The more diverse the customer, user and infrastructure base is, and the more often it gets refreshed (i.e. the more dynamic the environment), the less tangible and immediate benefits you will see.

If your existing processes and tools allow the service desk/incident management to operate at 70-75% First Contact Resolution, the very best process improvement will not yield anything better than an additional 5% (20% or so are H/W failures that require touch labor)

If one tries to justify Problem Management through ROI, one would base the analysis on the elimination of similar incidents but that may not translate in savings at the Service Desk for unsatisfied demand will make up for the reduction in calls.

If we will use/reuse the house remodeling analogy, consider that most of the time you do not need to gut the house, and you definitely do not want to knock the load bearing walls.

Here you emphasize on establishing a good CMDB and taking a step-by-step approach to “Bell the ITIL Cat”! What would you do in a situation where the organization wants to focus on Change Management first without a good CMDB in place? Do you see a preferred natural sequence for implementing the various disciplines of ITIL framework?

Also your emphasis on Technology Mindset is spot on. Many of the implementation does not seem to focus a lot on Organizational Readiness and preparing the user community for the change in their Change Management policies. This I think is critical to any successful change implementation. Your thoughts on this? Assuming you concur, what org. readiness and user preparation mechanisms and strategies you think will give the best results?

I wrote something about consultants chasing quick wins http://thinkingproblemmanagement.blogspot.com/2008/01/service-management-quick-wins-are.html

I think consultants chasing revenue with glue, duct tape and string are a major reason why ITIL projects struggle. Also, I suppose customers have created a problem over 20 years and expect it to be solved in 20 days.