Archive for the ‘Processes’ Category

Newer Entries »

Coming out of recession…Now what?

September 28th, 2009

bullAccording to the economical gurus, the world is coming out of the recession. After a year of cutting costs, doing more with less and outsourcing IT services, what should be the best strategy for IT executives moving forward?

Obviously, the reckless pattern of costs savings has lead to huge gaps in IT processes. Especially the maintenance of IT applications has been hit hard during the recession. In the last 9-12 months almost all companies have reduced the contracts with consultants dramatically, IT services have been outsourced and support and maintenance contracts not renewed. On top of that, internal IT resources have been cut back or reorganizations have taken people away from maintenance projects. But also new, innovative IT projects have been postponed. I’m pretty sure everyone can think of one project this year that was already approved but never executed or was killed during implementation.

However, since our gurus allows us to see some light at the end of the tunnel (which could easily be a train coming towards you from the other site of the tunnel!), what should be the recommendations for IT executives?

Allow me to come with some suggestions:

  1. Fill out the gaps of your IT processes by implementing new processes, new application to support the processes and by hiring resources in critical spots
  2. Gain competitive advantage by updating your website with new features such as: news feeds, newsletters, event calendars, case studies, photo galleries, customer support features, product catalogs, blogs, social networking capabilities, and SEO improvements.
  3. Invest in the future by hiring young, talented people and by training the employees that kept your business running for the last 12 months.

Just some suggestions. Let me know your ideas.

Floris

Leave your comment »

Posted in Implementations, Processes

Tags:

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

1 Comment »

Posted in Processes

Tags:

IT service management is threatened with extinction, Darwin says.

September 10th, 2009

darwinAs we all know, Darwin proposed the theory of ‘survival of the fittest’. Species have to evolve from generation to generation, adapting to their environment to survive. Based on this theory and more than 20 years of talking about business and IT you have to conclude that by now, IT should know exactly how to incorporate business requirements and needs. Moreover, IT is crucial in surviving against the competition.

So why does this seems so terribly untrue? Why after 3 versions of ITIL, top of the bill process improvement consultants and the newest flashy service management tooling, most of the implementation projects do not deliver what the business needs? And what about continual service improvement/ASL/BIZL and more …?

From my experience the most successful IT projects and organizations start with clear goals set by people for people, motivated project members, managers and key employees knowing how to change behaviour. As science proves, success, attitudes, culture and motivation start with defined, clear objectives and changing your behaviour; walking the talk. And of course don’t forget to measure the success and to celebrate it.

IT started with people and every initiative and project still depends very heavily on the people involved. We need to start focusing on the central and most important asset, THE PEOPLE! IT for the business needs People for People and walking the talk.

Or perhaps it still takes a couple of million years of IT evolution?

How to start? Just grab some ideas at: http://www.abc-of-ict.com/principles.php

Martijn

2 Comments »

Posted in Processes, Tips & Tricks

Tags:

How to…

August 27th, 2009

“How to…” is quite a generic title for a post so no doubt you will fill in the blanks yourself. And think of something nice… only for me to disappoint you, because the “How to…”  I’m focusing on is… “How to build a good report”.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that building a report is not that hard… and actually the definition of a report is the hardest part.  So to create a report – instead of just starting to build – you first need to think about a few important steps.

  1. Determine what information you need and who needs it
  2. Start building the report with selecting the data
  3. Manipulate the data (add calculations or other parameters)
  4. Create a final layout and broadcast it to your audience

The most important one of these is the first one, because based on the answer the following can be assessed. To determine which information you need you must think at several sub questions like:

  • What is the exact goal of the report, is it a simple overview,  detailed overview with calculations, or an in-depth view of performance per, let’s say, assignment group;
  • Number of Incidents per Assignment Group, Category and Priority
  • Who needs the information (management, a customer or is it for someone with in depth knowledge);
  • Management
  • How do they expect to receive the report (report with refresh possibility, PDF, Excel or HTML)
  • Report
  • How often should the report be broadcast (once, every day, weekly)
  • Every Monday morning at 8:00 am

Based on those answers you can start determining the source for you data, the answer on question 2. When you are using SMI Suite, and yeah you should,  the data will be available through several complete universes. Right now I’m taking the Incident process as an example so we need to select the Incident universe to get the data.

