Year: 2014

 “Best practices can only make you average. They stifle creativity and encourage ‘inside the box’ thinking.” I hear this all the time. But the truth is, best practices are what makes excellence possible, and I’ll tell you why.

Misunderstandings make for good TV entertainment, but in ITSM, it’s not so funny. A RACI chart is a quick and easy way to create clarity. I have no clue who first created the RACI chart, but like most common sense, it likely was born out of necessity. I picture a  struggling team trying to figure …

Earth to IT: we don’t care about your stupid internal bickering and blame games. We expect you to work together to help us solve our business problems. Your customers are under pressure to deliver results, and they don’t have patience for silos and tribalism. If you have a silo’d IT culture ~ it’s time to grow …

Trying to implement ITSM processes “by the book” is destined to fail. Practitioners must adapt best practices to meet the organization’s unique challenges. The Practitioner’s Dilemma Many newly trained and highly motivated folks head back to the office intent on trying to implement ITSM processes. Makes sense, right? But I’ve seen a wake of disaster …

Feeling like the lone IT Service Management prophet, without honor in your home town? Knowing how much Service Management can help, but feeling it will never happen because of the huge gap between ‘here’ and ‘there’? Been there. Why IT’IL never work You’ve been to training. You know how it’s supposed to work. But there’s …

CAB is arguably the most widely adopted ITSM process, but its value goes far beyond Change Management. CAB rallies people  around a common cause; the perfect antidote for silos and fragmented service delivery. Didn’t see that one coming In What is an ITSM CAB: A Simple Explanation I talk about CAB evaluating changes for business …

Calls are not all created equal.  Read how Basic IT Request Fulfillment can help you  stop ‘taking tickets’ and start actively managing excellence in  customer service. Life is like a box of chocolates Every Service Desk analyst can tell you; answering the phone is a bit like the box-of-chocolate effect – you can get a …

Often times people confuse ‘Standard’ and ‘Normal’ Change in IT Change Management. There’s an important concept that gets missed when they’re mixed up. This article will help you keep them straight.  Scope of IT Change Management First things first. IT Change Management is a control process. In addition to its widely understood role of evaluating …

 In IT, there are times for incremental improvements and other times when you just gotta start a revolution. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, the difference between the podium and obscurity in men’s high jump was a mere 10 centimeters. Dating back to the late 1800’s, high jump has been dominated by two major techniques: scissors …

Keeping your IT infrastructure stable while making necessary changes feels a bit like walking a tightrope without a net. A near-impossible feat requiring nimble balance The art of Tightrope Walking Nik Wallenda recently walked a tightrope over a quarter mile chasm near the Grand Canyon on live television  He did it with no safety harness; …

If you’re in IT, fixing the same issues again and again may not mean you’re insane, but it’s definitely driving your customers crazy! Stop the Insanity with Problem Management! Most organizations start looking at formal Problem Management when there’s a highly visible problem that they just can’t seem to fix. Customers are frustrated and complaining. …

Looking for a working definition of an ITSM Service? Is it Customer Service, or something more? Read on for a straight-forward explanation. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve seen a lot of “Service Management” discussions lately where it’s clear those talking don’t share the same understanding of “service”. Unfortunately, it’s more than simple semantics. Service …