Social ITSM - a skeptical view

The hype around social media is reaching the usual almost religious fervour typical of our industry when faced with anything novel. We run shrieking into the street like kids chasing a noisy carnival parade. Social media is a distraction to our day job, just like Cloud. Social media is a communication channel, and not a very good one. Get over it.
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For ITSM in general, i.e. for IT Management in general, social media presents a few issues to be dealt with, and even fewer opportunities.

The issues?

Forums and streams allow users to communicate directly with each other and form communities outside our control. The Cluetrain Manifesto is quite right in saying this is something for user-relations functions of the organisation to take note of. They need to actively reach out to and participate in these communities. One more job but not a big one.

If you support an external community e.g. a vendor, this has more significance. But the Cluetrain Manifesto and others are hysterical in one regard: social media doesn't put users in control. It gives them more voice but that is not the same thing. Most services are hard to switch. Think Microsoft gives a toss how angry I am at them? User voice is over-rated as an influence on many companies, despite the lip service. And besides, for the majority of readers of this blog, the users work for the same company. Guess how much power the staff users have and how much extra voice social media gives them.

If you support fellow staff, then what they do in the webosphere is of low importance. Risk and compliance managers might want to set good policies and keep an eye on what staff do and say with a company hat on. Social media provides the opportunity for staff to be more stupid more quickly and more visibly, but the difference between that and traditional channels is quantitative not qualitative. I've spoken to the press on behalf of an employer before - tricky.

Even for the Service Desk, who spend their day working with communication channels, social media is not that significant, other than dealing with the "new" external communities. To keep users happy, service desks will have to adopt these new channels just like we did with email and with web forms. Some level of integration with the service desk tool might be useful here because most social media channels, e.g. Twitter, are even more unreliable than email: there is no permanent record, messages are on a notoriously insecure and flaky platform, and the interfaces are even more primitive for flagging important messages and sifting out dross. For those with external users, Service Desk will need to seek them out in their uncontrolled communities, ensure the support information they are exchanging is correct, feed them good info, offer help, and try to do some problem identification. As I said, one more job.

What are the exciting attributes of social media?

As Jim Finister said recently (in his social media blog channel)

there is a lot of talk about social media and ITSM, but not many ideas for how it can be used in reality, either now or in the future

I like Jim: in that very British way he can be relied upon not to get hysterical about any phenomenon. He participates actively in the thinking but keeps one foot firmly on the ground. Follow Jim.

Jim found the following applications of Social Media in ITSM

  • Find out what people are saying. If you already have a press clipping service, you should engage them or someone similar to monitor the social media "airwaves" and feed back what the zeitgeist is about you. There's also this thing called Google...
  • Try out ideas. This seems like a casual and unmanaged version of the focus group. Pay an expert and do it properly.
  • Communication. Social media adds another layer to your other networks and professional organisations. Yes it gives wider reach and more diversity. Tick.
  • Build relationships. Big time, this is a powerful benefit of social media that I can personally vouch for. I'd not be doing what I do today without social media. There is no doubt that social media makes the world smaller. Tick. But is it something new? No, just really really good networking. The itSMF didn't build ITIL using social media. They did it with airplanes and conferences and red wine.
  • Build user communities. Tick. Users can get together worldwide, and have been ever since the advent of bulletin boards twenty years ago. But this is not necessarily a positive. The data they generate is often crap; negative memes get whipped up beyond reason; and usually it is the vocal minorities that dominate not your true community.
  • Educate users by getting them to inform each other. This is very very dangerous. The web amply demonstrates how bad people are at being discriminating consumers of information. Controlling the quality of peer "education" is near impossible. Check out ITSM forums. Or ITSM blogs. Or ITSM Wikipedia entries and other "open content". Even on the internet with huge populations, collaborative knowledge is seldom good. Inside an organisation - or anywhere with a smaller population contributing - collaborative knowledge rapidly degenerates into rubbish. As Jim himself said "I've seen the state of far too many internal ITSM Wikis". Knowledge sharing is a culture problem not a technology one.
  • Gamification. This actually has nothing to do with social media. I recently interviewed a US company who are building gamification into their in-house service desk. It is a real stretch to call gamification "social media" just because they can see each other's scores and compete.

Nothing much new there and certainly nothing that is going to radically impact business models or core practices, despite what the fizzy analysts tell you. Social media will help us do some things better, especially getting chummy with users and helping them get together with each other and help each other. And it will help us do other things worse, mostly around maintaining quality and controlling risk.

Is social media going to change how you conduct any of the 27 ITIL processes? No. I agree with Stephen Mann: mobility and bring-your-own-device are two developments with far more impact on IT and ITSM than social media (though neither of them are game-changing either, just more challenging).

Of course the ITSM software vendors are leaping on the social media band wagon with alacrity. ITSM tools have very little to differentiate them these days; anything new gives a short-term edge to the first hype-merchant to implement it. Of course anyone who buys software on the basis of feature-function in this millennium gets what they deserve. Select tools on business value, vendor reliability, price, local expertise etc, not bells and whistles.

Sure it would be cool to send ticket status updates to Twitter. Sure you could carefully validate and quality-assure your level-0 support advice and then publish it on a wiki so the users can hack at it for themselves. Sure internal chatter-tools can improve inter-tech communications (it couldn't be much worse). But in the meantime we have request and incidents to process, problems to resolve, changes to implement, services to build... Back in the real ITSM world the impact of social media is like rain on the window.

Ho hum.


[Update: here are some additional points I missed that have come up in comments below:]
I'm all for adopting social media. Everyone is citing the same use cases. We all agree on what is going to happen. The only disagreement is around how important that is. As usual it is the IT skeptic's role to prick the hype bubble.

Most evolution does NOT involve mass extinctions. The internet didn't cause mass extinctions of businesses. The bursting of the internet hype bubble did.

Social media will change things. I don't like talk of "survive or perish", a "coming tidal wave" etc. and I certainly don't appreciate being treated as stupid because I choose not to panic my clients into precipitate actions (such as buying stuff they don't need or cant use yet)

It's not the technologies I don't believe in, it is the irrational exuberance surrounding them. You'd think we'd learn.

Here is a fine article on Getting to Social by Harold Jarche: "everyone is connected but few know what to do".

It reminded me that social change isn't about social technologies, even if the technologies themselves trigger the changes, as the internet did. We have had the internet for more than a decade and we are only now beginning to evolve social norms, laws, critical faculties etc to deal with it.

I commented on Harold's article

A fine model and a fine aspiration. How long will such behavioural change take? How long will it take the community to assimilate this new model of interaction? years? Decades? Generations?

I think you are right and as a result i think you prove that social technologies will change nothing in any useful timeframe.

An analogy

I've been talking to someone deeply knowledgeable about tool developments related to social media, and i came up with an analogy that I like: social media is causing changes to ITSM in the same way as the move from GUI clients to browser-based tools did.

i.e. none really.

