1.    Introduction

Levels of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity continue to play a key role for organisations wishing to transform their business. IT is seen as representing 20% of the benefit of a M&A, and as a result, as leaders in the IT industry, we must make it as successful as possible. ITIL service management provides best practices associated with the development and delivery of end-to-end business services as well as technology. We can utilise many of the processes covered within ITIL as we move a M&A through initial integration to a joint working practice.
Organisations that adopt ITIL can realise business benefit through improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. By adopting a true service-centric approach, we bring transparency to the relationship between IT and the business, which is ultimately the goal for IT service management. This can be useful during a M&A, albeit that in the first instance there may be little time for planning due to the sensitive nature of the M&A, or even that IT has not been involved during any due diligence process.

2.    ITIL’s role in delivering value and business benefit

ITIL service management is a recognised professional best practice supported by an extensive body of knowledge, experience and skills. It is also a best practice framework for the provisioning of business and IT services to unite all teams toward a single aim: delivering business value.
ITIL focuses on recognising what each IT service brings, in terms of its value and business benefit. IT must challenge itself to check that it is providing services that each business needs in order to meet its own challenges.  It enables organizations to understand the role that IT plays on behalf of the business for sustained success.  

3.    Using ITIL for Mergers and Acquisitions

ITIL best practices can be used when IT needs to get involved in a M&A activity.
Initially it will be appropriate to view the combining business to assess the types of services provided: are there any common services, are there merging of skills and competencies, are locations coming together?
Senior IT executives should evaluate  the cost effectiveness of each service. Organizations should analyse the services against the desired business outcomes during a M&A activity, to ensure their continued relevance.
To sustain high levels of business performance, organisations need to offer competitive products and services that customers will value. This does not change during the M&A – adapting quickly to changes in the economic climate and in the marketplace will be critical to success. Adopting a structured approach helps to avoid the common mistake of using the services hosted by the larger stakeholder in the M&A – this is not necessarily best for the new emerging business!

M&A  transformations can be supported through the use of the ITIL Service Lifecycle approach. The ITIL service lifecycle has five distinct stages: which rely on service principles, processes, roles and performance measures. The following information provides a brief set of checks and balances that can be used as the M&A transformation progresses to ensure that services are adapting and responding effectively:

Service Strategy

At the core of the service lifecycle, focus is required to ensure that the strategy to deliver the M&A transformation is defined, maintained and implemented. Within the initial integration of the M&A activity, service strategy evaluates whether each service will add value to the new organisation and whether it is still appropriate as the organisation changes. There are likely to be new constraints, such as new corporate governance requirements, legislation, cultural or cost constraints. Service strategy focuses on enabling practical decision making, based on a sound understanding of the services, with the ultimate aim of increasing the economic life of the appropriate services It ensures that IT is in a position to handle the costs and risks associated with the emerging portfolio of services. At this point the business relationship is also established to progress the activities.   

Service Design                             

With transformation requirements identified, service design wil focus on converting the strategy into reality, through the use of a consistent approach to the design and development of new service offerings. It will be necessary to view the merging services in areas such as consistency of a common architecture, understanding and translating any new business requirements, and introducing the appropriate support requirements upon implementation of the M&A. It may also be necessary to increase or maintain additional value to customers during the integration period, but at the very least ensure continuity of each service as the transition takes place. There will undoubtedly be pressure on maintaining existing service levels.

Service Transition

As the design and development activities are completed, service transition will ensure that the changes are managed: any change carries risk to the organisation, whether it be a small bug fix or a significant IT project, and a M&A activity has even more intensity. Service transition will protect the changes that are going into live service to ensure minimal unpredicted impact on the business. It will bring together all the assets within a service, to ensure they are integrated and tested together. Its focus is on the quality and control of the delivery of a new or changed service into operations. There will usually be limited time within the M&A integration so quality effort to this stage of the lifecycle will reduce unexpected variations in delivery of the live services.

Service Operation

Importantly, the area having greatest visibility during an M&A process will be the day to day support services, without doubt the largest resource burden (often representing 60 to 75% of the cost of IT). There must be sound end-to-end practices which can support responsive and stable services. Service operation teams are a strong influencer on how the business perceives the service it receives. The service desk can be used as the focal point during the M&A activity as they directly own and support incident management through the support of any user issues, requests and feedback. Use of management reporting of service performance and achievement of service level targets will be important indicators of IT’s success for the evolving business.
Continual Service Improvement
Finally, after implementation of the M&A change, a check and balance on whether the change had the required impact on the business objectives is required. Continual service improvement therefore works with the other four stages of the service lifecycle to potentially realign the services with the business needs. Perfection will certainly not be reached at the initial integration of the M&A and as such continual service improvement must provide a vehicle for recognising further improvement opportunities and change. Where there are any significant gaps in service during the initial stages, these can be focussed on as a priority to mitigate against any significant risks.   

The ITIL 2011 edition improved clarity and consistency across the lifecycle suite. Many of these were driven from concepts in Service Strategy.
The Service Strategy publication was updated to explain the concepts and processes in the clearest, most concise and accessible way possible. The processes within ITIL Service Strategy have been clearly named as processes and defined using a standard template.
Some content was reorganized to improve flow, readability and alignment across the lifecycle suite. There is more consistency around interfaces, inputs and outputs across the service lifecycle and cross references that aid navigation.
There is a similar standard chapter structure across the suite to improve consistency and aid navigation. For example there is generic content in Chapters 1, 2 and 6. Having a common Chapter 2 that covers service management as a practice helps with consistency.
Terminology was also clarified and is consistent across the suite and the ITIL glossary.

Benefits of the 2011 changes to the ITIL core publications

The updated processes, corrections and consistency updates help to convey the core concepts and best practices in a clear and concise manner. The feedback from the Review Group confirmed that the books are more accessible and understandable to all.
Service Strategy and core concepts that are used through the lifecycle suite are easier to navigate, read, translate and teach.

How were the ITIL core concepts and principles retained?

The improvements were made in response to: issues raised through the change control log; advice from the change advisory board and feedback from the training community.
The ITIL authoring team was involved in deciding the best approach to clarifying key concepts. This helped to cascade points of clarification throughout the ITIL lifecycle suite.
Any significant issues raised by the authoring team were escalated to the Project Board for assessment. The Project Board, included Sharon Taylor as the Technical Advisor. The Review Group checked that the improvements clarified the ITIL core concepts, rather than changing them.

Emerging trends

Since 2007 when the ITIL lifecycle suite was published there have been global, economic and technology changes that impact service management.
In 2007, ITIL recognised the emerging trends towards governance of IT, risk management, standardization, globalisation, sustainability and different sourcing strategies. The ITIL update incorporates updates in these areas, often with examples.
The “cloud” is an emerging trend that an organization needs to consider in its business and IT strategies. The ITIL update includes support for cloud computing.
There are also new and updated best practices and international standards related to service management reflected in the ITIL update such as the international standards for governance of IT and service management. This is useful for organizations that use ISO/IEC 20000 to certify their Service Management System and adoption of ITIL best practices.

Will the 2011 update affect my ITIL qualifications and will I need to update them?

No, there is absolutely no reaccreditation, so no pain! If you are taking a series of intermediate courses, the exams are exactly the same format and the types of questions have not changed much at all.
ConnectSphere’s new foundation course syllabus has been in use since November 2011
Intermediate courses will be updated with the new syllabus and new exam papers for all courses from January 2012.
Managing Across the Lifecycle (MALC ) will change format in May 2012 for go live up to the following September, so courseware will be updated to reflect this in mid 2012.

Connectsphere is a an international leader in the ITIL Service Management. We offer excellent ITIL Consulting services and have a full catalogue of ITIL Training courses available.


ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries

Since its creation, ITIL has grown to become the most widely accepted approach to service management in the world. But what exactly is ITIL? 
ITIL provides a set of consistent and comprehensive best practice guidance for business and IT service management (ITSM). The guidance is contained within the ITIL publications and the supporting professional qualification scheme. ITIL is flexible and scalable. It is suitable for organizations of all shapes and sizes can implement parts of ITIL to deliver business benefits in stages. 
A service is defined as a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve, without the ownership of specific costs and risks. The challenge is to deliver services as demand for services changes with business needs. Service providers need to adapt and respond effectively to those needs. 
Service management is defined as a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services These capabilities enable service providers to ensure the production and delivery of quality services that meet the needs of their customers in a timely and cost-effective manner. 

What guidance does ITIL provide?

ITIL consists of five core service lifecycle publications. Each one provides the guidance necessary for an integrated approach to service management. The core publications are: 

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement

The Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle provides an overview of the lifecycle stages contained within the ITIL core. 
Practitioners can select complementary publications as needed to support the ITIL core publications. These complementary publications increase the durability and portability of knowledge assets and to protect investments in service management capabilities.
An additional contributor to ITIL’s success is the associated training and qualification schemes that provide professional development opportunities for personnel involved in service management. 
The ITIL glossary and publications are translated into several languages. These include: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Rumanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish. 

What are the core ITIL publications?

Each publication addresses capabilities that are required to improve a service provider’s performance. The structure of the core is in the form of a lifecycle. Implementing a service lifecycle provides structure, stability and strength to improve the service management capabilities of an organization. The principles, methods and tools provide the foundation for measurement, learning and improvement. 

Who uses ITIL?

The ITIL publications are relevant to organizations involved in the development, delivery or support of services, including:

• Service providers, both internal and external
• Service providers that want to improve service quality and their interactions with their customers
• Organizations that require a consistent managed approach across all service providers in a supply chain or value network

The guidance in ITIL can be adapted for changes of use in various business environments and organizational strategies.
References
The UK Cabinet Office owns the ITIL series.

The series includes:

• Cabinet Office (2011). ITIL Service Strategy. TSO, London.
• Cabinet Office (2011). ITIL Service Design. TSO, London.
• Cabinet Office (2011). ITIL Service Transition. TSO, London.
• Cabinet Office (2011). ITIL Service Operation. TSO, London.
• Cabinet Office (2011). ITIL Continual Service Improvement. TSO, London.
• Cabinet Office (2012), Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle, TSO ISBN-13: 9780113313099

Connectsphere is a an international leader in the ITIL Service Management. We offer excellentITIL Consulting services and have a full catalogue of ITIL Training courses available.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries

To sustain high levels of business performance, organisations need to offer competitive products and services that customers will value, buy and use. Adapting quickly to changes in the economic climate and in the market place is of real importance. All services offered should enable business transformation and growth.
ITIL Service Management supports this transformation through the use of the Service Lifecycle, which is split into 5 distinct lifecycle stages: 

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement

Each stage relies on service principles, processes, roles and performance measures, and each stage is dependent on the other lifecycle stages for inputs and feedback. A constant set of checks and balances throughout the Service Lifecycle ensures that as business demand changes with business need, the services can adapt and respond effectively to them.

Service Strategy

Service Strategy sits at the core of the Service Lifecycle and focuses on ensuring that our strategy is defined, maintained and then implemented. There is key guidance for Executive Managers’ around operating according to the business constraints, corporate governance and compliance, legislation, and some cultural aspects of organisational transformation. The focus will enable practical decision making, based on a sound understanding of the offered services, with the ultimate aim of increasing the economic life of all services.
Service Strategy is about ensuring that organisational units in support of the business are in a position to handle the costs and risks associated with their service portfolio, and that they are set up for service improvement.

