There is a good deal of interest and discussion today about how to effectively build a business case for implementing ITIL. Without one, how can you convince executive management that ITIL-based initiatives are worth the investment? Questions we hear often include:

• What is the ROI for ITIL?
• Is there an ROI model, method or tool you can use to prove ITIL?s value?
• Where do you find hard-dollar savings in an ITIL implementation?
• What sort of business objectives should you set for an ITIL implementation?
• What sorts of savings are organizations realizing that can be directly attributed to ITIL?

All good questions that should be answered before moving forward with an ITIL program.

Taking this thinking a step further and starting to dissect where an ROI might be, you are then left struggling with things like: How do we define an ‘inefficient’ process and what is its cost? How do we translate expected work-hour savings into dollar savings? How do things like improving the quality of service or improving compliance translate into ROI?

Continue Reading…

Hello Fellow Bloggers-

I have had the opportunity to speak two times in the last 3 weeks–once in a webinar on the Business Value of IT Change Management, and how it Leverages ITIL Success, and another leading a session at HP Software Forum 2006 in Miami–on Getting the Business Value from an Enterprise Change Management Program.

But I didn’t want to talk about those specifically other than to bring up two questions I asked which may be of interest to you. Here is the first question.

1) Do you have a requirement to lower the cost of IT Operations and invest the savings in driving more strategic projects?

Continue Reading…

Hello all,

This presentation presents a top-down review of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) best practices, discusses how these practices are implemented via the Change Management process and goes on to examine how Change Management translates into business value.

The presentation culminates in a case study review of Change Management recommendations that were implemented and integrated using IT Service Management software. I hope you find it informative.

Click here to download the presentation

Don

Technorati Tags: itil information technology infrastructure library it infrastructure library it governance itsm itsmf itsm consulting

—–

In a previous post (”The Chicken or the Egg“), I described some of the requirements for selecting technology to support the management of an accurate CMDB. Technology is required to support the volume of data that IT needs to manage. However, technology without data management disciplines will result in data ?drift? and loss of control. The credibility of the CMDB will be in jeopardy, and all the hard work you did to convince your organization of the value of the CMDB will be questioned. So managing the data accuracy of the CMDB is a prerequisite to achieving the benefits you so clearly defined when you started.

Continue Reading…

A. Often, it’s because we don’t know what else to do.

It’s an old joke in the IT world; being technologists, we tend to seek a technical solution to every business problem. And business today demands that we solve the problem (implement the solution) as fast as possible.
Here’s the problem with a technology driven approach. Executives want to deliver business value to provide return on investment, strengthen the business, improve agility and comply with regulations. These objectives typically are not addressed through a technology driven approach.

For example, if your management is supporting the purchase of an IT asset discovery technology, what should you really be looking for? What questions should you be asking, and what plans should you be making?

-Ask “why?” before we ask “what?” or “how?” Sometimes the answer is that “we don’t know why we’re doing this.” which leads to the next point:

Continue Reading…

We are always anxious to see the newest technology or the next great wiz-bang management theory or practice. Yet many times we really need to go back to basic, proven business practices. Many of our clients look at IT Service Management as a set of processes that must be accomplished one bite at a time. While there is some truth to this philosophy, they cannot be addressed in a vacuum.

Dr. W. Edward Deming, the father of quality, established the Deming Circle of Quality. One of Deming?s pillars in ‘The Deming System of Profound Knowledge’ is to “Appreciate the System”. Many times we are guilty of overlooking this very important point. When we take the time to appreciate the system, we will be able to discover the ‘root cause’ more quickly. A case in point is ITIL’s Support Processes. In itSMF’s Foundations of IT Service Management Based on ITIL, Page 87, Figure 7.1, Deming’s Circle of Quality is leveraged in viewing the relationship of the core ITIL processes.

Continue Reading…

I’ll be presenting two tracks at the IT Financial Management Association’s IT Asset Management conference in Orlando, June 12-16.

Yep, I somehow signed myself up for TWO tracks:

Monday June 12:
IT Asset Management Disciplines and Techniques Seminar (4 hours)

Designing and Implementing Asset Management Policies and Procedures. Enterprise ITAM can yield enormous benefits - both direct financial benefits and indirect efficiency improvements throughout all areas of IT operations. But many organizations fail to realize the full gains because of challenges with user adoption of new policies and procedures that can actually be used to deliver real benefits. In this session you?ll review case studies of implementations, dissect the good, bad and ugly, and learn lessons for your own use.

So You Have a Discovery Tool…What Next?

Continue Reading…

Benchmarking…. a frequent theme in client questions: “How do we compare to the other IT organizations you’ve seen? What metrics are available so we can grade ourselves?”

One of the great things about my job is getting to learn about many different organizations, in pretty thorough detail. Typically after only a few days onsite, I can tell you more about an IT organization’s ‘actual’ operating processes than most everyone who works in the organization full time.

That’s not bragging; it’s simply a matter of concentrated focus, combined with some useful tools, and experience in knowing who to talk to, what questions to ask, what sort of evidence is important, etc.

Continue Reading…