When our ITSM tools changed to browser deployment it gave us opportunities to access them anywhere, to be mobile, and it simplified client deployment.

that was mildly interesting but it didn't change the way we do Request, Incident, Problem, Change, Config, SLM, any of the processes (except a few improvements to field support, and some mobility for working from home).

And power operators still don't want browser-based tools because they are clunky and slow compared to a local rich client. they reduce value.

I'm sure that "social" extensions to ITSM tool function will be mildy interesting too and make some enhancements to how we communicate. But they won't change the fundamentals and they won't be for everyone. remember "MyCMDB" from four years ago. Boy has that swept the industry and revolutionised support. Not. I repeat, the ITSM vendors are desperate to generate some life and some differentiation in a moribund product sector. They'll talk up anything right now to try to meet quotas. Don't fall for the hype.

One counter-example raised is the idea of "virtual CABs", but virtual CABs have been in ITIL for a long time, are already in some tools using email, and are well entrenched in some organisations. that's not a function of social media.

Then we come to the question of "empowered" or 'connected" users and how this is somehow going to transform business. the analogy still holds. I well recall all the bullsh1t around how the internet was going to transform business and the apocalyptic predictions for those who didn't drop everything and embrace the "digital economy". It nearly collapsed the world economy.

The fact is that the internet changed little about how business is conducted (except in selected industries) and changed next to nothing about how ITSM is conducted, the topic of this post.

We've had digitally "connected users" since the first bulletin boards and chat rooms in the 1990s. We've had militant user groups since long before that, for centuries. The internet didn't fundamentally change how we relate to customers and users, certainly not in an ITSM context, and social media won't either. Some things improve, some get worse, life goes on.

i think the embrace of new technologies as some sort of messianic saviour of consumers/users/customers reflects people's own personal powerlessness and frustration as individual consumers. that powerlessness is also not something new, it has been with us for centuries. "You can have any colour so long as it's black". Social media isn't going to help. it's just a new hammer to bang on the corporate doors with.

the relationship between enterprise customers and suppliers is entirely different, has never had the same powerlessness. Social media won't change anything there either for ITSM. It'll introduce new channels and value chains like the browser/internet did and social media may even disrupt some industries like the internet did, but that's not the point of this post. Social ITSM is nothing much.



See also:
User self-help - a skeptical view
Transformational technologies are a small view
Analysts create markets so that they can feed off them. Vendors too.
Talk of IT innovation is the last gasp of the IT cowboys
Technology does not fix process
"People change slowly, so don't expect technology to alter the way business is run."

Comments

A Contrarian View: The Right Social Media Offers ITSM Huge Value

ITSkeptic - this is a VERY interesting topic, and reading both the blog post itself and the wide ranging commentary shows that there is no clear quorum of opinion regarding what Social Media means, how or whether value can be returned from its use or, what threats it offers to the business of IT Service Management.

Now, I must disclose that I represent the vested interest of an ITSM software vendor view here, so turn your bs filters on or moderate this reply out if you like.

By way of introduction, myself and my business partner: Phil Tee, were the cofounders of Micromuse (IBM Tivoli Netcool) and then subsequently Riversoft. We were also instrumental in the success of Remedy and Patrol outside of the US (before BMC acquired them). Without trying to sound too arrogant, having been involved in IT Service Management since the late 1980’s, we have been through many eons of service delivery infrastructure, so believe that we have a reasonable understanding of the issues and the subject at hand.

Our view is that where ITSM is concerned, Social media should not be seen as a distraction to our day job. On the contrary, Social Media offers significant value opportunities to those companies who deploy it effectively.

Social Media is the perfect vehicle for ITSM. It was made for it. It enables collaboration, compliance, communication, categorization and, containment.

Pre- Cloud services, Virtualisation, Distributed Caching, On-Demand Storage and Networking, combined with resilient compute and networking hardware (i.e. Client-Server networking), when a Fault occurred, the Fault caused Impact.

Who needed Social networking then? No one. Root-Cause was relatively easy to deduce and the impacted were similarly easy to identify. At least when people called the helpdesk, the helpdesk would know that operations are onto the Fault.

We call that “Singular Service Management processes”. Fault management technology was designed to isolate the Single Root-Cause and Incident management technology was designed to govern the process of resolution of that corresponding Single Trouble Ticket.

Today though, more often than not, a Single Fault does not lead to Business Impact. Resilient architectures and equipment mean that our infrastructures are tolerant of faults. Our problems today occur when multiple Faults, not necessarily related to each other, coincide. Then the Business is impacted but there is no Singular Root-Cause. Just like infrastructures have been through a fundamental transformation since the turn of the Century, we believe that IT Service Management technologies need a fundamental transformation too; transitioning from Singular to a “Situational” Service Management processes and technology.

Social Media offers one of the ‘Poles’ of Situational Service Management. We all know the idiom “A problem shared is a problem halved”, well Social Media enables a real-life ITSM opportunity to share problems and reduce their impact on our resources and bottom line business performance. The ability to use Social Media to corral the appropriate stakeholders and their customers around Situations is a game changer for ITSM.

The problem today for most organizations caught in the hype cycle of Social Media is two-fold.
1. They have no coherent strategy. No governance, and no alignment methods.
2. Individuals, lines of business, departments of the company and their customers are using ad hoc, disconnected, and diverse Public social media services when and how they feel like it.

Consequently person-to-person interaction offers high value but, the value retained by the business is low. Information is everywhere, scattered across the ether, available to those who search for it, but not indexable or relationally contained to make it useful to the appropriate stakeholders.

Why do we do ITSM?
To provide a consistent quality of service to our customers and reduce the cost and impact of any inevitable faults. (Remember, perfectionists are always disappointed with life!).

A little Sojourn: I used to live in Australia. Power outages were frequent in our suburb. I would call the Power Company and they would say “There is an XXX, we have resources on it and power will be restored in t Hours”. I now live in the UK. I have had frequent broadband and mobile phone issues. I call my provider[s] and hear “Really, oh, we’ll have to look into that”.

Knowing that my power was to be out for ‘t’ hours was most disappointing, but the fact that (a) they knew about it when I called and (b) they had a timescale for resolution and shared that with me gave me comfort and satisfaction. I felt they were on their game. Hearing “Oh, we don’t know about that” gives me no confidence at all and leaves me frustrated and sometimes angry.

That’s how our customers in ITSM feel. Knowing that we don’t know is not a confidence builder and does not reinforce a perception of quality of service.

It is a fact that in this most modern of worlds, Service Providers are monitoring the social networks frequented by their customers to identify the existence and location of customer impact (through the monitoring of the chatter) because their Singular Service Management tools are unable to identify service impacting Situations.

What does this really mean? It means that our helpdesk is unable to relate customer calls / tickets to events and our L0 and L1 operations staff (eyes on glass or eyes on trouble tickets) are unaware of the impact on business services and customers.