Service Design

At this stage, the focus shifts to converting the strategy into reality, through the use of a consistent approach to the design and development of new service offerings:

• A consistent use of a common architecture
• Understanding and translating the business requirements
• Introducing the appropriate Support requirements upon implementation of the service

The scope of Service Design is also not limited to new services; it includes any changes and improvements necessary to increase or maintain value to customers over the lifecycle of services, such as improved continuity of a service, or improvements necessary to enhance service hours and service levels. Changes required because of new conformance standards and regulations are also relevant as are services bought off the shelf from suppliers.

Service Transition

As design and development activities are completed, there is a period for Service Transition with its key purpose to bridge both the gap between projects and operations more effectively, but also to improve any changes that are going into live service, even if it is transferring the control of services between customers and service providers. The Service Transition stage brings together all the assets within a service and ensures these are integrated and tested together. Its focus is on the quality and control of the delivery of a new or changed service into operations. Giving sufficient time and quality effort to this stage of the lifecycle will reduce unexpected variations in delivery of the live services. 

Service Operation

The operational teams ensure there are robust end-to-end practices which support responsive and stable services. They provide on-going support unit and they are a strong influencer on how the business perceives the service it receives. A key part of this is the Service Desk that directly own and support incident management and request fulfilment for users, including feedback on user satisfaction. Supporting functions to the Service Desk include business support and administration teams. Specific to IT, there are Application Management, and Technical support teams that contribute to the successful resolution of major incidents that affect the business.

Continual Service Improvement

Continual Service Improvement works with the other four stages of the service lifecycle to align the services with the business needs, whilst recognising improvement opportunities and change. 

About ConnectSphere

ConnectSphere provides consulting and professional development services to help organizations to apply ITIL service management best practices and to improve value delivery. 


ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries

In the current business climate the focus for organisations is cost saving, value delivery and business transformation. ITIL Service Management is a recognised professional practice across the world supported by an extensive body of knowledge, experience and skills, spanning 30 years. The ITIL Service Management framework provides principles and practices to help leaders deal with today’s challenges. 
ITIL Service Management provides common practices for provisioning business and core services that unites all teams toward a single aim – that of delivering business value. Its focus is on recognising each service as a commodity and what each service brings to the business in terms of its value and benefit. It acts as a challenge to check that it is providing services that businesses need in order to meet their own challenges. 
Not only this, but all team managers face the challenge of doing this in a cost effective manner. 

Benefits of adopting ITIL

ITIL Service Management forms part of the body of knowledge providing a common practice for an organisation to apply service management across the supply chain. It demonstrates a systematic approach that is responsive, consistent, and measurable.
In summary, the real benefits to the organisation are around: 

1. Delivering business outcomes and value to customers
2. Common terms and language across the global supply chain
3. Simplification and reducing complexity
4. Can recognise service offerings, their value and prioritisation of investments
5. Enables business change, through a greater understanding of the influences and effects throughout the service lifecycle
6. Clear accountability, roles and responsibilities
7. Conformance to IT governance and compliance

Adopting ITIL in practice

Adopting the ITIL Service Management practices can aid the interaction between the product/service and its key business users. Taking the IT tools used by a Research scientist, we can show how this works in practice.
A key interactive capability would be the need to input experimental data. The requirement of the scientist would be the ability to use the application with ease, in such areas as moving between screens easily, being able to input lots of data, and following this up with the ability to report against key fields. This is known as the basic utility of the application, and if the interaction is done with ease the user would consider the service as being fit for its purpose. Due to the criticality of the service, the service would need to be consistently reliable, even in the run up to a major new trial launch. The service provider must therefore provide sufficient capacity, and importantly the ability to transact to a near 24 hour operation in most cases due to the locations of the R&D laboratories. All data must also be secure. These aspects are known as warranty of a service. 

ITIL Service Management provides guidance on the best practices in both of these areas to optimise the consistency and sustainability of both utility and warranty as this is key to overall customer satisfaction. It is to the whole of the Supporting organisation that we must look to guarantee that we can provide this value. ITIL is heavily reliant on processes to provide a common discipline for sustaining consistency and cost efficiency. Its worth is also that it can be adapted to any type of service organisation: whether it be internal or external; small or large. We can only truly deliver value to our customers if we provide an appropriate service that delivers what they want under all the constraints and conditions forced upon them.
When Senior Managers adopt a service management orientation, they are adopting a vision for their organisation. Such a vision provides a model where staff will feel inspired to work and behave. However there is no “one single” best way to organise. And over time organisations will evolve - our lifecycle phase of continual service improvement protects this fundamental element.

About ConnectSphere

Connectsphere is a an international leader in the ITIL Service Management. We offer excellentITIL Consulting services and have a full catalogue of ITIL Training courses available.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

A series of articles that focus on specific ITIL Process disciplines giving our readers an in-depth view of how implementation of ITIL processes can reduce costs while improving IT Services.

ITIL Problem Management

Why Read this Article?

Implementing ITIL Problem Management is the key to:

• Improving Service and Application availability
• Reducing support costs
• Reducing the number or impact of incidents
• Eliminating rework
• Showing tangible, measureable impact on services

Why Problem Management? 

Implementing a capable Problem Management process is the key to improving overall service.  By concentrating on this discipline you will have the opportunity to improve all elements of your service.
Problem Management focuses on detecting and driving out systemic issues that are causing your IT services to fall below the expectations of the business customers.
Some organizations may start improvements in IT Service Management with the implementation of ITIL Change Management.  It’s an easy target that will deliver some benefits in the short term and improve control over your organization’s changes.  I started ITIL implementation here also.  But more importantly organizations really need to focus on driving out those systemic issues that are causing service outages.  That’s where ITIL Problem Management comes in.

