How To Implement Itil Against All Odds ...

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ITIL Implementation / Business Processes Consultancy

How to Implement ITIL against all odds © Copyright. All rights reserved to I-til Consulting ltd.

Written by:

Benny Kamin, CEO I-til Consulting President of itSMF Israel Sep. 2008

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ITIL© Implementation / Business Processes Consultancy

How to implement ITIL against all odds The United States has the biggest amount of "startup" companies. That's what we expect from the strongest economy on earth. But, on the second place right after the US there is no superpower -country, but a tiny-but-loud country named Israel. This young Israeli industry known in its innovative spirit: startups like ICQ, Mercury and Check-Point are examples. That's good news for businessmen and investors, but that's a nightmare for those who willing to implement ITIL at the Holy-Land.

Is it something different with the Israeli engineer? They teach the young Israeli to improvise wherever he goes. It starts at the army serving, where it's essential to come with unexpected moves. That's how you win war. Then it's being developed at the university: only those who come with extra-ordinary solutions may stand out the rest. No wonder those innovative people are promoted at work: those who can drop a solution on the spot are the most appreciated employees. And there are so many of them, that the manager can count on creativity, not on methods. The results: only the innovative survive. The "evolution rule" keeps only those who have contrivance characteristics to be promoted at work, living the hi-tech offices almost without employees who can get results step by step, who can work according to procedures and rules.

It sounds like fun … Such environment is heaven for engineers, but hell for managers. For small startups - flexible atmosphere is the best! That's the place you can take your imagination to the sky and beyond. But if you want to provide IT services – it's nightmare. You don't need too creative IT personnel. You need personnel who may run maintenance rules step by step. You need stable flow of IT services, with order, SLAs, processes and procedures.

So, ITIL is a great solution: processes, procedures… Yahh. ITIL is a great solution, if you manage to convince IT management board to adopt ITIL. But the Israeli IT manager is Technology oriented. Technoid. After each ITIL presentation about processes and procedures there will always be a manager who asks: "So, what it takes to install ITIL, and how much it cost…" To fight creative-improvisators you need creativity and improvisations … You need advanced method to pursue technology oriented customers to deploy ITIL.

How to convince technology oriented customers to deploy ITIL? The customers (and my wife) are always right, and you need to find a way to convince them. If they come up with list of problems, and they ask for solution, but they are not open to hear about processes and procedures – you have to market ITIL in different way.

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© Copyright. All rights reserved to I-til Consulting ltd. Pages: 4 ITIL ® is a Registered Trade MarkNo. of of OGC

LTD (A.C. 513978080) - 55 Ider st. Haifa 34752, Israel. Mobile: +972-52-5278966 Fax: +972-1534-8347337

E-mail: [email protected]

Web Site: www.ITIL.co.il

ITIL© Implementation / Business Processes Consultancy

A customer of mine – a huge Israeli bank - faced many IT maintenance issues, but no one was open to invest few millions on ITIL implementation. "We need solutions now, not within 3-5 years". Short ITIL assessment revealed vast gap: the IT put all its effort on professional-technological approach, neglecting the need to provide IT services to customers. No matter how many presentations about ITIL they see – no one was brave enough to invest in processes. We took a different tactic: to get to ITIL via technology. If you cannot show the benefit of ITIL processes – you may show the value of CMDB to the IT. Unlike processes, which are virtual entity – you can present CMDB to the management: it has screens, you can connect it to the management systems, and you can provide Impact Tree view.

But, how can you manage CMDB without work processes? In that case we decided to do first and think later. To show the IT all the benefits of CMDB first, and to start with ITIL processes later. To obtain "quick win" we decided to fill the CMDB with "flat trees" only. After gathering the list of all banking-applications (and there are 500 of them!) we attached servers for each application. Since we choose the BMC-Atrium-CMDB, we could provide instantly a SIM (Service Impact Management) view of application trees. By providing fast value to business – we succeed to convince the bank to invest on the next step: to implement real ITIL processes around the CMDB.

The phase of ITIL processes After you have a CMDB running - it is very simple to convince your management to invest in Change Management processes: "We must keep our CMDB updated". Then you look after other "ITIL customers" within the IT. The DRP manager is looking for a tool to check the difference between the Disaster Recovery Plan environment to the production environment. He is a great customer for ITIL Continuity Management process. Having a Service Impact tree can collect data about Availability of a Business Service. That's a great opportunity to deploy ITIL Availability management process.

How the people get along with ITIL? That's a delicate issue. To shift from technical approach to Service Management approach we decided to set new role: "Service Owner". Those IT personnel got new responsibility: to take care on a business service widely. By nature people resisting any kind of change, especially when you change their work processes. Therefore we invest tremendous amount of effort in awareness: We provide presentations and training, we set documentation about ITIL within the internal knowledge system, we even advertize the project via the itSMF conference in order to gain the maximum attention from each IT personnel. The result was great: the technical people just glad to take part in this new approach. The journey from technical to business oriented approach is long journey, but beneficial.

–3– I-til Consulting

© Copyright. All rights reserved to I-til Consulting ltd. Pages: 4 ITIL ® is a Registered Trade MarkNo. of of OGC

LTD (A.C. 513978080) - 55 Ider st. Haifa 34752, Israel. Mobile: +972-52-5278966 Fax: +972-1534-8347337

E-mail: [email protected]

Web Site: www.ITIL.co.il

ITIL© Implementation / Business Processes Consultancy

About the writer: Benny Kamin is the ITIL pioneer in Israel, the founder and the president of the Israeli itSMF chapter. On early 1999 he performed the first ITIL implementation project while building the NSM system at the Israel Electric Company. Benny performed a full-sacle ITIL implementation project in the largest banks in Israel, raising 2 ITIL processes at the IT division. Few years later Benny establish a CMDB at the same bank, and today he provide methodological support to deploy ITIL processes widely. Benny prepared the Service Desk unit of Bank Poalim to become the first Israeli organization to be certified ISO 20000 compliant! Benny (MBA, B.Sc) is the CEO of I-til Consulting ltd - a consulting company, which specialized in ITIL implementation projects.

Contacts: Mobile: +972-52-5278966 e-Mail : [email protected] Web Site: www.ITIL.co.il Reference: How_To_Implement_ITIL_Against_All_Odds.Doc

–4– I-til Consulting

© Copyright. All rights reserved to I-til Consulting ltd. Pages: 4 ITIL ® is a Registered Trade MarkNo. of of OGC

LTD (A.C. 513978080) - 55 Ider st. Haifa 34752, Israel. Mobile: +972-52-5278966 Fax: +972-1534-8347337

E-mail: [email protected]

Web Site: www.ITIL.co.il