ITIL Malcolm Top Ten

8/13/2019 ITIL Malcolm Top Ten

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Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL

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Top Ten Reasons Organizations areUnsuccessful Implementing ITIL

by Malcolm Fry

Recognized industry luminary Malcolm Fry outlines the reasons

organizations fail to effectively implement ITIL, and discusses why a

philosophy of continuous improvement is paramount to success.




Table of Contents

Top Ten Reasons Organizations are ...............................................1Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL.......................................................1

Top Ten Reasons for Implementation Failure ................................3

The Impact of IT Failures ...................................................................5

The Need for Continuous Improvement ..........................................5

High-Level ITIL Benefits .....................................................................6

What ITIL Is Not...................................................................................7Time To Reap the Rewards...............................................................8

About the Author

Malcolm Fry is a recognized IT industry luminary with over 35 years

experience in Information Technology. He serves as an independent

executive advisor to BMC Software. Malcolm is the author of four

best-selling books on IT service and support, has had many other

articles and papers published, and is regularly contacted as a source of

information by technology journalists. In addition, he is the solo

performer in a highly successful, best-selling video series made for the

Help Desk Institute. He is an original contributor to ITIL and has

Masters level ITIL certification.

® ITIL is a registered trademark of OGC - the Office of GovernmentCommerce

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IT Service Management has become both more sophisticated and more

critical to the business. We are now in an era in which an IT failure or

error can interrupt critical business processes, severely damage a

corporation’s image, affect the bottom line, and even impact a

company’s stock valuation. As organizations become more reliant on

technology, the need for reliable, well-managed services continues toincrease. With this increased demand on IT performance, IT needs

well-defined processes to ensure that IT operations are maintained at

optimal levels.

The Information Infrastructure Technology Library (ITIL®) is the de

facto industry standard framework for providing guidance specific to

IT service delivery and support processes. ITIL can help IT

organizations improve Service Management processes, as well as

enable them to deliver benefits that matter most to both the IT

organization and the business.

The ITIL books are comprehensive and clear, yet many organizations

are unsuccessful in implementing ITIL. Why is this?

I’ve worked with numerous organizations through the years, and have

concluded that many factors contribute to failure in implementing ITIL

successfully.

Top Ten Reasons for Implementation FailureBelow I’ve listed my top ten list of reasons that organizations fail in

their attempts to implement ITIL:

1- Lack of management commitment – No project can succeed

without management commitment and drive. You can achieve isolated

wins with ITIL without management commitment, but these wins will

be few and far between. Commitment itself is not enough; those in

management must show their commitment to ITIL by their presence

and involvement.

2- Spending too much time on complicated process diagrams –

When you start to approach ITIL, there is a great temptation to produce

complex and detailed process maps. This is not necessary for most of

the processes, and wastes valuable time and resources. Many of the processes, such as Incident Management, are performed hundreds of

times every day and do not need rigid process maps. However, you

should create simple process maps for some of the ITIL processes.

3 - Not creating work instructions – Too often, organizations fail to

establish written work instructions because they spend too much time

on creating complex process maps. Work instructions include

escalation rules, priority definitions, and change categories. These

work instructions must be written, published, and continually

reviewed.

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4 - Not assigning process owners – IT, like most other departments, is

often silo-based and not process-oriented. A process owner should be

assigned to each of the ITIL processes that cross functional silos. The

process owner should concentrate on the structure and flow of the

process, without having to focus on staffing and other departmental

issues. Quite simply, the process owner’s job is to carefully monitorand manage the assigned process so that it can be continually

improved.

5 - Concentrating too much on performance – Most IT monitoring

activities concentrate on performance, while ignoring quality and

processes. For example, most Service Desks can report how quickly

they escalate incidents, but few can report how often they escalate

incidents to the wrong person. Organizations need to spend more time

on improving quality as part of implementing ITIL.

6 - Being too ambitiou s – ITIL consists of ten Service Management processes. Many organizations attempt to implement too many

processes at once, causing confusion, staff unrest, and poor integration

between the processes.

