A fool with a tool is still a fool.

More than 10 years has passed since GamingWorks first published their book IT Service Management From Hell: A Guide to Worst Practices. 10 years later there still appear to be too many fools in IT. In this series of four guest blogs, IT Service Management from Hell co-author Paul Wilkinson will be looking at the reasons and giving some best practice advice for solving this ongoing problem.

Find part one of the series here, part two here and part three here.

In the previous three blogs we have examined the continuing lack of business and IT alignment, exploring how worst practices in ABC (Attitude, Behavior and Culture) underpin our lack of alignment as well as the way in which we adopt and deploy the frameworks such as ITIL. We stressed the need to ensure that attitudes are changed so that everybody understands the value they must deliver to the business and that we must translate the value propositions into all our initiatives. In this final blog we examine how our approach to applying people, Product, Process and Partner needs improving.

The second aspect of the four ‘P’s that can be improved upon?

2. The  ‘holistic’ approach.

Last year ‘leverage’ was the hot buzzword used by consultants. This year it seems to be ‘holistic’. So if we say we need to leverage a holistic approach then we must really be top notch consultants. It is the failure to adopt a really integrated or holistic approach that causes many initiatives to fail.  This stems from the different levels of ‘maturity’ of IT organizations. Some leap onto the ‘PROCESS’ bandwagon, adopt a framework like ITIL, produce process flows and procedures and ‘throw them over the wall and hope that people will follow them’. Other organizations are so technology focused they throw a tool at the problem. Creating the situation of ‘a fool with a tool is still a fool’. The most common approach to addressing the ‘People’ side is simply to send people en masse to ITIL training, assuming that when they return they will be able to magically ‘do’ ITIL.

This point is partly proven by the fact that the ABC of ICT survey revealed “throwing solutions over the wall and hoping people will adopt them” scores number five in the top ten worst practices. This applies to both the ‘Process’ focus, and to the ‘Product’ or tool focus. The largest common failing in applying the four ‘P’s is too little effort and energy on the most important P – People. Says who? Successful ITSM improvement initiatives are all about changing the behavior of people. People don’t like to change. Indeed another Forrester report revealed that 52% of these types of initiatives fail because of resistance. In our mind it is ABC that is the fundamental success or fail factor for tool focused or process focused initiatives.

This point is proved by the results of a survey into the key success factors from 1000 students having participated in an ITSM simulation. The biggest single success factor was ‘people’ scoring 44%. (In the ITSM simulation teams had to translate a set of business demands into the four ‘P’s and demonstrate that they could deliver the performance demanded by the business).

Now you have read all four blogs you can test whether your ITSM improvement initiative will close the ever widening gap between business and IT.

1. Ask a selection of your IT employees to tell you what a service is according to ITIL.
   ‘a service is a means of delivering value to the business in terms of outcomes the customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks’. Ask them ‘What VALUE and OUTCOMES does the business demand and expect from ITIL?
2. Go and look at the project plans and proposals for all tool, process and training programs or any partner agreements and sourcing initiatives and look for the business case. Is there a section related to the value and outcomes these initiatives must achieve?
3. Look at your ITSM improvement initiatives. Is there a balance in the amount of effort between the four ‘P’s? Is there a significant investment in ‘People’? Ensuring the ABC worst practices described in the previous blogs have and will be addressed? And that initiatives are taken to ensure that this will not be one of the 52% of initiatives that fail due to resistance?
4. If the answers to these tests are negative you now have to ask yourself the question “what AM I going to do about it?” Remember one of the top three ABC worst practices is “not my responsibility”. If you do nothing about it who else will? I’ll see you in 10 years time. My presentation slides are already made.

Paul

A fool with a tool is still a fool.

More than 10 years has passed since GamingWorks first published their book IT Service Management From Hell: A Guide to Worst Practices. 10 years later there still appear to be too many fools in IT. In this series of four guest blogs, IT Service Management from Hell co-author Paul Wilkinson will be looking at the reasons and giving some best practice advice for solving this ongoing problem.

Find part one of the series here, and part two here.

In our first two blogs we explored the ever increasing gap between business and IT and how Attitude, Behavior and Culture (ABC of ICT) are the key reasons we have failed to successfully adopt and deploy frameworks to solve the problem. We mentioned that more than 70% of IT organizations are unable to measure and demonstrate value using frameworks and tools. In blog two we said the first step is to firmly embed into the mindset of every member of IT the concept of a service according to ITIL v3. A Service is “a means of delivering value to the business in terms of outcomes the business wants to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks”

So where does the problem lie in how we adopt and deploy the frameworks? Once again I’ll use ITIL v3 because it is a good starting point and reference as to what we are doing wrong and what needs improving.  According to Service Design improvement initiatives should be based around the four ‘P’s: People, Product, Process, Partner. If we examine most of the improvement programs and initiatives we can map them onto this. However there are two aspects about the four ‘P’s  that can be improved upon.

1. The 5^th P – “Performance” – should be added to the model. Performance, or Value in ITIL v3 terms should be ‘leading’ in the design of service management improvement initiatives. See the diagram. Before you design and implement processes, adopt and deploy management technology, send people on training or engage partners you should ask the question ‘Why? What value? and/or how will this reduce costs and risks’.

