Two critical success factors in an ITIL ImplementationWritten by Arno Esterhuizen
Any IT manager who wants to pursue IT Service Management journey by implementing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) needs to understand two very important factors well in advance. •The first factor i is to have dedicated, trained and committed process owners. If you want to have a successful Incident Management process which is under continuous improvement, you will need somebody who is ultimately responsible for it’s success and who can dedicate time and focus to drive it and to make sure it actually happens. A lot of organizations makes one of following mistakes: •The process owner is non-existent which means there is nobody dedicated to drive a particular process. There is a process owner, but he or she is bogged down in day to day reactive activities or other "more important" business-driven projects and thus have no time for unnecessary "red tape" like ITIL. •There is more than one process owner for a particular process - a classic mistake. The idea of ITIL is to have a single consistent process throughout organization and having two head cooks in this "process kitchen" is sure to mess up cake. Who will ultimately be responsible if there is more than one owner? Major companies who have successfully implemented ITIL have only one process owner throughout company, even if there are numerous divisions spread across globe. This ensures that process is consistent throughout all divisions and helps break down barriers between departments and divisions.The primary problem here, is that companies do not want to spend money on dedicate resources for process owners. Obviously a process owner can have a split role, doing other work as well, especially in smaller companies. As long as that other role is not of a reactive firefighting nature. One person can also be made responsible for more than one process. Although these processes should be of similar focus. The Change, Configuration and Release roles can be shared by one person in small companies for example. I believe in a large corporate these roles should be fulfilled by dedicated people, and companies who does not fill these roles are not serious enough about ITIL and is most probably lacking management commitment.
| | Communicating When A Crisis StrikesWritten by Robert F. Abbott
How would you handle communication if your business or practice got into a crisis situation?I was pleasantly surprised when my Internet service provider responded competently and quickly to a technical crisis. And, we can learn to communicate more effectively by studying its response. The crisis occurred when hackers attacked its system at same time that company was upgrading its systems to meet increased customer demand. And while customers experienced no dramatic shutdowns, some customers faced delays and difficulty getting online. In response, company quickly sent out a newsletter containing a single article, an open letter from president. First, president acknowledged there had been a problem. And, company took responsibility for problem. While it attributed at least some of problems to malicious hackers, it nonetheless took responsibility for system's integrity. Most of us find it refreshing when a company steps up and does those two things. It communicates self-confidence and it communicates sincere concern for customers. All too often, organizations make poor excuses or point fingers at suppliers and customers; that just makes customers more dissatisfied. Second, company apologized. In first sentence of article, president said he was sorry for disruptions that subscribers had experienced over preceding two weeks. By doing that he allowed his readers to get through rest of letter with less resistance. They weren't mentally concocting rebuttals - they were reading what he had to say. That's crucial any time you want to make an important point.
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