I had a frustrating conversation with one client I’ve worked with quite a bit in the past, who wants to have us back to help them build a Service Catalog, including Service Level Agreements, OLA’s, and a bunch of other related things. One of those things is a web-based IT request portal for security and application access that automates the multiple approvals, keeps everything auditable so the compliance folks are happy and reduces everyone’s workload.

As you might guess, this is not a small task, so our friend is playing the budget game. Since it’s December now, they don’t know how much money they’ll get for 2007, nor do they know which competing projects will get delayed, or reduced, or enlarged or accelerated.

I asked him, “wait a minute, you’re the guys that are planning all this stuff, and you don’t know which ones are going to get done until that month rolls around?” Well… yes, and here’s why - their money for big projects comes from the business, so IT is the “doers” but they are not the “controllers.”

If the business decides that project C is suddenly more important than project A, then IT has to re-shuffle dollars and resources.

“So Scott,” he said, “it’s not us that’s out of control - the business can’t stick to their own plans and budgets.”

Hmmmm… and if we can’t count on our masters - the business - to stick to plans and timelines… how do we expect to force them to live with SLA’s that we come up with, that are (too often) based on nothing more solid than “we’ve always done it that way.”

So at the heart of it, where ITIL and especially Service Level Management (and the related topic of The Business Perspective) are taking us, is a real heart-to-heart sit down talk with our bosses to say, “hey chief, we know we can do a better job, but we’re gonna need you to help us out by defining some agreements and sticking to them.”

If the idea of saying that to your CEO or other senior VP’s makes you nervous… it should.

Also, check out our new White Paper on “How To Develop a Service Catalog”.

Till next time, keep up the good work.

Scott Braden