An Examination of Current Trends

Transcription

1 Integrating IT. Delivering Value. W H I T E P A P E R : Leveraging Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL ) Best Practices to Attain Organizational Maturity An Examination of Current Trends Thomas D. Vetterani Vice President, Program Management & Service Quality CCSI Technology Solutions, A CompuCom Systems Company September 2007 Executive Summary In order to be competitive today, companies must actively listen to their customers and innovate quickly in response to new challenges, customer needs and business opportunities. Regardless of their industry, the enterprises that succeed today are the ones that have learned how to evolve continuously. They have mastered the art and science of change management, and embrace change fearlessly. They have learned to adapt. In short, these enterprises have attained a higher level of organizational maturity than their competitors by leveraging the best practices established by the Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

2 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S Executive Summary Introduction Challenges Associated with ITIL Initiatives Starting an ITIL Initiative Gaining Institutional Buy-in Evaluating the Success of an ITIL Initiative Conclusion About the Author About CCSI

3 Why Adopt ITIL? The adoption of ITIL enables organizations to put a serviceorientation spin on infrastructure management that improves IT alignment with core business processes and provides a supporting framework that enables them to attain the following objectives: Align IT services with the current and future priorities of the business Improve overall client satisfaction and service quality Establish predictable cost reductions by delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Introduction Information Technology Infrastructure Library Defined The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL ) is a widely accepted, cohesive set of IT best practices drawn from public and private sectors around the world. ITIL s model covers service support and delivery and is supported by a comprehensive qualifications scheme, accredited training organizations and implementation and assessment tools. ITIL provides best practices for IT service management and operations, including service desk, incident resolution, change management, capacity, service level and security management. ITIL is especially popular in Europe. ITIL is a framework outlining globally accepted best practices for IT Service Management. The concepts within ITIL support IT service providers in the planning of consistent, documented, and repeatable processes that improve service delivery to the business. ITIL s greatest strengths include the following: It s well established It s mature It s highly detailed It s focused on IT production and operational quality issues It combines readily with CMMI 3

4 Challenges Associated with ITIL Initiatives Highly dependent on interpretation, ITIL does not address the development of quality management systems, and it is not geared to software development. Additionally, many CIOs have historically struggled with understanding ITIL and how it may benefit their organizations. Typical reservations include Do we have to hire additional headcount to support these new processes?" and "Will we need to integrate all of the ITIL processes in order to gain efficiency and effectiveness? Nevertheless, ITIL has quickly become the de facto approach businesses have embraced for service management. The reality is that it's impractical, if not impossible, to implement ITIL in a wholesale fashion across all IT processes. In fact, most organizations integrate, at most, six of the 10 key processes into their operations. The 10 key ITIL process areas include the following: Incident Management Financial Management Problem Management Capacity Management Change Management Availability Management Release Management Service Level Management Configuration Management Continuity Management Management must decide exactly where it should begin, but where to start is not always clear. They ask their peers in other organizations about their experiences, join local interest groups to gather data, and so on. What they don t realize is that the ideal starting point should be determined based on a careful assessment of practices and a convincing analysis to quickly identify the greatest business gains. This can be accomplished by conducting a Business Services Management (BSM) Snapshot or an Infrastructure Maturity Assessment (IMAT) to gauge the infrastructure maturity of the current environment, and compare and contrast the same against key best practice areas. Currently, infrastructure maturity is all about processes, best practices, metrics and the goal of continuous improvement. According to Gartner, greater than 70 percent of a typical IT budget is invested annually on the infrastructure. Additionally, given the heightened security concerns today, more and more of these investments are made to augment support staff, training and higher levels of certifications. Combined with the typical investments in servers, operating systems, storage and networking, these investments add significant costs and complexity to the environment. Throw in the need to integrate and manage a new breed of mobile devices, as well as refresh desktop and laptop devices, and you wind up with an especially daunting array of challenges for the enterprise. (See Figure 1.) Only after the organization s maturity has been accurately assessed, is it possible to launch an ITIL initiative. 4