Once you’ve selected the objects you want to report on, that’s it… Business Objects will provide you with a default report with a tabular overview of the selected data.

tabularview

Then the last part kicks in, time to create some calculations like averages, sums, counts or percentages, and maybe create some variables that represent data in a more “jip en janneke taal” [Ed: this Dutch idiom translates to "in layman's terms", but it's cute so I didn't want to edit it out entirely]. I will add an percentage of the total number per category and priority shown per Assignment group.

Finally create the final layout and it can look like this. Because it is for the management I have decided to give exceptional high percentages a red color and “in the danger” percentages an orange color. In this case they can see at a glance the status and the possible issues.

fixed-view

Finally you can set up a scheduler, part of Business Objects, and publish the report in the desired format.

If you don’t think a report over and start building without thinking you will see that a lot of work is lost in adjusting everything.  So keep this list to guide you through the process or if you have a better guide please share!

In the next blog I will CHANGE the subject! You’re a real Sherlock if you know the subject, so surprise me!

Richard

1 Comment »

Posted in Processes

Tags:

The hidden costs of BI

August 19th, 2009

The Aberdeen GroupIn a recent report (registration required) the Aberdeen Group described the success rates of enterprise companies (which it groups into Best-In-Class, Average or Laggard) in Business Intelligence projects.  Some of the result are very interesting to share.

For example, the report identified the four top hidden costs of Business Intelligence as:

  1. Year-after-year budget increases: The typical best-in-class company sees a drop in year-after-year BI budgetary costs. Average and laggard companies, however, can witness increases in BI expenses that range from 2 percent to 9 percent.
  2. Cost per user: Best-in-class companies lower per-user costs by 4.3 percent whereas average performers and laggards often see increases ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent.
  3. Time to complete projects: Best-in-class achievers complete BI projects, on average, within 14 days. Average performers take nearly three times as long (approximately 39 days) to complete a project, and the typical laggard company takes more than 12 times as long (177 days).
  4. Modifications to BI software: Altering a BI program takes less than a day for best-in-class companies; three days for average performers; and up to eight days for laggard organizations.

Or as author David Hatch put it:

“The overall cost of ownership is not about the costs of purchasing the software,” Hatch says. “The real cost factors are the hidden or the soft ones that have to do with indirect and ongoing factors.” Hatch contends that a justifiable fear of such factors hinders adoption. “People are finding [that] the resources the company needs to acquire to properly implement, deploy, support, and maintain a BI solution are far greater than the solution providers lead [users] to believe or that [users] assume on their own.”

Interesting, because that is what Westbury has seen over the last years in dealing with BI projects for HP Service Management. But a report of the Aberdeen Group isn’t complete without some recommendations. On what areas should companies focus in order to improve the success rate of their BI projects?

Aberdeen suggests that investments in the following areas will maximize results from a BI initiative:

  • Data integration and cleansing: “Companies are finding it difficult to bring data together from multiple, disparate sources,” Hatch says. Investing in tools for data management can be of help in this regard. Best-in-class companies are twice as likely as their counterparts are to institute data integration and cleansing capabilities.

Westbury recommends: make sure the back end of your BI environment can be used by non-technical people

  • End-user requirements: “You really have to stop and think about why…so many companies have deployed tools that so many aren’t able to use,” Hatch says. Companies must understand that end-users — especially nontechnical, non-data-guru types — may need different approaches. Hatch advises companies to focus on end-user needs before deploying a solution.

Westbury recommends: make sure you talk the same language as your end-users

  • Training: Top performers are 37 percent more likely to invest in extensive user training on BI solutions and 40 percent are more likely to have formed formal user committees to encourage adoption. Additionally, best-in-class companies are twice as likely as laggards and average performers are to sign up for vendor-provided services.

Westbury recommends: the more accessible your BI solution is for the end-users, the better your processes should be around training

  • Operational BI: Successful users of BI use the technology on an everyday basis rather than merely getting a summarized spreadsheet version of performance and high-level trends. Hatch says that operational BI seems to be gaining traction as companies look to make comparisons over shorter time spans rather than just examine large-scale trends.

