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