Bob's concluding highlights, on management process and staffworker practices, names two critical success factors, but it's worth naming the success itself as well. In a company where the business wants the IT organization to "provide IT services at optimal cost/quality ratios", ITIL is the go-to frame of reference. But if the business does not actually want the IT organization to be optimized for that duty, then the degree of organizational change that is needed, to sustain ITIL's recommended practices and their integrations, would have to have some other strategic business driver behind it -- something not dissimilar in urgency to what causes a company to implement ERP. The punchline: ITIL usually can't be the business objective; but ITIL needs to be a critical means to achieving the business objective. As someone said long ago, people don't buy drills, they buy holes.

Heavyweight process only works if you have employees who don't need it.

The idea that process gurus sell to executives -- and some of the gurus may even believe it themselves -- is that with enough process the employees are interchangeable resources. Just plug in the right numbers and presto, you've got output.

The problem with the idea is that IT still isn't quite manufacturing. You can't generate a 13.4% increase in creativity and innovation. If you hire great people, they'll produce for you no matter what process you use, including no process. If you hire based on resumé buzzword matching, all the process in the world won't save you.

To be clear, I'm not saying process is unimportant. I'm just dismayed that the focus of most large-scale methodologies is on management of the process, rather than on helping the employees do their work better. Everyone wants their nice scorecards rating performance, but very few people seem to be concerned with how to actually improve that performance.

Bob has said over and over that you have to be careful what you measure, because that's what you're going to get. And if your idea of process management is to only measure, than that's the only thing you'll get.

Mr. Lewis,

ITIL is merely a means to an end - not the means in itself.

Many organizations have quickly jumped onto the "ITIL Bandwagon" over the last two years - driven from eager Service Enthusiasts and partially by internal service folk who often, mitakenly, see service problem 'nails' being resolved by the ITIL 'hammer'.

The best first steps are to examine the current service delivery and quality challenges and to systematically plan to eradicate or improve the situation. This should be planned in line with business strategy - the usual suspect is "cost reduction".

Once business drivers have been determined and specific actions allocated within IT Service, then ITIL processes can be applied in relevant areas.

The introduction and sound execution of highly repeatable, robust and well managed processes leads to improved service quality and increased manageability. This HAS been proven time and time again within medium to large scale organizations.

Visit the URL included for the ITIL Implementation Roadmap and the answers to the top 12 most asked questions about ITIL Implementation.

There's a two hour audio there that lays out a sound and proven approach to implementation - one that takes a very people and business centric approach. No snake-oil techniques here. Only honest and pragmatic advice from the battle-scarred.

Best Regards,
Robin.

I think what Bob might miss in his brief opinion is large firms that are not necessarily Agile in nature need to have a framework for accountability when considering performance and security issues. That's where I see IT Governance playing a major role and sometimes ITIL fits that role very well. I think it depends on the organization.

ITIL for a mid-size consulting firm would be like trying to eat a whole cow at once without stopping to swallow. It's too big of a beast.

Like Bob says, more focus should be placed on Processes first and teaching both the manager and employee the necessary steps to creating value and focusing on the quality of the process to provide a quality service.

Joe makes a good point. ITIL and other methodologies are great at providing IT governance. My point above was that ITIL -- like other heavyweight methodologies -- aren't primarily about improving the IT product: they're about controlling defects and tracing accountability. These goals are related, but not the same.

Proponent sets forth the classic symptoms of what happens when you try to sell ITIL from the bottom up rather than from the top down. All ITIL does is give you a framework to adapt your existing process and gradually improve them to achieve documented results. The #1 cause of failure when implementing ITIL in an organization is lack of management commitment.

The other thing I see here is that if someone is arguing with the technicians that ITIL tells them how to build a server, there is no trained and certified ITSM service manager overseeing the implementation. You can't take the foundations course and try to implement ITIL in an organization. That's like trying to fly a 747 after 10 hours in a Cessna 150.

Want to find out which companies did what to succesfully implement ITIL? Go look at "The ITIL Experience" by the Bruton Consultancy. It's PDF and available in many places.

Juan Jimenez
ITSM Service Manager (EXIN Red Badge)

Like someone said earlier, ITIL highlights responsibility. Its how you use that knowledge and how you manage the people responsible for that work that ensures your IT service will improve not in the immediate future but over an extended peroid of time. There is no way that anyone should think ITIL solves all problems in the short term. Its a long reaching stratergy and like most relationships it gets better over time. As long as you are capturing the right data that comes out of the ITIL structure your data will build up and you can produce more accurate and meaingful reports thatw ill tell you exactly where to start improving things.

Richard