It means that continuing to manage using Singular processes (and technology) leads to at least two adverse behaviours:
1. Our customers may vent their unhappiness in Public social media forums sharing our dark dirty secrets with the world
2. Our level one staff are forced to work in an informationally impeded way, unaware that the trouble ticket they are actioning may be related to other trouble tickets being actioned by other staff, unaware of the impact upon their customers, and forced to escalate more often to Level 2 and 3 experts because they cannot resolve the issue (which is actually a caused by a set of coincident faults).

At Moogsoft, we believe that a fundamentally re-thought-out approach to Event, Incident and Problem Management is needed. An approach that is informationally inclusive of all stakeholders: IT, LoBs, end-users and suppliers.

In this Situationally enabled approach to ITSM, Social Media is key.

Is Social Media a flash in the pan?
Let’s face it, social media is here to stay and is not going to go away, it is only going to get more entrenched into our lifestyles. So we can fight it or embrace it. Fighting it means leaving our staff and customers to utilize the public services that exist and suffer the consequences. Embracing it means finding ways to integrate ‘Gated Social Media’ into our processes to increase the quality of our services.

A social media strategy should not be centered around “what is being discussed about us in the public domain”, it should be about engendering discussion about the issue, its causal elements, impact and our approach that is inclusive of all of stakeholders, but contained and quarantined within our own domain borders.

ITSM strategies must encompass the effective exploitation of Social Media.
- You cannot simply bolt on Social Media to legacy technologies and Singular processes and expect to add value.
- Social Media should not be seen as a public tool or voyeuristic tool. Rather, Social Media should be utilized as a service enabling us to work together and to corral our customers into discussion within our domain. We should be opening our kimono to our customers, not firewalling them from the people who can resolve their problems by placing the helpdesk in between them and us.

ITSM is a perfect place for a gated social domain. ITSM is:
1. Bounded by IT and anything that touches IT
2. Involves interaction and collaboration
3. Intrinsically about Content Sharing

In the past we have put up artificial barriers between technology topics (silos), the Help Desk and our customers. In turn, our Suppliers have done the same to us. Social Media driven ITSM enabled through a Situational Event, Incident and Problem Management service should offer interaction and collaboration across:
- IT Resource to Machine
- IT Resource to IT Resource
- IT Resource to IT Supplier
- IT Resource to IT Customer
- IT Customer to IT Customer

Social Media, built on a Situational foundation offers IT Service Management practitioners the opportunity to reduce the impact of incidents by isolating and resolving them more quickly but more importantly, offering informationally inclusive communication to our customers which empirical evidence shows increases the perception of the quality of service delivered.

Practically though, the application of a domain bordered Social Media strategy enables the capture of knowledge as an asset to the business regardless of whether our service is in-sourced, out-sourced or a hybrid of both. Having that Knowledge Asset within our business means we can recycle that asset.

I will not attempt to use this reply and the ITSkeptic’s blog to tell you about our proposition. Find our blog for that if you are interested.

Using duct tape and bubblegum to affix social media to traditional processes is inefficient and fundamentally flawed, whether anarchy reigns or a strategic plan is being followed.

Social media technologies and services must be tightly coupled with to Situation Service Management processes to release their potential energy.

I just passionately believe that “we” have been looking at Social Media from the wrong perspective when it comes to ITSM. With Situational foundations, we can reduce our operational costs and increase the perceived quality of our services while, capturing and recycling all stakeholder knowledge.

Thanks for reading this tome!

That incessant bleeping in the background is my BS Filter going

That incessant bleeping in the background is my BS Filter going off.

"Social Media offers significant value opportunities to those companies who deploy it effectively". Quite true, as with any technology. To deploy effectively means not rushing out and buying a cool product, but working on culture and roles and practices and procedures, and then identifying the spots where improved technology will help effectiveness and efficiency.
"Social Media is the perfect vehicle for ITSM." No it's not. Nothing is perfect. Social media has issues, risks, and faults, like anything else.
"It enables collaboration, compliance, communication, categorization and, containment." No it doesn't. It might improve them or provide options for them, but it doesn't enable them - at least not exclusively: Post-it Notes and carrier pigeons enable them too.
"Fault management technology was designed to isolate the Single Root-Cause" Wrong. Your whole argument here is based on the premise that "traditional" RCA looked for a singular root case. Any half-way-sophisticated RCA understands there are multiple causes to any fault in any environment. it was never singular and it hasn't changed. there is no "fundamental transformation" here. Vendors need to invent these to compel buyers to change.

"The ability to use Social Media to corral the appropriate stakeholders and their customers around Situations is a game changer for ITSM." No t's not. This post went to great lengths to explain why the impact is interesting but not revolutuionary. "Game changer" is hype. Nothing you go on to describe can't be effected with email, and that's how it is done today. I'm not disputing that social media could be used to do it better but that is incremental improvement, not a change of game.

"You cannot simply bolt on Social Media to legacy technologies and Singular processes and expect to add value" All vendors of new tools say that to attempt to eliminate competitors. i don't believe you and you offer no justification for the statement.

Service Desks were "put in the way" for very good reasons, of both efficiency and effectiveness, based on expereince. Revolutionary change to abandon them may be exciting but like most revolutions it is misguided and destructive. You'll need much more compelling arguments and extensive evidence to convince me and I suspect many others. i find arguments to the effect that an entire industry has been stupid for decades to be patronising and arrogant. It happens, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Finally i think your concept of "Situational Service Management" is related to Adaptive Case Management, so in the sense that we may want to get away from structured process in incident resolution, I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think the idea is unproven in IT. Equally that shift is all about changing people's mindsets, skills and ways of working. the idea that that shift can be driven by acquiring a new tool is not only laughable but dangerous, and i think vendors are irresponsible in pushing such approaches.

Social change isn't about social technologies

Here is a fine article on Getting to Social by Harold Jarche: "everyone is connected but few know what to do".

It reminded me that social change isn't about social technologies, even if the technologies themselves trigger the changes, as the internet did. We have had the internet for more than a decade and we are only now beginning to evolve social norms, laws, critical faculties etc to deal with it.

I commented on Harold's article

A fine model and a fine aspiration. How long will such behavioural change take? How long will it take the community to assimilate this new model of interaction? years? Decades? Generations?

I think you are right and as a result i think you prove that social technologies will change nothing in any useful timeframe.

Everyone is connected but few know what to do

ITSkeptic - totally agree - and this is where the effective use of recent algorithm innovations in Natural Language Processing and Grouping analytics play their part. What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the existence of an Incident and the offer that Situationally related information to the appropriate resources. Those that know what to do, do. Those that rely on those who know what to do, view.

As the Harold Jarche points out, they're all connected anyway so remove the artificial barriers of help desk and resource silos by informationally and socially enabling the engagement proactive of those with the problems and those with the solutions.

