There’s been a great deal of discussion recently about the phrase “Change Control” – especially with ITIL® 4 switching from Change Management to Change Control in the initial release of the foundation book. I wrote about it in What’s with Change Control in ITIL4. But shortly thereafter, it somewhat unceremoniously changed to Change Enablement. Akshay …
Category: Organizational Change Leadership
IT Strategic Vision: The Land of Unicorns and Rainbows
What do unicorns and rainbows have to do with IT Strategic Vision and Service Management? It’s an interesting tale, and if you read on, I’ll make it worth your while. Trust me.
OneTeam
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 …
IT Improvement: Let’s Get This Party Started!
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 …
IT Transformation; Hitting ‘The Wall’
If you’ve been working on IT Service Management for some time, you’ve undoubtedly had times when you are just exhausted. Not sure you can take another step. Sound familiar? So much to do, so much opportunity; an endless uphill battle. And on top of that… …the regular job most of us in Service Management have …
How Organizational Management of Change is Like Quitting Smoking
Organizational Management of Change is a lot like quitting smoking. Most of us know a current or former smoker, and how hard it is to quit. What can we learn to help us better manage organizational change? I recently saw an on-line conversation between a currently-quitting smoker and a former smoker. The latter was encouraging …
Improving IT Service Delivery: CSI is NOT a Process
Thinking of CSI as a merely a process not only misses the point, it’s also hazardous to real improvement. CSI is NOT a process! CSI is Not a Process ITIL has a full book dedicated to Continual Service Improvement. CSI is a relative newcomer to IT Service Management. Want to know why? Because CSI is …
How Apple Reduces Time To Value (and what your IT can learn from them)
Apple has a reputation for the right products at the right time. What can IT learn from Apple about creating raving fans by reducing Time to Value? Christopher Meyer did a great piece on Apple’s Most Obvious Secret: Reducing Time to Value. Apple has built a corporate culture around customer value. It’s not how quickly …
Confessions of an ITSM practitioner
If you’re one of the countless ITSM practitioners who work daily in organizations large and small, in countries around the world, listen up. You know how hard, lonely, and thankless it can be. You have friends out there. I listened to Mark Kawasaki’s presentation at this week’s Tomorrow’s Future Today 2013 conference. The guy shows …
Why ITSM success demands Ownership
Does lack of clear Ownership leave your organization spending a lot of time trying to determine who makes decisions? Do they suffer from decision deja vu, again and again? Ownership is prominent in the Service Management frameworks. I’ll tell you why. Ownership In IT Value is Created Horizontally, I talked about horizontal vs vertical mindset …
IT Service Management: Building Accountability in Public Sector
Building Ownership and Accountability are critical to successful IT Service Management, however building these in public sector organizations presents unique challenges. Here are 10 ways to build accountability in the public sector. I’ve spent more than 20 years at a major high tech company, and now nearly 4 years at a public agency. It’s not …
IT Value is Created Horizontally
Successful IT Service Management is a different way of thinking, not just a different way of doing. We’ve heard for years about IT silos, and that they’re good and bad…. but mostly bad. “Throwing things over the wall”, “Network is fine, must be an application problem”, “those darn Service Desk folks can’t fix anything”. Been …
The Value of Values in IT Transformation, Part 2
Knowing your core values are critical to IT Transformation. I was faced with a hard question – why, exactly do I believe in implementing Service Management? Why change what’s working? Why do “this ITIL thing”? Why should staff give up something they’re good at in pursuit of something where they’re not sure they have a …
The Value of Values in IT Transformation, Part 1
Transformation is hard; transformation without knowing your values is impossible. Implementing Service Management demands changing behaviours and cultures, and that is never easy. It’s not enough to want to change, or even to know where we’re going. Too often we start with What needs to change, but people need to know Why. I came across …