5 (Figure 1) CCSI s Integrated Infrastructure Management (IIM) Solution Starting an ITIL Initiative One of the critical first steps in any new IT initiative, or for that matter any new business initiative, is proper due diligence. You must examine the situation on the ground in the organization, because no two organizations are the same. As such, there is no single blueprint that you can purchase or follow that will lead to success. To begin with, you must identify and have a clear understanding of the following: What the IT organization looks like at a high level and What the business organization looks like from an IT perspective Armed with these two primary data points, you can then begin gathering other key pieces of information such as: What services are being offered? How mature are they? What are their strengths, weaknesses, etc.? What formal processes exist? 5

6 Assessing the Business Impact One of the biggest mistakes organizations make, whether internally or via consultants, is to create solutions that are looking for problems, rather than focusing on the problems first. The cardinal rule here is: Stay off solutions until you have a clear definition of the problem. To do so, you need to have a fundamental understanding of: Who are the stakeholders? Who is impacted by the problems? What are the productivity measures used to gauge success? What evidence is there that this is the case? As you know, ITIL describes what best practices are and not how to implement them. The how is left to the practitioner. Consequently, just because you understand the problem doesn t mean that your solution or process ties back to solving it. In order to do that, you need to first create a clear problem statement and validate it within the organization, define a set of requirements, then qualify the solution to ensure that it addresses the problem completely. With a complete understanding of the problem, you are now ready to begin defining a solution. Based on key issues stated in your problem description, you can begin to map out specific requirements for solutions. With an accurate set of requirements for a solution, you can better control resources and increase the speed and effectiveness in the deployment process. This will lead to accelerating the returns afforded by your new solution by eliminating many of the irrelevant activities and overhead that plague one-size-fits-all solutions. Moving from problem qualification to solution qualification requires an understanding of the scope and magnitude of the problem, and then how appropriate and elegant your solution is at solving it. As we know, ITIL describes best practices and process knowledge; what you need to do is marry process knowledge with situational and institutional knowledge to ensure a strong and viable solution. The next step is qualifying the solution does it solve the problem, and how do you know that it does? The key factor here is the solution s ability to address the real problem. Once you ve solved the problem, you ll need to create metrics to track your performance over time. You will also need to involve the key stakeholders to ensure that they buy into the solution and that it is aligned with key business drivers and objectives. Recommendations As with the adoption of any new quality or best practices framework, ITIL facilitates change affecting three core factors: people, processes and technology. How a business implements ITIL will naturally impact the end result. To increase the likelihood of success of your initiative, you need to do the following: Seek guidance and expertise from organizations that are highly skilled in implementing ITIL processes where needed especially in areas of organizational change leadership. Work with organizations that have demonstrated a strong proficiency in program and project management. 6

7 Secure the core ITIL implementation expertise needed to help accelerate your organization through the transformation process. This proficiency isn t typically resident within businesses today. Make communications a priority. You need to develop key messages to be delivered by credible members of your senior staff. Without them, you may be setting yourself up for failure. In identifying external resources to support your ITIL initiatives, you need to seek out organizations whose focus is on quality and gaining value from integrating IT infrastructure. As part of the selection process, you should ask the following key questions: How deep is their knowledge and experience base of ITIL processes? How much thinking and post implementation reflecting have they done from assessment to assessment? Does their approach reflect a strong emphasis on being there to learn and understand your problem, or are they simply showing off their knowledge without a clear sense of your issues? Have they put their ideas and knowledge to work for other clients? If so, with whom, and what were the results? And finally, do they have a formal implementation methodology, and are they adaptive and creative in their solution engineering? If you ve done your due diligence, interviews and background checks, making the partner decision should be fairly easy. Although businesses no longer have the luxury of engaging in lengthy partner evaluations, there is still no substitute for potential partner due diligence to ensure the right people are engaged. Adopting and implementing ITIL processes is not an end-all answer to IT service delivery problems. However, effective processes, combined with a fully integrated infrastructure management solution will ensure a much higher degree of success and will ultimately result in productive changes in both job responsibilities and daily activities for the majority of employees. Employees need and want to hear about change. Communication can come from two key sources: the CEO or the employees immediate supervisors. One thing to remember here is that the messages emanating from these two sources will be significantly different; the world view and the departmental view. In summary, a key contributor to ITIL transformation is a strong, visible, and effective partnership with a skilled and knowledge-rich service provider. ITIL integration is a journey over time, calling for substantially different objectives, organizational structures, roles/responsibilities and attitudes within the organization. It also requires an ongoing and structured training program a solutions-based approach that is able to encompass skills assessments, job roles, 7

