In the last edition of Workspace Wire we began to tackle the topic of the new Service Strategy book in the recently released version three of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). We posed a number of questions in that article designed to determine whether your IT organization is properly aligned with the business goals of the organization. To revisit Part I of the article, click here.
If your answers to the questions indicated that your IT organization is in tune with your company’s business needs, you are well-prepared for a strategic IT service journey. However if your answers did not indicate complete alignment, it’s time to delve deeper. A really nice way to picture the gap between IT and business is through what I like to call an IT Alignment Analysis.
On the left are the results of our assessment of the business’ need for IT services and on the right is our analysis of the current state of IT service delivery. In the middle is the description of the “level” of IT service.
So let’s revisit our initial questions about where to start with Service Strategy:
- Is it with economics and starting to perform true ROI analysis on IT programs?
- Is it organizationally, with new staff taking up new in-demand positions and portfolio management?
- Are there elements of service design, transition, and operations that must first be in place before there is any value in service strategy?
If your business needs IT to be a system-based support organization, the lowest level on the left of the scale above, then there is little to no need to implement many of the concepts of Service Strategy. You are likely to add more value by implementing improvements in the areas of IT service operation, transition, and design — enhancing support, change management, and overall delivery of technology solutions to the business.
On the other hand, what if the business needs you to be service-based or above and your arrow on the right of the diagram is at a lower level? There is likely a combination of initiatives, both strategic and tactical, that provide real benefits to the business. For example, the higher the left arrow, the more critical Service Level Management (SLM) and relationship management become. This directs the integration of business and IT, in addition to elements of performance and availability management, and portfolio and catalog management.
So simple questions like, “Where should we begin with IT Service Strategy?” have answers that depend heavily on specific IT and business needs, which must be understood before implementation can begin. This is not unfamiliar to those that have worked with ITSM disciplines over the years. Starting points are often difficult to define and often the “obvious path” ends up not being the chosen one for many reasons.
The most critical thing to ask yourself is, “Does what I am planning benefit the business as a whole? If not, why am I doing it?” There may be increased benefit in selecting elements from many processes and implementing those rather than trying to do one process in its entirety.
This is the real joy of ITIL, there is so much to choose from in so many IT service areas. What you might decide does not benefit the business right now, might be the exact thing needed to solve a business problem six months down the line.
For further information on the approach, method or best practice concepts mentioned here, feel free to contact us at info@getronics.com.
