Welcome back! It’s time again for another blog entry here at Real World ITIL. However, we’re currently occupied with finishing the first Real World ITIL White Paper, which we expect will be released very soon. So this time around, we’ll share the paper’s draft Abstract below, in hopes that you’ll stay tuned for the finished product.

First, though, we’d like to recognize the following readers, who have provided excellent feedback to two of our recent articles. So, THANK YOU to John Worthington, Bernardo Melendez, Dr. ITIL, Ric Phillips and Brian Worsdall for your comments, discussion, and responses. I?m not ignoring you, folks — I’ll respond to each of you as soon as I can get the paper done, so kindly bear with me until then.

(By the way, Brian writes a blog about IT Compliance that’s drawing a lot of interest - we invite you to check it out!)

Here’s the Abstract. We invite your feedback on it by hitting the Comment link, below. See you back here soon!

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Will ITIL Cost Me My Job? ITIL’s Impact on Infrastructure Headcount?

Intended audience: Senior managers of IT infrastructure groups.

Abstract: If the delivery of IT services to customers were like a manufacturing assembly line, many IT managers would find it easy to understand how process improvements help increase productivity. We would naturally understand that if we define our manufacturing processes well, automate them to the maximum extent possible, and constantly improve our performance, then our manufactured products will be higher in quality, less expensive to produce, and our customers will be more satisfied. Moreover, we might expect to become able to produce more output using either the same or fewer workers.

However, the same IT managers are frequently skeptical of whether workflow process improvements would provide any value in their own departments. They often have difficulty understanding precisely which aspect of departmental performance the improvements would truly affect and whether the effort (and expense) of making improvements can be justified. This occurs despite the fact that IT executives are frequently challenged by corporate management to show that their departments are staffed appropriately for the expected workload yet find themselves lacking the tools necessary to make objective justifications in this regard.

Therefore, the intent of this white paper is to help senior IT managers understand how process improvements may affect overall staffing levels. To accomplish this goal, we first present a simple economic model for determining whether an IT infrastructure group is over- or understaffed. We then illustrate how ITIL-based process improvements may act to increase the number of labor hours available by reducing the effort required to satisfy demands for service. Any hours saved can then either be applied to either increase service levels or else shrink the workforce depending on the organization?s needs. We shall see in the end that this technique is an essential first step in realizing the many benefits that process improvements can bring to an IT infrastructure organization.

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