Implementing ITIL Problem Management is Important

Successful process improvement comes from finding and understanding the underlying problem that caused an outage or incident, determining what caused that outage to happen, and making improvements to eliminate it from happening again.  
Many organizations spend a majority of their time and effort handling incidents at the Service Desk level, or even second and third level support, a very expensive way to run a service.
Problem Management, implemented properly, will: 

• Reduce the number of incidents being handled by your Service Desk,  thus reducing costs
• Increase uptime for your services.  This ensures improved service to the businesses you support, and confidence in availability levels particularly for Vital Business Functions
• Have a huge effect on reducing rework caused by recurring outages
• Free up technical staff to work on more important work rather than firefighting and trouble shooting.  This allows for better, more productive use of your high cost labor
• Improve customer satisfaction

To be successful at Problem Management an organization has to make a conscientious effort to redirect and retrain staff so they can focus on collecting critical data, completing problem analysis, driving for problem resolution, and most importantly, successful problem elimination.

Think of Incidents as possible Defects

If you think of an incident as a “defect”, or multiple defects, in your process you can now start to think about how you can eliminate that defect.  I’ve borrowed that term from my Six Sigma training.  This is an excellent way to think about, and change the thinking around what an “incident” is.  Within a recorded incident there could be multiple defects in your process that caused that incident to happen.  This is one of the reasons why ITIL and Six Sigma work so well together. 

Example of how process defects impact Services, Customers, and Technical Staff

In a real life situation at one company, some 3500 Window servers were being modified with a certain software upgrade over a weekend.  Due to defects in the upgrade process, over 1700 servers (nearly 50%) did not reboot properly!!  What issues did that cause the service group?  

• Extended service delays to the customer
• Disruption to the daily work schedule of hundreds, if not thousands, of workers
• Enormous amount of rework for the technicians that did the install.  The technical staff had to spend another weekend doing the upgrades for 1700 servers!
• Unfortunately lessons were not learnt: not all of those 1700 servers rebooted properly the next weekend causing a repeat of the previous issues ……  a vicious cycle to say the least

How could Process Improvement using Problem Management techniques help?

Problem Management does not only look at the “direct” issue that caused the outages.  That’s usually done by the Incident Management/Service Desk staff.  They assess the situation, get the service running quickly, record the outage, then move on to the next incident.  Often this  is only solving the immediate issue/outage and  never looking further.
Problem Management asks that we review the incident or sets of related incidents to understand why they occurred.  It wants us to find the underlying problems that caused the incident.  You look for the defects in the process, the whole process.
In the case study noted above, by reviewing the whole process it was found that many of the defects in the process were actually more upstream, caused by poor handoffs between server engineering and the deployment team, as well as inconsistent checks and balances at critical stages of the implementation lifecycle.  All of the server outages were avoidable.

Success!!

After a thorough review and making the appropriate changes to the process for future server upgrades, the organization was able to reach a 95% implementation success rate and keep it there!

The Bottom Line

Implementing ITIL Problem Management allows organizations to view service outages and incidents with an eye on eliminating systemic issues.
Thinking of incidents as being caused by one or more defects give staff better clarity about what they are looking to find and eliminate.
Instilling ITIL Problem Management into daily work habits will deliver huge benefits by:

• measurably increasing your service and application availability
• reducing workload on your staff
• reducing the cost of doing business

About the Author

Vic Porcelli is an IT Consultant with ITIL V3 Foundation and Continual Service Improvement certifications and a Six Sigma Green Belt.  Vic has extensive knowledge of IT Service Management principles (ITIL) and process improvement techniques.  Follow Vic on Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/in/vicporcelli
If you think your organization can benefit from adopting ITIL best practices, contact ConnectSphere.  

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

ITIL is the world’s leading set of service management best practices. ITIL defines common terms, concepts and processes that organizations use world-wide. Organizations of all shapes and sizes can adapt ITIL as it is flexible and scalable. A key contributor to ITIL’s success is the associated ITIL qualification and training schemes.

What are the benefits of ITIL training?

1.  Recognized qualification

ITIL qualifications set international benchmarks of quality for all people within the IT profession across the world. Service providers and individuals recognise the ITIL brand and this is a key motivator for ITIL training. People feel that their qualification will be worth the effort and help their career development.

2. Learning a common language

Many people are already using service management processes but they may not be using standard processes or terminology. ITIL training helps people to learn a common language for service management that applies across global supply chains. People also want to be part of the ITIL community that speaks this language.

3. Doing a better job

Most people want to find smarter ways of working – this helps them to demonstrate their value in the workplace. Students identify potential improvements during ITIL courses and workshops. This motivates them to go and use what they have learnt on ITIL training courses. By learning ITIL, they can contribute effectively to service delivery and improvement initiatives. They also understand their roles and responsibilities within service management and delivery.

4. Changing behaviour

The ITIL training scheme encourages people to think about new ways of working and approaches for improving customer satisfaction. ITIL is designed to help everyone to focus their attention on the needs of the customers and user experience rather than focussing too much on the technology issues when engaging with customers. By learning about ITIL, individuals can contribute effectively to improving service delivery and changing behaviour. This helps to change an organization’s culture, for example from a reactive culture to a proactive culture.

5. Building capability and confidence for action

Delivering service successfully depends on personnel involved in service management having the appropriate competencies, skills and experience. ITIL training and qualifications help people to build confidence that enables them to improve service delivery to customers.

6. Building trust 

Building greater confidence in service management helps people to focus more on customer satisfaction and delivering the business outcomes that customers need. This leads to better engagement with customers that leads to a more trusted relationship.

7. Competitive edge

ITIL provides processes and models to help service providers to work with their business, customers, users and suppliers in a standard way. ITIL training helps people to understand the processes and models and this gives a service provider a competitive edge.

