ItSMF Bulletin Autumn 2014

www.itsmf.org.au

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itSMFA’s Unique Value Proposition

IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT FORUM AUSTRALIA

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Better ITSM From Clouded Waters?

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Instant Metrics for the C-Suite

Autumn 2014

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Towards the Technology Concierge

National Conference: Program Starting to Take Shape

LEADit 2014 L to R: Tristan Boot (Chair, itSMF NZ); Karen Ferris (Director, Publications, itSMF Australia); Michael Billimoria (Director, Certifications and Qualifications, itSMF Australia); Peter Hepworth (CEO, Axelos GBP); Kathryn Heaton (Chair, itSMF Australia)

Axelos Engages itSMF on Direction and Priorities Prioritising which projects and investments are going to bring the most benefits to the ITSM community and the commercial interests of Axelos, is the greatest challenge facing the global best practice company according to its CEO, Peter Hepworth.

Hepworth was in Australia in December 2013 to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Axelos and itSMF International which documents a commitment to ongoing collaborative development of ITSM best practice frameworks, translations and training programs.

While in Australia, itSMFA played host to Hepworth at events in Sydney and Melbourne during which he took the opportunity

to engage in interactive briefing sessions for members and other interested parties.

Hepworth explained the back story of how Capita won the tender to form a joint venture with The Cabinet Office (TCO) to commercialise the UK Government department’s suite of best practice frameworks. He also discussed in an open forum, a range of issues about the future of Axelos, what changes Continued on Page 3

With the Call for Speakers deadline now passed and Early Bird registrations due to open on April 1, everything is charging forward at full steam for LEADit 2014, itSMF Australia’s 17th annual National Conference and Expo to be held on 13-15 August at the Pullman Albert Park Hotel in Melbourne.

Including workshops scheduled for 12 August, LEADit 2014 will include four days of the best quality keynote presentations, breakout sessions and great entertainment as well as an expo with all of the major products and services vendors catering to the thriving ITSM community.

LEADit is Australia’s largest independent IT Service Management event and has built a strong reputation for attracting the highest quality delegates, speakers and sponsors from all over Australia and right across the world. Managed by members for members of the peak ITSM industry body in Australia, the itSMF Conference promotes robust discussion, education and debate to collectively support best practice to develop and improve industry services.

Under the conference theme, “Connecting the Service Management Community”, LEADit 2014 will include 60 keynote and breakout sessions across five streams. The program will include Hot Topic discussion panels and the very popular Hypothetical session will Continued on Page 5

Your Website itSMF Australia’s website continues to improve and evolve as a valuable member information resource. Keep watching for continued improvements as there are big plans for the site to be expanded over the next 12 months.

Events, News, Webinars, Bookstore, Membership, and Much more!

www.itsmf.org.au 1

CHAIR'S REPORT Kathryn Heaton Chair, itSMF Australia

New Year, New Challenges Welcome to the first issue of the Bulletin for 2014. I trust that everyone had the opportunity over the holiday season to take at least a short break from the rigours of work to spend some quality time with friends and/or family so that you were refreshed and recharged for the year ahead.

This will be an important year for itSMF Australia as we continue our concerted effort to grow the membership and increase awareness of the value that effectively implemented IT service management can introduce to business.

As this issue of the Bulletin is in production Board member, Karen Ferris, is in Las Vegas on invitation from ITSM tools and services provider, Pink Elephant contributing to the Pink Think Tank in the lead-up to their 2014 international conference.

This gathering brought together nine of the world’s best known ITSM thought leaders including Rob England, Charles Araujo, Charles Betz, Rodrigo Flores and David Cannon. Karen is the only female joining these luminaries who will debate the challenges faced by the ITSM and her presence amongst such illustrious company serves as testimony to how lucky we are to have her serving on the itSMF Australia Board of Management.

Our Value Proposition In 2013, there was a lot of focus from the itSMFA Board on clearly identifying our value proposition in the service management community as well in the broader IT industry and business world. As a result we have developed some new statements on our values as an organisation and our unique value propositions to members and the broader IT community.

These statements have been reproduced elsewhere in this issue so make sure you take a little time to read and absorb what we stand for as well as how we are striving to deliver value to our members.

In addition to defining our purpose and value, we also surveyed our members and sponsors to identify how we can continue to improve the value we offer to them. To this effect we have redefined our membership categories to provide more flexibility.

This includes embracing the schools community which is facing a range of service management issues as technology usage in education

explodes as the direct result of user demand and government investment. Look forward to further progress in this area.

Membership Drive There has also been significant effort to build up the number of people who want to join, contribute to and remain active within the Forum because it goes without saying that an organisation is only as strong as its membership.

We need to continue getting out there and showing people and organisations that it is a worthwhile investment of time and money to be a part of itSMF Australia.

There are several efforts that have been mounted as part of our renewed push to build member numbers. These include the appointment of a Membership Development Manager to the national administrative team and the launching of the “Member get a Member” incentive campaign under the catch-cry of “Just Get One”. If every existing member can introduce one of their colleagues or friends in the industry to join itSMF, then we would be well on the way to our goal of reaching 10,000 paid up members.

Apart from Alison Tucker joining the team in the aforementioned membership recruitment role, there have been some other changes at National Office. Sheryl Kingsley has been added to staff as National Marketing Administration Officer. This is a full time role that includes managing website content and member communications.

In addition, Donna Parker has been appointed as Events and Conference Sponsorship Officer.

Another exciting development for 2014 is the establishment of a new Northern Territory chapter. This came about on the initiative of several Darwinbased members who have been regular attendees at National Conferences. They wanted to increase the number of knowledge sharing opportunities available to them and have met with a lot of support and enthusiasm from within the thriving IT community in Australia’s north.

This is the first of a range of new networking opportunities that will arise for members who are located outside the major cities of Australia as there are also moves afoot to start several Special Interest Groups in some of the larger regional centres of NSW and Victoria. Stay tuned for more information on how

you can get involved and start networking with professional peers in your local area.

Outgoing Board Members I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Justin Gasparre and Justin Clarke who are both stepping aside from their directorial roles on the itSMFA Board of Management after making valuable contributions during their tenures.

Justin Gasparre has made a significant contribution to our strategy, governance and IT direction over an extended period of time as well as being a long term conference committee member. He has stepped up every year to volunteer his time to help us with our direction, program and abstract reviews.

His recommendations were always based his on his desire to provide our members with the best possible value and conference experience and his input will be greatly missed.

Meanwhile, Justin Clarke has also been a valuable contributor to setting our current strategic direction and governance model while providing the conduit to our State Branches.

As defined by our constitution, the process of receiving nominations and voting for replacements to the Board vacancies has begun. If you are an existing representative on the Council of Members and would like to offer your services or recommend someone who would be suitable to fill the roles, please contact the National Office for details on how to register a nomination.

Finally, I would like all members to know that I am undertaking a national tour to meet with State Branch Committees and attend Q1 seminars where possible over the next couple of months.

I would love to meet with and hear feedback on how we can improve your Forum from as many members as possible as I travel around the country.

So get in touch with your State Branch representatives to find out when I am in your state. It would be great to chat with you face to face during my visits but remember that my email address is always open to contact from members on any matter.

Once again welcome to 2014.

Let’s all strive to make it a great year for itSMF Australia.

Kathryn Heaton Chair, itSMF Australia – kathryn.heaton@itsmf.org.au

New Staff at National Office

New faces at the National Office: Shery Kingsley (left) & Donna Parker

There have been two new appointments to the National Office administration team in recent months as itSMF Australia continues to expand its member services.

Sheryl Kingsley joined the organisation as National Marketing Administration Officer in November 2013 while Donna Parker was been appointed as Events and Conference Sponsorship Officer in February this year.

Sheryl’s role is a full time marketing support position which will see her managing content for the itSMF Australia and itSMF International websites as well as eventually driving increased social media activity and providing administrative support to all National Office functions.

Sheryl will also be co-ordinating nominations and adjudication of the 2014 itSMF Industry Awards Donna joins the business development team for 2014.

She will be responsible for managing existing sponsorship arrangements for all events including the National Conference and State Branch Seminars as well as working with vendors to develop new sponsorship opportunities to engage with and deliver new services to members.

Both Sheryl and Donna are keen to engage the membership, so feel free to contact them at the National Office on (03) 9879 5466 if there is anything they can help you with. Their email addresses are sheryl. kingsley@itsmf.org.au and donna.parker@itsmf.org.au respectively.

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From Page 1 can be expected to best practice frameworks such as ITIL and PRINCE2 and Axelos’ role in the ITSM industry going forward.

Hepworth was also keen to receive feedback from those present about what they thought should be the priorities for the organisation as it prepares to invest in these vital business tools.

In an exclusive interview after the Melbourne event, Hepworth told itSMFA Bulletin that the joint venture was all about “commercialising the best practice suite” and therefore “investment in the frameworks”, something that TCO had been reluctant to do in recent years.

“We are in a commercial world,” he said. “We were before the joint venture and we continue to be. I think the new opportunity is around investing in ITIL, PRINCE2 and the whole portfolio. At the moment we are completing a lot of research and we are particularly going to be working with the itSMF global community.

“Right now there are so many opportunities. Our biggest challenge is linked to prioritisation in regards to our roadmap. We intend to champion the relevance of ITSM as a business process and there will be a particular priority focus on the value proposition to raise awareness among those who maybe don’t yet see the benefit of service management.”

Hepworth said that since the formation of Axelos, the new entity has already launched one new product but in the short term will be focusing on current competencies including progressing with several new translations.

“As far as new products are concerned, our best growth opportunities are clearly in the existing model and portfolio,” he said. “We have recently launched the ITIL Maturity Model (IMM), so it is exciting times and we will definitely be looking to expand the portfolio with more new products going forward.

“IMM was developed in response to feedback which suggested there is a desire, a demand and a need for benchmarking. As organisations adopt ITIL, develop their strategies and start seeing the value it introduces, IMM introduces a new way to sense and assess where they are, to benchmark themselves against other organisations in their sector and to highlight areas

of further improvement and investment.”

Hepworth said that as the IP owners of ITIL, Axelos is well and truly embedded into the ITSM community internationally and the signing of the MoU with itSMF International is a clear indicator that it feels it has found the right partner to co-operate with.

“We were delighted to announce a new MoU with itSMF,” Hepworth said. “It is really about working with the ITSM community internationally and exploring ways to collaborate for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

One of the things discussed during the forums was the need to transition ITIL from “big bang” releases such as we saw with V2 and V3 to a more modular or evolutionary type program.

Hepworth said that this is “definitely an option”.

“There was a great discussion around ITIL evolution from the Australian community and that was appreciated,” he said. “We need to work out if it still makes sense to continue with the periodic refresh which may see significant change after a period of time in a big bang sort of way as happened with V3.

“Alternatively, the question is, as our world continues to evolve, does it make sense to perhaps have a more modular approach to improvement and evolution in ITIL. That is what we are discussing at the moment.

We haven’t concluded those discussions and itSMF’s input would be valued in any decisions that are made but it is certainly one of the options.”

Another topic discussed at the meetings pertained to whether Axelos was considering transitioning the whole concept of ITSM and ITIL away from its information technology centricity and becoming a broader “service management” framework.

Hepworth agreed that there are growth opportunities in leveraging the maturity and quality of ITIL into other servicebased business processes.

“That was definitely one of the liveliest discussion topics we had in Australia,” he said. “I think the way we are looking at it is as an additive thing. There is great value in the ITIL brand so it will definitely stay.

Members Encouraged to

“Just Get 1”

Following the success of last year’s “Member Get a Member” promotion, itSMF is pleased to announce a new membership recruitment drive for 2014 called “Just Get 1”.

According to Bruce Harvey, itSMF Australia’s Executive Officer, membership growth is the key to continually improving the level of services the organisation is able to offer and increasing the influence that ITSM practitioners have in the broader IT and service management communities.

“We are continually getting feedback from our members about the great value they receive from being a part of itSMF,” Harvey said. “Therefore it makes sense for us to leverage that goodwill to try and grow the membership in partnership with our members.

