Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management

Posted by - Atul Porwal 

Not all organizations are same and neither is the effort required to implement ITSM. In my last blog I talked about the ITSM implementation stages and activities, which provided pointers towards areas “where” the effort is required. “How much” of that effort is required is driven by some of the Organization-specific factors. So what really are those factors ?

• Organization Size – Size of the Organization is one of the most important factors to be considered when doing effort estimation. During any ITSM implementation, the major chunk of effort is required in the number of stakeholder interviews and workshops that you conduct. These stakeholders could be in the form of process sponsors, process owners, process members and process customers. The number of stakeholders for an organization with IT staff size of 50 will definitely be less than the number of stakeholders for an organization with IT staff size of 1000, resulting into less number of interviews and less effort requirements.
• Number of Process areas to be covered – Number of interviews to be conducted as part of the “Current State Validation” stage is directly proportional to the number of ITIL processes to be covered as part of the program. Generally there is a defined set of stakeholder interviews for each process area and more the number of in-scope processes more will be the effort required towards conducting interviews. Number of in-scope processes also hugely impacts the number of users, who will have to be considered during the Organization Change Management effort.
• User Awareness on IT Service Management – Awareness of users on the ITIL framework and potential benefits coming out of its adoption can make a huge difference during ITSM implementation. Implementation is always easier if users have brought-in the idea of “why” IT service Management. During one of my projects, where I was involved in implementing Release Management process, lack of user awareness on ITIL caused program team to spend much more effort on Organization Change Management than warranted. It not only slowed down the process adoption but also extended the effort estimated during the start of the program.
• Language Consideration – Most of the leading ITSM tools are readily available in English language, but if in case an Organization would like to implement the processes and tools in different language, then corresponding effort needs to be estimated for interpreter and  translation (as needed). I was recently involved in ITSM tools implementation planning for a south-east Asia based financial Organization and the cost and effort estimated were spiked by 20% due to requirement of implementing tools and processes in local language.
• Sourcing Model for the Organization (In-source, Outsource, Multi vendor environment) – Current sourcing model is another key considerations for effort estimation. For a completely in-sourced organization there will be a single set of stakeholders, but if you consider a case where multiple vendors are involved, the set of process members increases in proportion to the number of vendors involved. So to take an example, a large organization, where core infrastructure is managed by vendor-A and telecommunications services are managed by Vendor-B, for this organization the set of stakeholders, who needs to be interacted with, will include at least three sets - one each from parent Organization, vendor-A and vendor-B.

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Posted by - Atul Porwal

With more and more organizations moving towards adopting ITIL as the best practices framework for IT Service Management, there is growing curiosity from organizations as to what it will take from effort and cost perspective to reach that coveted ITILized state. Is the ITSM implementation like any other initiative or are there special considerations? What are the different phases during ITSM journey and what are the key effort heads? How to plan meticulously to ensure that there is no “surprise” effort during the implementation? Is there a structured way of estimating effort and is the magnitude of effort required proportionate to the scope and size of the Organization?

In my experience one of the key activities, which ensures that the required budget, time and resources are available to run and sustain the initiative, is the planning and bucketing of all potential effort-heads. The first step to estimate the effort needs for ITSM implementation is to identify the different stages in ITSM journey and also the key tasks and activities, which will be accomplished.

I have seen different Organizations adopting different approaches, but typically they all involve 3 stages (as mentioned below) during ITSM implementation - 

Stage 1 – Current State Validation– This stage helps in identifying where an Organization is with respect to industry best practices and also the potential areas of improvement in current IT Service Management landscape. Some Organizations also refer to this stage as “As-Is Maturity Assessment and Gap Analysis”

Typical activities carried out as part of this stage are:

·          Identification and Scheduling  interviews with stakeholders
·          Identifying, gathering and reviewing process documents
·          Stakeholder interviews (X per process, Y processes)
·          Input validation Workshops (N per process)
·          Review of current Service Management tools
·          Analyzing information gathered to identify gaps in current setup
·          Preparing Gap analysis report

Stage 2 – Planning for “To-Be” State – Once the gaps are identified in current setup next step is to identify and document the improvement initiatives, which enables an Organization to reach the desired state.  Considerable amount of effort is involved in this stage and is mostly spread across following activities - 

·          Preparing and conducting workshop session on priority setting
·          Identifying initiatives and preparing implementation roadmap
·          Identifying data migration strategy, architecture, interfaces, roadmap for Service Management tool (if new tool is used)
·          Organization Change Management
·          Identifying channels to communicating the change 

Stage 3 – Implementation Rollout– This stage involves activities related to communication and roll-out of the initiatives identified as part of “planning for To-Be state” stage into the live environment.
Though the actual effort needs here will be primarily driven by the recommendations coming out in previous stage, but still are typically spread across:

·          Customizing standard processes for environment, where essential
·          Implementing initiatives (effort here will vary depending on the number and size of initiatives identified)
·          Developing /customizing /integrating IT Service Management tool with other applications, internal testing, bug fixing, UAT for service management tool
·          Rolling out customized tools modules in production environment
·          Developing  training material
·          Facilitating process reviews and feedback collection
·          Conducting trainings on new processes and tools 

Above listed activities are based on my experience and are indicative only. I believe that there is no single “ideal” set of activities that fits all Organizations, and the actual approach and set of activities will vary from organization to organization.
 
In my experience, most of the Organizations go through stage 1 and 2 to kick-start their ITSM implementation efforts. And once an Organization has good understanding of the current gaps and immediate priorities, it plans and goes ahead with “Implementation rollout”, as the next phase of Service Management adoption.

But do all organizations have to commit the same effort across the different stages and activities of ITSM implementation or does it vary depending on the some other factors (internal and external)?  In my next blog I will talk about some of these factors, which affect the magnitude of effort involved.

Posted by Guest Author at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As the popularity and adoption rate of ITIL moves up, it brings along with it the challenging task of estimating ITIL implementation costs and timelines across the organization’s internal units, geographies, service providers and diverse technologies. Like any other project, an ITIL implementation project also needs to be planned meticulously both in terms of tasks as well as implementation duration.

While planning for ITIL implementation, have you wondered - how long does it take to implement ITIL? Are there a defined set of parameters to be considered to calculate efforts? What are the factors influencing effort estimation? What parameters should you tweak if you have some pre-defined time/budget constraints? When should you involve an external consultant? What type of role-profiles should you consider for a particular activity to calculate effort? Does selection and sequencing of processes and tool(s) affect the implementation duration?

If you have asked yourself these questions, here's introducing Atul Porwal. Atul is an IT Service Management and Information Security Consultant. He has been involved in various engagements ranging from consulting and implementation to management of infrastructure and security projects. Atul's experience includes providing process and technology solutions for fortune 500 companies across the globe. He is also a certified ITIL Practitioner. He was recently involved in framing a reference model for calculating effort requirements for ITIL consulting and implementation engagements for Infosys. I am inviting Atul to share his thoughts and experiences through these blogs.

Posted by Arvind Raman at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)