Forrester Blogs › Category: People

Giving Back To The IT Service Management Community

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on August 4, 2011

Stephen Mann

 

No, this isn’t about the returning of your ITIL books to ITIL’s makers (just think how much they would cost to post) but more of the reaping of the knowledge and experience held within the ITSM community (ITIL’s creators, publishers, trainers, consultants, software vendors, ITSM practitioners, and ancillary roles such as analysts) for the benefit of all.

This is by no means a new idea. Various conversations have taken place over the years to create lower-level, more granular, and ultimately more practical best practice information that is freely available to ITSM practitioners. Whether it is in the form of blogs, white papers, discussion threads, podcasts, special interest groups, or “free” training and events, such information is invaluable to the IT people “at the coal face” who don’t want to have to “reinvent the wheel” nor to have to read through a set of ITIL books which IMO isn’t really designed for the hectic work lives of ITSM practitioners. Practitioners just don’t have the time even if they have the inclination. They will also struggle to find really practical help and assistance from such a "sea of text."

Read more

Categories:

What Next For ITIL?

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on July 28, 2011

Stephen Mann

With the updated version of ITIL imminent (the 29 July 2011), I participated in a BrightTalk webinar on “what next for ITIL.”

My views on this are very clear, that we need to “look back before we look forward.” I touched on some of this in a previous blog, 2011: An ITIL Versioning Odyssey, but think it worthwhile to continue to articulate my views in this area.

Let's start with what I consider to be the biggest issue: the gulf between theory and practice with ITIL.

There is no doubt that ITIL can benefit I&O organizations. There are certainly many I&O organizations encouraging, or even forcing, their people to take ITIL training and qualifications: There are at least 1.5 million people with the certification and there is no sign of this slowing down. Not only are trainers busy, so are ITSM consultants and, of course, industry analysts. But, from an industry analyst perspective, there is a lot wrong with ITIL. This is not just how it ballooned in size from ITIL v2 to ITIL v3, but also how it is adopted in the real world.

So what's going wrong?

  1. If you look at existing ITIL v2 adoption, there is a focus on the reactive elements such as incident management, problem management, change management, and maybe even configuration management and service-level management. How many organizations have moved on to the more proactive elements such as availability management, capacity management, IT financial management, and continual service improvement?
Read more

Categories:

Will It Be “DevOps” Or “DevOid” For I&O Professionals?

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on July 22, 2011

Stephen Mann

 

My colleague, Glenn O’Donnell, and I (do I sound like the Queen?) have delivered a Forrester report called “Improving The Ops In DevOps” inspired by the long-bemoaned tension between “change-the-business” (dev) and “run-the-business” (ops) IT teams and their activities, and the need for change.

This tension inflicts a detrimental impact on the business. In fact, most organizations suffer this curse, and stereotypes that reflect this animosity abound. Does this sound familiar? Ops people see dev people as sitting in their ivory towers cranking out code all day and wanting to release applications oblivious to real-world constraints; dev sees ops as cog-turners ensuring that the IT infrastructure doesn’t break under the strain of poorly written code. Chances are that your organization is not this bad. But this exaggeration is indicative of the tension between these two IT “tribes” and their opinions of each other. These stereotypes exist because organizational behaviors do exaggerate genuine conflicts, and both parties must act quickly to change.

Getting DevOps right will address many of the issues enterprises consistently have with IT, such as applications failing to meet both functional and nonfunctional requirements, delivery delays, increased costs, and an inflexibility to change. But is DevOps enough to save I&O from extinction?

Read more

Categories:

Getting Started With ITIL – The 30-Minute Version

Posted by Stephen Mann on the Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Blog on June 21, 2011

Stephen Mann

Time is valuable, so many of us are cash rich and time poor these days. We value simplicity and loathe the complex. Things need to be done yesterday, if not before. 

I can only see this getting worse as we are pressured to deliver the proverbial "more with less."

To elaborate, and it's a little tongue in cheek, Flash only had 14 hours to save earth. Twitter only allows us 140 characters to express ourselves. Shorter industry analyst pieces seem to be in vogue and, thankfully, in demand. BUT trying to tell someone how to get started with ITIL in 30 minutes is a bit of a challenge.

Well I'm up for it, and here is my starter for 10 …

To begin:

  • It’s about adopting not implementing ITIL
  • Take an adopt-and-adapt approach. Use what you need rather than everything. It’s a framework not a standard
  • It should be people then process then technology

People:

  • Do not underestimate the importance of people and their behaviors to ITIL success
  • ITIL is culture-based. A way of thinking as well as a way of working … IT delivered as a service (ITIL v2) … the Service Lifecycle (ITIL v3)
    • Too many organizations adopt ITIL without subscribing to its concepts
    • Many organizations stick with the common/core processes, never moving from these reactive processes to the more value-adding proactive processes
    • Many organizations say that they “do” ITIL v3 when all they “do” is a subset of the ITIL v2 processes and have bought Service Catalog technology and/or sent staff on an ITIL v3 course
Read more

Categories:

Syndicate content