About the ITIL qualification and training scheme

The ITIL qualifications scheme is modular and this provides a flexible approach to training for organizations planning a training programme and for individuals. The ITIL qualification scheme offers the following levels of certification:

• ITIL Foundation in Service Management
• ITIL Intermediate Level
• ITIL Expert Certificate
• ITIL Master Qualification

About the Author

ConnectSphere specialises in the application of ITIL and other service management best practices and is an author of the ITIL Service Transition publication. ConnectSphere is an ISEB accredited training organization with members of staff on the ITIL exam panels. ConnectSphere can help your people to learn about ITIL service management. 

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

In 2010 ConnectSphere helped many individuals and organizations on both public and on-site courses. Many thanks to all of you that attended and for your positive feedback and congratulations to all of you that passed.

ITIL Overview

This has been a popular session for organizations or teams that are just starting to think about ITIL and adopting service management best practices.

ITIL V3 Foundation Course

This is a very popular three day course. The pass rate for the 60-minute exam is 65% (26 out of 40 questions correct). Our pass rate continues to exceed the industry average of 85%. 

ITIL Intermediate Courses
Many delegates took the ITIL intermediate courses during 2010 across many sites, including the US. Our pass rate success (Column A) compared to the industry pass rates (Column B).

We have reduced the length of three intermediate courses:

• ITIL Service Strategy
• ITIL Service Design
• ITIL Service Transition

ITIL V2 – V3 Foundation Bridge Course

This examination route ceased on 31 December 2010. Any student holding a V2 Service Management Foundation qualification must now complete a full V3 Foundation course to progress to Intermediate Level certification. 
Our pass rate for the year was 100% against the industry average of 89%.

ITIL V2 to V3 Managers Bridge Course

This qualification provides 5 credits which will lead to an award of the ITIL® Expert in IT Service Management. Candidates must have obtained their V2 Managers Certificate. Candidates considering the V2 to V3 Manager Bridge course are advised to read the five ITIL® V3 core books prior to the course. This particular bridging route will cease on 30 June 2011. ConnectSphere's last courses is the week of 16 May 2011 before the withdrawal. Our pass rate continues to match the industry rates.

Continual improvement of our courses

We continue to refine our courseware from the feedback we receive from our clients to ensure we improve upon our 2010 results.

If you would like to know more about the benefits of ITIL and ITIL trainiing please see our articles:

• The top 5 benefits of using ITIL
• The benefits of ITIL training

ISO/IEC 20000 is the first international service management standard, a multi-part series of related documents. It defines the requirements for a service provider to deliver managed services of an acceptable quality for its customers. To achieve ISO/IEC 20000 certification, an organization needs to demonstrate that it uses management systems and practices in order to be compliant to the standard.
ISO/IEC 20000 is aligned ISO/IEC 9001 and ITIL®. ITIL is a comprehensive set of best practice for IT Service Management with a supporting professional qualification scheme and world-wide user community. ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 share a common sense approach to service management - do what works. One of the most common routes to achieving the requirements of ISO/IEC 20000 is via the adoption of ITIL service management best practices.
Formal certification schemes for international standards provide confidence in the level of capability that a service provider has achieved certification for ISO/IEC 20000-1. These schemes required audits to be performed by accredited certification bodies and accredited assessors that have to demonstrate that they work to internationally agreed standards of quality and service. 

Who uses ISO/IEC 20000?

Service providers have a crucial role in delivering services and products that enable their business and customers to deliver value. One of the key factors to success is to think about the service that is enabled by the technology, not the technology itself. Many service providers adopt service management best practices and standards to improve their interaction with their customers and integrate IT service delivery across their suppliers and partners. They also want to be able to benchmark their service management capability effectively and efficiently.
The ISO/IEC 20000 series is used by organizations that:

• go out to tender for their services;
• require a consistent approach by all service providers in a supply chain;
• wish to benchmark their IT service management;
• wish to perform an independent assessment;
• needs to demonstrate the ability to provide services that meet customer requirements
• aims to improve service through the effective application of processes to monitor and improve service quality.

What is the ISO/IEC 20000 series?

The series includes: 

• ISO/IEC 20000-1: 2005 – Information Technology - Service management - Part 1: Specification
• ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 Information technology - Service management - Part 2: Code of Practice
• ISO/IEC 20000-3:2005 Information technology - Service management - Part 3: Scope and applicability
• ISO/IEC TR 20004- Information technology - Service management - Part 4: Process Reference Model
• ISO/IEC TR 20000-5:2010 Information technology - Service management - Part 5: Exemplar implementation plan for ISO/IEC 20000-1
• ISO/IEC TR 15504-8 – Process Assessment Model for IT Service Management - under development.

About the Author

Shirley Lacy is Managing Director of ConnectSphere, a company that specialises in the application of service management best practices to deliver value and help service providers to achieve ISO/IEC 20000 certification. Shirley has a wealth of experience planning and implementing service management. Shirley is a UK representative on the international standards committees that develop ISO/IEC 20000 and process assessment standards.
If you want to find out more about ISO/IEC 20000, contact ConnectSphere. 


ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries

Introduction to ISO/IEC 20000

ISO/IEC 20000-1 (Part 1) is the international standard for IT Service Management used to demonstrate the service management capability of a service provider. Since the first edition was published in 2005, many organizations around the world are now certified.

A service provider certified under Part 1 has independent proof of having implemented best practice management techniques and processes, such as ITIL®. A service provider can use ISO/IEC 20000 to deliver improved services that add value to their customers. This should enable customers to be more effective.

Many organizations use ISO/IEC 20000-1 as a contractual requirement for their suppliers.

New edition of ISO/IEC 20000-1

The second edition of ISO/IEC 20000-1 (Part 1) has just been published in April. Members of standards organizations from over 25 countries and liaison members from the itSMF and ISACA produced this new edition.