As we mentioned in blog two, this point is proven by the fact that when we did an ABC of ICT survey with more than a thousand IT professionals the number one IT worst practice they selected in the workshop was “no understanding of business impact and priority” and number three was “IT is too internally focused.” If we do not understand the business needs then how can we hope to realize value? The fact that we are still too internally focused explains to me one of the reasons we keep presenting the same worst practices every ten years.

The second reason being that one of the top three chosen worst practices by more than a thousand IT professionals is “not my responsibility”. Nobody apparently feels responsible or accountable for breaking through the problems, hence the fact that business & IT alignment seems to be a constantly recurring theme and the reason we keep giving the same worst practice presentations every ten years! When we do decide to make a project proposal for implementing tools or ITIL is it any wonder that many of the projects in these difficult financial times gets cancelled. The number ten in the list of ABC worst practices – “IT thinks it doesn’t need to understand the business to make a business case.”

So that is one aspect of the four ‘P’s that can be improved upon. Ensure that the ‘Performance’ or ‘value’ underpins all of our initiatives. We must be able to demonstrate the value and the outcomes the business needs when we apply the four ‘P’s. What is the second aspect of the four ‘P’s that can be improved upon to ensure lasting, sustainable success?

Paul

A fool with a tool is still a fool.

More than 10 years has passed since GamingWorks first published their book IT Service Management From Hell: A Guide to Worst Practices. 10 years later there still appear to be too many fools in IT. In this series of four guest blogs, IT Service Management from Hell co-author Paul Wilkinson will be looking at the reasons and giving some best practice advice for solving this ongoing problem.

Find part 1 of the series here.

In our first blog we discussed the fact that the gap between business and IT seems to be growing and despite all the best practice frameworks we are not bringing IT under control. The first blog declared that the reasons were not the frameworks but the ABC of ICT. Attitide, Behavior and Culture within IT.

This second blog is entitled: Taking the first step in closing the gap.

Lau Tzu the great Chinese philosopher made a quote that very roughly translated goes “A journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step”. This is sound advice for those of us embarking upon our long, tiring, sometimes painful, journey with ITIL in an effort to bring IT under control and close the business and IT alignment gap.

ITIL v3 is the latest of the frameworks that claims to help address the alignment issues we mentioned  and help IT organizations finally gain control, so I will use this as a starting point to show why ABC (Attitude, Behavior and Culture) is still a problem and what we should be doing to finally resolve it.

Well first of all let’s look at what ITIL v3 says about a Service. This to me is crucial. If IT people could grasp, embrace and fully understand this concept we’d have the gap closed in no time. A Service, according to ITIL V3,  is “a means of delivering value to the business in terms of outcomes the business wants to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks”. If every single IT person could ask themselves the question ‘how does this activity contribute to business value’ or ‘how does my current behavior cause unnecessary business costs and create business risks’, we’d be a long way onto solving business and IT alignment.  This is the crucial first step changing people’s attitude about what it is they do and why they are doing it? We can’t possibly be aligned when most people in IT don’t understand the business needs. Don’t believe me? In a series of global ABC workshops with more than 1000 IT professionals the number 1 chosen ABC ‘worst practice’ was “no understanding of business impact and priority”. We in IT do not know or understand business priorities.

Changing attitude is the first step. But what about now embedding this into ‘Behavior’. Actually make it happen. This is where the tools and frameworks come in. Adopting and implementing process based working is all about introducing new ways of working. New ways of behaving. The way in which we currently adopt and deploy the frameworks and tools is also one of the key fail factors as to why we are still failing. 70% of IT organizations are unable to demonstrate the value gained by implementing these types of improvements.

So where are we going wrong in our adoption of frameworks? And how can we ensure that we can adopt and deploy them successfully? In the next blog we will tell you how.

Paul

A fool with a tool is still a fool.

More than 10 years has passed since GamingWorks first published their book IT Service Management From Hell: A Guide to Worst Practices. 10 years later it would appear that the statement about ‘a fool with a tool…’ is still applicable to too many IT organizations. In this series of four guest blogs, IT Service Management from Hell co-author Paul Wilkinson will be looking at the reasons and giving some best practice advice for solving this ongoing problem.

Every year the gap grows. Which gap? On the one side the growth in the importance of IT to business operations and on the other side the seeming inability of IT organizations to bring IT under control and demonstrate value. Says who?

A recent Forrester report declared that only 15% of IT leaders said they were aligned. A full 80% of business managers stated the importance of IT in terms of lowering costs, improving productivity, acquiring and retaining customers, but felt that IT was poor in realizing these outcomes. One of the problems is that IT reports on IT operational excellence and not on business value. Apparently a key best practice for resolving this is to make business-value communications integral in everything IT does and ensuring that IT operations and IT project metrics relate to increased business value.

This is nothing new – business & IT alignment seems to the hype every year. The IT industry is inundated with ever more frameworks like ITIL v3, BiSL and CobIT in an effort to tackle the problems and bring IT under control, and there are an increasing array of advanced service management tools for automation and reporting. Despite all these ‘new toys’ we are still not under control? Why is this?

It is all to do with the ABC of ICT. What is that? ABC stands for the Attitude, Behavior and Culture of those involved in the use and management of IT. ABC is like an iceberg, much of it is hidden beneath the surface and yet it is capable of inflicting enormous damage to your IT improvement initiative, and more importantly to your business.

So why are we not under control? Despite all these frameworks and what are these hidden ABC worst practices that are standing between your ITSM improvement program and success?

In the next blog we will tell you the first step in closing the gap.

Paul