|
Any IT manager who wants to pursue the IT Service Management journey by implementing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) needs to understand two very important factors well in advance.
- Having dedicated, trained and committed process owners is probably the most important factor.
Having someone ultimately responsible for its success is vital for a successful Incident Management process. Many organisations make simple mistakes:-
- No-one has ownership of a particular process, or reponsibility for moving it forward.
There is a process owner, but he or she is bogged down in day to day reactive activities or other more important business-driven projects and thus have no time for unnecessary red tape like ITIL.
- There are more than one process owner for a specific process. One of the prerequisites of ITIL is to have a single consistent process implemented everywhere in the organization. Who will ultimately be responsible if there is more than one owner? Major companies,even those with numerous divisions spread across the globe who have successfully implemented ITIL have only one process owner throughout the company. This ensures consistency within the organizations, and breaks down resistance between parts of the organization.
Providing dedicated resources to teh process owners can be an issue for many companies. Often, a process owner can have many tasks, with the process being only one of many things he must do for the company. As long as that other role is not too time consuming, this might not be a problem. One individual can take responsibility for more than one process. Although these processes should be of similar focus. The Change, Configuration and Release roles can be shared by one person in small companies for example. In a large corporate company, each of these roles should be fulfilled by dedicated people. Companies who does not fill these roles individually are probably not serious enough about ITIL and are most probably lacking the management commitment.
The second, but probably the most important critical success factor, is management commitment.
Make sure you have full management commitment, or you may discover ITIL might just become another failed IT project.
And management commitment does not mean, the manager says his committed. The manager must continuously show commitment to ITIL. Empowering staff through professional training, tools etc, is a prerequisite for this. As is demanding the right reports and taking action. It also involves appointing the right people in the right roles and managing by means of ITIL.
A good guideline for top management to follow is Kotters 8 steps to organizational change.
Management commitment is probably the most important success factor for ITIL, but probably also the most difficult to achieve. That is why a lot of ITIL implementations just become a black hole sucking up money.
A great number of IT managers are under the mistaken misconception that ITIL is a wonder-cure for all the problems that beset their organisation. Many believe everything will be OK if they just install ITIL and don;t appreciate that there is more to ITIL than this. Many managers need to understand is that ITIL is a a culture change as well as a major organizational change. We used to focus only on technology, but now we have to focus on the customer.
Because ITIL is not a direct requirement from the business, it can someties have a low management commitment, especially if it is seen as just an internal IT department endeavor. It must be remembered that ITIL is merely a methodology for improving IT, and not the sole focus of the business.
To overcome this, an ITIL project should become a business requirement and commitment is needed from all the way to the top, from the CEO.
An experienced IT practitioner and having just completed an A HREF=http://www.technical-check-center.comITIL Foundation V2-3 Bridging Course/A, George marks is ideally placed to offer information on A HREF=http://www.technical-check-center.comITIL implementation/A
|
|
SIGN
UP FOR FREE
