The Americas Regional priSM Institute Awards First …...The Fellow credential, the priSM...

Fall, 2011

In This Issue

Take it from the Top

President's Corner

The Americas Regional priSM

Institute Awards First Two Fellow

Credentials

Managing Your CPD Requirement -

Part 2

Features: Knowledge Management

Building Wisdom in Your Organization

Point / Counterpoint: Knowledge

Management

A 4-Letter Acronym Sending CIOs

Running Scared - BYOD

Improving Customer

Service....through the SKMS

Book Review: Information Lifecycle

Support – Wisdom, knowledge,

information and data management

(WKIDM)

And Another Thing....

Books (and their authors!) at

Fusion11

Opinion: ABCs of ICT at Fusion11

2012 Editorial Calendar - Your

Chance to Make a Contribution

Newsletter Tools

Search Past Issues

Print-Friendly Article

Print-Friendly Issue

Managing Editor

Tess DePalma - Nemours

Contributing Editors

Carlos Casanova - K2 Solutions

Philip Hellerman - IBM

Doug Hymel - Maryville

Michael Yee - CoreLogic

8,000 Pairs of Eyes!

Your ad could be here! For more

information, please email

[email protected].


The Americas Regional priSM Institute Awards First Two Fellow

Credentials

During Fusion11, the President of the Global priSM Institute, Jay Stuart, and the Chair of the Americas Regional

priSM Institute, Cathy Kirch, awarded the first Fellow credentials for the Americas region to Alex Hernandez and

Doug Tedder.

Cathy Kirch (right) and Jay Stuart (left) present

Alex Hernandez with the priSM Fellow Credential.

Doug Tedder recieves the priSM Fellow Credential from

Cathy Kirch (left) and Jay Stuart (right).

The Fellow credential, the priSM Institute's highest level of honorary achievement, is given to those select

Distinguished Professional in Service Management (DPSM) credential holders who have made an outstanding

contribution to the advancement of the field of Service Management by formal contributions to one or more

Service Management-oriented publications, by leadership contribution, by industry expert status as recognized by

their peers, or by their overall contribution to Service Management's related industry standards. Nominations are

reviewed by a committee and selects receipients after a thorough review of the nominee's significant contributions

as a practitioner, educator, author, or advocate based on evidence of accomplishment, opinions of references,

service to other professional organizations, and years in the profession.

Previous Article Next Article

itSMF USA

1200 E. Route 66, Suite 202

Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]

“The Source for IT Service Management” is the bi-monthly newsletter of the IT Service Management Forum USA (itSMF USA). The Editors reserve the sole right to

accept, refuse or modify articles based on itSMF USA policies or other acceptability criteria.

The itSMF USA, its officers, directors, newsletter editors, and contributors offer for this publication no warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty

of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances shall the itSMF USA be liable for any special, direct or indirect, incidental or

consequential damages resulting from any actions taken or omissions made, due to reliance on any information from any source contained in, or linked to, this

newsletter.

Publication in The Source for IT Service Management does not constitute an endorsement of any product(s) or service(s) advertised herein by third parties. The

itSMF USA is not responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of any advertisement or article herein contained.

Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner



Credentials


Part 2




Management



Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




Newsletter Tools

Search Past Issues



Managing Editor


Contributing EditorsCarlos Casanova - K2 Solutions





Managing Your CPD Requirement - Part 2

Dr. Suzanne Van Hove and Patricia Page

Every priSM® credential holder must maintain their credential via ongoing professional

development – either through verifiable practitioner activities, professional contributions or

ongoing education via Service Management-based training. For some, this requirement has

been a roadblock for entering the priSM program; specifically their itSMF Chapter has infrequent

events or their location doesn’t allow consistent participation in professional Service

Management events. There is a solution! Have you heard about BrightTALK™?

The priSM scheme recognizes these common difficulties and is working with BrightTALK, the

online event specialists for professionals. BrightTALK has dedicated channels that cater to the

Service Management professional: the IT Service Management channel (with an upcoming, at

the time of writing this article, all-day summit entitled “Service Catalog Summit”) and the itSMF

USA Channel. There are over 350 45-minute presentations that can be viewed when it suits your

schedule. You can look out for the banner on the ITSM channels to confirm the webinar is CPD

approved.




[email protected].

Other ITSM summits that have occurred include:

* Problem & Incident Management Summit

* ITIL Version 3 Summit

* Managing Cloud Services Summit

Review all on-demand ITSM events here:

http://www.brighttalk.com/r/GbP

These live and on-demand webinars are each worth one CPD and each is easily verifiable. All

you need to do is capture each webinar – either live or on-demand – by title and date. The

Professional Development committees will verify attendance when you submit your CPD

activities via statistics held by BrightTALK.

BrightTALK requires a one-time online registration with an email address. The webinars are

available at no cost to the viewer.

For another method of gaining CPDs, as an expert you can present on BrightTALK for even more

CPDs! BrightTALK offers regular summits and would be able to review your presentation if you

would like to speak. Do you have Service Management topic that you are passionate about and

a vendor-neutral presentation? Contact Suzanne Van Hove ([email protected]) for

more information on priSM and Patricia Page ([email protected]) to be considered as a

presenter for an upcoming BrightTALK™ webinar.

About the Author

Suzanne Van Hove, Ed.D, FSM, FISM is the CEO and founder of SED-IT. She may be reached

at [email protected]

Managing Your CPD Requirement ©2011 The priSM Institute


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]

“The Source for IT Service Management” is the bi-monthly newsletter of the IT Service Management Forum USA (itSMF USA). The Editors

reserve the sole right to accept, refuse or modify articles based on itSMF USA policies or other acceptability criteria.

The itSMF USA, its officers, directors, newsletter editors, and contributors offer for this publication no warranties, express or implied, including any

implied warranty of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances shall the itSMF USA be liable for any special,

direct or indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any actions taken or omissions made, due to reliance on any information

from any source contained in, or linked to, this newsletter.

Publication in The Source for IT Service Management does not constitute an endorsement of any product(s) or service(s) advertised herein by

third parties. The itSMF USA is not responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of any advertisement or article herein contained.

Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner



Credentials


Part 2




Management



Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




Newsletter Tools

Search Past Issues



Managing Editor


Contributing Editors

Carlos Casanova - K2 Solutions







[email protected].



Phyllis Drucker, Linium

Knowledge Management, considered a critical area by most, has been around and in use for a long time., however, its

concept and available tools have matured considerably since its early days. In its original context Knowledge Management

comprised building solutions the Service Desk could use to speed up incident resolution. Tools played prominently, but

many of them were not yet very sophisticated and were overly time-intensive to implement, particularly if the organization

was looking to build knowledge around proprietary systems. Self-service became one of its goals, as solutions to easy

problems were published to allow customers (users) to fix issues on their own, or log a ticket if the solution failed to provide

resolution.

Knowledge Management had some very simple processes to follow in this context:

Support teams write a knowledge article with step-by-step instructions to resolve an issue

A more technical team reviews the article for accuracy and provides corrections

The article is cleaned up by Knowledge Administrators and published

The article is reviewed periodically for accuracy, updated or retired as needed.

Many organizations have been able to demonstrate significant savings from implementing tools that provide these services

and the industry continued to mature, all the way through the release of ITIL v3 and its subsequent refresh. As a result,

implementing a self-service knowledge base is only the tip of the Knowledge Management iceberg. The purpose of

Knowledge Management according to ITIL is far broader than many organizations’ implementation of their self-help

knowledge bases. It concerns a broad and holistic view of knowledge. It is defined in Service Transition to reflect the need

to transition knowledge about new and changed services appropriately in order to ensure the effective and efficient

operation of these services once they go live. Looking at the design of the Service Knowledge Management System

(SKMS) provides a doorway into understanding Knowledge Management as it is viewed by ITIL.

Value for Effort

The value of Knowledge Management in the context of providing solutions for Tier I support and users to implement quickly

and effectively is not in question here. This has been and remains a key, critical component of Knowledge Management.

