process

Just enough documentation of practices

Let the people doing the work design the work. Stop patronising knowledge work professionals.

Challenge the level of ceremony in process

Reduce the level of process and hand it to the people.

I've been involved in enough ITIL adoption efforts to know they don't all work. Mostly that is because they are done to people, not by people; and they micro manage people as clerical workers instead of empowering them as knowledge workers.

ITIL processes aren't processes

Stuart Rance called out ITIL's dirty secret: they're not really processes. Stuart talks about how some things that ITIL calls a process are not a process.

Get out of the way

A basic principle of DevOps is for "Necessary Non-Value Work" to get out of the way of Value Work.
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In the Require-to-Deploy value stream, this NNVW includes

  • security
  • architecture

Challenging the operational rites

Over time a strange set of rites and rituals grow up around the Require-to-Deploy value stream*. Some of them are there to protect the quality of the output but others have ceased to add value.
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An ITIL process is not a unit of work

I want to call out a key issue I see over and over again in organisations' planning of their ITSM improvement (known as Continual Service Improvement or CSI - nothing to do with police forensics). An ITIL process is not a unit of work.

Why process maturity is a useless metric for ITSM improvement

Process/practice maturity is a metric that should be of little interest when deciding where to focus your improvement efforts, or for measuring the results of those efforts. And CMM process management maturity is even more useless than execution maturity.

Risk and value should be the primary metrics for planning and assessing your improvement.

The Standard+Case approach: applying Case Management to ITSM

Image ©canstockphoto.comHere is an exciting new approach to categorising and resolving any sort of activity "tickets", such as requests (including incidents) on a service desk, problems, or changes. It is called Standard+Case until somebody comes up with a better name. I know there is so much to read these days, but if you have anything to do with service support or change management, read this. It'll change your year.

Standard+Case is a synthesis of our conventional "Standard" process-centric approach to responding, with Case management, a discipline well-known in some other industry sectors such as health, social work, law and policing.

S+C addresses criticisms of approaches like ITIL for being too process-centric and not allowing customers and knowledge workers to be empowered. S+C does not seek to replace or change ITIL or other theory: it expands and clarifies that theory to provide a more complete description of managing responses.

It provides a good skills path for service desk analysts that fits well with gamification. And Standard+Case is applicable to Problem Management and Change Management (and Event Management...) as well as Service Desk activities. S+C applies to anything that requires a human response: there's either a standard response or there isn't.

For more information about Standard + Case, see the Basic Service Management website.

ITIL v3 Process Maps

Oh Great ITIL Wizard,

What do you think of these ITIL process maps. Are they worth it? It looks to me just something else to update, however, if put to actual and continual use, they could be a tremendous benefit. Especially for a company that is just starting to implement ITIL best practices...

Much appreciated,

cmajewsk

CMM is back to front

I think that CMM is back to front.

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