Westbury recommends: integrate your BI solution with the supported applications, so it is readily accessible for your end-users

Great to see our own own experiences in working with the HP Service Management software backed up with a solid research like this one from The Aberdeen Group.

Floris

Leave your comment »

Posted in Processes, Tips & Tricks

Tags:

Software development illustrated

July 15th, 2009

I’ve been working in the software development sector for 5 years now and the following cartoon is a real life example of how software development is performed.  The last year I work more and more in the Business Intelligence sector and I believe that the cartoon is also applicable on report building.

SoftwareDevelopment

To get the valuable information from your data is a real profession and needs to be performed from a specific angle. Do not take your own “way of working”  to build a report but look at the basis!  Ask yourself three questions:

  1. Who needs the information?
  2. What information is needed?
  3. Is this information available?

Once you have the answers you can start building your report.  Of course, the answers can be quite extended or not easy to answer but these are the fundamentals to create a valuable report.

In a future blog I will talk through a real life example of building a valuable report!

Personally I love cartoons like the one above,  so if you have comics about software development or related… don’t hesitate to share with us!

Richard


078.23.33.648VERBURG, A.C.J.

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:

Improving front end or back end of BI solution?

May 19th, 2009

Being the CEO of a product company that earns its living in the grey area between IT Service Management and Business Intelligence, I’m constantly looking for BI solutions that make life easier for the Service Management community.

But what does that mean: BI solutions that make life easier! Are customers looking for more out of the box reports, KPIs, analytics or for more functionalities within the BI tool? Or should the focus be on the back end of the BI architecture: the ETL layer and database? Of course, the answer is: both. However, looking at the number one priority according to “Gartner’s - 2009 CIO Agenda: improving business processes”, I’m convinced that in this economical downturn customers are most helped by making the back end as out of the box as possible.

The focus that I will have in my blogs is on the balance between adding value by improving the front end of a BI solution and the back end. Westbury’s focus has always been on making the BI solution for Service Management out of the box and to stay away from a datawarehouse architecture in which the dependency on SQL specialists and database developers is time consuming and expensive. But, again, what should be the right balance between out of the box capabilities for the front end of a BI solution and the back end? Does the CIO really care about the back end or is he or she only interested in the end results? Again, according to Gartner the focus of CIO’s will shift in 2009 to a more process oriented approach.

Keep you posted.

Floris

Leave your comment »

Posted in Processes

Tags:

The birth of WESTBLOG and a brand new product demo video

April 24th, 2009
www.westbury-it.com

www.westbury-it.com

Funny how technology companies often aren’t the first ones to embrace new technology… Well, better late than never, right? With corporate blogging seeming to be the one thing people are talking about these days (other than the economy), now seemed like the perfect time to launch WESTBLOG, Westbury’s first official blog.

We’re hoping to achieve a few things with WESTBLOG, although our aims will no doubt shift once we get going. Firstly we want to get nice and cosy with our customers. All too often we feel like we’re a faceless corporation that shows up once a year ask for support dues, and that’s not the way it should be, especially in an industry as small and connected as ITSM. We’re not simply a software vendor, we’re gurus of ITSM reporting – at least, that’s what we like to think.

Secondly we want to get people excited about the things that excite us – whether that’s things we’re doing here, or things going on at HP, or something happening in the big wide world of ITSM and ITIL, or whether that’s just the thrilling race for automatic promotion from England’s Coca-Cola League Two (COME ON YOU SHAKERS!).

Thirdly we want to impress chicks at parties by telling them we have a blog.

OK, so that third one was was a lie. We wouldn’t want to be associated with anyone who would be impressed by blog ownership. But the first two are very true, and in order to get cracking on the second objective:

We have a new product demo video out! Released this very day onto the Viddler airwaves is the video for Change Calendar, hosted by the best looking employee in the Westbury organization (I know, big fish in a very very small pond). Check it out:

Right now the plan is to have a bunch of different people contribute to WESTBLOG, so we heartily suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed (works really well in Outlook 2007) and keep up to date every time there’s a new post.

Until next time,
Tom

Leave your comment »

Posted in Processes, Tips & Tricks

Tags: