ITIL Wise - Govern Wise - Other Whys – A Team Blog

  • Utility and Warranty

    8/12/2008 1:32:00 PM

    ITIL v3 introduced a number of new terms, some of which have caused confusion for people trying to make sense out of the changes from v2.  As I teach classes on v3, I often find that the two terms Utility and Warranty seem to be especially problematic.  But it is important that we understand each, because together, they are the elements that determine the Value of any given service.  Let’s begin with the simplified definitions of these two terms from the Service Strategy book:  Utility means fit for Purpose and Warranty means fit for Use. 

    It would have been so much easier to put Utility and Use together (after all, if we utilize something, it means we use it, right?) but, alas, they mapped ‘use’ to Warranty and ‘purpose’ to Utility.  I sometimes jokingly tell people sitting my classes to think this way, “Utility means Use—NOT!!” 

    So, let’s take a ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

  • Change and Communication

    8/1/2008 11:34:00 AM

    On a trip to Austin, Texas, for my nephew’s wedding, I found that my airline ticket was going to cost much more than I thought it should.  I had often flown into Dallas-Ft. Worth for approximately one-third the cost.  Why was a flight to a city less than two hundred miles from Dallas going to cost that much?

    Any regular air traveler could probably share a similar story.  If we were to commiserate together, we might say something along the lines of “If I were running the airline industry, I’d …” and then pronounce how much more efficient and effective we’d be by making changes that make sense to us.

    The problem, of course, is that we don’t have all the data, all the facts—which makes it quite easy to have all the answers.   We run into that when working with our business “counterparts” quite often as well.  I have ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

  • Service Strategy

    7/31/2008 11:42:00 AM

    Over the last several years, I have had the opportunity to work with a number of IT shops in assessing their IT services and improvements they felt should or could be made.  When doing these assessments, the discussion is never around ‘value’ to the business.  An assumption seems to exist that they are providing the service that the business needs; they are simply looking at ways to better manage the service, ways to improve ‘how’ they are doing things.

     

    My observations sometimes lead me to believe that the reality, however, is that IT people don’t really know what the business customers truly wand and need.  Too often I see a defensive stance and a common theme when I begin to probe.  I have more than once been told by IT people, “They (customers/users) don’t get it.  This is complex stuff…”

     

    When I hear that song or a version ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

  • Service Catalog

    7/16/2008 10:30:00 AM

    After receiving certification in ITIL v2, I began teaching ITIL and Service Management almost immediately.  It didn’t take long to realize that I would see some common themes in client questions.  One of the real frequent themes:  How do I build a service catalog?  What kinds of things should be in it?  How do we really define our services for the catalog? Is there a good template out there?

     

    Not only were my clients asking me, they were asking my company’s Training Advisers, who would then come to me with:  “Do we have a class on creating a service catalog?”  Sadly for all, the answer was (and still is), “No, we don’t.”  So…Service Level Managers were left to either figure it out or have a consultant assist.  The Service Delivery book of ITIL v2 certainly didn’t give much help: a simple spreadsheet sample.  Nonetheless, I would say to my ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

  • Functions and Processes, What’s more important?

    7/12/2008 2:35:00 PM

    Interestingly, I have been in a number of conversations in which this topic arises.  Often I hear, “I’d rather have an expert deal with the matter than have to worry about following a bunch of rules that just waste time.”  So would I.  On the other hand, I’d rather have an expert deal with the matter while following a process that is streamlined and efficient; in fact, I would sleep even better knowing that the expert was deeply involved in setting the process up.

    I don’t know if this is an American deal, or if it is human nature, but I often find myself in “either/or” conversations.  The assumption seems to be that we need to take two elements (such as Processes and Functions) and turn them into a choice, as if we must have only one.  Often when this happens, people are hinting ,or stating outright, that they don’t ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

  • v3 Tranisition

    6/20/2008 10:28:00 AM

    Two of the new big elements of ITIL v3 are the focus on Lifecycle of a service and, within that focus a whole phase on Strategy: the bringing into life Services that will fulfill new and changing business needs/activities/processes.  It’s good stuff, for sure, but there are other new elements within ITIL v3 that simply build on pre-existing processes.  Within the lifecycle phase called Service Transition sit three processes that many of my clients felt were the most important processes of v2 in actually helping them better manage their work: Change, Config, and Release.  The authors of v2 saw them as so integrated that they offered up a recommendation that they be rolled together under a combined CCR central function (see Annex 7A in the Service Support book).  There are those of us who would still see these three as the backbone of good Service Management.  How have they grown ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

  • Event Management

    6/1/2008 7:37:00 AM

    I was given the task of “setting the table” for a trio of speakers who were going to speak to Event Management and Monitoring.  My task was to briefly explain the “new” Event Management Process of ITIL v3 that is part of the Service Operation phase of the lifecycle.  The other three presenters, all IT Managers, then spoke to some of the key issues and successes they have experienced in managing their environment’s monitoring and event management processes.

     

     All agreed that good Event Management and monitoring helped ensure a more stable environment and could help prevent or lead to quick resolution of incidents, and each spoke specifically to that topic.  But, as I expected, each put a different spin on what constituted an event within their environments.  For one, an event was strictly an exception within a system.  For another, it could be a warning or an exception.  In ...

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    Ron Hovland

    ITSM

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