ITIL V3 CIO - Chief ITIL Officer?
So, who in your organization is championing your ITIL Service Management (ITSM) program? The CIO office? Does your CIO understand or speak ITIL? Or is it driven more locally through pockets of excellence within the Infrastructure and Operations groups?
There appears to be a good amount of euphoria within the industry that the refreshed service lifecycle approach in V3 will put it straight on every CIO's radar. In the article ITIL Dons a Suit and Tie, published on searchcio.com, Linda Tucci suggests that "CIOs especially, should find it of interest". Similarly, Brian Johnson, one of the original authors of the first ITIL books, in his article ITIL Framework finds new stakeholders with V3, talks about how V3 discussions will now move to the executive level. Whether these statements prove true or not remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the question still remains as to how much benefit the CIO's influence brings to an ITSM program's success. Let me lay out a simplistic scenario of how the CIO influence may impact two organization's desire to implement an ITSM program -
- Organization A - "CIO's ITIL mandate" or "CIO says ..." is the mantra that goes here. The CIO understands, and what more, even speaks ITIL! (And I have personally been involved in or know of several such organizations.)
- Organization B - The CIO and his senior leadership are quite "ITIL agnostic". In some situations, you are even advised not to utter that four letter word.
So which organization has a better chance of success?
One thing few people will dispute is that an ITSM program initiated from the CIO office has a much higher chance of successfully taking off. So, potentially, organization A could get off the ground faster and successfully kick-start its ITSM program. And well, starting the program is, if not half the job done, certainly a substantial portion of it! Interestingly, that does not mean that Organization B will not get it right.
But the key here is not where it is coming from, rather how it is driven on an ongoing basis. Once the initial euphoria has subsided, how do you drive a program on a day-to-day basis? Given that most large ITSM implementations typically run into 2-3 years, what does it take to keep the ITSM program meaningful?
The "Chief ITSM Officer" and Co.
A while back, I came across a rather interesting article published by Wharton on the Chief Receptionist Officer and how Title Inflation has hit the C-suite. While I am yet to come across a role by the name of "Chief ITIL Officer" or anything to that effect, I think calling out a separate senior leadership role focused on delivering ITSM is quite effective in ensuring accountability and continued focus. Does this need to be a dedicated role? Or should it be combined with Infrastructure Operations? Or perhaps Application Production Support? You decide. Consider these for starters - how large is your organization, how many and which processes are you starting with, what is your existing maturity level (also see my previous blog on V3 Readiness Assessment). Along with these, build out the organization to support such activities. Invest in setting up roles and responsibilities for process owners and process managers.
Metrics, metrics, metrics: Do the numbers make sense?
Irrespective of whether the ITSM program has been initiated through the CIO office or not, eventually it all boils down to being able to demonstrate quantifiable benefits. Have you been able to improve availability? Has your change related dollar impact gone down? Across the program as well as within specific processes. One of the simplest things to say or write but disputably one of the hardest to get right 
... but let me save that for another blog!
Net net -
- The "CIO says" mantra definitely helps to kick-start, but you still need to drive your ITSM program continuously, whether or not you call it ITIL
- Getting the numbers game right is key
Comments
I like this line of thinking esp after being taught about Managing Services Organizations by one of the ITIL v3 authors at Carnegie Mellon.
Every function's a service and must me managed as one!
Posted by: Manik Patil | July 6, 2007 11:21 PM