Author Archive

Learn to walk before you try to run

September 24th, 2009

Rule Brittania (and Darren Campbell)

Chances are that your organization yearns for dazzling ITSM dashboards with sparkling graphics. Of course you would, who wouldn’t? Truth is however that if your organization does not have a solid foundation of operational ITSM reporting that strategic level dashboarding and scorecards are really nothing more than pie in the sky graphics.

To be fair, operational ITSM reports can be about as interesting as watching a plank warp. Apologies to the wood aficionados. But operational ITSM reports do provide something of great value; they are the foundation upon which to build the management and communication of your ITSM efforts.

Over the years I’ve seen my fair share of ITSM reporting environments and the disparity in quality and maturity is stunning.

On a positive note, quite a few companies have embraced the discipline of managing by fact. These companies are using ITSM reporting as a vital communication tool and a key part in their continuous ITSM process improvement. Interestingly enough, when asked about the state of ITSM reporting these companies will be the first to explain that ITSM reporting is an ongoing initiative and that there is much work ahead.

There are however many a company out there where, let me put this nicely, reporting is not a mature discipline. Typically such companies are running ITSM reports on the basis of “we run these reports as these are the reports that have always been run”. No business validation, no defined audience and often not even an understanding as to what the purpose of the reports is. Suggesting that it would be useful to sit down with the customer community to define customer reporting needs, will likely lead to a rapid exit from the room and a bee-line back to the ivory tower of IT. “There is no way we can provide the customer with the info they would ask for, therefore we won’t ask them”. A clear lose-lose situation that does nothing to improve the standing of IT department and its desire to better serve the business customer. When asked about the state of ITSM reporting, these companies will likely respond defensively “yes, we have ITSM reporting”.

There are very few shortcuts in life. Attempting strategic level ITSM dashboarding or scorecards without proper supporting operational ITSM reporting is like trying to run before you can walk.

David

Leave your comment »

Posted in Processes

Tags:

The “red-headed step child” of a HP Service Manager implementation

July 2nd, 2009

Chances are that if your company is using HP Service Desk or HP ServiceCenter, that you are contemplating a move to HP Service Manager. Such an undertaking will undoubtedly be coupled with a review of existing IT Service Management processes and the way in which HP Service Manager will support these processes. Having learned from experience, most companies recognize that there is no need to reinvent the wheel and are therefore minimizing customization and sticking to the out of the box configuration as much as possible.  However, and this is a surprising industry trend, most companies are still paying little to no attention to the reporting requirements from HP Service Manager. Without a proper reporting solution and strategy in place, your HP Service Manager implementation cannot succeed as you will have no way to properly measure and communicate IT’s performance.

Common themes that accompany the (planning of the) implementation of HP Service Manager include the sensible improvement goals around:

  • Business and IT alignment
  • Quality of IT services
  • Transparency of IT services to IT customers

Given the above themes it is therefore surprising to see that getting the right information out of your HP Service Manager implementation is often an afterthought. Or as one seasoned ITSM consultant put it, ITSM reporting is often dealt with as the ‘red-headed step child’ of any ITSM implementation. “We’ll deal with that when we get to it” however by the time you ‘get to it’ you’ve got your hands too full to properly address the issue.

At Westbury we are constantly running into customer scenarios where all the focus is aimed at getting HP Service Manager up and running and yet reporting often seems to be an afterthought. Interestingly enough, that same ‘red headed step child’ suddenly becomes of utmost importance the moment HP Service Manager’s live date approaches . The reasons are obvious:

  • At a minimum IT wants to provide at least the same reports as existed before the move to Service Manager
  • Additionally IT managers & supervisors need insight to better oversee, drive and improve the performance of the various support teams and services they provide
  • Going forward the IT department would like to prove its value by objectively demonstrating improvement in the delivery of IT services
  • Customers  of IT will demand insight into the delivery of IT services and will require increasingly more in-depth reporting from IT

We in roles of ITSM are being asked to do more with less and to improve the delivery of IT services to our customers. This means we have to be smarter as to how we go about this. Let’s all agree that it is not about what we put into the ITSM processes and tools, rather it is about what we can get out of it.

Be smart, look at the overall picture.

David

Leave your comment »

Posted in Processes

Tags: