Infrastructure management is undergoing a transformation. ITIL can help manage conflicting demands like – “low cost but high service quality”, “ubiquitous access but enhanced security”?

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Positioning IT Service management in the V3 context

Traditionally, ITIL was considered as a best practice framework for operations team who support the IT functions of an organization. There was limited credibility around IT strategy, planning, portfolio management, enterprise architecture, or solutions delivery. ITIL V3 has changed this perception by providing a lifecycle view of services and ITIL is no longer seen as an isolated process framework.

To enable V3 transformation, service management (SM) organization needs to develop a broader outlook. Can SM enable this transformation on its own? Whom do they need to partner with?
The V3 adoption has brought in some challenges to SM organization.  To enable end-to-end view of IT services, SM organizations need to focus more on the service strategy and design.  In fulfilling this, they need to leap into territories that are well established under other governance functions. These groups are typically not ITIL savvy and follows differing guidelines such as PMI, enterprise architecture standards etc, within their domains. In my experience, typical governance functions include:

Project portfolio management team (PPM):- Develop strategy that allows organizations to align their IT functions and application development projects to its business objectives. Provide means to proactively monitor project portfolios for alignment with planned costs and schedules.

Enterprise architecture groups (EA): To predict changes in technology and standards that help the organization to compete in today's dynamic business environment. Articulate the impact of new demands on the company’s architecture standards.

Project Management Office (PMO): Provide a full understanding of projects, its dependencies and impacts on other projects. Encourage adherence to the organization's overall project management standards and ensure that the new project's management methodology is consistent with existing practices.

What are the project governance functions within your organization? In my opinion, the high-level mapping of these functions to V3 principles would look like this:

PPM - > Service Strategy (SS)

EA -> Service Design (SD)

PMO -> Service Design (SD) & Service Transition (ST)

Have you done this mapping yet?

Though the lifecycle view is a new concept, the key functions that enable this view do exist in one form or other within organizations. The SM organization needs to identify these functions and drive towards the mutual alignment of their goals and objectives.

As per Sharon Taylor, the chief architect of ITIL V3, “The lifecycle extension of ITIL is orthogonal to process - it is a new dimension. Your lifecycle processes may need change: how you do what the service lifecycle does. Just as V2 changed the way you do service management, V3 will change the way you do service lifecycle.”

Is service management ready to take up this newly identified role in your organization? Are your project governance functions ready to accept the new role of IT Service management?

Let the dialog begin now!

 

Posted by Renjith Sreekumar on April 7, 2008 05:35 PM |

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