Brave new world anyone?

tooth fairies

...or brave new hype. My BS Filter just overheated.

"What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the existence of an Incident ". What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the root cause(s) of faults? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the links between CIs and services? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the bugs in software? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the illness in a patient? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the weather forecast?

it would indeed be a wonderful world, one we have pursued many times in many contacts. meanwhile, back in this world we need to stop believing in automated reasoning and tooth fairies.

hype around social media

If there isn't "hype around social media", how come this post has had three or four times the traffic that a post on "the future of IT management" got? (hard to be more exact because this one has been up longer)

[ITSMWPROW guys note: i talked about "hype around social media" not "hype around social ITSM"]

next step

Here's my next step in this debate: I want to look at why these technologies look transformational to some and ho-hum to others like me. (BTW I'm not alone. Lots of people telling me privately how they concur. Sure could use some support around here). Aale says it is because I have pickled brains and blinkers on. Chris says I'm a capitalistic flip-flopper in the pay of APMG (which is pretty rich from someone suddenly in the pay of an ITSM mega-vendor). I like to think there are less personal reasons.

That's a divergent topic so i have started a new thread.

The abhorrent nature of blog comments

"Chris says I'm a capitalistic flip-flopper in the pay of APMG (which is pretty rich from someone suddenly in the pay of an ITSM mega-vendor). I like to think there are less personal reasons."

and several other gems are the reasons I don't do blog comments. They can be read to many ways by folks and not all as academic as you give them credit for.

FlipFlopper, some days you are for IP protect, others you are not. Some days you are for gadgets, other days you hate them.
APMG, didn't want anything to do with you, and now see the error of their ways.
Capitalist, you need to make a living for your family.

How you can take my comments and twist them into such an ugly sentence about someone who genuinely cares and is your biggest advocate, is my friend abhorrent.

Which is why I asked for the discuss on camera in the first place. Blog comments are not the place to do this, you just proved that with your misunderstanding of ARoos, myself, James finister and countless others.

Camera's allow people to hear tone, and see facial gestures. So swallow your ego and talk to the only person on the planet who can explain all that you seek to debate with enough love to make sure you and the viewers come away with something that was a labor of love.

sorry

Yeah it was cheap shot, sorry. But I don't think I'm misunderstanding, I'm disagreeing. Debate is better conducted in writing because we can usually stick to the actual issues. We have a written record to go back to to show for example that i dont flipflop on IP protection. I have changed my mind on issues, and telegraphed it when I do, but not that one as far as I recall. Let me go back and see.

Twitter is unsuitable for debate - it is too cramped.
Blogs are unsuitable for debate apparently.
Yes that does only leave us with recorded speech I guess. Social media is pretty limited huh?
I stand by the integrity and semi-permanence of written debate, and with the exception of one cheap shot written late at night in fatigue and haste for which I apologise, I've stuck to the issues. I fail to see why you can't address them here too as James and Aale and others have.

I don't think spoken debate is better. Politicians prove daily that one can say very little and sound convincing. Tempers flare and topics wander. Important points get forgotten. Transcripts are often unreadable and useless. Nobody gets the time to ponder new ideas and decided what they really think. It's jousting: all very entertaining but less constructive . I'm sorry you disagree, but we're not going to engage in verbal debate until I feel I've stopped learning and evolving my ideas thanks to the excellent contributions of others here.

my understanding of good

my understanding of good broad debate - à la real politics - is that it is an amalgam of every available means. Picking one and then facing off sounds more like duelling than debate to me. Meanwhile the roles of social media in service management and the need for better service management in social media (see facebook and unexpected changes) seems eminently worth discussion/debate/opinion and even prejudice in all the media we use in our business. Can we get on with that topic?

A good summary of discussion

Something pertinent to this discussion http://xkcd.com/386/

Maybe there is room for a

Maybe there is room for a contribution from someone else shamelessly in the pay of a mega-vendor? I hope that I know the protagonists too well to see this as anything other than a minor playground spat. And like most playground spats it seems to me that we are all on the same side where it really matters.

Most every strenuous debate thrives because there is copious truth on both sides. My background usually drives me to take a big view of service management (I started working in service management long before i got at all involved with IT). Social media will make a big change - of course it will change the way people do things and it creates possibilities, both for good and less good. most of those have been touched on - like fast access to information and reporting of solutions through to massive time wasting with peer to peer playing and reinvention of a known solution.

But this is all changes in 'how' not really so much in 'what'. IT changed service management. Social media is changing IT service management. If we build on the evolutionary concepts discussed above it seems to me there is something different about the last 20-50 years. We now live our everyday lives in worlds that our parents didn't build - that is new in evolutionary terms, it is changing so fast that the kids coming up have a really different perspective. And social media is a key part of that and so we have to accept it will be a key part of the working world. It is an exciting challenge to help us carry on with new ideas. I don't see it as changing our goals - just our means.

How we use the mechanics of social media - taking advantage of the extra speed, accuracy and more esoteric new opportunities it offers - is exciting and our job. "If it's better, do it" - surely a good mantra for successful service management?

In a bigger sense we have done that with IT over the last 50 years - it is very hard to remember or imagine (depending on your age) what life was actually like without social media in its broadest sense. talk to some kids - it is hard for them to realise we weren't walking round in the 70s grumbling about 'why haven't they invented the cell phone yet'. The key aspect of evolution is that it doesn't know where it is going - if it did it would be design. We have had years of service evolution, and we are now preaching service design (and about time too). Much of the social media debate will hinge on how much more effective making use of what happens to have been invented is done by design - or whether we let it evolve. And as James points out, most of evolution is actually about the non-survival of the non-fittest - we tend to focus on the success stories but -honestly - they are in the minority. So my vote is for design and let's encourage people to see how social media - and anything else - can help and plan for it.

i'm all for social media

Well said Ivor.
I'm all for adopting social media. Everyone is citing the same use cases. We all agree on what is going to happen. The only disagreement is around how important that is. As usual it is the IT skeptic's role to prick the hype bubble.

Most evolution does NOT involve mass extinctions. The internet didn't cause mass extinctions of businesses. The bursting of the internet hype bubble did.

Social media will change things. I don't like talk of "survive or perish", a "coming tidal wave" etc. and I certainly don't appreciate being treated as stupid because I choose not to panic my clients into precipitate actions (such as buying stuff they don't need or cant use yet)

It's not the technologies I don't believe in, it is the irrational exuberance surrounding them. You'd think we'd learn.

PS I have nothing against working for vendors. Did it myself for way too long. I just resent being castigated for taking a few scheckels from APMG for what I thought was a useful exercise.

Sorry, trying to joke

Rob

Nothing personal meant. I'm sure I have been more marinated and blinkered with ITIL than you (V2 service manager, V3 expert, ashamed to admit). But it is refreshing to lose the blinkers and see things differently.

Aale

thick skin

Well there's a backhanded apology :) Its alright mate I have a thick skin. Recall I spent 16 years in Australia.

Don't bring a bird to a zebra fight.

Love your stuff. I own more Skeptic paraphernalia than anyone. Let’s be clear about that.
You waited close to four years to throw this red herring on social ITSM out on the blog.
You waited until Forrester had blogs talking about how to follow or not to follow.
You waited until every podcast was talking about it.
You waited after every ITSM vendor has had it built in to their tools.
You waited until a complete software company ITSmartDesk was created around this very notion.
You waited until after you changed your position on your following (many vs. few)
AND
You have very kindly declined a debate and inferred that it would be E! News.
Stating that you want people to have BLOG comments so they can evaluate is fair, but to deny anyone in this, now, aged topic the chance to hear you can I discuss it, as we did in Ottawa, last year, in front of 400 people, is an absolute cop out.
It it your job to be skeptical, on IT. You focus a lot on ITSM but you occasionally actually branch out into IT.
That being said, a benefit to only following a limited few trusted sources is the ability to watch and look for patterns, and hands down, you are what we would call here in the US, a “Flip Flopper”
I remember a time when the cronies in Castle ITIL wouldn’t acknowledge your existence, now you have an APMG blessed white paper.
You are the most UP FRONT ethical blogger in our space, so to pull this sensational stunt, and then ignore folks the opportunity to hear you debate your point on camera is down right, not skeptical of you.
I promised myself I would not let you head trip me into your nest of hyperbole, but you won, here I am.
Hands down you agree with every single point James Finister has made, but you keep this cycle of attention going? Why?
As I said on the Forrester blog,
“CUSTOMER FEEDBACK and continuous improvement are CORNER STONES ITSM and SOCIAL MEDIA”
So let’s sweeten the deal, 1,000K US dollars for 30 minutes on camera.
I am willing to pay this out of MY POCKET, because I think people deserve to have a clear picture and a concise dialog presented to them.
A panel a Pink Elephant, A panel in Ottawa, video interviews and panels with Pink sponsors and speakers?
Surely you can find some way to be as capitalistic on this topic as you do with the others mentioned, and besides, it’s me, how much could go wrong?

p.s. If not you can officially give yourself a chokey the chimp, heck I have the buttons.

SPOC is history

Social media has already changed the way support works. It is only the ITIL marinated brains of the consultants who need to change ;)

There is no SPOC, people rely on peer to peer support. Social media makes it much easier and it definitely is not the same as the old User Groups where 20% of the members met once in a year.

ITSMers should open their eyes and see what is happening. Lose the ITIL eyepads!

Aale

what does it look like?

Cool, so what does the request or incident management process look like now?

Forget those too

I don't us the word "incident" as it has lost its meaning between versions and editions. Majority of people do not know which version they are using.

More than half of all IT problems in most companies never come to their Service Desk and there is no process for asking you neighbor or friend.

This is how I see it. Customers contact service to buy things, sometimes they give feedback. They should not have problems but of course it happens sometimes. Problems should be rare. The Service Desk is there to help people to get best value out of the tools available.

Here are some examples where we are heading:
James and I used the vanishing garages as an analogy for vanishing old style service desks in our SD2 presentation. I used to drive a Lexus. They gave me a number if anything happened to the car while I was driving. This included not just car breaking down but puncture, locking myself out i.e. really anything and their promise was to fix the situation, including hotel/car etc. I had the car for three years and never called. It was nice to have the number though.

There are no garages on the roads, today's service station sells food, gas is sold on cold stations. Cars used to have bad quality and be easy to fix, not any more.

So that does not have anything to do with IT? My wife used to have a laptop pc. She had about two incidents per month for me to fix. Then I bought an iPad 18 months ago. Still waiting for that 1st incident.

Lately my best source for support in IT problems is the social media.

Aale

meanwhile on my planet...

If I went in to any one of my clients and said relax you wont have incidents any more so web can cdisband the service desk and incident management I know what would happen to me.
My wife is dropping her car down to the local mechanic tomorrow for a service. Honda don't make house calls.

Oh no

Change does not happen so suddenly. You cannot take away old models when you add a new one. Big story today on a local newspaper about a successful bank (Nordea) which has cut its traditional service to a minimum with the result that people who want to visit the branch office have to queue for hours. The correct way to do business with them is either via internet and/or by appointment. It works fine for me. If they were still relying to the old model, I would have changed bank.

Here is a comment from a Service Desk that has also changed the way how they work: " Previously the entire service desk manned the phones, but now the majority are dedicated to resolution and increasingly they are getting time to become involved in projects that add more value to the business. Again, XXX got an unexpected benefit here and said that their staff are far more effective and multi-faceted, because they now have time to work with other IT groups and share knowledge."

And also Lexus had to be taken for a service every once in a while. They did reserve a parking place for me with my name on it. But all that delightful service did not make a loyal Lexus customer. Rear wheel drive was not a good idea in Southern Finland which has suddenly become snow country (43 cm and snowing) and their 4WD options were too expensive and big.

Aale

Process vs. tool

Are we not just arguing about tools here and ignoring the process?

The policy, principle and process are all correct - people need to talk to people. IT needs to talk to the business, users need to talk to each other and can save IT some time if they do.

All that's happened is that the tools have evolved and IT needs to flex a little to accept that. The underlying concept that communication is good has not changed.

debate here

Chris, you don't need to descend to an ad hominem attack.

I'm quite happy to discuss this issue in any forum, just not now. Right now the argument is still evolving. I don't think it will evolve any further in a 30 minute verbal tennis match. Once the discussion has settled, I'll write a white paper. Then I'm happy to discuss the content on any platform you want. But I'll walk if you resort to personal attacks.

In the meantime, I haven't declined a debate at all. I prefer to debate here where people can analyse the real substance of the arguments. So far you haven't addressed any of them.

What I can see until now is

What I can see until now is that the arguments that each part is saying does not show numbers, statistics or measurable real facts to confirm that Social Media is a distraction to our day job.

Over an empirical view around the world it is not true but.... this does not mean that we can confirm so.

What I can do tell you is that I'm seeing two of the best industry guys sharing your ideas but not your knowledge; I miss that specially from you two you now?? I hope that objectivity remains part of yourself and you do not overcome by natural temptations of the Industry.

I think I'll have to send you an invitation and bring you both to Mexico, we'll drink a couple of shots of Tequilas and then we are going to write a paper the 3 of us ;)

Cheers!!!!

What figures?

But Mauricio, what figures would help in a case like this? Number of help desks already using social media? Number of vendors planning to add SocMed functionality? Number of incidents currently reported using social media? Amount of user time wasted trying to find an answer from Google before ringing the desk? How many of those figures would be reliable or help us decide where we will be in a year's time? I suspect we could all sit around a table with the same figures today and see them in the light of own views. And there is a potential problem for people deciding whether or not they should react to the possible hype. If we can't decide what the objective warning signs are how can we react until it is too late?

