The IT Skeptic - Comments for "ITIL V3 2011: a new book and four new processes"

Strategy Changed a lot - easiest then 2007 version

Mario G — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:59:14 +0000

Strategy book was some interesting changes. Easiest too understand then 2007 version. Less confuse then 2007. So, if you have conditions take a look at that book. If not, look at some wikis over the internet and try to compare the differences between versions (focusing in STRATEGY). Take a look at the new process DESIGN COORDINATION at the SERVICE DESIGN book. At the wikis try to find the new concepts, role and papers. Finally, one practical suggestion. Take a look at the new glossary. Is free and go direct to the point. You will find the differences. Compare the differences there too. Success.

Hi Guys, All of you seem

Saneth — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:48:48 +0000

Hi Guys,

All of you seem really to have a really good idea about the ITIL v3 and I guess you all have a lot of experience in the industry.

Here's my situation. I started studying for the ITIL Foundation V3 a few weeks back, and found out today that it's been "updated". I've been working as a network engineer for the past 1 year, I don't have any experience in consulting and the ITIL concepts are pretty new to me. I'd like to know if the older study material (v3) is sufficient to get a fair idea of this updated version? (Since it's mentioned that there's a lot of new stuff).

I wanted to take this exam in the next 3-4 weeks. But after reading this and all your comments, I'm wondering whether to wait a few months and collect more study material, before I go ahead with the exam. What do you think?

Thanks,
Saneth

ITIL 2011 impact : minor changes or dramatic evolution ?

Tru Dô-Khac — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:37:46 +0000

When we read the 2009 planning documents [1], we see
1. to be released "early 2011"
2. "cosmetic, editorial and consistency improvements".

For the first objective, well, right on time and we should give an applause to ITIL shareholders (UK citizen, OGC, authors, managers,...)

For the second, i would say "missed" but from a user perspective, this is great news. There is much improvement potential ahead.

To my opinion, we have finally a reputed guidance that recognizes the limits of process oriented IT governance and propose remedies : [IT] business relationship management, [business] demand management and [joint] design coordination.

Let's build on ITIL reputation and large base to enter rapidly into the next generation of IT governance that will help us to get rid over-engineering IT departement and the scores of RACI !

The next geneation of IT Governance (NGEN ITG) is a relationship oriented IT governance.

[1] “ITIL Update : Frequently Asked Questions October 2009”, STO, 2009

via portfolio

skeptic — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 02:04:00 +0000

...and I think the road to better scheduling and execution management across heterogeneous demand is via portfolio management as you yourself, Charles, have propounded so well in the past, and is well described in Durbin and Doerscher's Taming Change with Portfolio Management.

i think the main portfolios are
Org Change
|
Services
|
Projects
|
Operational Change

I'd love to see a diagram relating them, and showing where resource and asset portfolios might fit

Demand and capacity

Charles T. Betz — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:47:47 +0000

My approach to understanding IT processes and functions is linguistic. One of the problems in equating Demand and Capacity management is that in IT circles, actual "in the field" usage of the term "Capacity Management" almost exclusively refers to infrastructure capacity. Certainly, we see this in ITIL and related literature (e.g. Harris Kern library) as well.

Rarely if ever do I hear "capacity" used to discuss the availability of staff resources and time. This is simply a tribal quirk; there is no reason why Capacity Management conceptually would not also encompass human resources, but that's just not how the IT community in my experience talks and writes.

ON the other hand, "demand management" has a long and distinguished non-ITIL history of referring to the front end of project portfolio management, and thus primarily referring to the "demand" for IT staff time to execute projects. It was this usage that ITIL Service Strategy 1e reflected.

I have published some of my new editions' analysis of the topic here:

http://www.erp4it.com/erp4it/2011/01/demand-management-patterns.html

I think that the area of scheduling and execution management is a notable opportunity for IT improvement. How to better execute across heterogeneous demand (e.g. run vs. grow vs. change the business) is a very hard problem, perhaps best understood in today's manufacturing job shops. My conjecture is that there is as-yet untapped knowledge there that, with appropriate translation, could be beneficial to IT service management.

Charles T. Betz
http://www.erp4it.com

Damned Management

skeptic — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:44:00 +0000

Yes SS 5.5 has a few pages describing some considerations of Demand. Does it systematically describe all activities related to Demand? No. Does it describe who has roles and responsibilities? No. Does it systematically describe metrics or risks? No.