8 the mapping of skills and roles to specific ITIL processes, the development of a sustainable training curriculum path at all levels, and key metrics to measure the business results. (Figure 2) Gaining Institutional Buy-in The benefits and advantages of ITIL and IT Service Management (ITSM) may be clearly obvious to those who have received an ITIL education, or experienced it first hand in practice. But to the uninitiated, driving ITIL adoption can be challenging, and demonstrating its benefits to key decision makers isn t always easy. So two fundamental questions arise at this juncture; 1) How do you get organizational buy-in to launch a change management implementation when not everyone is on the same page; and 2) How do you change the mindsets of those in opposition? One of the best ways to overcome these mindset issues is to conduct executive briefing sessions with the key stakeholders as part of a two-phased approach. These 2-3 hours sessions quickly explain the key benefits of the ITIL process models in a fast-paced, fun-filled way through crisis simulations, such as a Formula 1 race or the Apollo 13 lunar mission. Once the key stakeholders are on board, creating a structured training and orientation schedule for the other key departmental and IT staff will get everyone speaking the same language along with a good understanding of the ITIL approach, and a heightened level of enthusiasm and commitment. The final step should be to join one of the IT Service Management Forum s (itsmf) local interest groups in your area (visit for more details). These special interest groups provide local support to organizations and individuals on any ITIL-related topics or questions. From a training and orientation perspective, we strongly encourage that key senior management participate in the ITIL Foundations training in order to effectively champion their organizations change efforts. Participation from cross-functional IT groups is also key. This training drives home the advantages of process-based approaches and breaks down mindset issues and helps to eliminate a siloed mentality. The bottom line here is that the increasing need for corporate governance and regulatory compliance has brought focus and attention on the need to incorporate standards and proven processes into the enterprise. Positioning ITIL best practices as a logical extension of these initiatives which can support the foundations of the IT infrastructure will be received positively. The business impact of ITIL lies not only in its well-defined processes, but also in its approach for continuous improvement and strong business results benefits that matter most to the business. By providing a positive environment for education, training, and orientation, your success in gaining support and buy-in at all levels should be assured. (See Figure 2.) 8

9 Implementing a quality framework is a significant step in the right direction toward process improvement, but it only represents about 15-20% of the big picture in terms of IT performance management. Having the right service delivery model represents the remaining 80%, and organizations that do not address this area are leaving a lot of money and risk on the table. Thomas D. Vetterani Vice President, Program Management & Service Quality CCSI Technology Solutions, A CompuCom Systems Company Evaluating the Success of an ITIL Initiative Executives expecting immediate gratification are not likely to experience it with process improvement initiatives, as the results of such initiatives are not realized in the short term in fact, cost savings are not likely to begin to flow until months following the implementation. Furthermore, certain costs are likely to increase as much as % during the early stages of operational refinement efforts. Sources of these temporary spikes include project and change management initiatives, communications, process documentation, and time taken out of a resource s day-to-day activities. Over the course of about three years, an organization may experience as much as a 30% ROI from its refinement efforts. Maturation of the processes may take as long as three years. For most organizations, the most significant elements of maturity may be experienced in as little as six to nine months. These elements commonly include those which evolve from standardized process definitions. Achieving top-level, or Level 5, maturity may not be necessary and may even be cost-prohibitive. For many organizations, achieving the standardized process definitions characteristic of Level 3 maturity will be sufficient to meet the majority of organizational goals. IT leaders must assess the appropriate target level of maturity for their specific organizations. Identifying appropriate targets, goals, and levels of detail helps narrow the scope of the refinement effort so the organization implements and optimizes the right processes to meet those targets. CCSI provides its clients with access to a range of assessment tools and professionals as part of its Integrated Infrastructure Management (IIM) Solution that: Helps clients understand the current state and risks of their infrastructure maturity Develops a plan to manage the risks Provides ongoing assistance to drive continuous improvements and manage change For client-specific IT organizations who need to demonstrate the ability to deliver high-quality, well-controlled service, CCSI can assist them in driving toward an ISO quality certification or help prepare for compliance with external audits and regulatory requirements. Our relationship goes beyond managed services to provide ongoing expertise that helps you achieve ongoing service quality improvements. In addition, our support team can assist you in every aspect of your IT operations from product acquisition through end-of-life disposal all aimed at delivering strong business value. 9