“There are tens of thousands of people who work in the IT service management industry in Australia so we think it is not unreasonable to target 10,000 members for our organisation in the foreseeable future.

“Just about every organisation with a network, more than one system and multiple applications can benefit from a more clinical, service management approach to review and better understand how they use that technology to satisfy the needs of users.

“That is what we encourage and foster. Bringing more service management professionals into the fold strengthens all of us by adding to the knowledge we can access.”

Harvey said that the best way for all members to reap the benefits that will come from organisational growth is to encourage one or more of their colleagues or professional associates to join.

“If every member introduces just one extra person to the Forum and encourages them to join, then we are instantly double in size and strength so we are asking members to give testimony to the value they receive and bring new people into the fold.” he said. “We will be continuing to offer incentives to members who can recruit new people to itSMF so stay tuned for details of our ‘Just Get 1’ campaign.”

Continued on Page 4 3

book review

By Karen Ferris itSMF Australia Board Member, Director of Publications

Title: IT That Matters

An Executive’s Guide to Maximising the Strategic Value From Your IT Investment Karen’s Comment: I love this executive guide. In just over 50 pages, Dennis manages to remarkably sum up the eight imperatives that must be executed to enable the organisation to maximise the strategic value of its IT investment. Dennis describes these eight activities as: 1. Fix the foundation 2. Build the governance structure and leadership team 3. Define the vision and strategy 4. Assemble and prepare the team 5. Begin and prosecute the work 6. Communicate, communicate, communicate 7. Monitor and manage the progress 8. Rinse and repeat Author: Dennis G. Ravenelle Audience: This book is aimed at the business executive.\ Coverage: This executive guide distils and serves up the eight imperatives that executives must imprint into their organisations’ cultures and execute to make the ascent from the bottom of the maturity scale - initial, ad hoc, chaotic to the pinnacle of maturity - integrated and optimised.

Level: Introductory.

Throughout this pocket book, Dennis incorporates real-world examples to illustrate the need to undertake the activities described. He cites supporting evidence from industry research and analysis and materials from industry experts such Kotter, Drucker, Carr, Westerman and Hunter, Weill and Ross, to name but a few.

Dennis’s writing style with well-placed quotations and references, make this an easy and enjoyable read. Dennis effectively uses the metaphor of a ‘road-trip’ to describe the steps on the journey to becoming a highly functioning organisation. We need to know where we are starting from, what the destination looks like, the condition and capacity of the vehicle, how much time we have to get there, how much money is available and what our route will be.

I was also pleased to see, as I was with Sharon Taylor’s executive guide that I reviewed in the last bulletin, a focus on organisational change within the guidance. I think that one of the quotes Dennis includes in the guide sums it up well.

‘Making IT work demands the same things that the other parts of the business do – inspired leadership, superb execution, motivated people and the thoughtful attention and high expectations of senior management’. Getting IT Right (2004) Charlie Feld and Donna Stoddard.

Bookstore Link: http://www.itsmf.org.au/bookstore

In addition to the materials cited within the pocket book, Dennis provides a list of additional publications that the reader may be interested in to help them reach the pinnacle of maturity that is occupied by only the top few percent.

★★★★★

I recommend this book not only to executives, but anyone wanting to ensure nobody questions that IT matters in their organisation.

Rating:

Axelos Briefing From Page 3 “We are, however, also looking at the broader principles of service management and the philosophy of delivering value through delivering services under an ideology of continual improvement.

It clearly makes sense to make service management relevant right across the business.

“All of the elements are there for ITIL to be the foundation of a business service management framework in addition to its current value to IT service management.”

Hepworth informed the audience during his presentation that Australia represents a very mature market for the suite of products now under Axelos’ management.

Despite our geographic isolation, he sees Australian expertise playing a huge role in future development because of our proximity to Asia which represents enormous growth opportunity for the frameworks.

“Australia will continue to play an important part in the future of our global best practice suite,” Hepworth said. “I am not sure how well it is known but ITIL penetration in the Australian market is the highest in the world on a per capita basis and looking across our broader portfolio there is also significant penetration in PPM and PRINCE2 as well.

“Our maturity model, P3M3, also shows the highest penetration and use in the world in your market here. So we are really looking to build on that and we are also very interested to discuss potential ways where we can leverage that

experience and maturity to reach new audiences in Asia. It is early days in our thinking but high on our priorities.”

Hepworth emphasised that there is an important message of “continuity” that needs to be communicated for ITIL and its other best practice frameworks. There are no plans for radical change in the short term and any changes will be undertaken in consultation with all stakeholders and will be communicated well in advance.

“In the short-term, there is no change,” he said. “So if you are in an accredited training organisation or if you are training a team or if you are a candidate starting on your journey of qualifications, there is no change.

“We have published our roadmap and we are really encouraging

people to look at that and comment on it as we continue to refine and improve it because, at the end of the day, it is all about us making sure that ITIL continues to remain relevant.

“We are targeting an evolutionary approach and there are some elements on the roadmap for career-pathing and developing complementary frameworks, and white papers with a particular focus on the value proposition and staying relevant that way.

“In the longer term, I don’t think I have the answer yet so that is where we have to collaborate with the users and continue to embrace that feedback from the user community. In the end, it is them who will inform and shape any changes that we do make.”

- Gerard Norsa

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From Page 1 again be on the agenda. In addition, there will be a range of “How-To” workshops, an Executive Leadership Brunch, a combined Industry Awards and Gala Dinner and a social networking program to ignite creative oppor tunities that connect the service management community all over the world.

A strong response to the Call for Speakers will see only the best selected presenters sorted into the following streams: 1. Introduction to Service Management 2. Service Desk 3. Maturing Service Management 4. Mobility / BYOD 5. Cloud / ISACA Full details about the program and other developments in regards to the event will be made available via the conference website (www.itsmf.org.au/ leadit/2014) as soon as they are finalised.

Registration will open on 1 April, 2014 with tickets to be listed in three categories; Member, NonMember and Group (three or more). There will be the option to attend all three days of the conference and exhibition as well as single day registrations and to add in a 4th day which includes our pre-conference workshops.

Registered delegates will also be offered the opportunity to purchase additional social tickets to the Gala Dinner / itSMF Awards Night as well as the social event on the first night and the post-conference Yarra Valley wine tour.

For more information about registration options please contact our Sheryl Kingsley at the National Office on

(03) 9879 5466 or via email at sheryl.kingsley@itsmf.org.au.

2014 itSMF Australia Industry Awards: Call for Entries Issued An official Call for Submissions has been issued for the highly prestigious, 8th Annual itSMF Australia IT Service Management Industry Awards seeking nominations in five categories to find the 2014 winners.

Expressions of Interest are now being accepted. To nominate for the awards, you must complete an Expression of Interest Form and send it to the itSMFA National Office before March 14. itSMF Australia’s annual itSMF ...” with the following: “itSMF Australia’s industry awards are presented each year as a key component of the Gala Dinner which takes place on the second night of the LEADit conference (14 August, 2014).

Our annual itSMF Industry Awards have grown in popularity every year since being introduced in 2007.

They are designed to recognise and honour those organisations who have achieved extraordinary success from innovative and effective IT best practices, having regard to the particular circumstances of different industries, budgets and the diversity of IT implementation programs.

The Awards have evolved over the years in response to new developments in IT Service Management as well as Australian and International Standards to reflect the growing appreciation of the critical role IT Service Management plays as a vital source of value creation for the business.

Nominations for the itSMF Awards are accepted from any Australian organisation and are

not restricted to itSMF members only. The award criteria and judging for each category are clearly defined, with nominations assessed by an impartial panel of judges drawn from experienced itSMF members.

• Certificates of Recognition for up to 20 key team members;

There are five categories in the itSMF Industry Awards which are as follows:

• Permission to use the award winner logo signature in all communications;

1. ITSM Project of the Year 2014 2. ITSM Innovation of the Year 2014 3. Service Desk Team Project of the Year 2014 4. Service Management Champion of the Year 2014 5. Whitepaper of the Year 2014 Nominations in categories 1, 2 and 3 must be accompanied by a three minute video outlining the project and why it should win a particular category. Finalist videos will be shown at the itSMF Gala Dinner Awards Ceremony and therefore should be suitable for this purpose.

Awards Presentation Ceremony Winners will be presented with their Awards on Thursday, 14 August, 2014 as part of the LEADit 2014 itSMF National Conference Gala Dinner held at the Pullman Hotel in Melbourne.

Nominees will be advised of being a finalist by 27 June 2014, and all finalists will be invited along with a guest to attend the dinner.

Recognition The winners of itSMF Industry Awards will receive: • Inscribed trophy award presented on-stage at the 2014 Industry Awards Gala Dinner; • Two complimentary tickets to the 2014 Industry Awards Gala Dinner for each finalist;

• Permission to display the award logo on all official company stationery and publications;

• Vendor Partners making a significant contribution to the winning project will be recognised by a special itSMF winning partner signature logo; and • Permanent recognition in all itSMF publications, press releases and social media that list award winners.

Awards dates to remember: Friday, 14th March 2014 Completed Expressions of Interest Forms received in itSMF National Office Friday, 11th April 2014 Final Written Submissions received by itSMF Friday, 16th May 2014 Final Videos received by itSMF Friday, 30th May 2014 – Final White Paper of the Year submissions received by itSMF Friday, 27th June 2014 Finalists Announced For more information about the 2014 itSMF Industry Awards, see the itSMF website (www.itsmf. org.au/awards/) where you can also find tips which will help to give your nomination the best chance of capturing the judges’ attention. Contact Sheryl Kingsley at the National Office on (03) 9879 5466 or via email (sheryl. kingsley@itsmf.org.au) if you have any further enquiries.

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itSMF Australia Releases a Values Statement

One of the new initiatives finalised at the end of 2013 by the Executive Management team in consultation with the Board, was the development of a new “Values Statement” for itSMF Australia.

It covers professional ethics as well as the way in which members are expected to share knowledge and interact with each other and serves to underscores the organisational culture that is being fostered.

The Values statement reads as follows: As Members of the Service Management Community, the values that we seek to live by at itSMF Australia in the provision of Service Management to our clients and customers and in our dealings with our fellow members, staff and stakeholders of our association are: 1. Excellence:

As part of a membership categories restructure, itSMF Australia has put into words the unique value propositions that are offered to individuals, corporate members, sponsors, schools and seniors.

itSMF Australia Defines its Unique Value Proposition According to itSMF Australia’s Executive Officer, Bruce Harvey, the exercise of writing and publishing the Forum’s unique value propositions was important for the organisation.

“We believe that the value individuals and organisations receive from being a part of this global ITSM community is easily demonstrable,” Harvey said. “Going to the effort of describing the value we offer to members helped us gain a better understanding of why we exist and what we are striving to achieve.

“As part of the process, we sought and received feedback from many of our members about what they wanted from us and where we can enhance the value we introduce to their world.

“What we have finally settled on as the value propositions we introduce will help us to make sure that we continue to improve our performance as an independent industry association representing five key membership types.”

We will always strive to achieve excellence through the application of Best Practice and Continual Service Improvement.

Following are the published Unique Value Propositions for each of the five main membership categories:

2.Mutual Trust and Respect:

Individual – Accelerate your Career.

We will exhibit trust and respect in order that our community may have confidence in our motives and our ability to deliver against our promises. We will strive to respect and preserve the dignity of ourselves, our members and all those whom we serve.

Continued on Page 21

Membership of ITSMF Australia will expose you to an international diverse and dynamic collegiate community of Service Management Professionals which provides unparalleled access to a wide range of opportunities to fast track your career.

From Networking and events, to searchable knowledge repositories to regular updates on

new trends in Service Management, you will be able to tap into the collective experience of your fellow practitioners, receive guidance in any relevant subject matter from experts in the field and will be able to obtain accreditation as a Certified Service Management Professional (CSMP) together with access to a wide and extensive range of Service Management related resources and tools.

Your investment in becoming a member of ITSMF Australia will return an impressive ROI and will prove an invaluable tool in advancing your Service Management Career.

Corporate – Advance your Business value.

Corporate membership of ITSMF Australia will provide you and your company with a competitive edge in empowering your Service Management Team through exposure to an international diverse and dynamic collegiate community of Service Management Professionals.

Through attendance at the many highly professional networking opportunities and events your Service Managers will benefit from the informed intelligence imparted to them and benefit both personally and professionally from the experience and involvement. They will also be able to achieve accreditations as a Certified Service Management Professional (CSMP) through their attendance at these events.

Membership of ITSMF Australia is a highly affordable investment with an impressive Continued on Page 7 6

From Page 6 ROI given the invaluable access and availability provided to Networking and events, searchable knowledge repositories, regular updates on new trends in Service Management and the ability to tap into the collective experience of subject manager expert practitioners to receive guidance in area of Service Management..

Partner – Access Your Customers.

Entering a Strategic Partnership with ITSMF Australia could be a very smart move for your organisation to tap into the growing Service Management market place in Australia.

An ITSMF partner obtains a wide variety of options to achieve exposure to an international, diverse and dynamic collegiate community of Service Management Professionals. From Conferences to Seminars and Webinars and a wide range of other related opportunities to bring your company and its products and services to our membership provides unparalleled access options to enable you to efficiently and effectively consolidate existing relationships, develop new relationships and create new business opportunities in the Service management Marketplace.

Through these opportunities, ITSMF Australia helps our partners market and sell more services and solutions more effectively into their target markets.

We already partner with some of Australia’s leading technology, communications and professional services firms to assist them generate new business, strengthen customer loyalty, and increase brand differentiation and can offer your organisation a range of investment opportunities available tailored to meet your specific needs all of which represent great value and provide unique opportunities for our partners to meet their ROI hurdles and build their bottom line.

Schools – Assure your future.

Membership of ITSMF Australia might be just what you need to support your School leadership

in achieving Worlds Best Practice in Service Management of your Information Technology Systems.

You will regular updates on new trends in World’s Best Practice in Service Management, and be able to tap into the collective experience of our highly experienced Service Management practitioners and receive guidance on request in any relevant subject matter from experts in the field together with access to a wide and extensive range of Service Management related resources and tools.

Your investment in becoming a member of ITSMF Australia will provide you with the peace of mind that only knowing that you have ready access to the collective experience of subject manager expert practitioners and the ability to receive guidance in area of Service Management can bring.

Seniors – Assist your Community.

An ongoing membership of ITSMF Australia is the ideal opportunity for you to remain connected to the Service Management profession and to transfer some of your considerable knowledge and experience base to emerging Service Management Professionals.

Remaining connected and being able to enjoy your involvement as a retired member is an ideal way for you to give back to the International diverse and dynamic collegiate community of Service Management Professionals that is ITSMF Australia.

Through a wide range of opportunities including attendance at events at reduced pricing, involvement in volunteer programs such as event management, mentoring, Professional Accreditation oversight and Advocacy your involvement would provide a benefit to those whom you would be assisting and provide you with the ongoing involvement with ITSMF Australia as a proud and passionate member.

Your investment of your time and the transfer of your considerable knowledge and experience as a retired Service Management Professional and member of ITSMF Australia would prove highly beneficial to you and your fellow members.

Why Join itSMF? Belong to an International Collegiate Community  Develop your knowledge and skills through networking with discounted attendance to conferences and free attendance to seminars and webinars  Complimentary access to an online network of 40,000 global members and over 1500 Australian SM Professionals  Remain current with issues and developments impacting the profession through FREE special interest groups Competitive Edge  FREE access to ITIL Online*  Free leadership and public speaker training through Committee participation  Aligning application of Best Practice Principles through adoption of membership standards  Permission to use itSMF member logo on your relevant collateral Career Accreditation  Professional recognition and accreditation through training courses  Opportunities to sponsor webinars, seminars, workshops and exhibit at conferences/trade shows Access and Discounts  Free and exclusive access to member only information and database of case studies, white papers and industry news  10 per cent off all purchases on resource publications  Discounts on Qantas Club memberships and renewals

Membership Types Individual Suitable for all individuals not covered by a C-Suite (Corporate) membership including independent consultants and full time IT and SM students C-Suite (Corporate) For organisations looking to professionally develop their staff skills and maintain best work practices Schools To support principals and IT staff within primary, secondary and tertiary institutions achieve world’s Best Practice Partners Providers of products and services to organisations adopting Service Management processes in their business Seniors Retired or Semi-retired professionals who wish to give back to the Forum in a voluntary capacity by promoting itSMF membership or mentoring other Service Management Professionals Call the National Office today for more information about the benefits and how to become an itSMF Australia member – (03) 9879 5466. Or visit our website: www.itsmf.org.au.

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and will then go on to represent Australia in the International WPOTY award.

Anybody interested in submitting a white paper should read the following statement about criteria and process. Submissions for the 2014 Whitepaper of the Year will need to be received no later than COB, Friday, 30 May, 2014. For more information contact: whitepapers@itsmf.org.au

WHITE PAPER CRITERIA INTRODUCTION

2013

International Whitepaper

itSMF Australia invites submission of White Papers that will be published on its website and made available to the membership.

WHAT IS A WHITE PAPER? A White Paper must address issues of problems or concerns of the readership and therefore be relevant to the intended audience.

White Papers for publication on the itSMFA website must concentrate on the interests of the readership and not focus on a specific product, service or solution. It must contain informative and persuasive information.

White Papers should be around 12 pages or less (3000 and 4000 words). They can contain images, charts and illustrations to reinforce the content.

Competition Results Announced itSMF International recently announced the results of the 2013 International Whitepaper Competition it held with Australia’s representative, Sandra Hinchcliffe’s paper; “Embrace Your Auditor” just missing out on a Top Three finish with a close fourth place.

Nine papers were submitted to the international competition, representing six countries (Australia, Belgium, Korea, Russia, UK and USA). The papers were rated by an international panel of judges against the following criteria: • Readability • Relevance • Technical accuracy • Currency • Depth The top three entries in the competition are: 1st Place – Patricia Speltincx – itSMF Belgium and itSMF UK – “The Seven Building Blocks for IT Service Management Success”; 2nd Place – Tom Segers – itSMF Belgium – “ITIL Pro and Contra: 10 Things That Would Make us Love ITIL Even More”;

The content must be original and any use of other sources of information (including text and images) must be acknowledged.

Layout should support readability so break the content into readable / digestible chunks.

Use headings, sub-headings and bullets to assist in maintaining the reader’s attention.

Include sidebars and callouts to summarise the content of sections of the paper.

EVALUATION CRITERIA All White Papers will be evaluated by the White Paper Review Board (WPRB). The WPRB will be comprised of a number of people from the itSMFA Council of Members.

All submissions will be evaluated against six criteria which are:

3rd Place – Walliam (Won-Gyeong) Jin and K.T. Hwang, PhD – itSMF Korea ”Impact of Cloud Computing on ITSM Process and System”.

• Readability

Congratulations to Patricia and the two place getters as well as all of the other finalists from the national competitions around the world. itSMF International advises that winning entries will be published on the itSMFI website (www. itsmfi.org) in May while details about the revised format for the 2014 competition will be announced in March.

• Depth

Meanwhile, itSMF Australia Director of Publications, Karen Ferris advises that the Australian chapter will again be running a search for Australia’s best ITSM-related whitepaper in 2014. The winner will be awarded the WPOTY award at the prestigious itSMF Australia Industry Excellence Awards to be presented at the LEADit 2014 Gala Dinner

• Relevance to the itSMFA membership • Technical accuracy • Currency of material and interest • Absence of obvious marketing of product, person or provider SUBMISSION PROCESS White Papers should be submitted to whitepapers@itsmf.org.au. Submissions will be sent to the itSMFA Director for Publications who will distribute to the WPRB with an evaluation template.

The evaluations will be collated and the results determined. The author(s) of the White Paper will be informed of the decision. If the White Paper has been successfully evaluated it will be forwarded to the itSMFA Office for publication on the website.

8

Is Better ITSM Emerging from the Clouded Waters ?

The tide of Cloud Computing services that now laps at the shores of just about every IT organisation in some form or manner creates many challenges for ITSM practitioners. However, Cloud Computing also offers great opportunity to improve service delivery by reducing the management burden on hardware, applications and service delivery.

Good ITSM practices are all about retaining control of infrastructure and applications as well as driving continual improvement based on good IT governance. How can Cloud Computing solutions support this assertion?

Generally, vendors of ITSM solutions and their customers alike are embracing the concept of externally hosted applications and infrastructure as a means to better management of service delivery.

What was hailed as the great new thing just three or four years ago has peaked on its hype cycle and is now understood to be a genuine alternative for consideration in how IT organisations manage their environments.

Change is a Constant So what has changed? What is new in regards to the relationship between ITSM and cloud computing. According to Matt Coulter, Product Specialist, Process, at Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS), the most exciting thing about the relationship between IT service

management and cloud computing is in “the dynamic nature of the service delivery model”.

“There is unprecedented elasticity, automation and self service capabilities in the cloud model,” Coulter said. “This allows for more responsiveness to the changing needs of the customer.

“This extended capability ensures that the customer has the required IT performance when it is demanded and within an appropriate time frame without having to manage everything that is required at peak demand all of the time.”

Stephen Miles, Practice Manager at ITSM consulting firm, ProActive Services thought the most interesting development is increased awareness within the broader IT community about the value of the service-based approach to IT delivery.

“IT departments are finally starting to realise and appreciate the critical importance of service management processes to making services changes,” Miles said. “This is especially evident

in regards to understanding the value of service-based design.

“Without a service-based approach to service transition, many of the operating benefits anticipated are not realised. Having recently worked on a project to pilot a cloud-based email service, the merit of treating the project as a change to an existing ‘service’ was very clear.

“By adopting a service change and service lifecycle approach it became obvious that the vital Service Management and Support Model as well as the Technical Operating impacts and requirements had to be considered from the outset. As a result, tender documents were developed to appropriately capture the service related impacts in terms of service utility and service warranty.

“Therefore, the way I see it, having staff with service impact analysis and service design skills is emerging as a key professional capability required in this new world of cloud-based service sourcing, as is the need for enterprise level IT service architects.”

Peter Doherty, Regional Manager, Solution Consulting, for ServiceNow in Australia and new Zealand said that cloud-based ITSM solutions have done more than just about anything else in the recent past to “free IT of a great many restrictions in how they support their business”.

“These new cloud solutions offer greater flexibility at a lower cost

than the traditional on premise systems that really have not changed in10 years,” Doherty said. “IT is now able to offer its customers the same experience they have when they go home and use Google, Amazon or whoever for various functions.

“Meanwhile, what is becoming increasingly apparent is that ITSM through Cloud is not just about IT anymore. What we are now seeing is that it can be used across an entire organisation to manage any department’s relationship with their customers.

“In addition, the last 18 months has seen vast improvements in how IT operates through Cloud ITSM solutions and has given IT a much more consumer-driven methodology in how it serves its customers. What is even more exciting, is that the things that IT does from a Request Fulfilment perspective is pretty much the same as what a lot of departments do and this enables enterprise Service Relationship Management.”

Not Just Sow and Reap ProActive’s Miles, however, is not 100 per cent convinced that all of the anticipated cost savings and efficiencies have been borne out in the implementation of Cloud Computing solutions. It is not just a case of simple sow and reap.

“Cloud is still a form of outsourcing and, as has always been the case, if you have not considered how you Continued on Page 10 9

From Page 9 will integrate and manage suppliers to provide a seamless service then there will be operational services issues that should and could have been avoided,” Miles said.

“There needs to be a welldesigned Supplier Integration Management (SIM) structure with the appropriate service management and governance to ensure that service incidents, changes, problems, etc are managed end-to-end across all suppliers and any internal IT teams that remain.

“Where ITSM improvement programs are designed with alignment to the Cloud sourcing strategy of any organisation, then that is where the expected operational cost savings, operational efficiencies, and expected improved level of service quality is more likely to be achieved. A service management and service lifecycle governance framework has to be developed in that context.”

Doherty disagrees believing there have been several waves of efficiencies and cost savings.

“Initially, cost savings were derived through lower Total Cost of Ownership where organisations could retire costly infrastructure,” he said. “Then, as the organisations use of cloud technology matured, they were able to start retiring older, disparate applications by consolidating them onto a single system of record.

“A third wave of evolution is now driving further efficiencies and savings as anything that it makes sense to automate is automated.”

What About Security and Control?

Whenever detractors voice their arguments against the concept of cloud computing, inevitably the questions of security and loss of control emerge.

DDLS’s Coulter feels that cloud computing model doesn’t necessarily introduce new security problems but there are some control challenges in regards to the self-service and automation aspect of service delivery.

“Risks associated with cloud computing including data sovereignty, IP security and data transmission were also inherently present in the IT sourcing model,” Coulter said. “Therefore, risk reduction takes the same form in determining what to keep in-house in a private cloud and what to outsource to a Public cloud. No

matter what compute model is used, being mindful who you trust with your services should play a major consideration as to what should be placed where.

and really start to apply more mature service management concepts like service portfolio management, business relationship and demand management.

“As far as control goes, in my experience, cloud computing when not governed nor monitored appropriately can lead to situations where an organisation can experience service sprawl.

An example would be where a service provider allowed for the automation of virtual machine environment to be built as a test platform for application developers.

“Essentially, the IT provider has the ability to be more focused on building the service management capabilities required to act as a true broker of services that realise defined business outcomes. IT departments can finally be appreciated as a core valued partner and enabler of the business because they are no longer distracted and reacting to day to day operational challenges.

“If left unchecked, the service provider could find that they are left supporting assets that are consuming IT resources which are, for all intents and purposes, redundant in purpose and value.”

ServiceNow’s Doherty asserts that there is not a universal answer in regards to security and control because not all cloud systems are the same.

“Just because you take a legacy ITSM system and put it in a data centre does not mean you have a cloud solution,” he said. “Most businesses are concerned that the information they put in the Cloud is safe from intrusion and theft as well as where the data resides.

“Tier 1 vendors address this very well; so much so that many highly risk-averse organisations are now moving to the cloud and the new Federal Government has a Cloud First policy.

“As I see it, the two main security challenges are controlling access to the data and data sovereignty. Tier 1 vendors are addressing these by adhering to very strict international and national standards such as ISO27001 for both the data centres and the organisation itself.”

What About Service Improvement?

In addition to any cost and/ or efficiency benefits, the core motivation to any change made in pursuit of best practice IT service management would be to achieve discernible service improvement.

ProActive’s Miles said that if the transition to cloud based services is done well and the end-state operating and service models are well designed then there are clear benefits available.

“Internal operational overhead can be reduced in regards to commoditised IT services and good service delivery,” Miles said.

“As a result, IT service providers can start to focus more proactively on which services are the right ones for their business/customers

“This is ultimately the vision of best practise frameworks like ITIL; true alignment and integration of IT and business.”

Doherty sees the major benefit of a cloud-based ITSM solution as being able to rapidly get it up and running without the delays of traditional in-house implementations.

“Cloud has made it possible to have an ITSM solution providing value within weeks as opposed to sometimes years with on-premise products,” Doherty said. “Most will have easy-toadopt best practice, which means you can concentrate process work on continual improvement as opposed to initial design.

“Meanwhile, from a customer experience perspective, as long as you have a browser and access to the Internet you can access the solution from a consumer-oriented interface.

That is a tremendous benefit that helps to improve service delivery in all sorts of ways.”

Roles and Responsibilities One of the criticisms that has been levelled at cloud-based ITSM is in relation to who has ultimate responsibility for service levels and governance.

ServiceNow’s Doherty is adamant that in a cloud environment, responsibility for some processes can and have to be passed over to a services provider.

“Virtually all the operational processes for running the solution become the responsibility of the cloud services provider,” he said.

“Operational processes such as security, availability, continuity, service level management – amongst others – all fall squarely into the hands of the provider.

“They go to the core of the value proposition offered by cloud solutions and are part of what you are paying for.

Similarly, the customer has to be

a key stakeholder in the incident, problem and change processes when it comes to anything affecting their system. There is a role for service providers here but mainly as a facilitator rather than a driver.

“In regards to governance, anything to do with the operation of the solution falls into the domain of the service provider. Again, that is one of the enormous benefits of cloud-based solutions. Of course, any defect or change management needs the customer to be involved as a stakeholder which then frees the customer to manage the processes within the solution.”

ProActive’s Miles believes that end-to-end ownership and responsibility of the processes needs to be retained internally as it is unlikely that all services are provided by one single supplier.

“It is my experience that most processes need to be managed across multiple external and internal teams,” he said. “I have yet to see a successful example of an organisation outsourcing the responsibility for service management and service provision to one lead supplier who acts as service integration manager for all other suppliers in the overall operating model.

“Indeed, on several occasions, we have been called in by some of our customers to help to bring the supplier and service integration management aspects back in house due to poor performance and service quality issues from providers.

“In general, the IT service provider utilising external cloud service providers should define and maintain an integrated service lifecycle governance structure that obtains input from the third party service providers as appropriate.

“Clear polices should be set regarding what decisions can be made locally by the third party service providers versus those they must be made by the IT service provider to whom they are providing services. The reporting and validation of services and their delivery are also very important roles to maintain in-house to ensure the metrics are accurate and meet any service agreements.”

When asked to pinpoint how cloud services had evolved in the ITSM environment over the last 12-18 months, DDLS’s Coulter identified the adoption of best practice principles by smaller providers of managed services.

“Previously, cloud computing was seen as the realm of the big Continued on Page 11 10

From Page 10 players only,” Coulter said. “With the release of dedicated IT management tools, a wider scope of service management providers is now able to compete and also provide a competitive difference with localised offerings and flexible solutions.

“Microsoft’s adaptation to the market demand is a good example.

Previously, their System Center cloud solutions suite supported only an internal (private) or Azure (public) offering. Recently they introduced azure services for service providers which has meant that third party vendors can now also be integrated into a hybrid cloud model.”

Doherty said that IT’s customers have been requiring IT to become more agile in fulfilling

their needs for years and finally IT can do something about it.

“IT operations had too much on their plates and had to develop capabilities to manage service delivery,” he concluded. “However, that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Now IT is sharing the ITSM concepts with other departments so as that they can leverage Service Relationship Management with their customers.

“Best practice service management is no longer an IT department secret. HR, facilities, finance and other business process managers are now able to use ITSM concepts, processes and practices to manage the relationships they have with their customers. In some cases, IT is even rightfully getting the credit for pioneering this sort approach.”

Thanks to the following organisations who contributed to this features:

their IT service model to service domains inside and outside the enterprise. www.servicenow.com

ProActive Services ProActive Services is a leading IT management consulting and training organisation specialising in helping IT service providers become more effective, efficient and agile. It delivers a broad range of consulting services and its consultants/ trainers are experienced IT industry practitioners and experts in their fields. www. proactiveservices.com.au

DDLS DDLS is Australia’s leading, trusted training partner offering learning solutions across IT, process management and professional development. It designs, develops and delivers innovative learning solutions from certification through to customised learning programs. DDLS assists the ITSM community by empowering individuals and organisations in service management solutions. www.ddls.com.au

ServiceNow ServiceNow is an enterprise IT cloud company. It transforms IT by automating and managing IT service relationships across the global enterprise. Its extensible platform, allows customers create custom applications and evolve

Article written by Gerard Norsa, Publications Editor, itSMF Australia.

He can be contacted via: gerard.norsa@itsmf.org.au

The Future of IT Service Automation lies in the Cloud The predominant technology used today for IT service management (ITSM) is old-fashioned, complex and difficult to work with. Acquiring and maintaining the technology is both costly and time-consuming. Upgrades can take months, use significant amounts of resources to test and then implement, and often don’t support customisations.

Evaluations, dashboards and reports are inconsistent and hard to prepare. In fact, the ITSM tools a legacy vendor typically sells as “seamless” solutions, often emerge as the results of the various clientserver technologies acquired through the years.

CIOs need IT service automation solutions that are not only intuitive and easy to use, but are built to support the way businesses work, whether that be based on current process guidelines (ITIL, for example), or a unique workflow specific to their business and not just ICT. Modern solutions are also expected to deliver fast results and ensure data sovereignty across the entire network. Furthermore, they require technologies that do not increase, but rather lower costs, by offering automatic upgrades, reducing maintenance costs, and delivering more rapid time to market.

Until a few years ago, there was no reason to believe these requirements could be realised. But then came the cloud. It breathed new life into the ITSM market and sets the scene for exciting developments going forward.

The future doesn’t lie in cobbled-together suites with a patchwork of legacy tools, but rather in a cloud-based platform born through organic development, based on consistent data models, workflows and processes, and consumed with nothing but an Internet connection and a browser.

Modern enterprise IT cloud services also have the distinct advantage of delivering service automation, allowing IT departments to move away from high-touch, high-cost solutions to efficient and effective problem resolution and self-service environments. Intuitive service automation does not only benefits the IT department but can be applied to assist all business departments.

Here are the specific advantages an enterprise cloud approach offers for IT service automation: • Automatic upgrades: IT shivers whenever they hear that their ITSM suite needs an upgrade. And not without reason. Apart from the fact that many upgrades are necessary just to keep the existing system alive, major modifications and integrations can be very complicated, along with being very costly to re-implement. A solution that comes from the cloud is just the opposite. The vendor is responsible for upgrades and these are performed automatically as part of the subscription service, and customisations are kept intact.

• Quick implementation: Companies no longer need to host the software within their own infrastructure - it simply works as expected through the cloud. Never-ending implementations become a thing of the past.

• Ease-of-use: The user interface is geared towards the design and functionality of modern business to consumer websites that the user is already familiar with, like Facebook, Google or Amazon.com for instance.

Users can configure SaaS applications very easily through the browser.

• Inclusive, transparent licensing: Simple and transparent cost models, like flat subscription rates per process user, are easier to understand and consume. The product license shouldn’t get in the way of getting work done.

According to Gartner, roughly 10 per cent of all companies currently use SaaS for ITSM. During the next five years, they expect to see half operate service management from the cloud.

Bill Keyworth, an analyst and IT management expert, sums it up by saying, “Those companies who are interested in lowering their upgrade and support costs and speeding up reaction times to user requests should consider ITSM as SaaS.” The benefits of enterprise IT cloud services present an opportunity for IT to get ahead of the curve while helping businesses be more responsive through true automation.

Article written by Peter Doherty, Regional Manager Solution Consulting ANZ, ServiceNow. He can be contacted via: peter. doherty@servicenow.com.

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The problem statement It is not uncommon for IT to think they have delivered a very successful service transition project only to find that the business does not share the same vision of success.

Having conducted many project reviews in my capacity as an outcome assurance manager where I have sought to discover “root cause analysis” for the success or failure of projects, I have identified two key critical success factors; • The transition project manager must have a Service Management background; and • There must be a clear understanding that a Service Transition project is different to an infrastructure and application implementation project Traditionally, IT has been focused on merely “delivering” an IT asset such as technology infrastructure, application or a data base etc. under an assumption that by some magic these assets will become a business enabler that creates business benefits. In more recent times, the more progressive IT organisations have come to the realisation that it is the “services” around the technology which are actually the true business enablers. It is these services which create changed capabilities which in turn eventually provide the business with an enhanced ability to derive benefits.

This is becoming a much more critical consideration as organisations continue to embrace outsourcing, cloud sourcing, SasS, IasS and AasS delivery models.

As I see it, the issue is that even some of the highest profile organisations invariably source most of their project managers from the technology and application domain with very little experience in the art of service management or service operation. The concept of service packaging is foreign to them and technology or applications are their comfort zones. Therefore, it is no small wonder that they tend to concentrate on tools and technology instead of service capabilities and business outcomes.

Leveraging a Capability Oriented Service Transition Approach to Service Management With an increasing commoditisation of technology, popularisation of Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud sourcing and outsourcing becoming common, there is an increasing need to manage service-focused transition. It is my observation that many traditional technologyand application-focused project managers are struggling to achieve successful transition to these new generation business tools.

While these traditional project managers are good at dealing with tangibles, the issue at heart is that if they use the same approaches to services and capabilities when there is any form of abstract or new concept, it represents a recipe for failure. The designs, deliverables and milestones are different in this new paradigm so it goes to reason that so too the outcomes and competencies to achieve a successful delivery are also different.

Key attributes of the Service transition.

In order for us to appreciate why we need to address service transition differently, we need to understand the key attributes which differentiate service transition projects from infrastructure and application projects. This serves to highlight why we are setting ourselves up for failure if we apply the same competencies, mindset and approach to service transition projects as we have traditionally with infrastructure and application projects.

Attributes

Infrastructure / Application

Service Transition

Focus

Technology Transformation

Deliverables

Tangible and Physical

Scope

System and Infrastructure Service Portfolio

Sign off criteria Tangible relatively simple Key Impact Milestones

IT Internal Technical Services Technology based

Stakeholder Management

Medium to Low – Mainly Technical Stakeholders

Budget

Costing models well defined Relatively well defined

Time frame Knowledge transfer

Well defined and can be gained through documentation

Organisation and Capability Transformation - People and Process Intangible Capability based and can be subjective Customer facing Business Services Capability based High to Medium – Diverse cohort of Stakeholders’ Customers, Business and IT Costing models with many variables Most of the time end event driven People based and need “Observe and Execute” activity with documentation

Capability Oriented Service Transition approach The “Capability Oriented Service Transition” approach is based on the principle that service transition is a transformational process of converting the current capability state to a future (and transformed) capability state including all or part of service portfolio.

Continued on Page 13 12

From Page 12 Hence, the outcomes need to be defined in terms of the “Capabilities” which need to be created. These in turn are direct “business enablers” which create business benefits. The capability elements are defined in terms of Service Catalogue, Service Package and competency bundles while transformation is seen an integrated set of gap closing initiatives.

One of key implications of this can be seen in the effectiveness of decision making and sign off processes. Therefore, in my experience, a decision register and decision authority matrix becomes a crucial tool for the project manager.

The following diagram provides a conceptual model for this approach.

The key aspect to note is that this approach is a life cycle approach.

There is an incorrect perception that “Transition” starts after all the other phases of a project have been completed and the new service is ready to go into operation.

In reality, a successful and effective transition requires a “Service Transition” stream to be operating right through the project from the conception to the post implementation phases of the project. An inability to appreciate this aspect leads to the appointment of a Service Transition project manager and setting up the transition stream of the project too late in the life cycle which therefore makes it hard to realise the desired business outcomes.

Critical Success Factors (CSF) Following are some key CSFs which need to be considered at every stage of a service transition management project.

• Optimised: Is it “fit for purpose”? Avoid the “Starship Enterprise” syndrome and avoid the temptation to over engineer • Delivers Value: Does it allow the business to meet its objectives in the desired timeframe?

• Manages Operational Risks: Does it create any detrimental impact on existing services or business capabilities?

• Sustainable: Is it supportable, maintainable, reliable and scalable?

Multiple dimensions Any Service Transition project needs to take into consideration multiple and diverse dimensions. Each of these dimensions has substantial cross impact and hence it is important to take a top-down view across all of the different dimensions to ensure they are appropriately and adequately addressed.

An over emphasis on some dimensions and under emphasis on others, creates the risk of capabilities being incomplete which can therefore have an impact on the end customer satisfaction and benefit. It is also important to note that during the Service Transition project timeframe some of these dimensions are more likely to change so constant monitoring of these changes and effective control of these change is crucial to the success of the project.

• Affordable: Does it meets total cost of ownership goals and strategies?

• Strategically Aligned: Does it align to the sourcing guideline, the business and enterprise strategy, the architecture, the policies and the principles?

Success or Failure?

Aspects which can make a difference between whether a service transition project is a success or a failure include: • Agreement on the acceptance criteria as part of design and build phases; • Having a clear definition of business and operational service requirements. Also revalidate the requirements at every stage of the design to ensure there is alignment with desired outcomes; • Most organisations have an established “service management ecosystem” which delivers and supports IT services to the business. A Service Transition project manager should; • Investigate existing organisational capabilities and competencies before creating any new or revised capabilities. Reuse the existing capabilities and service elements as far as possible and build new or changed services using already tested “Service Objects”. This will reduce the risk of the unknown and avoid reinventing the whole solution; • Understand how and where the extended capabilities created by a Service Transition Project will fit within existing the service management eco-system;

Diverse stakeholder groups In comparison to infrastructure and application projects, service transition projects are likely to have quite a diverse group of stakeholders all of whom need to be managed appropriately. The following diagram illustrates the diversity of these groups and therefore why it is critical to have an effective stakeholder management plan.

• Integrate with the existing service management eco-system to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of the design; • A service transition project manager should have a reasonable understanding of Service Management concepts. On larger and complex projects this should be managed by establishing a team to include BA and Solution architects who are service management Continued on Page 14 13

From Page 13 literate. However, on a smaller project, many times the project manager ends up supporting these roles and therefore may need to become an active coach and mentor to compensate for skill deficiencies; • Resource the project with people who have higher capability than required so that you can better manage unpredictable situations.

• When defining the target state for any changes within the organisation, create a functional model first and avoid getting i to organisation structures too early in design. Structure and responsibility should be “role based” and not “organisation title based”; • In the build process you might have to build temporary transition capabilities like – “War room”, “In transition governance”, “What if models for decision options” etc.; • Service Package mostly will consist of intangible elements but they still need testing. Do not avoid this by putting it into the “too hard” basket; • Capture experience gained during testing and transfer it to the operational domain. This will enhance the customer experience as well as operational efficiency and benefits realisation.

Potential Risk factors to consider Naturally, there are some risk factors that need to be managed.

These include: • A perceived small change to existing service has potential to create a much wider service disruption across a much larger service portfolio • Underestimating the “People” aspects of the project. People behave differently under stress so teaming is critical • Underestimating the testing effort required or applying insufficient “Use case” scenarios to successfully complete appropriate testing.

Don’t make too many assumptions with very little validation • Lack of clarity on • “Target state ownership” - Low maturity of the receiving entity • “Service owner” role and responsibility • Decision making process decision rights - Too many and overlapping signoff points • Acceptance criteria • Lack of or insufficient overall coordination, governance and clarity on interdependencies in complex multi-stream transition specially involving internal and external parties with contractual obligations • Unavailability of right resources from “Operation” domain – internal and external - Inability to get specific and definite answers from Operations domain

Core • Project Management • Service Management • Organisation Transformation Management • Process Management Supplementary • Risk Management • Vendor Management • Contract Management • Financial Management • Business Stakeholder Management • Requirements Management • Service Architecture Key benefits of this approach • The success or failure of the transition can be measured by well definable outcomes in the business context • The business can relate to this approach much better and hence is easier to gain their support and participation • A stepped approach can be applied to create intermediate capability states resulting early realisation of benefit • Estimation of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is much more predictable and defendable.

Results Applying this approach will result in • Higher probability of success • Better alignment to business outcome • Clear link to organisation strategic objectives.

Conclusion In summary, a sustained application of this capability oriented transition approach will help create an outcome focused organisational culture.

However, this paradigm shift is difficult when the IT decision makers can only see IT as custodian of business application and enterprise technology. Taking this approach to service transition is critical in changing this culture to a service and outcome assurance mindset. It is high time Service management professionals took a leadership role in this evolution.

Article written by Dinsha Palkhiwala, an independent ITSM specialist and founder of Competency Catalyst.

He can be contacted via: Dinsha_p@hotmail.com

Key competencies for service transition project manager.

A Service Transition project manager must have full life cycle involvement through the Concept, Design, Build, Implement and Operate phases of the life cycle. This life cycle involvement makes it necessary for the Service Transition project manager to typically have a much broader competency set.

Following is a list of some of the core and supplementary competencies. The level of each of the competency will be very much dependent on the complexity and nature of the Service Transition project. As an example an outsourcing service transition project might require higher level of Organisation Transformation Management and Vendor management competencies compared to an internal service transition project.

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Instant Metrics for the C Suite: Ready, Real, Right Now. HERE. Delivering the right metrics, at the right time, to the right stakeholders can be tricky. The mobile revolution has heightened C-suite expectations, requiring IT professionals to find new ways to provide instant access to performance metrics.

Though a seemingly monumental task, it can be easier than you think, taken with a slight shift in perspective.

We know the data is in there. As they say, the devil is in the detail. Read on to learn how a service desk in the private sector managed to harness and present instant, relevant performance metrics from local and remote teams across disparate networks, turning around data in a multitude of different perspectives to deliver the right message to the right stakeholder. The examples that follow are all real, though several organisations in this study have been merged as one. Think of it as protection for the innocent…

Included are easy ways to help your organisational data speak for itself, keeping it simple yet delivering on its potential. Creative tips to encourage thinking beyond the nitty-gritty of IT and transform data into a powerful tool in the hands of the executive will be examined, as well as ways to deliver instant metrics, driving informed decision-making principles.

Data is Abundant Data is everywhere and nowhere, to paraphrase from the words of Michio Kaku, world-renowned physicist and futurist. In our roles as IT professionals, data is abundant.

We collect it, we crunch it, we sell it, we buy it and we rarely divest ourselves of it with a tendency to keep it forever. There is hardly a place to look where we don’t see data or opportunities to collect and refine data. We have so much data and handle it so frequently that the management of data has become routine and perfunctory. We inherently process it without even thinking about it. As Kaku said, data is everywhere and nowhere.

Many IT professionals, and in this context, those specifically in service management

roles, collect and warehouse volumes of data to measure every component of the work we do. We classify, categorise, and prioritise.

We chart, publish, and share the results. Then we file the summaries away. If we practice continuous improvement, these summaries get additional life. We may enter a dialogue with our peers, our teams, and perhaps our executive leadership. We might consider an action plan and, if it’s a really good day, that action plan might actually see some action.

And then we are destined to repeat the process with the new cycle of numbers, often times before meaningful change is realised.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We have entered a mobile revolution where data doesn’t need to wait for analysis to drive action. Data delivery is now available instantly and abundantly, to a device of your own choosing, in real time, to drive continuous improvement in a real time cycle. We have the opportunity to place data in the hands of our executives, to offer opportune counsel by means of well-timed and well-placed facts, compartmentalised in tidy little segments to tell the story of our business.

This is a game changer for our executives.

Never before have we been in a position to take service management data and share it in a way that leverages our knowledge to directly influence and build our competitive advantage in the marketplace. The beauty of this lies in its simplicity. We aren’t untangling spaghetti; we are simply taking a fresh look at what we already have and shifting the focus to paint new pictures for a broader audience with enormous yields.

Mobility Mobility is a popular term in today’s IT environment. Information is the underlying

driver on which mobility is predicated.

Mobile devices wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for us seeking new conduits for sharing our data and connecting with others. In service management, it is our role to bring the two together and blend them in such a way as to make our business transparent and accessible.

There is an art to processing information, developing and refining relationships, and the resulting display and animation of our efforts to lead us into tomorrow. What do we need to understand to deliver this result? We need to embrace mobility, information, and the bonds forged as the relationships between these, us and those we serve, develop. Once we see how divergent information can relate within a broader context, how it can form relationships to yield new stories for our business, then we have the message to deliver to a mobile platform, to give it power beyond measure.

Information Knowledge is portable. It is mobile by definition. And not to be underestimated, knowledge is an enormous capital asset. So how do we take what we have and mould it into something new? Peter Drucker in The Essential Drucker (Drucker, 2001), outlines four basic components of the successful executive’s toolkit. These are: • Foundation Information: Foundation information is the building block basics of a business. These would include trends within the business and an overall timeline of work; major deliverables, release schedules, successes, profits, industry ratings.