I disagree that it is unclear the connection with Capacity. Look at all of 5.5.1 and the first para of 5.5.2. [Ah I understand what you meant Charles. the left had SS doesn't know what the right hand SD is saying, and vice versa. they don't seem to reference each other, although SS figure 5.22 and SD figure 4.11 are identical., SS 5.5 is called Demand Management and SD 4.3.5.6 is called Demand Management. According to the ~~Official~~ Introduction, SS "owns" Demand Management]

But then it wanders off into service packages for more than half of 5.5. perhaps I'm a bit slow but I fail to see any but the most tenuous connection to Demand Management.

it is all good stuff but it is not a systematic description of the "process"/practice of Demand Management, consistent with the way other "processes" are described in ITIL.

P.S. Google spellchecker wants to correct my dyslexic typing as "Damned Management". Not necessarily wrong: it is hard to get demand right - you are always too high or low.

Warning - Sharp Object Alert!

ianclayton — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:46:49 +0000

As an ex capacity manager (previous life) and based upon my work for the USMBOK sourced from non-IT materials, capacity management 'owns' demand management. It is a skill. It is responsible for working with Product/Service Marketing (research) and Product/Service Planning (owner of service) to predict demand, and characterize how it will drive resource consumption.

The connection with Finance (Economics) is where that area provides monetary rates, such as cost per megabyte of storage, which when added to the metering, result in the opportunity to recover costs (invoice/bill). Financial rates are also used to accelerate or throttle demand, such as seen in the electric utility and cell phone plan realms (kilowatts per hr rates change based upon time of usage and volume, as do phone rates)

The ITIL positioning of Demand Mgt in Strategy as Charles correctly explains, is indicative of the challenge ITIL sets itself by trying to refer to a skillset as a process island. Demand Management spans many aspects of service planning.

Remember, what ITIL calls the service lifecycle is analogous to the product lifecycle of non-IT organizations. when considering the topic of Demand Management please also keep in mind Finite Capacity Scheduling concepts, Elasticity, Channels to Market, and the correct definition of Value Chain Networks (supply/demand chain management). Its a specialized skillset as you can see and typically well described in Marketing Management references, such as that by Phil Kotler.

I would urge you NOT to rely solely on ITIL here... its at best 'quaint'.

Demand also in SS

Charles T. Betz — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:34:13 +0000

AND you will also find reference to Demand Management in Service Strategy (2007), with no apparent awareness that it appears under Capacity. Major section 5.5 under Service Economics.

Charles T. Betz
http://www.erp4it.com

No having just sat the

Visitor — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:51:00 +0000

No having just sat the Service Design exam not two hours ago, the demand management element is part of the capacity management process.

Demand Management

skeptic — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:22:00 +0000

OK point me to the pages that describe the "process". Roles, responsibilities, principles, activities, metrics, risks...

"business relationship

Visitor — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:37:18 +0000

"business relationship management and demand management are now covered as processes"

As far as I know, Demande Management was already a process in ITIL 2007...

I do

aroos — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 06:29:36 +0000

Yes Ian, I have the book and I have been working in an automated operations -project.

Btw, I think the concepts of incident and problem in their ITIL sense are inside-out thinking.

Consumers (end users) have sometimes problems which need to be solved. Quite often they can be solved by advice, sometimes something is broken and needs to be fixed and then there are unclear cases where the service can be restored but the case remains unclear.

The goal of service improvement is to minimize the number of all consumer problems, not just failures or unclear cases but also the need for support in form of advice.

Aale

It is going to be wonderful

JamesFinister — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:59:15 +0000

There is a little more information to be gleaned from these comments

http://www.best-management-practice.com/Knowledge-Centre/News/ITIL-News/?DI=630839

There are three names that I generally trust, though how independent of Castle ITIL you consider them to be is another matter

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

I should have added....

JamesFinister — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:16:06 +0000

...in the best case scenario, regardless of the 2011 edition, the debate between vendors and customers should be over whether a tool feature adds value or removes risk, and whether the customer can leverage the feature. Vendors should feel a responsibility to ensure that they are not selling features the customer has no capability to deploy.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

The event cascade

ianclayton — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:46:36 +0000

Hi Aale - by the way - do you have a copy of the Guide to USMBOK - if not email me separately - I need to get you one. Because, in there on or around p217 I describe the 'service event lifecycle' - and how events created within the service infrastructure are filtered, correlated and moderated as alerts, trip service level indicators, perhaps objectives (targets in ITIL), and start the impact measurement activity, and recording of an incident.

Nothing new here, and largely based upon systems management and automation theory and practice I used dating back to the 1970s - anyone out there remember the 'automated operations' days? Much of this has crept back into ITIL (Edition 2007), a good thing. As it represents the analysis of noise coming out of the infrastructure and detection of noteworthy events.

