itSMF USA Mid America LIG

"Exploring the Practical Implementation of IT Service Management"

2009-06-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

AIM Members Forum

"Exploring the Practical Implementation of IT Service Management
Using the ITIL Framework"

Wednesday, June 17, 2009
1 - 2 p.m.
Thompson Alumni Center at UNO
6705 Dodge St.

Please email Sherry Beglin at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it if you plan to attend.

Gain valuable insights into the practical implementation of IT Service Management using the ITIL framework from our panel of local IT experts. ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of concepts and policies for managing information technology infrastructure, development and operations. ITIL includes best practices, comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures that can be tailored to any IT organization.

Hear about the lessons the panelists have learned as they have guided their varied organizations — financial government and engineering/architecture — through IT service management implementations globally and locally. Our panelists will discuss how to get started, how to determine which metrics matter and how to champion IT service management within an organization. Also, learn about the itSMF local forum, where on a regular basis members share best IT service management practices and learn from nationally known IT speakers.

June LIG Event

2009-06-11T15:52:00.001-05:00

Do not miss the June 18th Mid America LIG Event featuring Wes Richert, who will be discussing Cloud computing.

When: June 18th, 2009
Where: Oaks Hills Country Club
12325 Golfing Green Dr, Omaha, NE 68137
Add this event to your Outlook Calendar
Click here for map
Time: 6PM - 8PM
Keynote Speaker: Wes Richert - IBM
Topic - Cloud computing:

Topic - Cloud computing:

Gain insight and knowledge on the topic of Cloud computing. Cloud computing is loosely defined as a style of computing in which dynamically scalable resources (such as CPU, storage, or bandwidth) are provided as a service over the Internet. The entire process of requesting and receiving resources is typically automated and takes minutes. A Cloud typically contains a significant pool of resources, which could be re-allocated to different purposes within short time frames, and allow the Cloud owner to benefit significantly from economies of scale as well as from statistical multiplexing.

Cloud services today are delivered in a user-friendly manner and offered on an unprecedented scale. The payment model is pay-as-you-go and pay-for-what-you-use, eliminating the need for an up-front investment or a long-term contract. This presents a disruptive business opportunity for businesses with spiky or unpredictable IT demands, as they are able to easily provision massive amounts of resources on a moment's notice, and release them back into the cloud just as quickly.

Most of what has been publicized about cloud computing is about public cloud-based services. Public cloud services are characterized as being available to clients from a third party service provider, via the Internet. The term "public" usually implies that the services are accessible by anyone via the "public" Internet, but it does not mean that the cloud services are free, even though they could be fairly inexpensive to use. Private cloud-based service, data and processes are managed within the organization without the restrictions of network bandwidth, security exposures and legal requirements that using public cloud services across open, public networks might entail.

Bio:
Wes Richert
IBM - SOA / Cloud Leader - Great Plains

Wes is a active part of the IT industry for the past 27 years with IBM. He is a IBM Certified IT Architect and has had worked in a variety of roles within IBM. Wes speaks regularly at customer and industry events and has a wealth of customer experiences to share with the group.

Come join us! November LIG Event...

2008-11-19T10:53:00.001-06:00

The Mid-America LIG of itSMF USA will be hosting a event next Thursday, November 20, 2008 at the Oak Hills Country Club beginning at noon!

Speaking during the gathering will be Rob Stroud, a 25 year IT veteran and self-proclaimed "IT best practices evangelist". Rob was recently elected International Vice President of ISACA as well as to the Board of Directors of itSMF USA. He is recognized as an industry leader and speaks on a variety of topics regularly at national and international conferences. Rob is well-versed in ITIL v.3, having served as a member of the ITIL Advisory Group as well as a Mentor and Reviewer for some of the recently published ITIL v.3 volumes. He has also authored several of his own titles on ITIL and COBIT. Rob's presentation, "Can I have cheese with my Cheeseburger - a guide to SLA Management and the

Service Catalog", is sure to a interesting and informative session -- certainly one not to miss! Mark your calendars today! The event will be held at the Oak Hills Country Club from 12PM to 3PM on Thursday, November 20, 2008. Please RSVP today to attend this exceptional educational and networking opportunity. RSVP today at info@itsmf-midamerica.org.

You can also learn more at www.itsmf-midamerica.org.

We will be providing Pizza and soda for lunch!

Deep Thoughts: An Interview with Rob Stroud

2008-11-19T10:47:00.001-06:00

1. How did you first hear about ITIL and what got you interested in it?

My introduction to ITIL was before ITIL existed. In the early 1980’s I implemented CHANGE MANAGEMENT at a large financial organization in Australia using the then existent methodologies. I became reacquainted with ITIL again in 1999 with the launch of V2 and a change in organizational roles and have enjoyed the experience since.

2. What part of ITIL v.3 are you most excited about? What part do you think will need the most work to implement?

Service Portfolio Management and Service Catalog are my 2 favorite V3 processes. They really move IT Operations forward to the next level. That said they require some considered thought and planning.

3. How is ITIL utilized at CA?

CA leverages ITIL in our global data centers globally to ensure business and IT integration. We also leverage the service catalog as our interface between IT and the Business and manage our portfolio of offering using Service Portfolio Management.

4. What are some of the common problems you see with the implementation of ITIL in general? How would you improve them?

The issue with ITIL remains the level of prescriptive guidance for many processes. CA is delivering guidance with our solution sets to resolve this and I believe that more prescriptive guidance must be delivered with the ITIL Complementary Library in development.

5. What are some of the common misconceptions about Service Level Management that you have seen in your experiences working with ITIL?

Service Levels are often too technical measuring bits and bytes rather than measurements experienced by the consumer of the service. We MUST elevate ourselves to leverage business metrics.

6. If you could change one thing about ITIL, what would it be and why?

I would not have called the release of ITIL last year, V3. I would have released it as the originally intended ITIL refresh and simply called the books ITIL Service Strategy, ITIL Service Design etc.

7. In your opinion, what does the future of ITIL hold for the IT industry?

You will have to attend my session to get the answer to that!

8. In your 25 years in IT, what specific job stands out most as your most rewarding experience?

My most rewarding experience was identifying some security exposures in an operating system and my participation in the development of a smartcard system used by a major bank for access control and application authentication.

Deep Thoughts: An interview with Mark Yanike

2008-10-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

1. How did you first hear about ITIL and what got you interested in it?

I’ve been with Maryville for 9 years, which has always promoted a process approach to service management. We had been tracking IEEE, COBIT and ISO, so when ITIL started to make some rumblings in the USA, we were pretty quick to immerse ourselves in that. I was most interested in ITIL for its practicality, process focus and widespread adoption in Europe.

2. What part of ITIL v.3 are you most excited about? What part do you think will need the most work to implement?

I’m personally most excited about Service Transition because this approach is more holistic in guiding organized, high quality promotion of services to production. Organizations typically struggle with trying to cobble together components of service requests, release management and change management as separate entities.
I actually think companies will be most challenged with Continual Service Improvement; not because it’s hard, but because it will take an organizational structure and focus to implement and, most importantly, sustain.

3. As an IT service management consulting firm, how does Maryville promote ITIL utilization for its customers?

Maryville is more apt to promote IT Service Management as a concept. Guidelines like ITIL (and COBIT, Six Sigma, IEEE, ISO, etc.) are merely specific approaches to IT Service Management. We like ITIL because of the common vernacular a company can embrace, its common-sense organization of processes, and its decent adoption in the industry. This makes it much easier for us to communicate and share ideas with our customers. However, ITIL lacks definition in some areas (e.g. Work Management), so we’re careful not to promote ITIL as the be-all, end-all.