A simple look at the math involved demonstrates why:

Based on the cost of a call to a Tier I Technician of $25 at a Service

Desk that takes 500 calls per day, a 10% reduction in calls saves

$325,000 per year.

With this in mind, it makes sense that most organizations would start here. But once an effective self-service and Tier I

Knowledge Base is implemented, there is still additional value that can be brought to an organization by looking at what’s

next in this area.

Knowledge Management as a Practice

Knowledge Management as a practice unrelated to IT began in earnest in the early 1990’s and is so important to

businesses seeking to retain the competitive advantage that there are now university Master’s Degree programs that teach

the concepts and methods related to managing knowledge. The reason is very simple: as organizations grow and continue

to become more technical, they rely on the knowledge of individual workers, who could leave the organization at any time

and as a result place the organization at risk. As such, there are several forms of knowledge that organizations are seeking

to capture:

Documentation and operational procedures

Historical information that contributes to day to day operations

Information that supports strategy

The practice of Knowledge Management also looks at the needs to extract personal information so that it can be used at the

team level and then further extracting team knowledge so it may be used at the department and enterprise level while

documenting all of it to ensure future availability.

Looking to ITIL and the framework surrounding Knowledge Management, there are several main activities to managing

knowledge and maturing the organization’s Knowledge Management practice:

Knowledge Strategy

Setting a strategy is the first step to moving beyond the simple knowledge base. It becomes necessary since it is

critical to defining a single set of standards for managing knowledge. Some things to consider when developing the

strategy include:

Defining the business requirements: why are you collecting and to what use will it be put

Defining the types of knowledge that will be collected to support these requirements

Documentation

Policies & Procedures

Operating Instructions

Historical and trend information documenting experiences

Information concerning proposed changes

Defining standards for the tools that will be used to house this knowledge

Data bases and knowledge bases

Web tools that provide search capabilities, like wiki’s, SharePoint, blog

Level of involvement of forums, chat rooms, social media style tools

Defining the refresh/review periods, methods of keeping the knowledge current

Defining who should be able to access different types of knowledge

Identifying the critical success factors for the effort and defining the measurements that will be needed to

ensure success

Documenting the strategy

Knowledge strategy is the most critical component of expanding Knowledge Management beyond the knowledge

base. Looking at this from the standpoint of ITIL, this is equivalent to the Service Strategy. Taking a Knowledge

Management practice through the full ITIL life cycle will ensure the appropriate level of planning is performed

enabling the implementation project to be successful.

Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge Transfer is possibly one of the more difficult areas of Knowledge Management to address. It requires a

culture of sharing, or in the absence of one, a set of standards defining what will be documented and where. One

way to accomplish this is to begin with new and changed services. A solid Service Strategy and Service Design

implementation calls for a significant amount of documentation to be created including:

Business Requirements

Technical and functional requirements to support them

Service Level Requirements and Agreements

Hours of operation, patterns of business activity related to the service

Monitoring requirements

Capacity, Availability and Continuity Plans

Financial information concerning the service

More….

First, all of the components of this “service design package” must be stored in a location that is organized,

appropriately secured as well as available, in accordance to the overall strategy.

As the service or changes to the service are then built, coded, and then tested, additional documentation will be

developed. All of the technical documentation concerning the build, all of the test scripts and results should again

be stored according to the agreed upon standard procedure.

Finally, all known errors, steps taken to resolve and those being introduced into the production environment need to

be added to the organization’s Known Error Database (where one exists) and made available to the appropriate

personnel. At the very least, in lieu of a database, there needs to be a documented repository to house this

information while a database is constructed along with a plan to migrate data to it accordingly when ready.

As the service is turned over to operations, all policies and procedures concerning its use, operational instructions,

run books, etc. need to be added to the store.

As part of Knowledge Transfer, all training materials should also be collected and housed, and made accessible to

new personnel who will need access in ordr to learn how to use the service.

As the Service is then operated and incidents are logged against it, the Knowledge Management practice needs to

ensure that the appropriate people are contributing resolution information to the Knowledge Base and keeping it

updated with any operational knowledge that is gained over time.

Once teams are accustomed to the practice of creating and storing this information, further effort can be made to

collect the appropriate information on existing services.

Data & Information Management

All of the data collected during Service Design and Transition, records of known errors, incidents, problems,

changes made to the service over time and Knowledge articles will quickly become outdated if there are no

procedures in place to keep them updated. This idea should have already been addressed as part of the strategy

that includes a program of regular refreshes and audits to ensure teams are performing the tasks associated with

maintaining the data.

ITIL processes should be reviewed to determine what tasks should to be added to each of the processes to help

ensure that data is maintained. For example, before a change can be approved for deployment, documentation

must be updated in the appropriate store, any known errors and associated workarounds must be added to the

Known Error Database and any solutions in the Knowledge Base related to the impacted services must be

reviewed and updated.

Periodic audits also need to be performed to ensure these tasks occur as documented.

The SKMS

While left for last, the SKMS (Service Knowledge Management System) is the hub of all of these activities from a

tools perspective. Once the strategy regarding tools and storage of different types of data has been defined, a

collection of databases will be growing to house this data. The SKMS is the virtual repository or collection of data

regarding services currently in use at the organization. It will be comprised of a number of different data stores; all

called out in the various ITIL processes. An example of some of the major data stores includes:

The Service Portfolio, including the Service Catalog and all data maintained within it

Capacity Management Information Systems as well as availability plans, business continuity plans….

Information Security Management Systems and documentation

The Configuration Management System with all federated CMDB’s

The “ticketing system” or product used by IT to manage incidents, problems, changes, service requests,

access requests etc.

The relationships built over time between the ticketing system and the CMS that build the history of each CI

contained in this store

The document stores used to house requirements and technical documentation etc.

More…

The challenge here is that over time, there needs to be one way to find all of the associated information. As part of

the strategy, a “single pane of glass” approach will need to be developed. In other words, a system of record will

need to be defined. From that system of record, links to other stores can provide access to other data concerning

the service. The organization will need to determine if this is performed by the CMS, the Knowledge Base, the

Service Catalog or some other tool that drive standards to ensure that all of the appropriate data is available

through that agreed upon system of record.

It’s evident that building a robust practice around Knowledge Management is complex and evolutionary. It will take a

strategic plan to establish the practice with continued improvement and a dedication to maintain the organization’s collection

of knowledge over time. Expecting that this can be done quickly or that it will ever be truly finished will ultimately lead to

failure of the initiative as the data collected becomes outdated.

The need for this practice is clear. IT services have become critical to the day-to-day operation of virtually every business.

As complexity grows and staff turns over, the knowledge lost puts the organization at risk. A good Knowledge Management

practice should therefore be considered as part of the Management of Risk and appropriate resources should be allocated

to ensure continued knowledge growth and maintenance.

About the Author

Phyllis Drucker has been active in the ITSM industry for almost 20 years, both as a practitioner, as the Operations Director

of itSMF USA and now as a Business Process Consultant for Linium. She has been a frequent contributor of knowledge to

the ITSM profession, has provided numerous presentations at HDI and itSMF conferences and webinars for several

organizations. She has also had her articles and white papers published by HDI, itSMF USA and itSMF International.

Finally, she has been active at the International level, speaking at two itSMF Spain conferences and working with the

international ITSM community to offer both webinars and conference content in Spanish.


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]

“The Source for IT Service Management” is the bi-monthly newsletter of the IT Service Management Forum USA (itSMF USA). The Editors reserve the sole right to accept,

refuse or modify articles based on itSMF USA policies or other acceptability criteria.

The itSMF USA, its officers, directors, newsletter editors, and contributors offer for this publication no warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty of

merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances shall the itSMF USA be liable for any special, direct or indirect, incidental or consequential

damages resulting from any actions taken or omissions made, due to reliance on any information from any source contained in, or linked to, this newsletter.

