I was talking to a consultant recently about some process work he was doing with a large, global IT organization. I asked him if they had adopted any formal service management framework and he said that when he asked them about ITILv3, they said, “We tried that, but we just don’t have the discipline to do it!”
I was thinking about this admission from a multi-billion dollar, global enterprise, and thinking about analogies.
Businesses that Can’t Deliver What they Promise
Supposing, when you booked a flight, the airline said,
That flight might not get you to the destination you are paying for. In fact, it might not get you anywhere with safety!”
Or, when you booked a hotel room (can you tell I travel a lot!), the hotel operator told you,
We can’t guarantee a room will be available, or that it will have clean sheets and towels. We will try, but we really don’t have the discipline to ensure it!”
Or going to a hospital for surgery, and the admissions officer asking you to sign a waiver acknowledging that,
I understand that my surgery might not be performed by a board certified surgeon. Or by anyone actually qualified to perform the needed surgery. We will try to do no harm, but we don’t have the discipline to ensure it.”
For all the criticism we might throw at airlines, hotels, and even hospitals, by and large, these organizations have the processes, controls and disciplines to mostly do it right the first time. IT service management is hardly open heart surgery, but the IT organization is being paid a significant amount of money to deliver services that people depend upon. The customers of these services expect that they are being delivered consistently, reliably, accurately and at the best possible cost. I can’t imagine what they would say or think if they knew this was not necessarily the case – that their service provider “did not have the discipline” to do it right!
Process and Service Management Discipline – Not Optional!
I’ve posted before about ITIL and about it being necessary but not sufficient. I’ve never posted anything that implied that process discipline is not a critical success factor, or that ITILv3 is not a highly effective framework for bringing process and service management disciplines to an IT organization. I do acknowledge that any process improvement methodology when applied without a modicum of intelligence can go overboard. We see this in a phenomenon I call ‘death by Six Sigma‘ when the race to green belt certification leads to hundreds of mini process improvement projects without any overarching change architecture. We saw it with Total Quality Management, and the Baldrige Award and Deming Prize winners that got into serious difficulty as the end of the prize became more important than the means to make money!
Do you have the necessary discipline to provide the best possible services at the lowest possible cost? If not, what can you do to develop some commitment to do it right, and the discipline that comes with that commitment? If the answer is “nothing,” how can you look your customers in the face?
Filed under: IT Infrastructure, IT Management, IT Maturity, Key Frameworks | Tagged: ITIL, process management, Service Management
Here’s my two cents worth … using the airline analogy …
We have an airplane and we’re going to fly in that general direction and based on the fares that you are paying we will get somewhere in that general vicinity. If you want a commitment to get where you want to go we will need to buy more fuel (developers) and better navigation equipment (PMs / PMO). That would also allow us to hire counter personnel who speak english. Since this will raise the fare beyond what you seem willing to pay (and then you go down the road to Offshore Airlines where you get even less certainty for less money), it seems to me that you should be happy with the service you get.
I love the analogy! Thank you!