7 - Failing to maintain momentum – It’s a huge effort to implement

all ten ITIL processes and maintain the momentum, especially if the

biggest gains come early in the ITIL implementation. A complete and

successful implementation of ITIL takes most organizations between

three and five years –a long time to maintain momentum. Remember,

to maintain the momentum from those early achievements, you must

implement all of the ITIL processes. Think of it like a taking a course

of antibiotics when you are ill--after a few doses, you feel better. But,

if you fail to complete the whole course of the prescription, you will

soon be back to square one—feeling ill again.

8 - Allowing departmental demarcation – Some of the processes

cross more than one department. This often causes conflict among

departments, especially in organizations where department boundaries

are rigid and ownership is important. All departments need to

understand that ITIL is a joint venture and success comes from all

working together; that is, the “power of one,” and not from ownershipof a process.

9 - Ignoring solutions other than ITIL – Although ITIL is regarded

as the industry “best practice” for IT Service Management, many other

best practices and frameworks exist to facilitate Service Management,

such as Control Objectives for Information and related Technology

(COBIT), Six Sigma, and CMMi. Corporate control requirements,

such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, can also affect ITIL. These other

components are often ignored, which can delay ITIL implementation.

Even worse, if you don’t focus on these components, then you are not

maximizing ITIL’s potential.

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10 - Not reviewing the entire ITIL framework – Although there are

ten basic ITIL processes, look at the entire ITIL framework when

putting ITIL best practices in place. In particular, review the Security

Management and the Information and Communications Technology

(ICT) Infrastructure Management books, because ITIL success is

dependent upon other IT processes.

The Impact of IT FailuresI’ve just outlined the reasons that organizations fail in implementing

ITIL, but let’s take a step back to understand why we need the well-

defined processes as defined by ITIL. Two examples show the impact

of two critical IT failures in the same week, first when the National Air

Traffic System failed to operate in the UK:

“NATS’ Flight Data Processing System failed at around 0600 BST for

an hour, after overnight testing of an upgrade.” Extract from a BBC

(UK) report dated June 3, 2004 (www.bbc.com)

As a result of this failure, virtually all flights from commercial airports

were grounded for at least an hour beginning at 6 a.m. on June 3, 2004.

Can you imagine the chaos? Not to mention the cost and image

damage. This failure was obviously caused by the testing of a future

change. Note that the change was only being tested, yet it still had an

enormous effect. It appears that poor change management was the

cause of this failure. Now, for the IT failure at the Royal Bank of

Canada in the same week:

RBC’s computer woes began on Monday, May 31 with what it

described as a routine programming update to one of its computer

systems. The bank’s national system failed to register withdrawals,

deposits, and payments against customer balances.” Friday, June 4,

2004( www.globeandmail.com)

Again, this looks like a failed change, but is described by the bank as a

routine programming update, suggesting that this type of change had

been performed many times before. Surely, a routine update shouldn’t

fail, should it? Sometimes, the lack of attention to the “routine” can

cause the worst problems. The impact to RBC was huge, because itwas a full working week before IT was fully restored.

The Need for Continuous ImprovementEnsuring successful IT Service Management is like becoming a martial

arts expert. To maintain your martial arts level status, you have to

continuously practice and train, because laziness breeds failure and

incompetence. To maintain your IT Service Management at the

highest level, you must practice continuous improvement, or you will

breed failure and incompetence. No IT Service can rely on previous

successes, so it is important for IT Service Management to embark

upon a continuous improvement cycle.