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

There are a lot of figures

There are a lot of figures that can help us to understand this subject (just in a general way); In fact you already mentioned most of them. The main problem arrives when we try to generalize the findings when we only have few data.

Every person on this blog has his/her own point of view, so the 'sit around a table with the same figures' it’s really important as well as been objective and concluding that 'Under this figures..... considering this view.... the conclusion is......'

So this will be a personal appreciation or a particular point of view, but not a fact.

About reliability - these findings will be not reliable until we conduct a formal and extensive study about this subject using scientific methods. This is sad because 99% of the papers I have read about this are NOT RELIABLE, and even less reliable the papers from ITSM companies, APMG, ITSMf but this is the best we have and we have to learn to be more CAUTIOUS IN MAKING OUR CONCLUSSIONS WE MUST HAVE TO BE A MORE RESPONSIBLE PERSONS and do not let the passion or a company that is paying us cloud our minds.

It'll take time, there will be casualties, but it is coming

I reckon there's going to be a glut of process re-engineering projects driven by the 'need' to integrate social media into ITSM, and a load of flashy, buzz-word-drunk 'social IT consultants' are going to make a lot of money wrecking people's processes in the name of progress. But...there is value to be had where social is used to augment processes by implementing the right social principles into good existing processes.

The innovators will need to take the inevitable hit before attitudes are reset and the industry matures to absorb social from a more informed perspective. The pitfalls will become clear, paving the way for the early adopters to start getting it right and then it will take off. I'm thinking 3 to 5 years before the early majority start paying real attention.

I think you're missing the point...

Hi Rob,

I love the fact that there is so much debate around Social IT at the moment - it confirms what I've been thinking for some time now, that Social Media is going to have a huge impact on ITSM (and will polarise the community in the process).

I think this article focuses on a few negative aspects of what can be construed as Social IT, and misses the point of how Social Media can transform ITSM.

Social IT isn't just about creating incident records from Twitter streams - it's a fundamental change to how IT works and communicates both internally and externally with its customers. It enables a much more collaborative way of working between the two communities, breaking down the 'us vs. them' barrier that has arisen over many years.

Social Media has transformed how people communicate, and this change is filtering in to the workplace, influencing how people work together. This means not only our customers but the people who work in IT are communicating through Social Media more and more. As a result, there is a massive opportunity to change how we work to take advantage of this preference in communication which offers benefits such as speed, flexibility, transparency, thought leadership, inclusivity and more...

Note - this doesn't mean we should ditch all other communication channels, but we should take this one seriously and look to exploit it for our benefit.

Will Social IT will change ITSM processes? Absolutely yes!

The support processes around Incident Management and Service Requests will become more collaborative and open to the user community (check out the post I wrote on the Service Desk 360 site here: http://www.servicedesk360.com/featured-articles/goodbye-service-desk-hello-to-the-collaborative-it-support-future/) for starters.

The openness and transparency that Social Media brings with it will also no doubt alter how we manage other processes too; communications around Release and Change Management will become easier, and the Change authorisation process will become much more streamlined.

As William said in his comment - we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg with Social IT. We should really start to understand what's beneath the water rather than ignoring it and pretending it's not going to sink our Titanic!

Cheers,

Maff

PS re. your comment "The fact is that the internet changed little about how business is conducted..." - that was a joke, right? :)

Geographies

I'm thinking of starting every reply I make in this thread with the following statement:

"For goodness sake Rob, I'm agreeing with you that the impact of SocMed on ITSM is currently being over-hyped and vendors are over-selling their SocMed features,but..."

I did wonder if Rob's "Internet changed little" comment was tongue in cheek, or whether it was an example of what I meant about evolution and revolution being hard to tell apart sometimes. It only seems five minutes since I was struggling to convince "the business" that their e-commerce site needed to be on the business critical list. We have clients who have used mobile ITSM solutions to reduce resolution times by 70%. And yes I can hear Chokey choking from here.

As an aside on the impact of web functionality of ITSM tools I think we are seeing the longterm impact of that in terms of the percentage of calls being handled via self service in one form or another. and certainly in my last SM role it made life an awful lot easier that pretty much everybody could read and access records, especially within support teams.

The question I really wanted to raise in this post, though, goes back to the different perceptions Rob and I have of what is going on in companies - starting with the fact that I disagree with Rob that our lists agree. Some users owning a PC is NOT the same phenomena as users being sat at their desk with an iphone, android phone, or a fondleslab that they are using in parallel to, and in preference to, their office desktop in an always connected mode.

It has struck me many times over the last eighteen months that perceptions of ITSM, outsourcing and, yes, social media differ considerably across geographies, often for historic reasons. The pattern of mobile phone usage in the UK has been very distinct from that in the USA, for instance, until quite recently. In India we are seeing mobile phones used for micro banking. These differences may well filter through to different approaches to SocMed integration, as well as generational ones - the step-daughter sleeps with the iPhone on her pillow, bless.

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

perspective

yes I know you're agreeing Jim :)

I'll talk about internet change in a later comment when i have time. Gotta go to work.

but the geographic thing: no. This isn't about some provincial colonial unaware of what's happening in the big smoke. The world is smaller than that (thanks in large part to the internet).

If my perspective differs it is more around the 5% Club - I don't deal with a small number of enormous mega-corporations.

We were both children of the sixties so don't come that "old folk don't understand" crap with me either :)

I have worked out where a big disconnect in these comments comes from: people, process, technology. We'll talk about that when i get home tonight.

Social media is like browser interfaces

I've been talking to someone deeply knowledgeable about tool developments related to social media, and i came up with an analogy that I like: social media is causing changes to ITSM in the same way as the move from GUI clients to browser-based tools did.

i.e. none really.

When our ITSM tools changed to browser deployment it gave us opportunities to access them anywhere, to be mobile, and it simplified client deployment.

that was mildly interesting but it didn't change the way we do Request, Incident, Problem, Change, Config, SLM, any of the processes (except a few improvements to field support, and some mobility for working from home).

And power operators still don't want browser-based tools because they are clunky and slow compared to a local rich client. they reduce value.

I'm sure that "social" extensions to ITSM tool function will be mildy interesting too and make some enhancements to how we communicate. But they won't change the fundamentals and they won't be for everyone. remember "MyCMDB" from four years ago. Boy has that swept the industry and revolutionised support. Not. I repeat, the ITSM vendors are desperate to generate some life and some differentiation in a moribund product sector. They'll talk up anything right now to try to meet quotas. Don't fall for the hype.

One counter-example raised is the idea of "virtual CABs", but virtual CABs have been in ITIL for a long time, are already in some tools using email, and are well entrenched in some organisations. that's not a function of social media.