10 Conclusion Adoption of ITIL will surely increase as enterprises struggle with the complexity of the infrastructure, its underlying architecture, limited IT budgets, and increasing demands from their clients and end-users. CCSI offers a complete range of assessment and consultative services for ITIL, Six Sigma, CobiT, and other quality frameworks and processes. Our personnel have more than 42,000 certifications to support our clientele regardless of scope. Our experience is based on real-world implementations across a broad range of clients in virtually all industry segments. CCSI s solutions encompass product procurement (hardware/software), consulting, outsourcing, support, service desk and network management solutions and training all focused on delivering the value of Infrastructure-as-a-Service SM (IaaS) and grounded in ITIL best practices. 10

11 About the Author Thomas D. Vetterani Vice President, Program Management & Service Quality CCSI Technology Solutions, a CompuCom Systems Company Tom Vetterani oversees CCSI Technology Solutions service excellence programs and internal quality initiatives. His team identifies process and improvement trends, enables technology adaptation to service delivery, and delivers best practice processes to strengthen CCSI s outsourcing solutions strategy. Mr. Vetterani also directs a team of process architects that is responsible for the transition and integration of new clients into the CCSI system. In addition, Mr. Vetterani is responsible for the melding of CCSI s Integrated Infrastructure Management (IIM) and ClientLink methodologies into the organization s service delivery operations. CCSI s IIM approach helps clients improve operational performance while reducing cost and increasing business value. CCSI s ClientLink methodology is a system of processes aligned across six phases (Assess, Plan, Design, Test, Implement, and Support) that contain proven documents, tools, and methods for project management, service delivery, and ongoing operations of a client services engagement. Bringing more than 25 years of demonstrated technology and management expertise, Mr. Vetterani joined CCSI in 1999 from former parent organization Safeguard Scientifics, where he provided business and technology consultancy and leadership to a number of Safeguard s portfolio companies. Prior to that, he was Chief Technical Officer and then President of Global Intellicom s AMCom and VirCom subsidiaries, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, as well as business development. Mr. Vetterani began his career at IBM and spent more than a dozen years in various executive positions at BASF in both the United States and Europe. 11

12 Integrating IT. Delivering Value. White Paper: The Evolution of the IT Help Desk to the Service Desk About CCSI CCSI is a leading IT outsourcing company providing infrastructure management services, application services, systems integration and consulting services, as well as the procurement and management of hardware and software. With 20 years of IT experience, CCSI employs more than 7,700 highly skilled associates who have earned a combined total of more than 42,000 industry certifications company-wide. As experts in workplace services, CCSI s unique Integrated Infrastructure Management TM (IIM) solution reduces costs, increases productivity and helps clients gain maximum value from information. CCSI Technology Solutions, Corp. CompuCom Systems, Inc Meadowvale Blvd. Mississauga, ON L5N 7Y Learn more about CCSI s broad range of services and how seamless integration can help you drive greater business value from your IT infrastructure. Visit us online at or call us at today. CWPITIL1107-0K 2007 CompuCom Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CompuCom is a registered trademark of CompuCom Systems, Inc. The names and logos of any companies or products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners in the United States, Canada, and/or other countries. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.