Publication in The Source for IT Service Management does not constitute an endorsement of any product(s) or service(s) advertised herein by third parties. The itSMF USA

is not responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of any advertisement or article herein contained.

Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner


Institute Awards First Two FellowCredentials


Part 2




Management

A 4-Letter Acronym Sending CIOsRunning Scared - BYOD

Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




Newsletter Tools

Search Past Issues



Managing EditorTess DePalma - Nemours



Doug Hymel - MaryvilleMichael Yee - CoreLogic


Your ad could be here! For moreinformation, please email

[email protected].


Point / Counterpoint: Knowledge Management

Tess DePalma, Nemours and Steve Matthews, DorLind

Today’s technology allows organizations to acquire and store massive amounts of data. And, a business’s desire to have

access to that data with a few clicks of a mouse button has, over time, become the norm. Businesses demand information

at ever increasing rates and need that information in constant changing forms and formats. Ease of data retrieval has

proven to be valuable yet equally challenging in many ways.

Businesses thrive on data. They rely on it more and more as they grow and mature, face tough competition, develop new

products or services, focus on new strategies, and comply with ongoing regulatory requirements. Demands for data can be

challenging, yet at the same time successfully enable businesses to make informed decisions to support their ever

changing needs and strategies. IT Service Management also relies heavily on knowledge to make informed decisions, to

measure performance of processes, and support continual improvement efforts. Just like the Business, IT is a significant

consumer of organizational knowledge. So how do we harness the power of IT organizational knowledge? By managing it

via a measureable and repeatable process of course!

Before we tackle the introduction of a Knowledge Management (KM) process, we need to understand the maturity levels of

our organizational intelligence, documents, materials, facts, and figures. The following diagram shows the progressive

maturity of organizational knowledge:

Source: ITIL® Continual Service Improvement, ©Crown Copyright 2007

As stated previously, we can easily capture data with today’s technology. That’s the simple part. Data, though, is the rawest

form of knowledge. Organizations need to apply formatting and context to data to transform it into usable information.

Information, likewise, matures into reusable knowledge and allows us to solve “how” we do things. When we’ve taken

knowledge to the level of wisdom, we’ve enabled ourselves to properly support quality IT service provision to the Business.

Data that has matured to the Knowledge and Wisdom levels propel the capabilities of IT multifold.

From documents to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to Service Improvement Plans, all knowledge assets created

and maintained by an organization have the potential to enable an efficient and effective culture. Knowledge Management

within ITSM good practices provides guidance for managing these knowledge assets via a measureable and repeatable

process. Standardization of documentation formatting, contextual review, and formal approval procedures are also

significant derivatives from utilizing good practices. Ideally, a knowledgebase is a part of a well-constructed Configuration

Management System (CMS) and most integrated service management tools have KM modules that serve to support all

integrated processes.

A very visible example of the use of knowledge assets is the typical measureable increase in Service Desk efficiency and

Tier 1 incident resolution with the increase of “how to” information available during investigation and diagnosis. Of course,

all Service Management processes benefit from the availability of a current and accurate knowledgebase to guide their

process execution and continual improvement efforts.

Knowledge drives Business and IT just as much as Business and IT drive the need for knowledge. They say “knowledge is

power”. In supporting an organization, this can hold very true.

Tess: Hey Steve, Wait up! I just came from the KM session and I wanted to pick your brain…

Steve: What session? What are you talking about…KM?

T: Knowledge Management, silly. I’ve been picking up all the KM topics at Fusion this year. I’m even more convinced we

need to be thinking about a more structured process. What is your favorite repository currently? I know different pockets of

XYZ are using spreadsheets, Access databases, SharePoint, Word docs; we are all over the place! I’d like to settle on a

single format and get everything stored in a single database.

S: Whoa! Hold on! Why? You are talking about adding a whole lot of overhead to the daily workload here.

T: OK, wait. Let me start again. First, tell me how your folks document their troubleshooting steps for future reference.

S: Well, we don’t really.

T: What?!?!??

S: No, we don’t. I have a highly trained staff. I hire people who know how to troubleshoot and resolve issues. They

don’t need step by step instructions to do their work. Besides, who’s supposed to write all those documents? We

don’t have any time to do all of that!

T: Steve, I have to say that may be the most short-sighted and maybe the dumbest thing I’ve heard from you in a long time.

S: Ouch! Getting personal again! But, honestly, what is the point? It’s a lot of extra work and we don’t have time or

quite frankly a need for jotting down a bunch of “how-to” steps in some document.

T: I am almost speechless!

S: Listen; my folks are hired for what they know and their experience applying that. Some of them have absolutely

no talent at writing. For Pete’s sake, these are IT people – they aren’t authors!

T: OK, let me start AGAIN…do your team members have a bunch of sticky notes around their monitors and cubes

reminding them of server names?

S: Yes…

T: Do they ever complain about simple troubleshooting that the Service Desk could do – or better yet, SHOULD HAVE

DONE before assigning a ticket to your group?

S: All the time! The Service Desk doesn’t even seem to try half the time! Just the other day, in a team meeting, they

were complaining about that exact thing.

T: Wow, Steve, don’t you realize we just talked about two of the most important reasons to have a knowledge base? A

centrally located and widely accessible database of all the disparate information that can help with troubleshooting, and a

knowledge transfer mechanism to spare your team from getting unnecessary tickets - which of course can translate to

better first contact resolution and, most importantly, happier customers.

S: But, I don’t need a bunch of miserable techs! Listen, they have enough to do. And, I already told you they

majored in computers, not grammar.

T: Well if we do this right, that won’t matter.

S: Huh? Why not?

T: Because it won’t!

S: Come on! Don’t get mad; I’m actually getting interested. You’ve raised my curiosity. I’d at least like to hear your

theory here.

T: Well, it isn’t “my” theory. KM good practices have been around a LONG time and are now an integral part of ITIL® V3i

and even the ISO/IEC 20000 Standard. I just heard in the breakout session that there are even requirements related to KM

in the HDI site certification standard.

S: Really?

T: Look; just think of the possibilities if we had a measureable and repeatable process surrounding the capture, formatting,

acceptance, and maintenance of knowledge within XYZ IT. Do you realize how significant that knowledge would be to our

overall ITSM initiative? Our Teams don’t have to be “authors.” We can develop standard formats that everyone can easily

follow.

S: OK, so you’ve convinced me that this is something we really ought to get working on. And, I get it. There are lots

of benefits like saving us some research time, and possibly some rework due to incorrect troubleshooting... so

where do we start?

T: Well, we need to select that single repository and get it populated.

S: That sounds just like a lot of work and exactly what I was afraid of. I can never sell that to the team.

T: Sure you can if you make them realize all those benefits we just talked about. It’s definitely some work on the front end

but much less going forward if our knowledge assets are easily storable, searchable, and usable. Our teams won’t fight

knowledge capture and sharing if we show them the value! And just think of the benefits for training new staff. It’s a

pre-made instruction manual.

S: I like that – it sometimes takes folks a while just to learn the names of all the applications we support...

T: Which would be a list in the KMDB…

S: …or what they actually do…

T: And those descriptions can be in there too.

S: …what server they’re running on…

T: Check!

S: …who the user groups are…

T: Steve, it’s all in there! Or it could be if we standardized and centralized it all.

S: So tell me again how this isn’t a lot of work after the initial data gets into the KMDB.

T: Well there is some work but if we have a good process managing KM and the KMDB, the maintenance becomes easier.

With procedures laid out for KM articles and submission, our staff can easily submit potential articles and assets.

S: You’re right. Hey! I’ve got an idea!

T: Uh oh, you scare me sometimes when you say that……

S: Uh, give me a break will ya? Look, I know how my folks operate. There has to be some incentive to help drive

them other than “this will help everyone”. Why don’t we consider having some recognition for article submission

every so often? Put KM in a positive spotlight within IT.

T: Tell me more.