There are improvements in wording that help people that do not speak English as their native language. Terms have been standardised wherever possible. There are also more terms and definitions that will help organizations that use several standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001. There is closer alignment to ISO 9001and the information security requirements used in ISO/IEC 27001.

One of the significant changes relate to the scope of the service management system. This can be complex and Part 1 now includes specific requirements for scope definition.

Another important change is the applicability of the standard. The new edition of Part 1 recognises that many services are composed of service components from many parties and suppliers. The new clause on governance of processes operated by other parties means that a service provider has to demonstrate that they control their suppliers effectively. If a service provider relies on other parties for the majority of the service management processes it may be difficult to demonstrate adequate control to achieve certification.

Many service management process requirements have been extended. The clause on the design and transition of new or changed services has more requirements. This will provide better support for organizations that have adopted the ITIL service lifecycle.

Transition to the new edition

Each ISO/IEC 20000 certification scheme owner defines their own plans for transition. The changeover may differ between the certification schemes and it is important to seek advice from the certification scheme owners. The International Accreditation Forum certification schemes will have a common transition approach. Typical changeovers like this take 2 years.

A certified service provider should check with their auditor to find out what arrangements there will be for transferring the certificate to the second edition of Part 1. At the moment, your auditor may not yet have detailed information because they need to assess the impact of the new edition before they can confirm the details on how to transition to the new edition if ISO/IEC 20000-1.

There are the ISO/IEC 20000 IT Service management qualification schemes for individuals that need updating. The qualification scheme owner or your training company will let you know about changes.

Where can I get a copy of ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011?

Downloads are available from the ISO online shop. National standards organizations will also sell the standard as a national version.

About the Author

Shirley Lacy is Managing Director of ConnectSphere. ConnectSphere provides consulting and professional development services to help organizations to adopt ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000. Shirley is UK Principle Expert on the ISO and BSI committees that develop IT, IT service management and process assessment standards.

If you want to find out more about achieving and using ISO/IEC 20000, contact ConnectSphere.  

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries

ITIL is the world’s leading framework of service management best practices. Many top performing organizations around the world are implementing ITIL practices. Why Is this? 

The top 5 benefits are:

1. ITIL is proven and used worldwide

ITIL defines common concepts and terms within an integrated set of best practices that evolves to meet market needs in a cycle of continual improvement. 
Organizations across the world have demonstrated that they can adapt and adapt ITIL to their business needs. As ITIL is flexible and scalable, organizations of all shapes and sizes can implement parts of ITIL to deliver business benefits in stages. 
Using ITIL works in practice as its adoption provides individuals and organizations the confidence for action. A key contributor to ITIL’s success is the associated education, training and qualification schemes. Delivering service successfully depends on personnel involved in service management having the appropriate education, training, skills and experience. 

2. Improved customer satisfaction and relationships

ITIL is designed to help everyone to focus their attention on the needs of the customers and user experience rather than focussing too much on the technology issues. Increasing customer satisfaction leads to a better and trusted relationship. 

3. Better reliability and quality of service

By adopting standards that are proven to work, service providers can more easily deliver services consistently to the agreed service levels, efficiently and effectively. Support teams can restore service faster, reducing downtime and disruption. Service providers are also more capable of meeting their service levels, contractual, regulatory and legal compliance requirements. 

4. Optimisation of service delivery across the supply chain

ITIL offers significant opportunities for simplification and standardisation across trading partners. ITIL provides processes and models to help service providers to work with their business, customers, users and suppliers to make sound business decisions on investment opportunities, cost optimisation, management of risks and priorities for improvement. Typical benefits from implementing ITIL best practices are: 

• Reduce support costs by 30%
• Increase incidents fixed at first call by 20%
• Increased value from service portfolio, with reduced cost and risk

5. Competitive advantage through value creation and agile change

By adopting ITIL service lifecycle practices, organizations can focus on delivering value to the customer and quickly adopt change for the business and IT. Defining and managing the customer and service portfolios enables successful business transformation and growth with an increased competitive advantage. Typical benefits include: 

• Reduction in cycle time for projects and changes by 30% to 50%
• Increased success rate of change
• Reduction in risk from unplanned and late changes

About the Author

Shirley Lacy is Managing Director of ConnectSphere that specialises in the application of service management best practices to deliver value from IT investments. Shirley has a wealth of experience planning and implementing service management. Shirley was co-author of the ITIL Service Transition volume and is project mentor for the ITIL Update. 

If you think your organization can benefit from adopting ITILbest practices, contact ConnectSphere .


ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

ITIL offers a common and widely accepted approach to managing business and IT services. ITIL best practices cover a service lifecycle in five core publications: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement.

ITIL provides access to world-class service management expertise, a comprehensive qualifications scheme, together with accredited training and consultancy.

Challenges in Service Operation

A key challenge in service operation is to deliver services day-day whilst responding effectively and efficiently in a way that adds value for customers and users. Operational activities need to be properly conducted, controlled and managed. 

Operations staff need processes and support tools to allow them to have an overall view of service operation and delivery to be able to detect any threats or failures to service quality or security. One challenge is to provide an overall view of an end to end service that includes the business perspective and technical perspective, rather than just the separate components or ‘silos’.

Many services are provided by one or more internal or external suppliers. A significant challenge is to understand and manage the end-to-end service with components that are provided externally as well as managing process workflows across organizations.

Service providers also need to adapt and respond effectively to changes in demand needs to customers and users as demand for services changes.

Benefits of adopting ITIL for Service Operation

Selecting and adopting the best practices in the Service Operation publication will help an organization to deliver significant benefits such as:

• Reduce unplanned resource and costs through better handling of service outages and identification of their root causes
• Enable the business and customers to add value from the services they are receiving by reducing downtime
• Enabling continual improvement and better investment decision making by providing operational results and data for decision support
• Enable users to improve their productivity or the quality of business services and products by providing quick and effective access to standard services
• Meet the objectives of the organization’s security policy by ensuring that IT services will only be accessed by those authorized to use them.

