Unlearning ITIL

Aale Rooswww.pohjoisviitta.fi@aalem

I will show you:• that ITIL has some serious “problems”

• it is a good idea to unlearn some ITIL

concepts

Aale Roos• MSc Statistics• ITIL Service Manager & Expert• ISO 20000 Consultant• EXIN Professional• Speaker at

–Pink11– itSMF: Finland11, Russia12, UK12,

Estonia12–TFT12

• ITSM person of the year 2012 by itSMF Finland

Short history of ITIL

1980´sBritishPublic servicesInternal

=> Mainframe

=> Class society

=> Bureaucracy

=> No customers

or suppliers

ITIL

st included some great ideas

Processes

Services

…and thatrestoring serviceand permanent removal of causes are two different things

V3

added service lifecycle

and a lot of problems

for example• Silly Strategy book with funny examples• Two Demand Management processes• Service Lifecycle without Business Relationship Management • Crazy definition for incident

for example cont.• Lost Proactive Problem Management• Illogical graphs• Overlapping processes• and so on

Why did people accept it?

Picture by James Finister

Edition2011

fixed many problems

for example• Silly Strategy book with funny examples• Two demand –management processes• Service Lifecycle without Business Relationship management • Crazy definition for incident• Lost Proactive Problem Management• Illogical graphs• Overlapping processes• and so on

examples removed + rewritten

BRM added

came back + rewrittenremoved

removed or fixed

just one left

BRM StrategyDemand

mgmt

Service

Portfolio

Design

coordination

Service

catalogue

mgmt

Service level mgmt

Transition planning and

support

Change

mgmt

Between a customer need and a new service there are 9 processes

actually 11 but I ran out of space

BRM StrategyDemand

mgmt

Service

Portfolio

Design

coordination

Service

catalogue

mgmt

Service level mgmt

Transition planning and

support

Change

mgmt

And all have the power to stop

but none of those creates the new service, they just make busywork

BRM StrategyDemand

mgmt

Service

Portfolio

Design

coordination

Service

catalogue

mgmt

Service level mgmt

Transition planning and

support

Change

mgmt

You don’t need them

X X X X X X

What is service?

= Definition for outsourcingInternal IT?,

Failed projects?Service is what IT does

A ferry & bridge provide same value = same service

Service lifecycle ≠ infrastructure lifecycle

What is service lifecycle?

Business manages service lifecycleIT manages infrastructure lifecycle

What is best practice?

What is best practice?

Cynefin framework 2011

Complex certification scheme

• No scientific theory• No empirical

evidence• A combination of

ideas, current practices, lore

21 years of ITIL

• At itSMF UK 12 conference 75% presentations about ITIL

• Many incident /problem management sessions

21 years of ITIL

• after initial success processes fail

• ITIL trainers & consultants blame the IT people

ITIL is a stage in the journey

Don’t stop there!

1862

We need better terminology

ITIL is not clear• Event• Incident• Major incident• Problem

• Service Request

Service request

Event

Incident

Catastrophe

A failed disk is

Infra vendor

Service Provider

Service Desk

Customer

fault observed repairservice

restored

customer problem taken care

satisfied

customer

fault management = incident mgmt ?

customer service = ?

We need better processes

Consumer Contact

27

• Feedback – opinion – wish – complaint

• Support request– help– unverifiable– fault

• Service request– request for an activity– request for a product– request for a change

What now

Innovate

Test

Improve

You are on your own, there are no textbook solutions

Be brave

Recap

forget ITIL incident/ service request/ event/ problem

Service lifecycle is as valid as Soviet 5-year planning

most value in ITIL is in V2

never implement ITIL

thanks