framework). Another example is if I searched for ‘IT Infrastructure Library’, results for ITIL will also be returned (ITIL is the acronym for IT Infrastructure Library).
Another improvement is that snippets (the bit in blue under the header of the returned search result) may now be longer and the search words are highlighted in bold in the snippet itself making it easier for the searcher to make a decision as to the relevancy of the returned search results.
This new capability is as a result of the efforts by the Israeli/Australian (now living in the U.S.A.) search guru who pioneered the Orion Search Engine, Ori Allon.
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March 7th, 2009
A lot of my work is spent designing and implementing ITIL processes. The one common denominator with all customers I work with is a lack of understanding that processes have various levels and that there is a substantial difference between a process and a procedure (or work instruction). Even if the stakeholder/s understand that processes adn procedures should have levels it is seldom that he/she/they are able to keep steps in flowcharts at the same level.
Process Levels
The difference between a Process, Procedure and Work Instruction is explained below however Read the rest of this entry »
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February 3rd, 2009
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) as offered by Eli Goldratt is a very powerful conceptual as well as practical tool of which every Business Analyst should be aware. Many MBA programs recommend the reading of ‘The Goal’ (authored by Goldratt) and cover the core elements of TOC in Operations Management modules.
Very simplistically, TOC is about identifying the core bottleneck in a system and then eliminating that bottleneck (something like ‘a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link’). The bottleneck will then be somewhere else in the system so the process of identification and elimination continues.
ITIL and TOC
In relation to Quality Management and ITIL, the ITIL books refer primarily to The Deming Cycle (‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’) for process improvement (ITIL version 3 also describes a ‘7-Step Improvement Process’). TOC is conceptually very powerful and compliments the Deming Cycle. The power of TOC is it’s simplicity in illustrating that there is always a bottleneck (constraint) in any system. The challenge is to identify the primary bottleneck and eliminate it as the primary bottleneck. ITIL process maturity is all about eliminating the bottleneck at which time the bottleneck will move and during this removing of the bottleneck/constraint the ITIL processes mature. TOC therefore works very well with the Deming Cycle together in that TOC assists to identify the bottleneck whilst the Deming Cycle assists in eliminating it (we could also add in Lewin’s ‘Unfreeze Change Refreeze’ Change model as we are we unfreezing a stable state, effecting the Change and then moving to the next constraint).
As an example, suppose that we are continuously failing a Service Level where the Service Desk should be responding to all emails within ten minutes even although we employ two people to specifically respond to emails. We analyse our business process and discover that 40% of emails are received between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. each day and that these are the hours where our two email responders take a lunch break. Our constraint is in the supply of services where demand exceeds supply during the two hours. We eliminate the bottleneck by changing the lunch break hours of the responders. Now we are free to look at the next bottleneck (please note that this is a very simplistic example).
External Article
Below is an article offering TOC as part of an ongoing Process Improvement initiative. The article may provide some benefit however doesn’t articulate well how TOC may be used for process improvement (I believe that the article was originally authored by Pink Elephant):
A system or a process cannot be more efficient than its limiting factor!
In “The Goal” Eli Goldratt presents the Theory Of Constraints (TOC). TOC introduces primary measurements for the analysis of systems based on productivity and ultimately, profit. The core truth of TOC is that every system or process has at least one constraint or bottleneck, and that the identification of this constraint should be the focus for any improvement activity.
TOC advocates that organizations take a three-dimensional view of three core business concepts, Inventory, Operating Expense and Throughput. To relate these financial terms to IT one needs to expand the definitions beyond their traditional concepts.
Inventory: All of the money, investment, outstanding issues, pending changes, unresolved incidents, excess capacity, etc. an organization has tied up in an un-sellable, unfinished, unresolved, undeliverable, or pending state.
- Pre Process Inventory: stuff that is currently waiting in queue in a raw or input state. i.e.: Calls that are waiting in the ACD system or emails that have not been answered by the Service Desk.
- Active Inventory: stuff that is currently within the system or process and is currently being transformed into a desired or sellable output state, i.e.: Change Management records that are currently being assessed, authorized and scheduled.
- Post Process Inventory: stuff that has been successfully transformed into a desired output but has not been delivered to a client, sold, confirmed resolved, or generated profit, i.e.: The Service Desk’s feedback calls back to the users to confirm that an incident, which has been resolved, can be permanently closed.
In TOC, the concept of Inventory contradicts the conventional balance sheet definition of Inventory as an “asset” and redefines inventory as a “liability.”
Operating Expense: All of the money, time, energy, thought, resources, overtime, etc. tied up in the process of converting raw data or inventory into the output of the process.
Throughput: Defined as the speed at which inventory is moved through the end-to-end process, and delivered to the customer in order to realize the goal of profit, resolution, deployment, etc.
Goldratt observes that these three core principles are inseparably linked and that a change in any one of these three dimensions will automatically result in a proportionate change in the others. The perspective taken by TOC is that the biggest gains are realized by increasing throughput. However, to increase throughput the bottlenecks to the process need to be identified and eliminated.
Question: What occurs when you remove a bottleneck?
Answer: Another bottleneck appears elsewhere in the process.
Result: The identification of the next area for improvement to increase throughput, and the cycle of continuous improvement continues.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints places a practical tool in the hands of individuals involved in the ongoing management and improvement of business processes.
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