Continued on Page 16 15

From Page 15 • Productivity Information: Productivity is measured by benchmarking, call resolution metrics, duration metrics, ratios of open to resolved issues, and output by organisational unit. We would also measure specific customer volumes as productivity information, to measure product and service effectiveness company-wide.

• Competence Information: Competence deals with understanding what it is that we do. What is working well?

What isn’t working well? For measurement, we would look at Change Management for one perspective of competence indicators.

How many Changes are related directly to Incident and Problem resolutions? What are the top reasons customers contact our sales, service, and support organisations?

Something to think about too, what are those elements our customers are not talking to us about? These disclosures are indicative of positive competence in the marketplace. So critically important as a honest measure (as a confluence of non-verbal communication), this is the negative space not reported thereby not traditionally measured. This is a place we need to look, to really see in our data stores, to stand out from the competition.

• Resource Availability: Resource availability is about understanding your human capacity in relation to your business contacts and needs. How much volume is handled by each of your business teams by hour, day, week, and month? Where are the peaks of activity? What are the internal and external drivers behind periods of peak activity? Are there opportunities for blending business functionality stemming from trends identified by volume metrics?

Each of these tools drive us to the inevitable; we must learn to harness information as the key resource that it is. It is our job to use the tools available to better represent our data in the hands of the executive.

Relationships To be true to ourselves, we must acknowledge that business is about relationships. Information is the key to productive, effective relationships.

Our organisational success depends on it. If we have bad information as the source data driving our decisions, we are very likely to fall into a state of dysfunction. We need to strive for the quick delivery of good data. But even this isn’t really good enough anymore. We need to take service delivery to a new transformational high, to deliver in time, just in time, real time great collections of thought, micro compendiums of our business story, from the focus of the reader.

We want to use the power of information to fuel our chief executives. We want to strengthen our relationships across the board.

So how do we do it?

C-Level Executives First things first, all c-level executives are not created equal. They have unique backgrounds, personalities and business needs. They each have their own level of comfort with all things technical. Some executives might be bleedingedge technical consumers while others might work best with paper and pencil, eschewing

the smartphone and other current technology as intrusive and unnecessary. It is up to us to decipher their needs and deliver data in a mobile format that works best for them.

To make this easy, we’ll profile six chief executives here, with six distinctive needs, sharing how to collect and display data in the method most meaningful and impactful to their personal style. Maybe you know them.

You most certainly know the type.

Chief Executive Officer Affectionately known around the office as the gung-ho MBA, this is the person that drives the bus, shares the profits, and keeps us gainfully employed through their talents in the marketplace. They absolutely love the work and it loves them. They are an expert on everything, always ‘on’ and speak in trendy industry buzz words. They like to draw conclusions from data to push their MBA to its limits. And though they have been known to get in the weeds occasionally, their time is generally too valuable to get bogged down with nuts and bolts details of the day to day. Their data needs are specific, preferring data that can be displayed in pictures that illustrate success and summary data in a visual context that shows positive, upward trajectories. So what can we give them to spark their passions, fuel their momentum, and conserve their energies for running the company? Fast, responsive, real time data that doesn’t require a manual to understand.

To this end, and for all of our executives, we mash up data collected across the business, showcasing different components of service, support, client services, operations, and sales.

Using native dashboards delivered to the mobile platform of his choosing, our CEO views: • The Business metrics as an overall snapshot, headlines first as time is of the essence.

• Customer Service trends, looking at satisfaction levels and aging, unresolved issues across business units.

• Sales revenues, projections, and timelines in concert with company activity tied to specific high profile customers.

• Change components. How many changes are our customers driving to production? What is the volume of changes in a given timeframe?

Where are the impacts felt by these changes and how does that impact the overall business? Uptime impacts driven by changes are key indicators for continuous service improvement opportunities.

• Incident and Problem metrics at the thirty thousand foot level, volume of open to resolved issues, customers and units impacted, and revenue risks.

• Financials, tracking money, profit, cost and trend movement, how the business is performing right now with up to date information.

Chief Information Officer The CIO is a caffeine junkie and like the CEO, embodies many qualities that make an organisation great and keep IT humming. This is a person always in motion and likes their data like they likes their coffee, straight up with no added fillers and fancy processing. This is one who likes a steady drip of pure facts, statistics,

and measured changes. So how do we deliver?

No charts, no colours, no decorative effects, just pure text data in a fast hit that tells an immediate story, without needing interpretation.

Our CIO’s data points include: • Incident volumes, by criticality. The CIO is less concerned with the KPI’s around the management of Incidents than they are with the volume of Incidents requiring the most resources from IT. Increased resource needs of IT for service management impacts service delivery to other business units. The higher the demand of critical, reactive IT, the more the CIO will be answering to the CEO on resource deficits in other areas. This is the necessity of real time knowledge of incident volume by criticality. Problem volumes, measured

by Production Down events, outages, and defects discovered. These have an immediate impact on the company bottom line and require vigilant attention to draw them down in frequency or time by undertaking root cause analysis exercises for continuous improvement.

• Changes, by forward schedule, customer impact, and relationship to Incident/ Problem resolution. The introduction of Changes sometimes yield negative collateral. It is very important to review Changes in the context of the broader organisational impact. The high level of organisational knowledge of the CIO adds value to the oversight of Changes initiated by other managers who may not have all the detail needed to fully understand potential impacts in other business units.

• Overall volume by time period; today, yesterday, week, month, quarter, year.

Sometimes the CIO just needs to see how truly busy we really are.

Chief Technology Officer A typical CTO is the slow and steady thread in our framework. Consider them the Groundhog Day guy, leading by routine, preferring the same patterns of systems over and over and over. We need our infrastructure to behave predictably and we need our CTO to ensure that same tried and true stability day after day. Your CTO can seem changeaverse. While this might not be literally true, he or she does need to be certain of change procedures and will demand diligence to following process, to ensure predictive effects and outcomes. In terms of data representations, the CTO is a visual receiver over more cerebral interpretation. Using standard, easily-recognisable charts and visuals, the CTO reviews: • Incident and Problem data by department and client, with root cause trends identified.

• Change schedules, with specific insight to rollbacks and those completed as scheduled.

• Customer activity showcased by volume of incoming requests and schedules of promised Production and service delivery dates.

• CMDB reporting on system health and hardware lifecycle.

Continued on Page 17 16

From Page 16 Chief Financial Officer It is with great affection that we call our finance officer the Micromanager in our coterie of executives. We need this individual to be detail oriented and exquisitely analytical. The CFO is the financial quality control officer, reviewing the finest points in every transaction. In the mindscape of a CFO, everything has an order and a place; it would be unwise to deviate from prescription. Their own reports are often laborious and excessively detailed, requiring specialised interpretive skills to decipher deeply buried conclusions. For the CFO, we need to provide workflows and approval changes in our data presentations. These are the factors that impact our fiscal bottom line.

• Charts of customer activity, volume of incoming, forecast, and completed services and implementations (invoicing dollars in process).

• Forward schedules of Change that have customer impact; changes scheduled but not yet approved; last week’s changes with customer impact; and volume of changes requested by customer. These are very important to effectively manage customer relationships within your organisation.

• Problem metrics by Production Down or Priority 1 events; which customers were impacted, the duration of the impact, our total up time ratios to down time. Each of these has measurable financial impact to the company with the application of service level agreements, measured in your service management solution.

Chief Customer Officer The CCO is very much the Travel Agent in our company. As a good CCO, they need to know the overall postcard picture of the business at any point in time. They are well-organised, good communicators, and service oriented.

Their data points are perhaps the most fun a metrics manager can provide, given the breadth of perspective and choice. The CCO looks at everything and often will choose to showcase outliers not considered by others, enhancing their effects. Our CCO data points include: • Customer satisfaction details, call temperature assessments, net promoter scores and survey responses. Customer specific details like unique services requested, changes requested (and implemented), and how those relate to the Incident/Request history for a specific customer.

• The status of the enterprise; active issues for strategic customers, present volume of unresolved issues, resource allocation (as a measure of supply/demand), recent downtime statistics and their unique customer impact (in addition to enterprise impact).

• A picture of customer touch points within the organisation. These can include average number of customer contacts per Incident or Service Request recorded, web site analytics, social media activity, and the number of outbound/inbound contacts between the customer and organisation within a designated time period.

Data representations can be widely varied and

account for dozens of correlating data points to paint the desired picture. With the CCO, count on providing a slide show of visual representations, with options to filter for a host of selections, and flexibility to adjust for projections and what if ’s.

Chief Operations Officer The Chief Operations Officer is quite literally the Wizard of Oz. It is the COO that has the singular responsibility to ensure all the components of the organisation hum along together in harmony. Motivated by good and entrusted to watch over us, they are by definition a helper to all, uplifting us to reach our fullest potential. For our COO, we are all valued stewards on the path to organisational enlightenment yet unlike the famed character of the same name, the efforts and successes of our COO are no illusion.

The COO needs a mixture of data points with filters and differing visual representations that can adapt to the needs of the day. These are: • Organisational health data. Week, month, and quarter activities planned for internal development and the same for external customer development.

• Resources. Quite simply, where people are and their tasks of the moment, wherever these might be.

• Report detail by way of grids that highlight revenue wins and losses, related by business unit, customer, product, service, and industry awareness.

• Industry trends and event happenings in the professional sphere of the organisation.

• Aggregated social media outputs directly relating to the company, industry, specific people, customers, and competitors.

• Performance data on key components of the operations across the business, like the CEO but into the detail!

Your Mobile Apps As you know, the needs of our C suite are vast and varied. The fun for us is meeting them; ready, real, right now and here! Mobile apps are part of the solution.

To get there, consider these factors as you evaluate your present service management tools or consider new ones. Mobility should not be on the wish list of features any more.

This is high on the list as a must-have.

• Native mobile solutions are here. Do not settle for Internet ready applications. Viewing data in a mobile browser does not deliver the same result as a native application of your service management tool. It isn’t real time, just in time, the time is now data if it isn’t fully native to mobile devices.

• Your data delivery needs to be a showcase of your business. It can be overwhelming on its own. Breakdown the business into segments, like chapters in a book that taken together, in context, tell a complete and compelling story. Incident, Problem, Change, Sales, Contact, Release, HR, Finance, Facilities… all of these components relate to one another in unique and interesting ways. Correlate them in bite size pieces and piece them

into a story displayed visually through dashboards in a native, mobile format.

• Keep it simple. Going mobile and delivering dashboard data should not be a complicated endeavour. If your tool requires feats of specialised programming to deliver real time data that is equally real time flexible for the viewer, it’s the wrong tool to use.

• Delivering mobility as part of your end game requires thoughtful planning in the early stages of your data organisation strategy.

Work backwards from your delivery goals to define the data points to capture and don’t overcomplicate the task. Concise is the rule for mobility viewing. Data needs to be specific, relevant, and easily relatable to business drivers and established measures of organisational success. It shouldn’t need a manual to understand it.

Conclusion So what is the bottom line? We have virtual warehouses of data that require interpretation.

Interpretive powers vary widely by role and experience level. Roles are highly specialised and mobile like never before in our history.

The stakes are high, the demands are deafening, and the data is raw. As service management professionals, we must answer the call to deliver, to blend the data in a manner that is both transparent and accessible, in the hands of our business leaders.

It is about information, relationships, and the magic of skilful delivery. Skilful delivery rests on us, as service management professionals.

Information exists without us. The presentation of meaningful data does not.

All in all, like ever present data, mobility is fast becoming the norm. It has become difficult to distinguish where the office stops and our non-work lives begin as we carry home our office lives in pockets, purses, bags, on wristbands and key chains, either as fully functional mobile devices or mobile facilitators.

As knowledge workers ourselves and service management professionals; We must anticipate, plan for, design, and deliver data in a mobile, ever-flexible format to meet the needs of our business executives.