S: Okay, a smooth process and procedures are great, but to not make this seem like a lot of work, we could

incentivize the staff. Recognition and possibly rewards go a long way. Let’s make this less about “work” and more

about raising the level of KM awareness and its value in supporting what we do. And, we can spotlight where KM

has proven value within the organization in our newsletter or on our intranet. I think you get the idea.

T: Okay, but we’d have to be careful…like not giving credit unless there is real value. For example, no points for adding

commas to an existing document, or creating documents about tying your shoes.

S: Again, she goes into comedian mode….No, you’re right. You get what you measure. I agree and we can work

that into the process. You know it takes me a while to catch on to what you’re talking about sometimes but, when I

get it, I get it!

T: Yep! I think it’s great. We are on the same page and I think you see the benefits I’ve been talking about. So are you

ready to tag-team with me and discuss this with Dawn? We can get her to back us on adding this to our ITSM initiative.

S: You betcha! You know my uncle Steve used to throw out pearls of wisdom once in a while and I remember one

that I think we can use to help us explain the difference between knowledge and wisdom to our Teams:

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit;

Wisdom is knowing to not put a tomato in a fruit salad.”

T: HA! Funny, but true………………….

S: … I “know!”

About the Authors

Paula “Tess” DePalma is the Senior Director of IT Service Delivery in the Information Systems department at Nemours, one

of the largest pediatric subspecialty group practices in the nation (www.nemours.org). She holds the ITIL v2 Service

Manager and v3 Expert certificates, is a DPSM in the prISM program, and is the author of the Problem Management

chapter in HDI’s "Implementing Service and Support Management Processes." Tess has been part of itSMF USA’s

Communications team for several years and currently serves as the Managing Editor of "The Source for IT Service

Management." She also serves with Steve Matthews on the prISM Credentialling Committee. She may be reached at

[email protected].

Steve Matthews is the Principal Consultant and Owner of DorLind, LLC, a provider of IT Service Management Consulting

and Training Services. Steve has consulted in the public sector in both municipal and Federal government spaces as well

as with Fortune 500 companies in the private sector. He holds ITIL v2 Service Manager and v3 Expert certificates and is a

member of an elite group of only ten individuals worldwide who hold the ISO/IEC 20000 Executive Consultant/Manager

certificate. He currently serves as the Chair of the prISM Credentialling Committee. Backing Steve’s ITSM experience is

over 26 years in the IT industry. He may be reached at [email protected].


itSMF USA1200 E. Route 66, Suite 202

Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]






Publication in The Source for IT Service Management does not constitute an endorsement of any product(s) or service(s) advertised herein by third parties. The itSMF USA

is not responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of any advertisement or article herein contained.

Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner



Credentials


Part 2




Management



Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




Newsletter Tools

Search Past Issues



Managing Editor







A 4-Letter Acronym Sending CIOs Running Scared - BYOD

Karen Ferris

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a trend on the rise and is not going to go away.

Organisations have to face up to the fact that employees want to use and will use their own

devices in the workplace. They are already doing it and have been doing it for some time.

Forward thinking organisations are embracing BYOD as a way of attracting and retaining

talent. Students leaving school and university where they have been able to plug in their own

devices – smartphone, tablet, laptop etc. – are not going to be satisfied when told by a

potential employer that they have to use equipment provided by the employer and are not

allowed to connect their own devices. This will be seen as archaic, restrictive and

unsatisfactory. The likelihood is that the equipment being provided by the employer is inferior

to the leading edge technology owned by the employee.

On 26/07/11, Citrix Systems announced the results of the Citrix

Bring-Your-Own (BYO) Index revealing that 92 percent of IT

organizations are aware that employees are using their own

devices in the workplace and 94 percent intend to have a

formal BYO policy in place by mid-2013, up from 44 percent

today. The research found that attracting and retaining the

highest quality talent, increased worker productivity and

mobility and greater employee satisfaction, as well as reducing

IT costs, are the primary drivers of BYO adoption.

“There are two reasons that BYO is being embraced within

organizations,” stated Mick Hollison, vice president, Desktop

Marketing & Strategy, for Citrix. “There are those that are using

BYO to keep up with the rapid consumerization of enterprise IT

and then there are forward-thinking CIOs who have embraced

BYO as a way to attract the best talent, encourage a flexible

working environment and raise productivity levels.”1

The biggest fear of CIOs is security including access to sensitive information and the chance

of that information leaving the organisation. Neither of these should be new concerns raised

by BYOD. Employees have had access to sensitive information for decades and the

availability of CDs, USBs, email forwarding, phone cameras, photocopiers, pen and paper




[email protected].

etc., has allowed this information to leave the organisation.

So it is time to calm down and embrace the future.

In April 2011, iPass issued the Global Mobile Workforce Report2 . iPass surveyed more than

3700 employees at 1100 organisations worldwide. The survey found that only 27% or workers

with tablets received them from their organisation. 73% were using their own tablets for

work-related purposes. 94% of workers have a smartphone and the smartphone and tablet

users are doing more than just email.

The top five business applications beyond email are:

* Note taking applications (47%)

* Contract or contact management (39%)

* Office suites (33%)

* Social media for work (30%)

* Web conferencing (25%)

I do not intend to discuss in detail how organisations can overcome the security concerns that

BYOD poses. There is a myriad of information already available that covers that. It is suffice to

say that virtualisation, security control such as “wipe and lock”, GPS tracking and fencing,

anti-malware and firewalls, device encryption, device fingerprinting solutions etc., and a good

BYOD policy should resolve any issues.

I also recommend that reference be made to organisations such as Suncorp Metway, Citrix

Systems, and Curtin University, who have embraced a BYOD approach.

Having established that BYOD is the here and now as well as the future, I want to discuss

what this means for IT Service Management (ITSM).

The following are some of the key areas of ITSM that I believe have a part to play in the BYOD

environment. They are not in any particular order nor do they imply that BYOD is not subject to

the entire ITSM service lifecycle. BYOD should be treated like any other service but it does

have some distinctive considerations.

Service Strategy

Service Strategy needs to consider the adoption of BYOD in the organisation. It may not be

appropriate to every organisation and it may not be appropriate to every employee within the

organisation.

Careful consideration needs to be given to the ramifications of a BYOD strategy including

legal, financial, HR and the need to maintain productivity and meet service level agreements.

The Service Portfolio approach of “define, analyse, approve and charter” needs to be applied

to BYOD as it does to any other service under consideration as a potential service offering by

the organisation.

Demand Management needs to understand the demand for BYOD within the organisation and

Financial Management needs to understand the financial impact of adoption (see below).

Once the decision to adopt a BYOD strategy has been made, this will drive corporate policies

and procedures in relation to use of personal devices which will also vary from country to

country due to differences in privacy laws, taxation, working practices etc.

Financial Management

Investigation into the cost of a BYOD approach including Return on Investment (ROI) and

Return on Value (ROV) needs to take place. Whilst organisations may realise cost savings

through reduced hardware purchases and support costs there may be increased costs in

additional security and administrative systems and infrastructure investment.

Organisations may have to provide equipment allowances such as employee interest-free

loans for new computers, stipends, etc. and allowances for applications purchased for

work-related purposes. These additional costs need to be weighed up against the inherent

purchase and support cost savings of BYOD along with the ROV of employee -engagement,

-satisfaction, -productivity and -retention.

Policy

As mentioned above the adoption of a BYOD strategy will drive the establishment of corporate

policies and procedures.

Gartner recommends that these policies include, at the very minimum3:

* Language to explain the employee's responsibility to have a suitable machine available for

company use at all times

* Minimum specifications for hardware and OS

* Who will pay — and how much — for hardware, software and third-party support

* What is and isn't supported by IT organisation

* Remote-access policies security policies

* Levels of permissible data access

* Safe storage of company data

* What to do if the system is lost or stolen

* What to do at termination of employment

* Financial liabilities of enterprise and user

* Data cleansing from notebook hard drive

In addition to the security considerations that were listed earlier, the Information Security

Management (ISM) policy needs to clearly state what happens if an employee loses a mobile

device or leaves the organisation. For example, the organisation may retain the right to wipe

any mobile device of corporate data or all data in given circumstances.