4. What are some of the common problems you see with the implementation of ITIL in general? How would you improve them?

Many companies try to define and deploy ITIL as one big effort. This not only is very costly, but the massive amount of internal organizational change will often doom this approach. Another is in the area of “tools”. People, by nature, are lured by bright shiny software solutions that promise out-of-the-box solutions, and a tool-first implementation will typically fail because the due diligence of pure process analysis is bypassed. Process analysis is absolutely crucial to defining how a company is going to behave, who is responsible for certain behaviors, and how IT service management can improve (see my response to 2(b) above.

5. You will be speaking on the topic of getting started with Service Level Management at our October meeting. What are some of the common misconceptions about SLM that you have seen in your experiences working with ITIL?

Common misperceptions:
- taking a class will be enough preparation to define and deploy an SLM strategy within a company
- an ITSM software solution will provide ITIL/SLM out-of-the-box
- current organizational roles, responsibilities and organizational structure are sufficient to support and sustain SLM
- “we have defined our SLAs, so we have SLM”

6. If you could change one thing about ITIL, what would it be and why?

ITIL tends to be too philosophical. It’s good at educating the reader, but it’s poor at helping a company figure out how to make it happen in an organization; it’s kind of like looking at a pile of lumber, concrete mix, fasteners, shingles, and a general picture of a house and being expected to know how to build that house. I personally would like to see the addition of a shorter, more prescriptive book that is focused on the specific steps, actions, responsibilities and “how to” approaches to deploying ITIL within an organization.

7. In your opinion, what does the future of ITIL hold for the IT industry?

Hmm, that’s a tough question. I think the basic building blocks are here for quite awhile. I think it remains to be seen if companies are able (or willing) to adapt their IT organizations to the ITIL v3 service orientation. The role of ITIL in defining ISO 2000 is interesting, but it’s unknown just how big of an impact ISO 2000 will have on the industry.

8. In your 27 years in IT, what specific job stands out most as your most rewarding experience?

That’s a tough one. My knee-jerk reaction is designing and coding a client-server application before “client-server” was even much of a concept in the industry; then publishing a paper and presenting it at an international conference. Now THAT’s dating myself! Another one is having responsibility for managing the build-out and migration of 8 data centers around the country for a large wireless telco in less than a year. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…

9. If you could change any part of the ITIL v.3 process, what would you change?

For me the jury’s still out. I’ll have to spend the next couple of years working with clients to really get a hands-on appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of ITIL v.3. I’m sad to see some specific disciplines defined in V2, like capacity management, have been spread out amongst the five V3 books. This can make it more challenging to identify and implement a specific core competency. See my answer to #6 above.

Incentive to Attend! Great prizes up for raffle at August LIG Meeting!

2008-07-09T09:28:00.002-05:00

This just in!

BWyze has graciously donated two ITIL v3 Foundation online classes for raffle at our August LIG Meeting! The classes, a $449 value, are up for grabs for anyone in attendance!

BUT, there's a catch...

In order to have the classes as raffle prizes, we have to have 30 members in attendance... In order to get a chance at this GREAT opportunity to get ITIL v3 Foundation certified, you need to tell all your friends in IT!

Please join us for a great evening including keynote speaker Jay Stuart, itSMF USA Secretary, great networking opportunities within the Omaha IT community, and of course -- great prizes!

Deep Thoughts: An Interview with Jay Stuart, Secretary of itSMF USA!

2008-07-01T07:47:00.002-05:00

1. How did you first hear about ITIL® and what got you interested in it?

Truthfully, I learned about ITIL® by accident. When I accepted a new position several years ago as Service Level Administrator, I was tasked primarily with implementing Service Level Agreements (SLAs.) In my research of best practices for SLAs, I stumbled across the Practitioner course which seemed to be exactly what I needed. The only trouble was that there was a pre-requisite – the Foundation Certificate in ITSM. I attended a Foundation course in 2001 and became certified; I could hardly wait to share what I learned with my leadership team – a prescriptive way to manage the business of IT!

