In Name Only (Or: On ITIL Implementations)
In today's IT-departments, we like to approach matters in a controlled manner, keeping an eye out for quality and service. While a few years ago it was acceptable to govern an infrastructure in a more ad-hoc manner, the risks of such an approach are no longer acceptable in today's departments.
For precisely this reason, processmodels such as ITIL and Cobit were called into life. Their structured and iterative way of working provide a validated method of administration and control. That is to say: That is the intention. Unfortunately, a lot of implementations of f.e. ITIL hardly realise any benefits at all and are more often experienced as a bureaucratic burden. Certainly, when discussing the model and its benefits with employees, there is not a single person who does not see the improvement such a structured way of working can provide. There is, unfortunately, always a large difference between theory and practice. In this article, I will be looking at a few of the major pitfalls one encounters in the implementation and everyday practice of ITIL and how these can be avoided.
Be practical
ITIL is a lovely method of working, but has a few hazards that can be difficult to avoid. For example, a lot of processes need specific requirements (such as an inventory of CI’s for the CMDB) to function properly. It is imperative that these requirements are examined carefully and discussed in detail. Too much or too little detail can either cause an enormous overload of labour with very little benefit, or cause processes to completely malfunction because of a lack of information.
Therefore, consider all requirements separately and as a whole, while keeping an eye on the practical side of things. If it is expected that certain information will not benefit the organization now or in the future, feel free to discard it.
Awareness _does_ matter
Technically speaking, it would suffice to go up to an IT department and inform them that as of today, ITIL is the new way of working. After that, you can go back to your office, have another coffee and give a happy sigh in the warm knowledge of a job well done. However, in doing so, you will leave a department completely befuddled.
Before any successful ITIL implementation, be prepared to spend a lot of time in creating an acceptable level of awareness. Ensure that everyone involved understands what exactly this new way of working means for day-to-day business, where the benefits lie, what is needed to achieve these benefits and how they can ensure the benefits are permanent rather than temporary.
Giving presentations, discussing every detail with both managers and employers and making sure ITIL becomes more than just another buzzword will be a very time-consuming matter; but well worth it in the end.
Educate
Now that we have ensured that everybody supports the new way of working, it is important to make sure every party involved knows what the hell they’re talking about in the first place. There is little point in assigning process managers who don’t have the vaguest clue how their own process works. Especially those keyplayers in the grand scheme of processmanagement need to be well educated in both the theoretical and practical side of ITIL.
A good way to achieve a reasonable level of ITIL understanding is to send both employers and managers on a course. For precisely this reason, there are several exams available for almost every function; an employer who needs to work according to the ITIL processes might benefit greatly from the ITIL Foundation exam. For process managers, there are ITIL Practitioner exams available for every ITIL process, while traditional managers and process owners should consider the ITIL Manager exam.
Only after this is achieved can an organization prepare for the Battle of the Processes.
Communicate
While ITIL in theory should be comparable to a well-oiled machinery where all the cogs and wheels connect flawlessly, most ITIL implementations bear more resemblance to a quickly assembled and cheap watch; the Change Management process has absolutely no interaction with Asset & Configuration Management, everyone involved in Problem Management has yet to hear of the inner workings of Incident Management and the Helpdesk is just considered to be a rather large pain in the behind.
Make sure that everyone involved is constantly updated of ongoing activities within all the processes, be it the implementation of new tools, the assignment of new resources, etc. While in theory the ITIL processes separately can function as a ‘black box’, people will always be people and therefore want and need to know what’s going on.
Measure and improve
It is often forgotten that ITIL is a theoretical way of working, not designed to suit one specific organization. Every IT-organization will have to tweak the ITIL processes according to the circumstances. To create input for this tweaking, it is important to measure exactly how well the processes function. By establishing KPI’s and SLA’s, it is possible to create reports that may indicate bottlenecks within the implementation. Again, be practical. Even though an ASA (Average Speed to Answer) of 5 seconds may sound prestigious, if 20 seconds is an acceptable level as well you might want to consider adjusting this KPI. There are many things that can be measured in every process; do so. Create trendlines. Try to discover bottlenecks and discuss possible causes for these bottlenecks.
In this article, we briefly discussed important aspects of an ITIL-implementation. Even though there are many other aspects to be taken into consideration, I consider these to be the main pitfalls; almost every other challenge in ITIL can be traced back to these rootcauses.