In conjunction with Access Management, ISM may generate one-off, time-limited access

codes. ISM also needs to prescribe what is expected of the employee in regards to their

mobile devices. For example, employees may be expected to have a certain level of anti-virus

protection installed onto any device they bring into the organisation.

The organisation may decree a minimum specification for employee-owned devices including

a specified warranty period from the device supplier / manufacturer.

According to Lia Tim writing in IT News4, the following is a quick checklist in relation to

security for BYO devices:

* Apply to BYO computers the same security settings as an outsider connecting to the

network.

* Only allow BYO computers onto the network after administrators have cleared the machine

for use.

* Consider use of virtualisation to lock down a virtual machine for work use.

* Ban the storage of corporate data on the device and offer secured cloud services as an

alternative.

* Ban jailbroken devices.

* Insist on encryption.

* Lock sensitive documents to devices and/or time-limits.

Service Design Package

As mentioned earlier, the provision of BYOD as a service should be no different to that of any

other service and should be subject to the same service design considerations. Some of the

considerations specific to BYOD are mentioned throughout this article.

A Service Design Package (SDP) should be created with particular emphasis on the security

implications of the service, the technology standards associated with the service, service

dynamics, support requirements and service level requirements. It is not the intent of this

article to list all the aspects of the SDP in detail, but suffice to say that it should cover at a

minimum:

* Requirements: Business requirements; how and where the service is to be used; contact

details;

* Service Design: Functional requirements; service level requirements; operational

management requirements; service design requirements; expected outcomes and deliverables

including financial outcomes;

* Organisational readiness assessment; and

* Lifecycle plan: overall service programme; service transition plan (including all testing

requirements); operational acceptance plan with acceptance criteria.

Service design requirements should include a service model that describes the structure of the

service – i.e. how all the various components fit together and interact. This is where

consideration will have to be given to which devices are to be supported for which business

services as not all devices will be applicable for all business services e.g. smartphone may be

used for some business services and not other others; tablets may be used for some business

services and not others etc. The service dynamics need to be captured and may form part of

the Configuration Management System (CMS).

Service Catalogue Management

BYOD should be included as a “service” in the Service Catalogue. The Service Catalogue

should describe the BYOD service including (but not limited to) the following:

* what the BYOD service entails;

* standard service details and options;

* any exclusions pertaining to the service;

* who is entitled to the service (if the service view is not limited to those entitled to receive it);

* the level of authorisation and approval required in order for the service to be granted;

* the obligations of the employee (including linkage to the associated policies);

* costs such as support costs that may have to be incurred by the employee); reimbursements

available such as an allowance for using a personal device and purchase of applications for

work-related purposes;

* information to assist employees in making an informed decision of whether to opt-in to the

service e.g. pros and cons;

* how to obtain the service;

* service level targets associated with the initial service provision and ongoing support;

* hours of provision and hours of support; and

* contact details for more information regarding the service (including avenue for complaints

and compliments).

Service Level Management

Service Level Management will have to consider the service level targets for the various

device types that the BYOD environment encompasses, both for initial connectivity to the

network as well as ongoing support and maintenance. The obligations of both the employee

and the organisation should be specified in the Service Level Agreement (SLA). For example,

initial support for connectivity issues will only be provided by the organisation if the employee

has accepted the conditions of service that include stated security protection on the device

and three year manufacturer warranty for the device. If the organisation provides no additional

support for BYOD other than initial connectivity, this should be clearly specified. See “Service

and Support” below.

The SLA should clearly reflect the BYOD policy, levels and conditions of support, costs etc.

either by links to the relevant information or specifically within the agreement (avoiding

repetition of detail).

Release and Deployment Management

A phased approach to deployment would be recommended in order to test, validate and

evaluate the outcome of allowing each type of device access to the organisation’s network.

Once network connectivity is established, testing will need to incorporate the use of each

device type to access each business service to which connectivity is being permitted.

Testing should incorporate as many security scenarios as possible to provide assurance that

the biggest concern for this service has been given appropriate focus. As with any security

breach, it is not just the potential cost of the incident that is of concern but also the reputation

of the organisation that is at stake.

Change Management

If your employee onboarding is managed via the Change Management process, ensure that

there is a child Request for Change (RFC) that drives the acceptance of a BYOD policy by

each employee. This should provide a check that the employee has read and signed the

BYOD policy before IT is allowed to grant access to that person.

This should also apply to employees as they opt-in to the BYOD scheme. The Configuration

Item (CI) relating to the employee should indicate that they are a BYOD subscriber. See

SACM below.

Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM)

If you are recording employees as Configuration Items (CIs), include an attribute that indicates

whether they are users of organisation owned computing (and if so what items) or using their

own computing. This will allow reporting on the percentage of employees adopting BYOD over

time. The trend analysis will allow forecasting to take place on predicted uptake and therefore

provide insight into how much computing equipment the organisation will have (or not have) to

provide in the future. This feeds into Capacity Management and the management of spare

computing resource in the event of failure of employee owned equipment.

It will also be necessary for a check to be made on current software licences to ensure that the

organisation is allowed to grant employees access to any licensed software that they will need

to use when using personal computing devices over the network.

Capacity Management and Demand Management

Research should take place to try and predict the uptake of BYOD within the organisation.

This is going to vary from organisation to organisation. Factors that will influence the uptake

include the age demographic within the organisation (e.g. Gen Y are more likely to adopt

BYOD than the Baby Boomers) and the nature of the work undertaken by employees (e.g.

those using IT intermittently are less likely to adopt BYOD than those using it for the majority

of their work).

The degree of employee mobility may also have an influence where a highly mobile workforce

may be more suited to a BYOD approach than a static one where the fixed desktop is more

than adequate for most employee needs.

The level of employee computer literacy within the organisation will also have an influencing

factor. A highly computer literate workforce is more likely to embrace a BYOD approach as

they will be more confident in the management and maintenance and connectivity of their own

devices including provision of initial fault investigation and diagnosis.

When planning the introduction of BYOD all these factors need to be taken into consideration

to determine the capacity levels of computing devices that the organisation will need to

provide for both normal operation and backup in the event that the employees equipment fails

to work. The BYOD policy should state that in the event that the employee cannot conduct

their expected duties with their own equipment that they will be provided with

organisation-owned equipment until the time that their own equipment can be used. Not being

able to connect your own equipment to the organisations network is not an excuse not to work!

Therefore the organisation needs to predict demand and ensure sufficient capacity of

computing capability for normal and contingency situations.

There also has to be consideration of balancing demand for a BYOD approach with the

complexity for the Service Desk and support teams in supporting many varied and unfamiliar

devices. See below.

Service Desk and Support

There needs to be clear communication from the Service Desk to employees in regards to

what is supported in a BYOD environment. This should defined in the BYOD policy.

Liz Tay writing in IT News5

outlined the combination of tactics that organisations are adopting

in regards to the support of BYOD according to the Gartner analysts.

These included:

* timeboxed support, where support staff committed a maximum of 30 or 60 minutes to

supporting any BYO devices;

* “best effort” support, where support staff made “reasonable attempts” to fix problems, with

the understanding that BYO problems were ultimately the user’s responsibility;

* technically bounded support, where corporate IT supported some technologies and not

others;

* loan device pools, from which users could temporarily replace lost or broken devices;

* community support, so employees could share information and experiences through mailing

lists, corporate social networks, wikis, or microblogging tools;

* defining or providing support arrangements with third-party providers;

* outsourcing support completely to an external organisation;

* education and training programs to make users aware of common problems and solutions,

BYO policies and their responsibilities; and

* policy administration and enforcement, including wiping devices or deauthorising users when

necessary.