Then we come to the question of "empowered" or 'connected" users and how this is somehow going to transform business. the analogy still holds. I well recall all the bullsh1t around how the internet was going to transform business and the apocalyptic predictions for those who didn't drop everything and embrace the "digital economy". It nearly collapsed the world economy.

The fact is that the internet changed little about how business is conducted (except in selected industries) and changed next to nothing about how ITSM is conducted, the topic of this post.

We've had digitally "connected users" since the first bulletin boards and chat rooms in the 1990s. We've had militant user groups since long before that, for centuries. The internet didn't fundamentally change how we relate to customers and users, certainly not in an ITSM context, and social media won't either. Some things improve, some get worse, life goes on.

i think the embrace of new technologies as some sort of messianic saviour of consumers/users/customers reflects people's own personal powerlessness and frustration as individual consumers. that powerlessness is also not something new, it has been with us for centuries. "You can have any colour so long as it's black". Social media isn't going to help. it's just a new hammer to bang on the corporate doors with.

the relationship between enterprise customers and suppliers is entirely different, has never had the same powerlessness. Social media won't change anything there either for ITSM. It'll introduce new channels and value chains like the browser/internet did and social media may even disrupt some industries like the internet did, but that's not the point of this post. Social ITSM is nothing much.

Hi, Skeptic What about

Hi, Skeptic

What about "internal" social media services? Stuff like Yammer?
In this case issue with getting dirty clothes out of the house decreases, and it goes more towards knowledge sharing within corporate community.
Of course this does not resolve "collaborative knowledge rapidly degenerates into rubbish", and that's more human nature issue. But still
Is there a place for such "social" and what main issues can you highlight in that case?

Atelophobia

As I said "internal chatter-tools can improve inter-tech communications". And wikis can be useful for making notes. Every tool ever invented has a place. So what? Big deal.

There's the same culling algorithm I apply to CMDB:
Do we actually have a business need, problem or risk?
if so, will the proposed solution actually produce a result that resolves it?
If so, do the benefits exceed the cost?
If so, is this the best use of these scarce funds?

Most knowledge tools are like CMDB: tech wet dreams to appease a desire for anal perfectionism. "Atelophobia", apparently. or ETF: Excessive Technical Fastidiousness.

I repeat: knowledge sharing is a culture problem not a technical one. Tools don't help until you have solved the problem. Tools enhance a working solution, they don't create one.

Cultural shift

I think SocMed is changing the way the knowledge culture is working. Gen Y is in the building and theyre more comfortable with SocMed than email. They're creating knowledge without really realising it. The problem I'm seeing is that the knowledge is distributed outside the enterprise, at the moment. A lot of my brain cycles are being taken up with finding ways of centralising knowledge that aren't so manual as cut and paste.
For now, search is on track to being the best knowledge tool we'll have.

knowledgebird.com

Real problems require real solutions

Here is how I see the the challenge of "SocialIT"

Full disclosure - I have spent the last year consulting for an Enterprise Social Networking platform and driving integration's with ITSM and other business solution vendors as partners

After 100+ implementations of enterprise social platforms and over 300 project specific uses here are some findings

The point features like live feed communications and Twitter to ticket feed features that have been added to ITSM tools are just the tip of the iceberg. It does not make them "Social". It makes them a solution with a different feature.

I ask vendors to show proof that the features they have added are really delivering value to the business or line of business solution.

If 2 people use twitter to vent on an issue in an organization of 5000 people...Is it worth investing in? Not in my books...

If your employees have a low adoption rate and the content they add to the live feed is garbage and just useless brain farts...Is it worth investing in? Nope

If features are added that allow for control, transparency, agility and speed in a method that is familiar to end users and these features have quantifiable benefits...I then say, they are worth the investment.

Don't get caught up in the hype over the term Social...examine the benefits of the whole solution and make informed decisions on the value the solution brings to the business.

Just my 2 cents

Right of Reply

Since I'm much quoted above I suppose I should make some sort of response.

And actually that's what a lot of this is about - deciding what the appropriate response is to social media in the user and customer community.

Are we seeing users turn to social media for peer to peer support? Yes
Are we seeing stories about IT impact on users amplified by the use of social media? Yes
Are we using social media within IT departments to enhance processes? Yes
Are we seeing users in organisatiuons who "only use email at work"? Yes

It isn't about creating solutions in search of a problem.

Whether we like it or not there is a generation of workers coming along for whom the combination of cloud, mobile devices and social media is the norm. I stress that it is the combination which is the new norm, I don't think we can pull out anyone element in isolation because that is not how they are being used.

The net result, left unchecked, is a return to the chaos of the early days of the PC in business. I remember the challenge as an auditor of discovering a major element of a public sector organisation's catering finances, a notoriously fraud prone operation, was being run on a manager's home PC. I think we are all well aware of the dangers inherent in peer to peer education. Yet, like many, including Rob Stroud, I'm not convinced that the solution this time around demands a return to the strict lock down policy as much as it does the application of some lateral thinking.

Is the result going to be a revolution driven by social media? I mean a revolution in IT support, obviously we've already had REAL revolutions driven by social media.

I suspect so, but many IT revolutions creep up on us slowly but hidden in plain sight, and depend on a lot of factors coming together.

Time to give Skep my own scores:

"Is social media going to change how you conduct any of the 27 ITIL processes? No." Disgaree. Actually I think yes in some cases. Nice waterfall based workflows can be torn asunder by the disruptive nature of social media interactions. Being positive I've already seen social media tools lead to real improvements in major incident management

"Of course the ITSM software vendors are leaping on the social media ....bells and whistles....not business value"Agree, for now. OK, I've moved Rob's words around, but only so it makes it easier for me to say that I agree with the underlying point. Twitter integration at the level I've seen so far has limited value. How about Siri integration - that would be cool - but still not what I have in mind as a vision of the ITSM tool of the future.

"Knowledge sharing is a culture problem not a technology one" Agree, and by now you savvy readers will have realised I'm looking at all this from our usual clichéd ITSM P.P.T. perspective, and have shamelessly cherry picked Rob's points to fit.

See you on twitter @jimbofin

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

evolution not revolution

"There is a generation of workers coming along for whom the combination of cloud, mobile devices and social media is the norm". True. I addressed that. it is something we need to respond to (and I've never suggested a lockdown). Is it revolutionising anything ITSM? Not that I can see. Not for years to come, which in any other industry would be like saying not for lifetimes to come.

is it improving anything ITSM? Sure. I also addressed that. Faster looser communications are a boon in situations where we care more about speed than risk, such as Major Incident.

Are our core processes moving away due to social media like they did with your example of home PCs? No. Mobility and personal devices are doing that but not social media.