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http://www.bbc.com/

http://www.globeandmail.com/

http://www.globeandmail.com/

http://www.bbc.com/




The power of ITIL lies in not only in its well-defined processes, but

also in its philosophy of continuous improvement. To gain the full

benefits of implementing ITIL, IT staff and IT management must meet

this challenge of continuous improvement. Both the ITIL Service

Delivery and Service Support books include a list of ten benefits that

you should achieve as a result of following ITIL Service Management processes. The philosophy of continuous improvement is reflected in

the following list:

• Improved quality of service - more reliable business support

• More focused IT Service Continuity procedures; more

confidence in the ability to follow them when required

• Clearer view of current IT capability

• Better information on current services (and possibly on where

Changes would bring most benefits)

• Greater flexibility for the business through improved

understanding of IT support

• More motivated staff; improved job satisfaction through better

understanding of capability and better management of

expectations

• Enhanced customer satisfaction as service providers know and

deliver what is expected of them

• Increased flexibility and adaptability that is likely to exist

within the services

• System-led benefits, e.g. improvements in security, accuracy,

speed and availability, as required, for the required level of

service• Improved cycle time for changes and greater success rate.1

High-Level ITIL BenefitsThis is quite an impressive list of benefits. If you are not currently

achieving these benefits, then quite possibly you are suffering the

losses and impacts of not implementing ITIL best practices. Here are

some additional high-level ITIL benefits that are not mentioned in the

ITIL publications:

Common terminology- Apart from standard processes, ITIL has a

standard set of terminology that allows IT to communicate more easilywith customers. This is especially useful to large, multi-site

organizations in which all sites perform the same IT Service

Management functions, but are using different lexicons to describe

their actions. In addition to simplifying communication with IT,

standard terminology also improves training, improves reporting, and

reduces confusion.

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Best Practice for Service Support, ITIL. The Key to managing IT services, Page 17.Published for Office of Government Commerce under license from the Controller of

Her Majesty’s Stationery Office ©Crown Copyright 2001.

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Narrower gap between management and practitioners —Senior

management often does not understand many of the processes under

their control, for a variety of reasons. There may be too many

processes for management to understand them all, or a manager may

not have performed some of the processes. Also, the processes may

have changed. One of the benefits of an ITIL shop is that seniormanagement can use the ITIL books as a guide to help them ensure

that Service Management processes are being performed according to

best practices.

International standards – ITIL has a BS15000 British Standard, is

allied to ISO9002, and is awaiting ISO ratification. Reaching the

standard required for ratification is a great vision for the improvement

of IT Service Management, even if you do not wish to become ratified.

Staff certification – ITIL has independent staff certification comprised

of two main levels of certification: foundation and managers. If youare certified at the foundation level, you show a general understanding

of the ITIL processes and terminology. To pass managers-level

certification, you need a comprehensive knowledge of ITIL, along with

the ability to implement and manage ITIL in the workplace. It’s

important to note that ITIL certification examinations are set and

marked by independent examining boards that cannot teach or profit

from ITIL certification. A by-product of ITIL certification is that you

can gauge the quality of your training by the percentage of your staff

hat passes the exams.t What ITIL Is Not

Your organization can realize many important benefits by

implementing ITIL best practices. In most organizations, there is still

much good work to be done. Be careful, though, to draw a line

between looking for tangible benefits and merely tinkering with

technology. It may be useful to look at what ITIL is not:

• ITIL is not a methodology for implementing IT Service

Management processes. Rather, it is a flexible framework that

you can tailor to meet your specific needs.

• ITIL does not contain detailed process maps. ITIL provides the

foundation and information that you need to build and improveyour processes.

• ITIL does not provide work instructions. For example, the ITIL

Incident Management process tells you at what point you must

escalate the incident, but it doesn’t tell you how to escalate the

incident, or who you should escalate the incident to; only you

can determine this.

It is refreshing to discover that, while ITIL is not the complete answer

to everything, it does provide a solid foundation. Think about it like

this: memorizing the rules to baseball does not mean that you can play

the game. To play baseball well, not only must you follow the rules, but you must also learn to utilize your strengths and abilities.

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Similarly, memorizing the ITIL books does not mean that you can

effectively implement the ITIL processes; you can successfully

implement ITIL best practices only by understanding your IT strengths

and abilities.

Time To Reap the RewardsKnowing what you know about ITIL, and the benefits it can bring to

your business, aren’t you ready to see what it can do for you?

Let this industry framework guide you as you implement IT Service

Management best practices in your IT organization—and begin to reap

the rewards that ITIL can bring—to IT, to users, and to the success of

your overall business.

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ITIL Malcolm Top Ten