It was also suggested in the article that support staff should be prepared to provide training,

education and policy auditing to prepare for situations in which a personal device may be

required for e-discovery as a result of litigation.

The key is for the boundaries to be clearly stated and understood. Communicate the level of

support and maintenance that will be provided to employees who bring their own devices and

what minimum standards are to be met before an employee is allowed to connect their device

to the network.

The Service Desk and support staff should have clear cut criteria to determine what is

supported by IT, what is supported by a third party and what is the responsibility of the

employee in relation to BYOD.

Ensure that employees understand the level of access the organisation has to the employee’s

personal devices and the content held on it. This has to be defined in conjunction with HR and

incorporated into policy. For example, is the organisation enabled to investigate breaches of

codes of conduct on an employee’s device e.g. the presence of pornography on a device used

for work purposes? If a device is lost or a security breach detected, can the organisation wipe

all the data on the device or will the wipe exclude “personal” data?

As with any support requirement, the Service Desk and support team should be equipped with

enabling knowledge and tools.

Supplier Management

In regards to support, the organisation may wish to consider third party support for the

employees participating in the BYOD scheme.

In the paper, “Checklist for an Employee-Owned Notebook or PC Program”, 6 Gartner

provides some advice on the third party support and maintenance considerations.

One of the great benefits of an employee-owned PC program is relieving IT support staff from

dealing with PC break/fix and nonstandard software application issues.

However, one of the primary tenets of the program is the employee’s responsibility to have a

suitable machine available for company use at all times. If that system breaks, then the

employee will need to get the support from somewhere. Requiring a hardware maintenance

contract is not enough, since there will always be “how to” questions, as well as inquiries

about OS and software problems. While many younger workers who grew up with PCs, as

well as many technically astute workers, are self-sufficient, a significant percentage of

knowledge workers will still require an organized, predictable form of support.

A best practice is to organize suitable third-party support options for the plan’s participants.

The support can be provided by value- added resellers, dedicated support organizations or PC

hardware OEMs. In addition to hardware, the support plan has to cover OSs and application

software, as well as home networking and printer issues.

Potential options are that:

* During the plan pilot and in early stages, the enterprise can choose to pay part or all the

support expense as an employee benefit. Employees can, of course, opt out.

* Enterprises can also choose to provide “loaner” systems loaded with the corporate image.

This strategy serves to keep users productive during a personal system repair period.

Note that there is a separate, in-house concierge-level support program for executives who

require faster and more-personalized service. To ensure adequate funding, executives should

be charged for the concierge service.

Supplier Management should investigate the various support options available to the

organisation for the BYOD environment and choose the most suitable for the requirements of

the organisation.

Knowledge Management

In an environment where support for many varied devices is required (to some degree or

other), Knowledge Management will be key. At a minimum, support will be required for

connectivity to the network and therefore the knowledge base should include instructions on

how to connect a particular device to the network.

The knowledge base should also include details of the BYOD policy and the requirements of

the employee as discussed in this article e.g. minimum specification for devices, mandatory

warranty periods etc.

As new device types enter the workplace, the knowledge base should be updated with the

connectivity details for that device.

Collaboration tools also allow employees access to the knowledge and experience of other

employees so a degree of self-help can be undertaken where employees are experiencing

difficulties. Good collaboration tools and a comprehensive, up-to-date and accurate knowledge

base can drastically reduce the demand on the Service Desk and support teams in BYOD

environment.

Summary

As organisations start to embrace BYOD, ITSM also has to step up to the new challenges that

this brings, not only in terms of security but also support.

Treat BYOD as you would with any other service and subject it to the aspects of service

strategy, and service design that it warrants.

The key is to clearly define the policies around BYOD and ensure that it is communicated

across the organisation in a language that can be understood by all employees. Make sure

that the requirements of employees are clearly laid out and the responsibilities of the

organisation in relation to employee owned devices clearly specified.

Make this information easily accessible e.g. in knowledge systems and on the intranet. Keep it

forefront of mind by regularly checking understanding through audits or surveys and making it

a requirement for employees to sign a letter of understanding on an annual basis.

Manage the demand and ensure sufficient capacity of computing for those employees not

adopting BYOD and for the instances where employee owned devices are not able to operate.

Equip the Service Desk and support teams with the skills, tools and knowledge to support the

myriad of devices entering the organisation. Make it clear to the Service Desk and support

staff, as well as employees, the scope and boundaries of support provision for employee

owned devices.

Ensure that HR and the legal department are fully engaged before the introduction of BYOD

as the legal and employment ramifications are not to be underestimated.

Finally, embrace it, love it, and cherish it. BYOD is all about happy, empowered, enabled and

productive employees. BYOD is about the ability to attract, engage and retain our talent. Don’t

we all want that?

Acknowledgement – Thanks to John Custy (@ITSMNinja) for his feedback on the initial

release of this article and suggested improvements.

About the Author

Karen Ferris is a Director of Macanta Consulting Pty Ltd and can be contacted at

[email protected].

1 http://www.citrixaccessessentials.com/English/ne/news/news.asp?newsID=2314341

2 http://www3.ipass.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/iPass_MWR_Q2_2011.pdf

3

https://www.citrixmarketingconcierge.com/FileExplorer/Partners/XenDesktop

/BYO/Gartner_Report_BYO_checklist.pdf

4 http://www.itnews.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=256857

5 http://www.itnews.com.au/News/265821,byo-computing-needs-contingency-

plan-gartner.aspx

6 https://www.citrixmarketingconcierge.com/FileExplorer/Partners/XenDesktop

/BYO/Gartner_Report_BYO_checklist.pdf

This article first appeared in the July 2011 issue of "At Your Service," the official magazine of

itSMF International, and is reprinted with permission. "At Your Service" is available for

download at www.itsmf-whitepapers.org.


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]



The itSMF USA, its officers, directors, newsletter editors, and contributors offer for this publication no warranties, express or implied, including

any implied warranty of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances shall the itSMF USA be liable for any

special, direct or indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any actions taken or omissions made, due to reliance on any

information from any source contained in, or linked to, this newsletter.



Fall, 2011

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Management



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Managing Editor







Improving Customer Service....through the SKMS

Joe Hurley, CA

The Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) provides great value to those

organizations who are mature in their ITIL processes. By providing an intersection point for all

service-focused knowledge, the SKMS enables IT to address questions that were previously

difficult, if not impossible to consider. Some examples include:

What is the true cost of providing a service?

What is the value of that service to the business?

What might the value of a proposed service be?

How effective are my internal processes for building, delivering, and supporting

services?

While the data intersections modeled in your SKMS focus largely on addressing questions that

tend to be strategic in nature, they can also help provide support when addressing more

tactical concerns related to improvements in customer service. One of the most valuable

tactical sources in the SKMS are the discovery sources that flow in from the Configuration

Management System (CMS) and the Performance Management Database (PMDB) These

data sources can, if properly utilized, drastically improve overall service quality.

Discovery Data in the SKMB

Data flowing from the PMDB provides the early warning system necessary to detect and

prevent service impacts before they occur. Data flowing into the CMS help establish and

maintain the process controls that allow effective Service Management. Together, these data

align at a high level to one of two sets; either the current state (what is), or the control state

(what should be). Both are equally important in understanding how to maintain high levels of

service quality.

Current State - PMDB

Data from monitoring solutions are usually focused on the current state. Aside from the

benefit of understanding when components are online, the mature PMDB can help to identify

trends and conditions that at some point could lead to a service outage or degraded levels of

service. While simple examples of this like the detection of processor load or disk utilization

exceeding a predefined threshold are common in the PMDB, only the most mature PMDB is

actually able to take a "preemptive strike" support approach. The most advanced PMDB

systems are able to determine whether spikes in performance or consumption exceed

baseline trends for equivalent windows in time. The ability, for example, to determine that the

load on a server is high given the anticipated load from the previous day/week/month/quarter

/calendar year of sample data, or worse yet, the load is unusually low given these same

expectations, gives us substantially better information against which we can automatically




[email protected].

determine whether an issue actually exists. Where one might point to a pending system

failure, the other could point to a breakdown of the service superstructure that delivers load to

a given system.