Now I must admit I did not enter the fray on that discussion you mentioned. perhaps I should have. Event management and the investment in tools designed to offer visibility into the infrastructure is a key decision for all. How much visibility, where, and why. I believe this is driven by requirements management activities and the service/product manager (hello ITIL - I think Service Design appendices?)

As for measurements - good luck to Pink. How many incidents are closed is an inside-out metric and practically useless. What do you do with that number. "We closed 500". "We closed 2000". What is the criteria for closure? best practice (again USMBOK) says to use a 2-step end - complete and close, and to compare the response (effort, duration and result), with the authorized response (thresholds, caps and constraints).

I'll stop here... I feel a lesson coming on...

Nobody notices

aroos — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:50:53 +0000

Nobody notices the differences and all think they are doing ITIL. The new processes are not processes so they do not affect the tools. I would not worry about the tool vendors, the V3 compliance is total bs anyway. All they need to do is update their sales material.

The real problems arise when people use same words with different meanings. Here are some practical examples:

* There is a discussion about event management on this site and somebody explains the difference between event and incident using V2 definition (i.e. pre-Event Management) of incident.
* Pink Elephant is doing a Metrics survey. The first question is: "In a typical month, how many Incidents are closed in your organization?" I wonder do they mean V2 incidents i.e. Service Desk tickets which include service requests or do they mean strict V3 incidents with no service request. And what about incidents created automatically from events? The numbers are not comparable if you don't know what the respondent mean by the word incident.

Aale

Change in ITIL = change in ITSM

JamesFinister — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 07:35:14 +0000

Let's go all perfect world:

The new version of ITIL will encapsulate existing good practice. To identify what current good practice is the authors will have spoken to all the leading ITSM vendors and adopted ideas that are already embedded in the more innovative tools - we can leave the demise of the ITSM tool magic quadrant to another day.

Of course there might be some ideas introduced into this minor revision that aren't supported by current tool sets. On closer examination it will be found that this is because:

- They are in effect a clarification of existing ITIL concepts and will not require major modifications to ITSM tools except at the cosmetic level
- The concepts are already well proven in other areas of IT and/or customer service
- They have such a strong theoretical basis (I'm blogging about what this should really mean in the near future) that their adoption is a no brainer.

So what have the vendors to be worried about?

But back to the real world:

Vendors will be forced to use constrained resources to window dress their products to appear aligned with the new release, existing customers will have to bear the impact of this in terms of implementing new releases that might not enhance real world functionality. Vendors with real, innovative, functionality that could enhance ROI will spend ages at sales meetings explaining to potential customers why they don't currently use the new ITIL terminology.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Plea to TSO

skeptic — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 04:02:45 +0000

Dear TSO
Please please please put the "2011" flash on the spine as well as the cover, so I can have both versions in my bookshelf. I know you want to kill off all the old versions, but in the real world we consultants need to be able to refer to whatever version the client is looking at
Thanks in advance

ITIL: No more inside out processes - PLEEZE! (BRM?)

ianclayton — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 01:32:36 +0000

Chaps - a few years back the BPM (business process management) folks - yes the gurus on process improvement and user interface design, realized all their efforts were 'inside-out', having slipped into the promiscuity of tech.

They have since reinvented themselves as 'customer relationship/experience management' aware folks, led in part by Lean/Six Sigma failures and the advent of the customer driven forces.

I for one am so hoping the new ITIL Edition 2011 (must be an acronym for that IE2011?) respects this and goes beyond the V2 verbiage found in the Business Perspective book, which read like an IT person fumbling around in the dark on this topic but... BRM never was much more than outbound product marketing (account management, CRM, hug a customer role).

The Service/Product Manager was inbound product management - facing development and persuading them to build what was wanted, not what they thought was needed!

ITIL's challenge remains to help explain how a 'process' such as BRM helps build and mature a meaningful Service Strategy by providing the customer with a voice and nailing a new set of ears onto IT. By establishing a customer centric approach that encourages service expectations to be negotiated out of the clash of customer requirements and provider capabilities.

Was that Monty Python who nailed heads to tables? Anyway, the voice of the customer + customer expectation + customer experience (including emotional stuff) + moments of truth is where the service economy is at today. ITIL needs to help IT get 'aligned' by truly giving us one ruddy 'process' that is actually outside-in or customer biased and centric.

Business Relationship Management

skeptic — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:58:15 +0000

BRM is different to Service Delivery. BRM is about account manager relationships: customer-level service as compared to the user-level service of Service Delivery . Think reps in cars not drivers in trucks.