2. What part of ITIL® v3 are you most excited about? What part do you think will need the most work to implement?

While I have not yet had the opportunity to do a real deep dive into v3, I have been very encouraged by the approach to ITSM that has been taken in the latest release – services. The more we see through our customer’s eyes what we do as IT professionals, the better off everyone will be. Many of the concepts introduced in v3 seem to be a natural evolution from what many of us have experienced in real life. However, I believe that some organizations may view the latest version as a radical departure from the previous because of the way it is presented (service vs. process.)

3. How is ITIL® utilized at GE?

The General Electric Company is comprised of several different verticals; I believe each of the GE businesses views ITIL® as a strategic tool to drive growth in their respective business. At GE Appliances, the division for which I work, we are using ITIL® for several of our practice areas.

4. You will be speaking on the topic of Service Level Management at our August meeting. What are some of the common misconceptions about SLM that you have seen in your experiences working with ITIL®?

Over the years, I have seen several common misconceptions about SLM; I’ll share with you two of them here. Believe it or not, many people will use the SLM terminology when they really mean to reference Service Management as a whole. So, instead of speaking about their Service Management initiative, they mistaken describe it as their Service Level Management initiative. I’ve also known people to think that SLM is one-sided, that the process only benefits the customer and user community; this, of course, is totally false since there are most definitely benefits which the IT organization can achieve.

5. What aspect of your job excites you most in your role as Secretary for itSMF USA?

As Secretary of the Board of Directors for itSMF USA, I continue to be amazed by the talent and dedication shown by our countless volunteers and experienced staff members. I am grateful to my peers who elected me to the Board to represent them and who have provided me with this opportunity. I enjoy having the opportunity to help make decisions which will both shape and grow the organization and our industry. It’s been very rewarding to see the recognition of ITSM as a real career option by the IT industry and academia. itSMF USA continues to attract and retain ITSM professional members at a phenomenal rate and our annual conference has set an outrageously high quality standard for others to try and imitate. With everything we have going for us, it’s hard not to be excited about itSMF USA!

6. Prior to your position as Secretary of itSMF, what other positions have you held within the organization?

In 2002, I learned about the USA chapter of itSMF and became a founding member of the third Local Interest Group (LIG). My first role was Programs Chair for the Ohio Valley LIG, serving the metro areas of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Louisville. Later, I was elected President of the LIG and served in that capacity for a couple of years. At the 2005 national conference in Chicago, I was a Track Vice-Chair. In 2006, I co-chaired the first ever itSMF Regional Event which took place in Cincinnati; during the same year, I decided to seek election to the USA Board. Communications Chair was my first role on the USA Board when I took office last year.

7. After your term as Secretary is over, what are your future plans in itSMF?

itSMF USA is a great organization and offers many different professional development opportunities to its members. I was honored to be elected to the Executive Committee this year and will serve in whatever capacity the organization needs me. I sincerely enjoyed my previous LIG experiences, so if my LIG could use my help, I would be proud to serve the organization and my local IT community. I’m also a big proponent of Student-Special Interest Groups (S-SIGs,) so that area may also provide me with some additional opportunities.

-=-

Come see Jay in person at our August meeting; he is our keynote speaker at our LIG Meeting!

Time's Running Out to be a Part of the Fusion '08 Conference Committee!

2008-07-01T07:46:00.001-05:00

There are only 2 days left to submit your application to be a part of the Fusion 2009 Conference Committee!

Call For Fusion 2009 Conference Committee Volunteers

Objective: To assemble an outstanding group of itSMF USA® voting members to serve on the 2009 Fusion Conference Committee, with a goal of selecting members representing a cross section of the itSMF USA® Membership.

The Board of Directors wishes to invite all current itSMF USA® voting members to submit your name as a potential 2009 Conference Committee member by completing the on-line application. Applications will be accepted through Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 10pm Eastern time. The application can be accessed here.

The positions in which the Events Leadership team will be selecting include:

Track Chair (10 positions)
Track Vice Chair (4 positions)
Workshops/Simulations Chair (1 position)
Training Chair (1 position)
Training/Workshops/Simulations Vice Chair (1 position)
Networking/LIG Marketing Chair (1 position)
Networking/LIG Marketing Vice Chair (1 position)

Click Here for specific Roles & Responsibilities as well as associated time commitment for each position.