We need to step outside of ourselves for a moment, to get outside of thinking in a traditional IT framework, to view our institutional data as a business commodity, to envision the relationships, the mingling of commonalities, the stories data will tell if only we see it without constraint and conventional restriction.

We have to be present, thinking in what if ’s, and be fearless to try new combinations of measurement to tell our stories in the marketplace.

We need to demand native mobility of our tools and plan for mobility futures in our data designs.

And then, we can bring our executives along for the ride. And what a ride it can be!

Article written by Anne Vail, Customer Experience Manager Australasia, Cherwell Service Management, Service Quality Pty Ltd. She can be contacted via: anne.vail@servicequality.com.au

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Incremental Innovations or a New Vision for ITSM – Can We Break With Tradition?

The process for writing this article started with the recurring thought that ITSM systems have traditionally been 100 per cent forms driven. Isn’t that getting old and dull? Is it really necessary? Is it still relevant? Is there a viable alternative? What ideas provide inspiration for future innovations?

The purpose of this article is to progress and collect ideas, generate discussion and hopefully affect a better outcome in the workplace.

In reading this paper I would ask you - if these innovations were to be combined, then would this provide a fully rounded new vision for ITSM? Or, are they still incremental steps on the journey?

It’s rare to see a fully rounded vision suddenly surface in any marketplace. It’s common, however, to see a series of slow hunches and incremental ideas gather momentum. Then eventually, with enough iterations and hard work, we sometimes reach a new fully worked vision.

So let us look at the incremental innovations taking place in the ITSM ecosystem today and see what might happen if some of these collide or become strategically combined.

Enabling Iterative Innovation Technologies being applied to the world of ITSM are making innovations more accessible and iterations much faster than ever before, such that now we are often only constrained by our best thinking.

Previously it could take years to rollout new releases of service management software from vendor to customer implementation. Now, we commonly see this reduced to days or less. Furthermore, vendors are reducing the time between major releases to months and in some cases minutes to share smaller sets of capabilities.

The world of SaaS innovation has enabled us to evolve and increase value faster than ever before. Even more exciting is that the speed is increasing all the time, where communities and vendors alike trade intellectual property at lightning speed on a global scale. In the future, could organisations reduce their ROI through selling innovation?

Historically increases in connectivity have meant an increase in innovation.

Today, it’s far easier to find other people in the global community with the same interests, needs and problems. So naturally if we can share, publish or sell applications, process flows, portal designs and catalogue items in a global ITSM app-store then we could innovate at a greatly accelerated rate.

So What if the Process Doesn’t Fit? The increase in adoption of ITIL has had a very positive impact on IT organisations and I think largely we are thankful for the consistency and discipline it has introduced. However, can we really say that standardised process flows are able to solve every issue or fulfill every request?

I would suggest that, no, we cannot.

Today, we can leverage graphical process design tools so that business analysts can launch new capabilities such as service request catalogue items without the need for programming skills. Process owners can modify and rollout processes within minutes. Procedures can be fired by any event or field on a form, so is this enough?

Having listened to renowned ITSM thought leader, Rob England recently, he voices support for case management to facilitate the resolution phase where there are strong guidelines, templates, policy, content, procedures

and resources to draw upon (As described in Rob’s book: PLUS! The Standard+Case Approach).

For example, checklists are used so at some point you need to do these things to complete the case but it doesn’t enforce a process flow or sequence of actions. Here we choose to dynamically assemble process fragments at runtime but that’s not the same as having an end-to-end defined process. To summarise this thinking I will use a phrase that Rob uses; “adaptive service management”.

Forms Are Dead – Streams Are In! For a long time now, all ITSM systems have been based on filling out a form to log an issue. Inevitably we then revert to many other means of communication until at some point we then close the incident. Aren’t we losing lots of valuable knowledge by just closing off an incident?

What if we could post an incident onto a collaborative live stream or wall or even create a collaborative online group that could be a mix of 2nd/3rd line support, vendors and users? Here we could capture the conversation stream and collaborate to resolve the issue.

Increasingly, we are now seeing the combination of Twitter and Facebook type feeds and walls to help manage the resolution of incidents. Updates are delivered in journals relevant to a specific person or group with small bursts of information like an SMS. All this is making a nice extension to ITIL and delivering a rich source of knowledge. Taking it even further, what if we could make that more formulaic by defining it as; Incident Priority = Impact + Urgency + Number of Followers on a Live Stream?

Consumerisation on Steroids Increasingly, we are creating environments where users are able to help themselves. Self service portals and service catalogues have been launched so that users can not only log and track issues but also request just about anything from employee on-boarding through to provisioning whole systems. Organisations have truly embraced opening the IT shop front to increase service quality and transparency.

But what if a service doesn’t exist? Should the user community wait for IT? What if the users or business analysts could create the service, workflow, form, dashboard etc. for themselves through leveraging capabilities and building blocks provided by IT? To some degree PaaS vendors are doing this today by driving down the rights of innovation from the specialist programmers to the business managers and business analysts that have a clear view of the process they want to automate. Taking many of the principles provided by Continued on Page 19 18

From Page 18 ITIL and ITSM systems, we can quickly see a new type of application ecosystem building out as depicted in the diagram below1.

Mobile devices potentially allow us much easier access to services and enable staff that need to be in the field to still perform their work.

However, these intelligent devices with such location-based services can also help to enrich a more dynamic user profile. Ultimately this means support can be more proactive and relevant to each individual user.

Interface Interface Interface

Hitting the Wall “The Wall” is the original profile space where Facebook users’ content is presented. The Wall is dynamic, collaborative, sticky, relevant and personalised. As I see it, there are two core characteristics we see in social tools that we can leverage in business.

Collaboration – Social collaboration can and is being used in business applications. This brings about synergy and teamwork that will produce an overall better result than if each person within the group was working toward the same goal individually.

Group cohesion - is a property that is inferred from the number and strength of mutual positive attitudes among members of the group.

As the group becomes more cohesive, it’s functioning is affected in a number of ways. First, the interactions and communication between members increase. Common goals, interests contribute to this. In addition, group member satisfaction increases as the group provides friendship and support.

In the early days of the iPhone, Apple set the tone for the best design of user interfaces and pushed the envelope for what the iPhone could do: Safari, Photos, Siri, and iTunes were just the leading examples of what the best mobile developers should hope to accomplish.

As consumers we expect to shop like Amazon with recommendations, bundles, incentives and hot deals. We also expect to track our requests like UPS to set clear expectations of where my stuff is within the supply chain. We often don’t mind delays so long as we know it’s coming and are given a revised timescale.

The newest user interfaces are intelligent, tailored, interactive, sticky and simple to use. Let’s take it further and make the ITSM interface content dynamic and relevant to the individual user.

To do this, the system needs to understand and leverage usage information such as: • What have I been looking at recently?

• What do I use most often?

• What information and features are relevant to me?

Parting Thoughts ….. Be the CIO, CTO and CEO

What we see is that Social Media + Social Technologies = • • • • •

Knowledge Sharing Collaboration Open Discussions Relationship Building Communities of people with common interests, needs and problems

Leveraging Mobility So what if user profile included data such as; • • • • • •

Location at that moment Services subscribed Skills Interests Communication channels and preferences Travel Plans

Don’t feel overwhelmed by innovation. All employees should be responsible, interactive and involved in the evolution of their organisation including its new services and systems.

I would suggest all companies adopt a culture where they encourage everyone to take charge of innovation and help evolve the role of IT. Almost all of these ideas and innovations have come from the shop floor. Individually, some of these concepts are here now, others are just around the corner while a few are aspirational. Can you imagine a world where they are combined to deliver a new style of ITSM and even more importantly are we prepared to embrace it?

Article written by Paul Thomason, Solution Consultant, ServiceNow. He can be contacted via: Paul.Thomason@servicenow.com

19

Towards the Technology Concierge

Technology Superhero The Traditional Approach

Ladies and Gentlemen the call was made. We have a priority 1 incident!

The big guy with the cape and the boots is called to get onto it right away and restore Gotham city to a state where its citizens can go about business as usual.

But the calls have been much less in recent times and the service desk is seeing a decline in incidents and problems. Surely this is an indicator that all is running well in Gotham.

The service desk is feeling happy that the monthly stats are all green, calls are down, no one is yelling at the change advisory board meetings and there’s been no recent “please explain” made to the CIO. Is Batman and Robin’s approach a thing of the past? Do we really continue to need them if we don’t have any incidents?

We all know what ITIL says: The service desk as the single point of contact is efficient plus good process identifies reoccurring incidents which can be directed appropriately for speedy resolution. Requests for standard services can also be fulfilled in a timely manner from a single point. So rigorous repeatable process is desirable. Well…. maybe in theory.

Guess again Batman. People are individuals – each and every one feels they are special and have a natural resistance to being processed.

We have tried and failed in training people to use the service desk as the single point of contact. Today there are many alternatives to acquiring service and resolving incidents. In reality, Google is the first point of contact for most people, followed by asking their neighbour. Today’s workforce is tech-savvy and want speed of delivery. IT has a history

of taking a long time to deliver and often getting it wrong. The service desk is the last place customers will go and only then when they’ve run out of alternatives - most will do anything not to call the service desk.

Does your corporate policy say no BYOD? Is there’s an app in the cloud that immediately meets my business need? If it’s more efficient for me to use my iPad with a cloud-based app and there are ways to get around the policy, do I care what IT says? IT is increasingly being seen as the department of “no” and to be avoided.

Let’s take a step back in time. Who amongst us remembers when the last typing pool ceased to be? When did they actually disappear? In the past all correspondence in and out of the organisation was handwritten and submitted to the typing pool who speedily and accurately typed and formatted the documents.

The typing pool worked in shifts to ensure services were available when needed and they adhered to corporate standard formats in order to provide consistency and protect the corporate brand. There was no autocorrect, which made errors difficult to fix, and poor work would need to be redone. As they were measured on speed and accuracy it was a specialist job. Does this sound like the premise the helpdesk was founded on?

Why did the typing pool become obsolete?

Technological advancement gave us the tools to do this work for ourselves and we humans developed the capability to make good use of those tools. ITIL renamed the Helpdesk to the Service Desk and said it should be service centric. But that didn’t change the reactive methods of expecting our customers to come to the caped crusaders with problems to solve. IT was a specialist field but now every job has some IT element and the service desk no longer is the sole provider of all technology with the ability to fix everything.

The Modern Approach Batman and Robin had an excellent approach for times past but now they need to take some lessons from Catwoman. Catwoman is very agile, adaptable and focused on desirable outcomes.

According to an Accenture survey, 93% of CEOs believe sustainability issues are critical to the success of their business. Sustainability is no longer about high performance with lower costs – we’ve done that. Corporations have also made great strides into social responsibility that customers want to see. The continued path to sustainability and increased revenue is through strong customer relationships and agility. We need to be seen as a strategic enabler to our customers’ outcomes.

Support and Customer Service is key to building these relationships and the Service Desk remains the face of IT regardless of what technology resources and capabilities are ultimately deployed to deliver services. But we need to change the way we deal with our consumers and customers as they become increasingly more tech-savvy and demanding adaptable business solutions. We must partner with our customers to become the strategic enabler who will help them navigate the technology landscape, deliver business value and support business objectives. In short, IT needs to become the trusted advisor providing technology where and how our customers want to use it.

The traditional service desk as we know it will become extinct just as the typing pool did.

This won’t occur overnight but it will happen.

Our challenge is to evolve as the trusted advisor and become the technology concierge.

To do that we need to be agile and innovate just like Catwoman.

So how do we unleash our inner Catwoman to progress our evolutionary journey?

The first thing is to understand what the current perception is of our service from our customers. This does not mean you send them a 20 page survey from which you will be lucky to get a 15% response. And stop asking those dumb questions like “was your service operator professional, polite and punctual?”

These traits are an expectation today and you will learn fairly quickly if your service provider didn’t meet those expectations.