Each of these event types provides a unique challenge, but the ability to address them each in

an effective manner is supported equally by a mature PMDB. Of course to truly consider a

PMDB mature, it must possess the ability to integrate seamlessly with the CMS. Only by

enabling your PMDB and CMS to share a single definition of a service can you begin to

establish the basis of your SKMS discovery layer. Without this integration, you are likely to

replicate the siloed approaches of the past in which the worlds of Service Development and

Service Operations never intersect. In this environment, it is difficult to enable any processes

that effectively extend your Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rates.

Control State - CMS

The CMS acts in much the same way in the service operation world as a source-code

management system would in the development world. By providing a repository to map and

manage configurations of services, as well as version the operational state of each of these

services, CMS acts as a control against which the data in the PMDB can be measured.

Discovery data in the CMS can help to support a positive customer experience .

By establishing the baseline for a configuration, it becomes possible to respond to outages

with much greater efficiency. Often times, when problems occur in an environment a support

team can quickly become befuddled trying to understand what happened, focusing their

attentions and energies on assigning blame. These exercises in accusation and redirection

often cost support teams valuable time in their attempts to restore service to customers.

Given that the vast majority of outages in most IT environments are related to a change,

having a basis against which to identify whether a change has occurred and understanding the

precise nature of that change eliminates what can often times turn into a prolonged and painful

debate. Now the question shifts from "what changed and who changed it?" to "why has

element X changed from Y to Z and will reverting that change resolve the outage?" Clearly,

the second conversation is the more productive of the two. By understanding the environment

relative to a control state (or baseline) we can dramatically reduce Mean Time to Repair

(MTTR) and improve overall service levels.

Another way that the CMS discovery data directly affects the customer experience is by

detecting the dependency hierarchy across all the intersecting systems in a service

environment. Armed with this information, it is substantially easier to understand the true

impact of a problem and successfully prioritize those issues that are having the greatest

negative effect. Take, for example, the operator working to restore service based on the

blinking red light on their monitoring console. In most environments, addressing the red light

would be a clear priority over addressing the yellow light blinking next to it. Imagine though

the red light representing a disk failure on a backup server while the yellow light represents

extreme network latency on the primary load balancer on the charge processing system. With

that additional context, it seems relatively clear that the yellow light is actually the more urgent

of the two alarms.

The nature of Service Operation work often makes it difficult to understand impact and

respond appropriately. This situation is often exacerbated by the inability of our

instrumentation toolsets to effectively understand context and therefore understand business

risk. With CMS dependency discovery, we create the ability to automatically calculate and

prioritize risk by service impact and therefore greatly improve the quality of the service we

deliver by drastically reducing MTTR.

Improve Service Quality

Certainly, there is great strategic value added by an effective SKMS. Additionally there are

tactical benefits to establishing a level of maturity, particularly when it comes to reconciling

data from the various discovery mechanisms which feed the SKMS and its sub-repositories or

federated sources. By giving context to our overall support processes, we can achieve

maximum efficiency and generally improve the overall quality of service we offer.

About the Author

Joseph Hurley has over 15 years experience in IT. He has spent the last 10 years focused

primarily on the areas of Service Management and Asset Management. A software developer

by training, he has worked closely with a wide variety of companies ranging from small

startups to the Fortune 500. He operates ITBPL.org, a website devoted to expanding industry

exposure to IT Best Practices. He has authored several whitepapers, presented at itSMF

events, holds certifications in ITIL and ITAM, and is currently a Sr. Principal Consultant for CA,

Inc.

NOTE: This article originally appeared in itSMF USA Forum in October 2009 under the title "Improving

Customer Service through Effective Use of Discovery Data in the Service Knowledge Management

System (SKMS)"


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]






Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner



Credentials


Part 2




Management



Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




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Managing Editor







Book Review: Information Lifecycle Support – Wisdom,

knowledge, information and data management (WKIDM)

Reginald Best

The book Information Lifecycle Support is focused on the value of creating a corporate

organization which specializes in wisdom, knowledge, information and data management

(WKIDM). The authors do a great job of conveying the value of WKIDM when it is integrated

into the corporate strategy, roles, processes, technology and governance of an organization.

They’ve created an easy reading, entry level book. This book is neither a strategic or

methodical document but rather a structured white paper which establishes the foundation for

discussing Information Management (IM) concepts.

The authors recognize the challenges of implementing WKIDM within a corporation. For

example, they discuss the lack of business interest; the resistance of IT organization to new

techniques; the incompatibility of tools/packages for data interchange; and the conflicts

between the short-term business imperatives versus the long-term benefits of WKIDM. Yet,

they fail to present a structured approach to offset these challenges. While this book won’t

sway the reader on the value of creating a WKIDM organization, it will give the reader enough

information to intelligently discuss the subject of WKIDM. The authors close the book with a

“wisdom chapter” and a health check (to determine if an organization needs a WKIDM

program) – without presenting a strong conclusion in either direction.

You should read this book, if you are (1) looking for an entry level book on the concepts of

information management, (2) trying to understand the ideal role for WKIDM in a corporation

and/or (3) trying to grasp the acronyms or jargon used by IM professionals. A few times in the

book the authors refer to the concepts of Service Management used in the IT Information

Library (ITIL). The reader is expected to know and understand the concepts of ITIL before

reading this book. The book could be part of additional reading curriculum for MIS students or

business leaders without an MIS degree. In the end, the book levels the playing field (between

MIS and non-MIS leaders) and portrays the ideal approach for managing wisdom, knowledge,

information and data.

Book: Information Lifecycle Support – Wisdom, knowledge, information and data management

(WKIDM)

Author: Brian Johnson and John Higgins

ISBN: 9780 1 13312627




[email protected].


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]









Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner



Credentials


Part 2




Management



Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




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Search Past Issues



Managing Editor







Books (and their authors!) at Fusion11

Angelica King, Cargill

"I am Artist" by Erik Wahl

“We are all born artists. We are trained out of it.” Wow – what a powerful statement!

Erik Wahl’s book I am Artist is a workbook designed to help you to find the artist – the creative

focus – inside of you. He believes that we are all inherently creative; spending time exploring

the exercises in this book will help you to reignite your creative energy and think in a different

way. Better yet, the exercises can be used to explore the artistic side of our daily activities.

Spend some time thinking of the benefits of working every day in a more creative way.

The kit for I am Artist includes a 10 minute inspirational video. This is a great way to catch the

essence of Wahl’s message and see a bit of his creativity at work.

When is the last time you wrote in a book? How do you explore your inner desires? What

causes you to think in a new way? By picking up I am Artist you are opening yourself to the

opportunity to unleash the artist in you.

"Nice Bike, Making Meaningful Connections on the Road of Life" by Mark

Scharenbroich

One of the most important ingredients to individual happiness is feeling connected to others. In

his book, Nice Bike, Making Meaningful Connections on the Road of Life, Mark Scharenbroich

explores the concept of connectivity by using the power of stories to explain three “powerful

actions.”

Nice Bike are two simple words that, within the Harley Davidson community, create a

connection the moment they are spoken. Two simple works that embrace the three “powerful

actions”:

To acknowledge is to be respectful of others and truly recognize the gifts that people

bring to the world. Acknowledgement can be as simple as asking a sincere question,

greeting people at the beginning of the day or contributing to others each day.

To honor is to validate another through what is important to that individual. This starts

with sincerely listening to others and identifying what is important to those individuals.

Honoring also includes recognizing your weaknesses and opportunities to learn from

others.

To connect is to create a bond and build lasting relationships with others. Connecting

includes being loyal to others and grateful for what people bring to your life.

We all have an opportunity to use these three powerful actions, acknowledging, honoring and

connecting, to grow as individuals and in our relationships with others.




[email protected].

Nice Bike, reader! Thanks for taking the time to connect, learn and grow!

About the Author

Angelica King is currently working on defining and maturing services at Cargill. She is ITIL v2

Managers and ITIL v3 Expert certified. In addition, she is recognized as a Distinguished

Professional in Service Management from the priSM Institute.


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]









Fall, 2011

In This Issue


President's Corner



Credentials


Part 2




Management



Improving Customer





(WKIDM)



Fusion11




Newsletter Tools

Search Past Issues



Managing Editor









[email protected].



Paul Wilkinson, GamingWorks

GamingWorks presented the ABC of IT (Attitude, Behavior & Culture) at the itSMF Fusion11 conference in Washington

this year. Despite the fact that the itSMF LIGs have been rolling out ABC (Attitude, Behavior and Culture) workshops for

almost two years, and the ABC of IT has been a key session at many international itSMF events for the last 5 years, we

have never been accepted to present this subject before at Fusion. Why is this I thought? 'Obviously the North American

market doesn't suffer from the ABC worst practices that the rest of the world experiences when attempting to adopt and

deploy ITIL or ITSM improvement initiatives.............or do they?'.

In my presentation I congratulated everybody on becoming a Strategic Asset, because after all ITIL 2011 (as the latest

manifestation of ITIL appears to be called) quite rightly says ITSM is a Strategic Asset. That means that each person in

the audience of some 150 people was a Strategic Asset for their company. Congratulations! You walk in as an IT

professional and walk out as a strategic business asset.

I then played the role of a Business manager or Customer of IT, I wanted to explore with the audience how true is this? I

started by showing them the shocking results of the ABC Workshops held in the North America, representing some 500+

IT organizations. These are the top 10 ABC worst practice cards we think the business would choose if asked, cards that

display worst practice behavior of the IT organization.

Whenever I ask people after the exercise 'Do you KNOW that these are the cards the business wants fixing or is this what

you THINK’? In more than 90% of the cases people say 'this is what we THINK, because we've never asked them'! As a

Business manager I would expect a strategic asset to KNOW the potential risks they are creating for my business? I

would expect their focus to be outside-in (knowing) rather than inside-out (thinking and assuming).

I then asked the two questions that I ask whenever and wherever I present ABC. 'How many of you are 'doing' ITIL'?,

about 80% of the hands went up. 'Now put your hands up if you can tell me the definition of a Service according to ITIL?'

3 hands went up - all trainers I believe. I then said as a business manager 'How dare you sit here and tell me you have

spent MY IT budget on ITIL training and not one of you can tell me the basic, fundamental concept of ITIL, and in fact

YOUR right to get paid and not be outsourced!' I went on to add 'I would expect a strategic asset to KNOW that a Service

is all about delivering Value and Outcomes to my business whilst helping me reduce Costs and Risks'. I now recommend

you ALL go back and ask every IT person in YOUR organization for the definition of a Service and then tell them, in the

context of YOUR business needs EXACTLY what that means and how you can demonstrate your are delivering on this

Service expectation.

I then confronted them with the fact that 70% to 80% of IT organizations are failing to get the Value from an ITSM

improvement initiative, more than 50% fail because of resistance. I showed them 'Planning to Implement Service

Management' - The V3 version and asked them 'How many of you have read THIS book or the V2 version?' - once again

about 5 hands went up. I then said 'So, as a business manager you are telling me, not only do you NOT know the

fundamental concept of what ITIL is all about, but you also haven't read the single most import book and guidance for

making sure it really does deliver value and manage my risks?......Is this the behavior I would expect from a Strategic

Asset?'

I gave them my interpretation on this. 'The reason you haven't read this book is because you don't need to in order to get

your ITIL Expert certificate!! you only read the books YOU need, in order to pass your EXAM rather than the books I

NEED YOU TO READ to deliver VALUE to my business. If this is what we as ITSM professionals and we as an ITSM

Industry perceive as being the attitude, and behavior that defines a Strategic Asset then I now know why the business

Says this.

I wanted to make a T-shirt for Fusion11 which says 'I am a Strategic Asset', so that we could all walk around continually

reminding ourselves of this fact. But something went wrong with the font. It came out looking like the image below? how

fitting perhaps.

I concluded by showing that this hidden Iceberg of ABC worst practice, coupled with the way in which we chase after the

theory and ITIL certificate as the end goal, rather than developing the capabilities to use the theory to realize results, is

why the majority of organizations fail with their ITSM improvement initiatives, why still 80% in a survey say they do not

have business and IT alignment under control and why 'customer and service' attitude still scores so low. The types of

Attitude, Behavior and this industry wide internally focused Culture. It is time for change! I’d like to say ‘Yes we can!’, but

considering I have been presenting EXACTLY the same results for the last 10 years I’m afraid I have to conclude ‘No we

can’t!’ Unless……

Recommendations:

Here are my recommendations for change.

* Ensure that somebody reads Planning to implement Service management and follows appropriate training.

* Identify what the ABC Iceberg looks like in YOUR organization.

* Either try and develop the skills in-house to deal with ABC and resistance or if you are going to employee training,

consulting or tool providers to help you, then implement DEMAND MANAGEMENT! I don’t mean the demand

management as defined in ITIL. I mean this:

a. Before you hire any Training, Consulting or Tool provider DEMAND that they show you in their training offerings

which course covers ‘Planning to implement’ and which courses show how to deal with ABC issues. Before you hire ANY

consultant ask them if THEY have read ‘Planning to implement’, if so ask them to tell you the biggest reasons for failure?

(failing to address Attitude, Behavior and Cultural issues), then ask them to tell you how they dealt with these and give

ONE reference customer who will confirm this. Before you hire any tool provider ask them how they deal with gaining

buy-in and overcoming resistance to ensure the tool is embedded in behavior and used properly.

b. If they cannot demonstrate these then DON’t HIRE THEM!!

c. The ability to change, the ability to say ‘Yes we can!’ lies in the hands of the user organizations DEMANDING that

the provider organizations change the way we currently develop and deploy our capabilities to demonstrate we really are

Strategic assets.

* If you are going to tackle the issues yourself, then as I promised in my presentation here is a link to the top 10 critical

success factors for dealing with ABC as identified in the more than 35 cases in the publication ‘ABC of ICT – An

introduction’. Cases from industry experts such as Sharon Taylor, Ken Wendel, Ivor MacFarlane, Robert Stroud, Gary

Case, George Spalding, Brian Johnson……the list goes on, my apologies to the authors I failed to name here.

* Here is also a link to the itSMF International magazine which contains a case study of how one organization tackled

ABC head on.

* Good luck.

At the end of the presentation several people came up to me afterwards saying 'that was a reality shock, it wasn't a

motivational session but this has now inspired me to go out and change this is my organization, I recognize we still have a

way to go'. This to me was the greatest success of the session. People wanting to take the ownership and responsibility

to make the dream of becoming strategic assets a reality.

I was told afterwards by one of my business partners that they heard somebody go up to one of the stands and ask ‘How

do your offerings help address ABC of ICT’? The answer was ‘What is ABC? No we don’t do any of that, why?’, ‘The

presenter of my last session told me not to use your services…..’ YES! Let the changes begin!

About the Author

Paul Wilkinson has been involved in the IT industry for more than 25 years and has a broad background in IT operations,

IT management and product innovation and development. He was an ITIL V2 author and member of the ITIL V3 advisory

group. He is co-owner of GamingWorks and co-developer of a range of business simulations focusing on IT Service

management, Project management, Business Process management, Business and IT alignment, Alliance management

and co-author and developer of the ABC of ICT products and publications.


itSMF USA


Glendora, CA 91740

Phone: 626-963-1900

FAX: 626-963-1977

[email protected]






Publication in The Source for IT Service Management does not constitute an endorsement of any product(s) or service(s) advertised herein by third parties. The itSMF

USA is not responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of any advertisement or article herein contained.

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