Selection Criteria

1. Returning Conference Committee members will be subject to a review process that maintains the objective of 50% turnover in the committee from year to year.
2. All potential Committee members must be willing to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with itSMF USA® upon selection.
3. All potential Committee members must be willing/able to attend the on-site planning meeting (March 2009).
4. Vendors deemed to be competitors of itSMF USA® are not eligible to apply.
5. Committee members must be current voting members of itSMF USA® (or obtain this membership status upon selection) and must maintain current voting status through the planning process and Conference dates.
6. Employees of vendor training and simulation providers are ineligible for selection of chair responsibilities for these activities.
7. Only one representative from any organization will be selected.
8. Selection requires a commitment by your organization to allow time required to serve in volunteer capacity to ensure conference success.
9. All candidates are required to provide an employment and volunteer experience synopsis.
10. Candidates will be required to submit a summary (500 words or less), answering two questions: 1) Why do you want to service on the committee, and 2) What do you feel you can “bring to the party.”
11. Potential volunteers who have served previously for three consecutive years on a Conference Committee, other than in a leadership role, are instead asked to encourage other members of your LIG to apply to optimize new ideas.
12. By design, the final selection process will provide an even mix of practitioner, vendor and gender candidates for approval.
13. Preferential selection will be afforded to those itSMF USA® voting members who have attended regular LIG meetings.
14. Preferential selection will be afforded to those who have attended a itSMF USA® conference and/or will be attending the 2008 conference.
15. If, during the course of the Committee planning and execution process, a confirmed Committee member changes jobs or responsibilities within your organization, itSMF USA® reserves the right to review your continued participation on the Conference Committee.
16. All Conference Committee members will be held to the performance standards established within the Roles & Responsibilities

Timeline: June 2-6 Establish Volunteer Opportunities

June 9-12 Prepare Call for Fusion 09 Committee Volunteers

July 2 On-Line responses due

July 1-18 Initial review of responses/schedule interviews

July 21-28 Potential Committee Interviews

August 4 Process Completed for Board approval

August 15 Notification to all applicants

July Lunch and Learn!

2008-06-13T14:32:00.001-05:00

Come join the ItSMF USA Mid-America LIG for another great event! Coming July 29th, 2008, we will be presenting another exciting “Lunch and Learn” with guest speaker Teresa Mount of Maryville Technologies, a Platinum itSMF sponsor. Teresa will be presenting a session titled “Birds of a Feather”, a facilitated and highly interactive session detailing the approach to Change and Configuration Management.

Teresa is an Information Technology Management Professional with over 20 years of experience in software application development and infrastructure services in both technical and management roles. She has worked with technical platforms ranging from mainframe to distributed web architectures. Teresa’s passion centers on process engineering and continual improvement initiatives. In addition to leading software projects through the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) processes, she has served as the core champion for a large-scale ITSM program, has been accountable for Change and Configuration Management operations in both the software engineering and infrastructure spaces, and has lead organizational change efforts supported by a structured communications program. In her current role with Maryville Technologies, Teresa applies her knowledge and experience to deliver quality ITSM solutions to match the realities of the organizations she serves. Her goal is to “make it real”, one process at a time. Teresa also serves on the itSMF LIG Presidents Council.

Please come join us July 29th at Maryville Technologies for the third installation of our popular “Lunch and Learn” series. Lunch begins at 11:30am with our program concluding around 1:00pm; though you’re more than welcome to stay and continue our discussion should we run long. Maryville Technologies Omaha Field Office and Training facility is located at 9290 W. Dodge Road, Suite 200.

June Lunch and Learn!