ITIL Service Operation publication

The ITIL service operation publication covers the following

• Management of the delivery and support of services at agreed service levels to ensure value for the customer and users
• Activities required to deliver and support the services including the supporting processes, technology and people
• Maintaining stability whilst also responding to changes in business needs and technology.

About the Author

Shirley Lacy is Managing Director of ConnectSphere. ConnectSphere provides consulting and professional development services to help organizations to apply ITIL service management best practices in order to deliver value for customers. Shirley is an ITIL expert and project mentor tor the ITIL V3 Update project.See Shirley's bio.

If you want to find out more about applying ITIL best practices, contact ConnectSphere and see our services. For more information on managing verndors across the service supply chain see our multi-vendor services.

A series of management articles from ConnectSphere to help coach and mentor professionals with their day to day activities.  See more articles on www.connectsphere.com/resources/articles

Successfully Leading Virtual Teams

Very often in today’s business, managers, project leaders, and program leaders are asked to lead a team of people they have never met, may not ever see face to face or meet with regularly.  As companies cut back on travel and organizations spread their operational capabilities across physical locations, cities, countries, and continents, it makes the complex task of leading virtual teams even more difficult.
Here are a few suggestions that will help you if you are managing this organizational structure:

• Clearly Communicate the Overall Goals of the Project
• Make sure the overall goal of the project is understood from the beginning and the individual roles are defined in delivering that project.  Some organizations use formal charter documents to accomplish this
• Discuss those project goals with the team so they can provide feedback.  Make adjustments as necessary
• Be sure to convey the importance of their role and contribution in delivering the project successfully

Be a Leader!

I know it’s an overused term but be a LEADER. When dealing with such a wide variety of people and skillsets, people you may never see face to face, it’s important they “see” you as the leader of that project and a leader of people overall.  Here are a few suggestions on how to lead your team:

• Set up regular meetings with some sort of published agenda
• Be prepared to lead each and every meeting
• Communicate regularly to all the individuals in the group
• Make communications to the team interesting and informative
• You’ll be providing updates to senior management.  Be sure your team sees what you are going to communicate and allow them to comment on the content.  Update the team after those meetings
• Regularly connect with key members of the team responsible for delivering milestones and content
• Inform, ahead of time, those people that will be presenting material at your next meeting.  Make sure they’re ready for their segment. Deal with the different personalities in the group.  Remember even though you can’t see them face to face they do have personalities you have to read and respond to. 
• Don’t always run the meetings in your time zones – show that you are committed to flexibility

Additional Tips to Enhance the Virtual Team Experience

• Make sure your meetings have a “personality”.  By that I mean get done what you need to get done but keep the meeting light and uplifting if at all possible.  People will want to come to your meetings.  They will more than likely have a choice of going to your meeting or going to one or two others in that same time slot.  Make them want to come to yours!
• Leverage those on the team that are most interested in being involved.  Give them assignments.   Have them present at meetings.  Talk to them one to one whenever possible.  Make them interested in what is being delivered
• Make each person feel a part of the team, someone you value being there
• Work to ensure all organizations stay involved over the length of the project or program.  If someone wants to drop out, ask that they find a replacement
• Keep senior management informed of the team’s progress.  Give praise to those who warrant it during the project.  Let their managers know as well.  Celebrate short term successes that are leading towards the overall project or goal.
• Be sure to reward the team at the end of the project or program.  Monetarily if possible.  It’s the right thing to do but also will pay dividends for any future projects you may lead.

Keep the Team’s Energy Level High

Most of all keep the energy level and enthusiasm high throughout the project.  That is entirely under your control.
Here is an example from my days working in the Banking industry.
You have probably noticed, when you’ve walked into different branches of the same bank, each branch seems to have its own identity.  Some branches are sullen or surly with workers going through the motions. Others have vitality to them.  The staff at these branches are always positive and seem to like where they’re working.  That’s no accident.  It has to do with the tone the leader of that branch sets for the staff.  Bad manager, bad branch.  Good manager, good branch.  It is the same for projects and programs as well.  You are the key to the project’s success!

The Bottom Line

I’ve always enjoyed leading virtual teams.  The more you put into it the better your outcome.  I often feel as if I’m conducting an orchestra.  At times it seems that I’m coaching and mentoring staff during the project.  It gives me the opportunity to work with interesting people from all over the world.  It gives me a chance to learn about them, motivate them, while still delivering critical projects for the organisation.  
If offered an opportunity to lead a virtual team, by all means take it!  Use the suggestions provided here and enjoy the experience.
If your organization wants to look at the bigger picture of developing an IT competency framework I suggest looking at the SFIA* website - www.sfia.org.uk.
If you think your organization can benefit from the tips provided in this article, contact ConnectSphere . 

About the Author

Vic Porcelli is an experienced IT Management Consultant who is ITIL V3 Foundation and CSI certified, a Six Sigma Green Belt, with extensive knowledge in staff and project management using virtual, multi-cultural teams.  Follow Vic on Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/in/vicporcelli.
* The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) is owned by the SFIA Foundation:  www.SFIA.org.uk

- how ITIL can help

As IT Service Management practitioners we all want to improve and streamline our Service Management Processes, but how?  The sexy way is to implement “integrated” solutions from one or more vendors while putting our collective careers on the line by justifying large sums of cash to implement what seems like the ideal solution.

Well, good luck!  Many of these vendor packages have very enticing capabilities allowing linkages between capabilities such as Incident, Problem, and Change Management.  Some allow you to take advantage or your company’s managed data repositories that will help you build a federated Configuration Management database or system.  Others try to add in a Discovery capability that allows you to “find” configuration items on your network automatically, all good ideas.  Some actually work!

