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If you are an IT manager, and you want to implement the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), then you need to understand two very important factors well in advance.
- The most important factor is having committed, dedicated, and well trained process owners.
Having someone ultimately responsible for it's success is vital for a successful Incident Management process. The person responsible should be capable of dedicating enough time and effort to ensure a successful conclusion. Many organisations make simple mistakes:-
- A non-existent process owner, so there is nobody dedicated to drive a particular process.
There is a process owner is bogged down in reactive activities or other "more important" business-driven projects, and has no time for ITIL or other "red tape".
- There is more than one process owner for a particular process - a classic mistake. The idea of ITIL is to have a single consistent process throughout the organization and having multiple process owners makes this difficult to achieve. If there is more than one owner, who will ultimately be responsible? Major companies who have successfully implemented ITIL have only one process owner throughout the company, even if there are numerous divisions spread across the globe. Having the process consistent throughout all divisions and departments helps break down differences amongst divisions and departments.
Providing dedicated resources to teh process owners can be an issue for many companies. Especially in smaller companies, it is not unusual for a process owner to have many tasks. As long as that other role is not of a reactive firefighting nature. One individual can take responsibility for more than one process. It would be best if these processes are of similar focus. In small companies, the Change, Configuration and Release roles can be shared by one person. Companies who does not fill these roles individually are most probably lacking the management commitment to be serious about ITIL. In a large corporate company, each of these roles should be fulfilled by dedicated people.
Possibly the most important critical success is management commitment.
Make sure you have full management commitment, or you may discover ITIL might just become another failed IT project.
Just becuase a manager has stated he is commmitted to ITL, does not necessarily make it so. The manager must walk and talk ITIL and continuously show his commitment. This requires empowering staff through such methods as professional training, tools, demanding the right reports and taking action. Managing by means of ITIL and appointing the right people in the right roles is also crucial.
A good guideline for top management to follow is Kotter's 8 steps to organizational change.
Management commitment is probably the most important success factor for ITIL, but probably also the most difficult to achieve. Many ITIL implementations fail and become money pits for this very reason.
Many IT managers are under the misconception that ITIL is a cure-all which will magically fix all their problems. Many believe it will simply be necessary to install ITIL and magically everything will be OK. 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.
Another reason for low management commitment is also that ITIL is usually an internal IT department endeavor and not a direct requirement from the business. It must be remembered that ITIL is not the sole focus of the business and is merely a methodology for improving the IT aspects for 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 ITIL Foundation V2-3 Bridging Course, George Marks is ideally placed to offer information on ITIL implementation.
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