2008-06-13T14:30:00.000-05:00

You are invited to an itSMF Mid America LIG Lunch and Learn next Wednesday. It will be a fun and interactive session on CMDB’s (Change Management Databases) and “How they work in the Real World”. This session will be facilitated by ITIL expert Steven Levy. To learn more please go to our website: http://www.itsmf-midamerica.org/

Lunch and Learn
When: Wednesday June 18th, 2008 - 11:30AM - 1PM
Where: First Data
Location: 6855 Pacific Street
Topic: "The CMDB in the Real World" presented by Steven Levy
RSVP to mscott@dotcomm.org

Deep Thoughts: An interview with David Cannon!

2008-06-09T11:18:00.000-05:00

1. We are almost half way through 2008, how is itSMF USA doing on the goals that were laid in the beginning of the year?
The goals set at the beginning of the year were part of a 3 to 5 year program. At the beginning of the year we created over 50 actions and items that we would like to be able to do. This was exciting, but we acknowledged that we would not be able to do them all in the first year. So we focused on the most important areas and are making good headway. You can follow the progress of the key projects in my column in The Forum which gets published every 2 months, but to summarize: We have 2 main priorities. The First is to have a formal process for finding out what is valuable to our members and then being able to build services that deliver that value. The restructuring of the board around portfolios that focus on value has been completed, and the new charters have been written. Each of the committees is hard at work defining the process for understanding value and defining the appropriate services. We have already seen a number of new services being scoped (e.g. a new registry is close to completion, a LIG Leadership education program will be launched in July and we are developing the interactive Knowledge Sharing tools to be part of our website) The second priority is to ensure that our staff are able to delivery on the promises we make to our members. We have appointed a new Operations Director (Phyllis Drucker) to build the processes, tools and skills that we need to achieve our objectives. Be on the lookout for some announcements around this soon!

2. You have been traveling to a lot of LIG events as President of itSMF USA. Is there anything that sticks out most as you interact with LIG members across the country?
Several things:
· ITSM people are different. They are no-nonsense, get-it-done people who make things happen. They’re always willing to learn and look for better ways of doing things. This makes us a unique group of people and I always find I have so much in common with the people in the room. I honestly believe that the only reason I am where I am is because of these people, and I am privileged to part of the group
· I have really appreciated the level of support, both personally and for the board, as I visit the LIGs
· I am always amazed by the amount of effort LIG volunteers put into organizing their meetings – and it really shows!

3. What has been your favorite place that you have traveled to so far? Omaha right?
LOL Of course! Hands down, the best cookies!

4. What was your favorite part of writing the V3 Service Operation book?
I can tell you about a lot of “unfavorite” parts! Actually, it’s difficult to talk about favorite parts without referencing some of the difficult stuff to put it in context.
There were 2 really difficult things about writing the book:
· The responsibility that I felt when I started out was crippling. I literally could not write a word for around 6 weeks, because I was terrified of how important the book was and what would happen if I got it wrong. I dealt with this by remembering that this was not “my” book – that I shared the responsibility with David Wheeldon, my co-author, author of ITIL v1 and v2 books, and long-time mentor. I have to say that it was a great pleasure to work with Dave on this project – and one of the things I enjoyed most. In addition, I had to remember that we weren’t writing about our ideas, we were writing about what people in the industry were doing – so we just set about doing our best to honestly represent the phenomenal achievements of people in the industry. In any event, it wasn’t like we were writing some sort of holy scripture which represents an absolute truth. All we were really doing was documenting a new baseline in the evolution of the industry. What we wrote was not perfect, and neither will the next version be perfect. The best we can do is to help lay the foundation for the next level of growth.
· It was easy to gather the information and do the research, but putting into a simple and cohesive format was really difficult. Access Management was an area that doesn’t really exist as a single process within any of the companies that we looked at, so we didn’t actually include it in the early drafts of the book, but the more we looked at our data, the more we realized that there was this group of related things. We had to make a decision on how to deal with those. That was really difficult, because we weren’t just writing about what we saw, we had to create a new category to describe our observations (refer to the previous point).