Are our core ITSM processes being transformed? No. I disagree with Jim. they're not. As a Grand Old Man of ITIL, Jim, you know full well that ITIL is not a blueprint or holy writ, it is a comparative framework to be adapted to the situation. If the communication channels and speed and location change, adapt the ITIL procedures. Do the concepts change? Not one whit.

is the conjunction of cloud, mobility and media a "perfect storm" transforming IT? No I don't think so. That's another post - those who have seen my Cowboys Acrobats and Rainmakers presentation know it. The broader situation than just social media is more interesting and requires more complex response and some real evolution (not revolution) to grow into it. But social media alone is a minor issue for ITSM.

Sure we need someone in each IT organisation thinking about social media and dealing with it. Is social media life or death for IT? Nope. It is a fizzing around the edges of what we in IT are there to do: create and run IT services, protect assets and control risk, create and facilitate business value.

The vendors and pundits can beat the drum all they want. Social ITSM is ho hum. When is this industry finally going to mature enough that we don't get suckered by these fads time and again?

Look where evolution has got us

Aren't you actually agreeing with quite a bit of my response?

Over the long term, and with the benefit of hindsight the impact of evolution pretty much looks like revolution.

I did make the point that in my view we need to consider the combined impact of the changes we are currently seeing, I was trying to avoid placing social media as either the prime catalyst or the prime solution. I would agree it is actually one of the less important individual components of the perfect storm. In fact another component I'll throw in is the rise of 3rd party management of multiple suppliers on a Service Integration model. Still, I think the discernible step change will come well before you think it will, and that perfect storm is a lot closer than you do, and so do many of our clients. And yes, I know a lot my clients fall into the 5% club.

Do I genuinely believe social media could lead to a radical change in how we manage processes? Yes I do, though perhaps not as much as Aale does. Yes some of those key underlining ITIL concepts will remain, but other will be revealed to be out dated conventions.

What I believe is dangerous is to take the current state of ITSM SocMed for anything other than the early starting point it is. The future doesn't look like Twitter or Facebook, or Google+. They are tomorrow's yesterday. If I knew what it will look like I'd have "futurologist" in my job title and get to go to a lot more conferences.

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

mishmash

No, evolution doesn't look like revolution after a while. A ramp isn't a step. Revolution is "punctuated equilibria". Revolution is bloody heads in a basket. Revolution is destructive. Evolution is growth.

So there is a change coming but nobody can see what it is yet? And as a business I'm supposed to respond to a statement like that by doing precisely what? I'll tell you what: nothing.

When there is a concrete evolutionary change going on that can be tangibly measured and practically dealt with, then we can have a serious business conversation about social media and cloud and mobile and personal computing. Or when a revolutionary step change is looming and there is some sort of consensus about what it is going to look like, then we can start walking through scenarios to plan for it. In the meantime the only "predictions" we have are a weird mishmash of the Matrix, apocalyptic evangelism, and Engadget. This makes for fun conference presentations but it is not useful in any practical way.

Can we please all calm down and get back to the serious business of running organisations' information systems for them? I know it is not as exciting as iPads implanted in your nose or pills to resolve incidents, but we are not paid to be excited, we're paid to deliver results.

Real issues today:

  • Some users have their own PCs. We need to deal with the increased risks (no new ones).
  • Mobility is useful for a small percentage of staff: sales, field support. We should give them mobile versions of stuff.
  • Connectivity takes users outside the firewall. The security wonks need to rethink their perimeter-based defense concepts.
  • For consumer service desks (a minority), some of their users talk to each other on the internet. the SDs don't need to engage them but it is nice if they do and sometimes it is worth the effort.
  • In the unlikely event that you get a decent knowledge sharing culture and practices going, there are a few new tools to assist
  • IT staff can now broadcast messages to each other in a manner faster and more intrusive than email. We can take advantage of that to speed up communications if we act quickly before those channels become as clogged as email
  • Business units find it easier to engage 3rd party providers directly. This is a governance problem, not an IT one
  • Outsourcing commodity components of IT is easier. Perhaps we should do more of it... maybe

...um that's about it.

So the interfaces at work are different to in personal computing? BFD. Email works. Show me the money before I care.

Evolution isn't smooth

Evolution isn't bloody and full of extinctions? Tell that one to the dinosaurs. For that matter I thought punctuated equilibria was first developed as an evolutionary theory ?

There is a difference between saying that there is a change coming with no evidence of any change at all, and saying there is an unknown coming, the first signs of which can be detected. Now whether doing nothing is a good in either of those cases is a debatable point.

To quote Lord Winston "This atavistic instinct is part of human evolution; it almost certainly aided the survival of our species. On the savannah, the best chance of a largely naked early human avoiding being eaten would have to been to remain completely still" on the other hand sometimes you just need to run faster than the other person, not the lion. Regardless of that there are many organisations that will have plenty of time to react, and will do so by following the herd. But here is the news from the other side of the world - mobile, cloud and BYOD are all happening, as is SocMed enabled peer to peer support. What we don't yet know is what the actual consequences will be, or what the successful coping strategies will be. One thing I can tell you from my experience in a retained organisation managing a private cloud solution a few years ago is that things do change. Needless to say "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" but I'll say it anyway before you do.

In the real world I am seeing, not as the norm, but often enough to be significant:

- A large proportion of users with very capable smartphones on their desks, companies expecting/encouraging BYOD. Those smartphones and BYOD are not standardised platforms, but users are demanding standardised experiences.
-Home and mobile working still isn't the norm, but is significant, and those workers doing it tend to be perceived as a business priority because of their place in the sales cycle, their seniority or their role in collecting business critical data.
- Firewall issues worry me when I remember my techie days, but I see more concern about where in the world data might end up on some cloud services
- Aale has some interesting figures about how much peer to peer support is going on, regardless of whether it is internet enabled. I think you are kidding yourself if you think it is a minority
- Anything promising effective knowledge management grabs business attention, but whether tool enabled or not still fails to actually deliver for many in the mainstream
- The use of multiple channels for communication - though often traditional ones like "getting off your seat and walking down to see what's happening on the floor below" are unaccountably underused.
- Business units find it easier to engage INDIVIDUAL 3rd party providers directly, but struggle to understand that they rely on an eco system of IT suppliers
- The vast majority of commodity IT is already outsourced in the UK

Now is that tall grass over there moving because there is a gentle breeze, or is there something there?

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

agrees exactly

Your list agrees exactly with my list.

Just one point: By "minority" I mean that a minority of organisations:
- have external uncontrolled users (i.e. consumers) mutually supporting each other to a significant extent
- and give a toss that this is happening
- and are being impacted by it enough to cost justify addressing it
BTW users have always been connected. As a vendor I worked with user groups long before social media came along

If the grass is moving, i intend keeping still and not wasting my employer's money until i can see what's moving it.

SD is a minority

When people have IT problems, they will try to solve them first alone (probably Googling), then with a colleague, then with someone else. If all fails, they may contact the SD. The SD "market share" is less than 20% of all attempts. This Dilbert gives you one explanation http://www.dilbert.com/2012-01-22/.

common

That's common. But we all know a successful service desk is possible. It's our job as consultants to help make it happen.

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