Stop asking these questions and start asking what you really need to know. Will your customer recommend your service to others or will they activity discourage others from using it and why? That’s the Net Promoter Score in use. It’s very simple and consists of 2 questions: on a scale of 1-10 what would you rate the service and why did you give that rating? Those who gave 8-10 are your promoters and those 6 or less are your detractors. Your rating is the total promoters less total detractors and you will Continued on Page 21 20

From Page 20 seek to improve that rating over time. The “why” question gives you the information to understand what your customers like and what they don’t like. You can then make decisions about what you need to continue doing and what to either eliminate, or alter the perception of, regarding your service offerings and activities.

Once we have our baseline we can start to get a little more sophisticated and identify who are our customers and how they want to engage with us. You might think you know something about your customers already, but do you really? ISO/IEC 38500 (the standard for IT Governance) talks of Human Behaviour as one of 6 fundamental IT governance principles.

This principle gives guidance around profiling both customers plus the service provider and acknowledges the needs of all the people in the process. Profiling can assist understanding your different customer communities and the resistance and attraction factors impacting delivery and acceptance of your services. Once these are understood you can start to develop a tactical plan how you will Influence those communities’ in positive ways to drive a desirable behaviour. Without a targeted plan you’re sailing the ocean without navigational assistance – You might find an interesting island or you could get shipwrecked. Do you want to take that chance?

When we know which groups we wish to influence in what ways, attention to diversity and communication style becomes important.

In 2020 there will be 5 generations in the workforce. Veterans (over age 75) will consistently remain at 1.3% either through choice or the inability to retire. The first GenZs will impact the workforce in 2015 and will rise to 8% by 2020. They are already serving you at fast food chains! Gen-Y will make up the lion’s share of the workforce at 50% with Baby Boomers and Gen-X fighting it out over the remaining 40%.

These generational groups are often stereotypically documented as predisposed to particular styles of communication due to the influence of differing environmental conditions and community values. The differing technology influences are particularly interesting to note: Veterans saw the rise of the fax machine, Gen-X saw the widespread adoption of the mobile phone and Gen-Z has an app for everything and is hyper-connected.

Communication falls into two distinct groups: ”Tangible” versus “Flow of Transmission”.

Those disposed to “Tangible” prefer the mechanisms of print, physical mail, faceto-face and telephone whereas a “Flow of Transmission” preference is for texting, e-mail and social media profile updates.

Are your customers baby boomers who like to telephone? Or are they a Gen-Z where social media is the preferred approach? Regardless of whether your customers fit a stereotypical model for their generation, profiling them will help you make decisions on where it makes

sense to put your communications effort.

From Page 6

Now that we know what our customers think about our services, who they are and how they like to be communicated with, what do we communicate? Usually that starts with SLA metrics. Traditional service measures, like availability of 99.x% mean something to IT but very little to the customer, particularly when the 0.x% downtime was when they really needed that service available.

3. Responsibility and Accountability: We will accept responsibility for our actions and be accountable for the outcomes of our actions. We will endeavour to meet our commitments and fulfill our responsibilities and obligations to each other and all those we serve.

Meeting an SLA is not a measure of quality customer service. If the SLA is the goal, you are only measuring the efficiency of your processes.

If that’s your only source of communication this gives rise to a state of quality delusion and can easily slip into a penalty and blame culture when perceptions differ. The relationship can then get adversarial as your customer experiences IT as something done to them rather than services provided for them.

Governance via SLA is an important aspect of service measurement but don’t strangle service provision with rigid process. We need to go further with a meaningful constructive dialogue around intentions, progress and outcomes.

Service Charters can bridge the communication gap as part of a customer centric engagement model in language appropriate for your business and be something both provider and customer are able to relate to. Charters are two-way with clear expectations agreed regarding the rights and obligations of all parties involved in delivering and consuming the service. The intention of the service should be transparent with clearly documented goals and objectives regarding accountability, fairness and reliability.

Metrics can then be applied against resources, both people and technology, addressing the commonly agreed goals.

This isn’t a revolution but an evolution.

Sticking to the old service desk model with the rigid process of caped crusaders is fast making IT obsolete. Fundamental change to an engagement model is needed. IT must be agile, responsive and above all innovative. Our customers already are – that’s how they are staying in business.

To become a trusted advisor and strategic partner we must connect, communicate and collaborate both within IT and with our customers. We must evolve the service desk into the technology concierge.

4. Integrity and Credibility We will display integrity and credibility in our dealings with our fellow members, staff and stakeholders of our association.

5. Teamwork, Co-operation and Collaboration; We will seek to work together to achieve that which we cannot achieve in isolation, to accept the team’s decision, to share our collective knowledge in seeking to advance the profession of Service Management, and to achieve the objectives laid down in our Strategic Plan.

6. Innovation and Learning: We will encourage a journey of life-long personal and professional development and learning through ongoing education, mentoring of our fellow Service Management Practitioners and through sharing our experiences as well as exploring new approaches to our profession.

7. Resourcefulness: We will be resourceful in applying our scarce resources in seeking better ways of achieving the best outcomes for our members, staff and sponsors.

8. Diversity, Creativity and Identity: We take pride in and will respect, celebrate and protect the unique, inspirational and significant examples of diversity, creativity and identity that lie at the core of our Australian Culture and of our association.

9. Celebration and Enjoyment.

We will celebrate our professional achievements and success as proud and passionate members of the Australian Service Management Profession and seek to encourage others to share our passion through membership of itSMF Australia.

Look to your strategic future. Find out what your customers think about your service using the net promoter score, identify how they like to engage through profiling and organise your communications according to their style through meaningful metrics and charters.

How will you become the technology concierge? Agility plus Innovation are required. Begin by asking yourself “what would Catwoman do?”.

Article written by Kathryn Howard, itSMFA NSW State Branch Chairperson.

She can be contacted via: kathryn@ kathrynhoward.com

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itSMF Australia Products & Services Directory If you would like to include your organisation in the “Products and Services Directory” please contact the National office.

ALC TRAINING The region’s most comprehensive provider of certification training in IT Service Management, Project Management, Governance and Standards, IT Security and IT Management.

Contact: Lisa Reed • Phone: 1300 767 592 Email: lisa@alc-group.com • Web: www.alctraining.com.au APMG-AUSTRALASIA APMG-Australasia is a high quality, worldwide accreditation and certification organisation. Contact us to train or consult in PRINCE2, ITIL, MSP, Agile Project Management, PPM maturity assessments, Change Management, Managing Benefits, ISO/IEC 20000, and now COBIT 5.

Contact: Mark Croxford • Phone: 0447 470 330 Email: mark.croxford@apmg-international.com Web: http://www. apmg-international.com AXIOS SYSTEMS PTY LTD Axios Systems is a leading provider of best practice, ITIL-based, IT Service Management solutions. Our customer-centric approach combined with our award-winning solutions ensures customers worldwide can align their IT service provision with the overall business goals.

Contact: Mr. David Lloyd - Sales Manager (Asia Pacific Region) Phone: (03) 9093 2100 • Email: assystau@axiossystems.com Web: www.axiossystems.com CCI Consulting Working with external and in-house service providers, we measure, monitor and benchmark customer satisfaction with the delivery of IT and shared services. Our benchmarking database enables industry comparison including in-house/outsource and onshore/offshore service delivery models.

How does your service delivery measure up?

Contact: Andrea Murray • Phone: 03 8637 1200 Email: info@cciconsulting.com.au • Web: www.cciconsulting.com.au DIMENSION DATA LEARNING SOLUTIONS DDLS is an experienced and prominent IT Service Management training provider. Our ITIL® facilitators are certified and practising ITSM professionals with over 90 years collective industry intelligence, experience in both facilitating and real world ITIL® implementation and consulting. We have trained over 12 000 ITIL® students and surpass industry standard in pass rates.

As the largest IT training organisation in the country, DDLS also has a wide range of PRINCE2® Project Management, Business Analysis, Professional Development and Technical training courses available.

Contact: Melissa McLachlan • Phone: 1800 U LEARN (1800 853 276) Email: training@didata.com.au • Web: http://www.ddls.com.au/ ITSM HUB “The ITSM HUB is proud to be Pink Elephant’s exclusive partner in Australia.”

We provide ITIL and Prince2 certification raining at all levels, from Foundation through to Expert, for individuals as well as groups on site.

Need specialised or customised non-certification training or workshops?

Not a problem!

In addition to world-class training, The ITSM Hub also helps organisations turn knowledge into practice, with a range of service and process improvement consulting services. No lock-in, no “one size fits all” approach - we work with you for as long or as short as you need us.

Contact: Rachel Pennings • Phone: 1300 424 025 Email: info@theitsmhub.com.au • Web: www.theitsmhub.com.au

ITSM REPORTING SERVICES Through our excellent people, well defined processes and automated reporting software “Captell”, we have the solution to your IT service management reporting requirements.

Contact: Adrian Heald • Phone: 0411 238 755 Email: info@reportingservices.com • Web: www.reportingservices.com Kinetic IT ‘Kinetic IT is one of Australia’s leading enterprise managed services providers, supporting complex ICT infrastructures, critical data and multi-layered environments both nationally and internationally. We have over 15 years of ITIL experience under our belt and offer accredited ITIL training that’s highly interactive and applicable to IT environments across all sectors.‘ Contact: Simon Dorst • Phone: 1300 782 072 Email: training@kineticit.com.au • Web: www.kineticit.com.au ProActive Services ProActive provides a comprehensive suite of consulting and education services designed to help organisations transform the business of IT. Email info@proactiveservices.com.au Web www.proactiveservices.com.au • Phone: 1300 880 855 PRD HelpMaster PRD Software is an Australian company based in Canberra that has been developing helpdesk software and solutions for the ITSM industry since 1996. Available in both Windows + Web, HelpMaster is used worldwide for IT helpdesk, customer service and facilities management.

Contact: Rod Weir • Phone: +61 2 6278 4664 Email: sales@prdsoftware.com.au • Web: www.helpmasterpro.com SOLISMA Solisma is a leading provider of integrated Service Management solutions that equip and enable you to deliver real business value from IT. We offer a complete range of assessment, consulting and education services that provide you with a clear path to achieving business service excellence through the effective use of leading frameworks and standards such as ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000.

Contact: Michael Nyhuis • Ph: 1300 765 436 Email: info@solisma.com • Web: www.solisma.com SUNTREE GROUP Suntree Group is your first choice for business and IT process consulting, assessments, performance, training and managed services.

Contact: Gregg Holden • Phone: 1300 00 ITIL (1300 00 4845) Email: enquiry@suntreegroup.com.au • Web: www.suntreegroup.com.au SYSTEMOLOGY AUSTRALIA Microsoft Service Manager is an ITIL compliant service desk for all businesses. Systemology is Australia’s leading expert in Service Manager.

Contact: John Mustac • Phone: 0406 934 188 Email: john.mustac@systemology.com.au • Web: www.systemology.com.au UXC CONSULTING Accelerate your capability across the IT service lifecycle by partnering with UXC Consulting. We have the most experienced IT Management Consulting and Education team, providing insightful guidance and practical implementation approaches utilising current best practices adapted to your organisation.

Contact: Michael Billimoria • Phone: 1300 678 426 Email: info@uxcconsulting.com.au • Web: www.uxcconsulting.com.au versaSRS versaSRS is an Australian, highly flexible, multi-purpose Case Management, Service Desk & CRM enterprise solution that supports the ITIL framework.

Contact: Timo Bishop • Phone: +61 8 8463 1914 Email: info@versadev.com • Web: www.versaSRS.com

itSMF contact details itSMF Australia Mail: Suite 4, 45-51 Ringwood Street, Ringwood VIC 3134 Phone: (03) 9879 5466 Fax: (03) 9879 2833 Email: info@itsmf.org.au Web: www.itsmf.org.au CF10719

Advance your career with itSMF membership

itSMF members receive regular updates, professional development opportunities and access to ITSM resources and seminars. Enhance your career by joining your industry forum now - www.itsmf.org.au or call 03 9879 5466 22