So now for the favorite parts:
· My favorite part of the Service Operation book is the section on Monitoring and Control. It’s kind of hidden away, but if you read it carefully it will provide some great ideas around metrics and how you can link IT performance to business performance
· I really enjoyed working with the other members of the project team. I can honestly say that this was a group of people who are passionate about Service Management and about making the industry succeed.
· This was one of the most growthful experiences I have ever had – at every level. I learned an incredible amount about Service management, and I learned about people, business and myself
· The QA feedback. Our book was reviewed by over 150 people from all over the world. I was dreading the feedback and how I would respond to it. But I can honestly say that this was an incredibly valuable part of the process. I learned a very important lesson – you need to choose how you respond to criticism. If you reject it or get hurt by it, you won’t learn anything from it. Dave and I worked through every comment (over 1,200) and responded to each one in writing. After we listened and thought about each one we realized that by taking on these comments, we could create a better quality product – and that would make us look even better!
· The site visits, data gathering and interviews that we went through to research for the book. People were so helpful in providing us with information and validating (or invalidating) our ideas. Dave and I may have written the book, but the content came from some really phenomenal people

5. Where do you recommend that companies that are new to Service Management start?
It all depends what they are trying to achieve. First let me stress that Service Management is not an option. Whether you call it by that name or not – if you want to manage IT you need to have a way to manage changes, exceptions, testing, etc. So whatever is causing you the most amount of pain is probably a good place to start. My experience has been that people tend to start with processes that help them achieve some sort of control and an understanding of how big their problems are – so usually a combination of Incident, Problem and Change Management with a basic Service Catalog definition. Once they have that, they start dealing with some of the processes that require cultural changes – Configuration, Availability Management, for example.

The two most important things to remember are: What are you trying to achieve?, and be practical – don’t just do something because it’s in ITIL

6. How do you see Six Sigma and ITIL getting along?
The two work very well together. While ITIL describes a set of practices or guidelines specific to managing IT, Six Sigma describes a methodology or approach aimed at reducing error rates and optimizing processes. ITIL will tell you what the processes are, Six Sigma will give you some guidance on how to implement, manage and improve the processes. In fact ITIL recommends Six Sigma as an approach.

7. When you were in Omaha you mention that the certification scheme was still merging, how is that coming?
You can get up to date information from the following web site: http://www.itil-officialsite.com/Qualifications/ITILV3QualificationScheme.asp

Bottom line, the curricula and exams are close to being piloted, and should be released within the next 2 months.

8. Is certification necessary for a company to implement ITIL? If so who should be certified?
No it is not necessary, but it can help in the following ways:
· It is a good way of ensuring that people have studied the “common language” that you are going to be using and understand it
· Some people find it very motivating when their employer invests in certification
· It helps you to measure the effectiveness of the training program
· It helps you to make sure that people understand the dependencies under other people’s control (e.g. someone implementing Configuration Management needs to understand why Change Management is so important)
· It ensures that people implementing the processes or tools know what they are doingJ

Not everyone needs to be certified. In the v2 scheme, I would recommend that at the very least, the project leaders and architects need to be certified – either at Practitioner or Manager’s level (depending on the scope of the project. Most of the staff on the project need to be certified up to Foundation or potentially Practitioner level.
In the v3 scheme you will need to identify the correct combination of Lifecycle and Capability modules to ensure that you have the appropriate level of knowledge.
In any event, whether you get certified or not – I think that training is critical!

9. If you wanted to bring ITIL to company that is new to Service Management, how would you sell the project and to whom?
That’s a difficult question because it depends on what issues that company is facing. Ideally I would try to sell to the CIO so that they could get the right level of commitment and budget. But if the company is in trouble and they need to fix the problem urgently, I would not even try to do that. I would work with the manager who has been tasked to fix the problem and get that taken care of. If we succeed, then we could talk to the CIO….

10. What is in store for itSMF USA the rest of 2008?
We have only just started! The conference in September promises to be one of the best ever. We are busy hiring new staff to improve the level of service we deliver. The new Membership Administration system is being rolled out, which will help provide even better levels of support. Some exciting projects are on the way, including the development of a new IP sharing tool, a new career development process, new publications will be added to our bookstore. And that’s just for starters……