Service Management - Improve existing processes first

However, there is something you have to do first if you want to be successful.  You must work to ensure your current Service Management processes are documented, functioning to some level of measured capability, and properly staff to do so.  If you don’t, you most likely will be throwing good money, and the “solution” you’ve selected, on top of bad processes.  When all is said and done, and hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds are spent, you may still have bad processes with potentially good tools.  You will not reach the level of improvement you expected.

Service Management Software - Tips for Success

Before you propose bringing in the “solution”, get your own ducks (processes) in order first.  You will be surprised how doing that will help you.  Here are several tips:
1)    Use ITIL Service Management principles to provide the blueprint for what a good process looks like
2)    Gain an understanding of your current processes, their strengths and weaknesses
3)    Improve and document your current procedures well so you can more effectively transition to new tools and processes in the future
4)    If you don’t have them already, put in place appropriate measurements so you can baseline your current processes.  This will help you understand how effective the process is now and be able to show how the new processes and tools have helped
5)    Do your homework.  Bring in several vendors and have them give you their product suite “dog and pony” show.  I’ve used this technique repeatedly.  It allows me to: 

• See what products and processes are being sold and where the industry is in comparison to my current processes
• Get up-to-date on terminology and functionality (i.e. federated model, managed data repositories, reconciliation engines)
• Learn how the products will integrate with my current processes (or not)
• Take what I’ve learned and see how I can implement some of those techniques on my own.  You may not even need any expensive tools when you realize how you can apply some of the techniques being employed by the newer software offerings

Selecting service management software

One thing I’ve learned over the years.  Make sure, when you review service management vendor products, you do your homework.  The vendor presentations will make their products look like they will walk on water!  They will put stars in your eyes.  What is most important is that you look beyond the glitz.  The “10 minute” view is very deceptive.  You will need to go beyond that to see if the glossy product advertising and technical claims really work for you and your processes.  By using the tips above you have an in-depth understanding of your current processes and will clearly see what works and what does not.
The Bottom Line
Don’t throw good money at bad processes.  Be your company’s champion in the IT Service Management space by applying ITIL Service Management principles and focusing on improving your processes before selecting and implementing any related tools.  You’ll be successful if you do.

About the Author

Vic Porcelli is an IT Consultant with ITIL V3 Foundation and Continual Service Improvement certifications and a Six Sigma Green Belt.  Vic has extensive knowledge of IT Service Management principles (ITIL) and process improvement techniques. See Vic’s bio and followVic on Linkedin.

If you think your organization can benefit from adopting ITIL best practices seeConnectSphere's services and contact ConnectSphere.  

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Many organizations depend on IT for their core and critical business services. Being confident in a service provider’s capability to deliver IT services is therefore important for a range of strategic, tactical and operational activities. Higher levels of capability provide give greater confidence that an organization can deliver the desired business and IT services. Lower levels of capability may indicate potential sources of risk. 
Benchmarking and comparison with best practice 
Benchmarking and assessment tools help senior managers to understand areas of weakness, risk and what can be done more efficiently. Comparing the current situation with international standards and best practices is a good starting point for assessing current capability and planning improvement. 

In addition to performance and customer satisfaction benchmarks, many organizations assess their service management capability and IT processes using: 

• ISO/IEC 20000 IT Service Management series
• ITIL service management best practices
• COBIT
• ISO/IEC 15504 series

A capability maturity model (CMM) or process assessment model (PAM) can be used by an organisation as the framework for benchmarking, internal assessment and planning improvement. 

Using COBIT maturity models

COBIT 4.1 (published by ITGI and ISACA, 2007) provides guidance on maturity modelling for management and control over IT processes that is based on a method of evaluating an organization’s processes from a maturity level of non-existent (0) to optimised (5). 
The COBIT generic maturity attribute model is useful for performing a high level assessment for a range of processes. It provides a useful model to identify where issues are and how to set priorities. There is also a specific model based on the generic scale for each of COBIT’s 34 IT processes. 

ISO/IEC 20000 series

ISO/IEC 20000-1, published in April 2011, is the core of the 20000 series, providing the basis for establishing a Service Management System (SMS), service improvements, management reviews, internal and certification audits. Part 1 is set of requirements which are compulsory for a certification audit, considered often as the destination that is reached. 
ISO/IEC 20000-4, published in 2010, defines service management process reference model, aligned to Part 1. The process reference model defines each Part 1 process using inputs, outputs and activities. Although it can assist with process design it was developed as the basis of five-level process assessment model (PAM). . 

Using ISO/IEC 15504 and process assessment models (PAM)

The 15504 series sets out the requirements for performing a process assessment and writing a process assessment model (PAM) that is conformant. There are general requirements that apply to all types of assessments and specific requirements that apply to assessments of process capability and organizational maturity. 
A process assessment model is composed of a set of indicators of process performance and process capability. The indicators are used as a basis for collecting the objective evidence that enables an assessor to assign ratings for each process. Using 15504 helps to ensure that the assessment output is self-consistent and provides evidence to substantiate the ratings.  
Work is currently under development to produce ISO/IEC 15504-8, an Exemplar IT Service Management Process Assessment Model. Several pilots are underway using the draft PAM. 

About the Author

Shirley Lacy is Managing Director of ConnectSphere. ConnectSphere provides consulting and professional development services to help organizations to adopt ITIL® service management best practices and use ISO/IEC 20000. Shirley is UK Principle Expert on the ISO and BSI committees that develop IT, IT service management and process assessment standards.  
If you want to find out more about using the IT service Process Assessment Model and ISO/IEC 20000, contact ConnectSphere.  
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries