Change Management Training Workshop - Phase 1

Hoorah!  On Wednesday afternoon I delivered a change management (based on ITIL) training workshop to the IT managers of multiple councils as they are working in partnership to deliver shared IT services.  I spent quite a lot of time preparing the materials for it as, knowing my audience, I wanted to be sure I had things they could take away and refer to when I'm not around and to consider which questions were likely to arise that I would need to answer.  The training packs were made up of some change management basics, process framework document, process diagrams, copy of presentation slides and a little 7Rs of Change Management laminated card.

I'd originally scheduled 3 hours for the session to allow for lots of discussion (again, knowing who would be present).  I surprised myself by keeping everyone on-track so that we actually finished in just over 2 hours.  I think this was due to a few factors,  My preparation headed off potential questions and that facilitation training continuing to pay off (thank you Cathy) ;)  My agenda for the afternoon was:

1. Purpose of session
2. Presentation - 'Let's Have Some Change Management - with a Dash of Pragmatism'
3. Normal Change Process (using process framework documentation)
   
4. Emergency Change Process (using process framework documentation)
5. Exercices (1: Name that change 2: Roleplay an emergency change with some curveballs throw in)
   
6. Wrap-up Discussion
   
7. Feedback forms (I believe in self-improvement)
   

I was expecting quite a hard time from some of them - so I was pleasantly surprised that each manager present was taking notes and asking pertinent questions.   The only negative feedback I had was that some of them think we should wait until we have the new ITSM tool in place before introducing change management.  As all you ITSMers out there will know it's crucial to get the process agreed, documented and tested before implementing it in a tool - so I'm not too concerned about this point (although it certainly would be great if a more appropriate tool were in place to support the process in the meantime (and no - this is not an invitation for vendor spam thanks!).

Only time will tell how effective or not the workshop was.  The next stage is rolling out training to all the IT staff.  It certainly achieved it's objective in educating them in the basics of change management, terminology, process, etc.  One of the feedback forms actually showed that they thought they knew a lot going into the session, then coming out realised how much they didn't know and have yet to learn ;)

It's times like this that I wish I would be there for the duration of the journey - letting go is never easy is it?

All change... and introducing change

As those of you who have been here awhile will know, I've been trying to get an ITSM Programme going at my organisation for some time.  I finally get the budget and the buy-in, and submit the mandate for approval to the board only for me to go and get another job.  My timing is impeccable.  I'm finding it quite difficult to let go as I still have this wonderful vision in my head that I want to make a reality.  Anyhow, as that isn't going to happen time to replace it with a new vision - but I digress.

Some months ago I was tasked with quickly introducing change control ahead of change management as part of the approved ITSM Implementation Programme.  As you can imagine, I wasn't keen on doing this as I wanted it to be done in a properly managed way - however the business need was and continues to be there so I threw something together (through workshop with other key managers).  They specificially didn't want a lot of documentation so two sides of A4 had to suffice.  As predicted, confusion reined for people failed to understand what it was all about, how and when to use it, etc.  What did they expect without allowing time for training or enough documentation to provide the detail required?

Anyhow, one of my tasks before I head off is to train the IT managers in the basics of change management and teach them how and when to use our revised new change management process (only covers normal and emergency changes in an initially small scope).  I spent today fleshing out the document with sufficient detail to address the questions they already have and those that will be asked and preparing some training packs and little laminated cards that they can stick by their PCs.  Tomorrow I aim to finish the presentation that will go with it all because I'm delivering it on Wednesday afternoon!  I'll let you know how it goes...

Moving your ITIL Implementation Forward - part 2

This post continues my summary of key points from the itSMF's latest e-symposium, 'Moving your ITIL Implementation Forward' this time focusing upon Malcolm Fry's 'ITIL V3 Essentials and the Role of a CMDB' and Harvey Davison's 'What Should Configuration do for Change?'

Malcolm Fry - ITIL V3 Essentials and the Role of a CMDB
I've seen a lot of presentations from Malcolm on-line but not had the opportunity to see him live so this was particularly interesting to me - if its possible to assess a presenter's style from an online web seminar anyway!

One of the things that I found interesting was his immediate acknowledgment of the v3 certification scheme being superior to that of v2. He strongly felt that in v2 everyone forgot about the other 7 ITIL books (true enough) and that with v3 the assessment of ALL core books will lead to more rounded ITSM professionals.

He also dropped a plug for a book that he is writing at the moment with working title: 'How to build a service management department'. I look forward to seeing what it has to offer.

His presentation faltered a moment for me when he talked about the v3 lifecycle and had the wrong order of the core books up on screen (had transition after operation instead of before). Something fundamental like that inevitably then makes you question the accuracy and validity of the rest of the presentation but thankfully that was the only error I spotted.

The slides showing how v2 and v3 work together were quite helpful, but most amusing was his use of a perfume analogy to achieve an ITIL implementation road map. Apparently in perfume making there are four key things: Primary, Modifier, Blender and Fixative. He expounded upon the analogy by showing how the various ITIL processes could slot into one of these categories, e.g. Incident, Problem, and Change Management came under Primary with Financial management listed as a fixative.

There wasn't really anything of note in the section on the Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) except that he reiterated the benefits of template CIs. Towards the end of the presentation he did make a joke regarding how there should be a 'decision management' process in ITIL. Someone pointed out in the Q&A afterwards that this exists in the form of IT governance and went on to promote A 8015:2005 which is the Australian standard which has been taken to form the basis of a new ISO standard.

Harvey Davison's 'What Should Configuration do for Change?'
Of all the presentations I think that this was the most interesting and useful for me. This may be because he is working in the trenches of Lloyds TSB and using ITIL theory successfully in practice. I really liked the whole approach to identifying which areas to attack first in the creation of a CMDB and using change management as a driver for this.

The approach sounds simple enough... define the objectives, identify the results required, and ascertain what is needed to deliver those results. Actually doing this can be quite a challenge though.

When it came to defining their CIs they divided into type, role, and status. In doing this they were then able to produce a cube which showed where best to focus their efforts.



An analogy I liked was seeing the infrastructure as a jenga tower. The CMBD then tells you which brick you can pull out safely without the tower falling down.

To be honest there was so much good stuff in this presentation that, rather than me trying to summarise it here, I highly recommend that you sign up to the itSMF e-symposium and go listen to it and download the slides in the archive!

Check back on Tuesday for the final summary featuring Georges Ataya's and Rob Stroud's presentation on 'IT Governance for the Real World, Mapping COBIT & ITIL' and a summary of the roundtable Q&A.

Moving your ITIL Implementation Forward

This afternoon I 'attended' an itSMF e-symposium entitled: 'Moving your ITIL Implementation Forward - what are your next steps?' Before I summarise my thoughts on the whole thing I must say that I didn't think that any of the presentations, or indeed answers to the questions, addressed the question posed. It was really more of an introduction to ITIL and IT Governance than what I interpreted it to be, i.e. a high-level process for planning and implementing ITIL with focus on the first steps of visioning, road-map etc. Admittedly the summaries of the presentations immediately suggested that it was not going to deliver what I hoped, but still I thought it worth attending. So... coffee in hand and Mind Manager at the ready, I listened to the music before the symposium began.

The Interface
The enterprise web-cast platform is provided by Brightcast. Having pre-registered for the event I received a reminder e-mail the night before and it was a simple matter to login with my username and password. As a spectator rather than presenter there was no need for me to dial up to listen, just delivered as you would expect through your PC soundcard. Limited controls during the live symposium as there was no way of pausing when I wanted to nip to the toilet / get a drink. However, there were tabs to make it easy to submit questions (shame you could not view which other questions had already been asked) and download the presentations in PDF format. Finally there was a tab to take the CPD test to get your certificate.

The Presentations

Sharon Taylor - What's going on out there?
This was fundamentally an updated version of the presentation she delivered at the itSMF conference last year. A few points:
- She believes that ITIL v3 will achieve an increase in the measurement of both Business value and ROI.
- Observed that the ITIL was previously geared towards a purely operational audience and now this is broader including CIOs and the wider business.
- Ran through some of the areas that people are picking from v3 for early adoption.
      - Service Portfolio Management
      - Service Catalogue Management
      - ROI Business cases
      - Event and request management
      - Supplier Management
      - Service Measurement
- She has this idea that everyone is actually doing ITIL because v3 is based on v2. Personally I think this is a nice concept but don't believe this to be truly the case in reality.
- As with v2, Sharon stressed the importance of picking and choosing what is needed for your organisation and the benefits of an incremental approach to implementation.
- When asked about the v3 qualifications capability and lifecycle streams she advised that the syllabi are complete and going through checks for consistency between the streams. The sample exams are in pilot as part of QA and there will be a further pilot with accredited training providers, i.e. a way to go and will be some sonths before release.

Check back on Friday for my summary of Malcolm Fry's 'ITIL V3 Essentials and the Role of a CMDB' and Harvey Davison's 'What Should Configuration do for Change?'

Crucial Conversations - buy it, read it, do it!

Given the publication date of 2002 I'm late to the fold on this one, but I found reference to 'Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high' whilst reading a report called 'Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution' and thought it would be worth a read. It was.

Fundamentally the book teaches you how to:
1. Recognise a crucial conversation - "A discussion between two or more people where stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong." (Get Unstuck)
2. How to analyse what is happening (Start with the Heart, Learn to look)
3. What to do about it (Make it Safe, Master my Stories, STATE My Path, Explore Others' Paths, Move To Action)
This is then summarised as a visual 'dialogue model' at the end of the book (which makes much more sense if you've actually read the book first!).

The style of the authors is an easy going conversational one which makes for quick reading. However, it's one of those books that you absolutely have to absorb, practice, go back and re-read, practice, etc. There are also supplementary materials (videos, self-assessment questionnaires, group questions) available on the vitalsmarts website if you register.

Much of what they say resonates for me with that which Mark and Mike teaching over on the Manager Tools podcast series.

If, like me, sometimes you get in a mess in a crucial conversation - then get this book and practice what it preaches. I certainly will.

Silence Fails and Crucial Conversations

I recently came across a fascinating report called 'Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution' . If you involved in projects at all, be it as a team member, a project sponsor, project manager or otherwise, I highly recommend that you register and download a copy of the report. To summarise those 5 crucial conversations:

Problem 1: AWOL Sponsors. 65% of project leaders work regularly with sponsors who fail to give the required support, leaving projects stranded and exposed.
Conversation: Project sponsors must communicate, providing leadership and political support.

Problem 2: Fact-free planning. 85% of project leaders are given parameters such as deliverables, budgets and timelines with no opportunity for input.
Conversation: Project leaders must be involved in the earliest stages of planning.

Problem 3: Skirting. 83% of project leaders say their effectiveness is undermined by powerful stakeholders and managers who attempt to skirt decision-making, planning and prioritization processes.
Conversation: Project managers have to stand up and maintain project discipline.

Problem 4: Concealing risk. 50% or more of project managers say team members regularly fail to honestly report project risks. As a result, the team loses opportunities to respond with revised goals, shifted resources or reorganized plans.
Conversation: Team members must be encouraged to speak up.

Problem 5: Team failures. 80% of project leaders are hobbled by direct reports who don't show up to meetings or fail to meet schedules or goals.
Conversation: Project leaders must insist on picking their teams, and they must confront inadequate performers.

I've ordered the book Crucial Conversations and will post my thoughts on it once I get around to reading it (doing a great job of adding to instead of reducing my reading pile right now!).

The future's bright, the future's Pink!

Those who have read up on ITIL will no doubt be familiar with Pink Elephant as their consultants have been involved with writing both the v2 and v3 refresh; in fact, their claim as the world leader in IT Service Management probably isn't far wrong!

But did you know that this month they launched a free member's area which features archives full of quality articles, web casts and their new pinkcasts (podcasts)?

I didn't! I've only watched one web cast, but I've listened to all the pinkcasts, and dipped in to some of the articles (some of which I have seen previously) so far; yet I must say it's good introductory stuff!

If you're into ITIL and you haven't already signed up for a free account, then do so. That's right, leave this page and do it now! You won't regret it :)

And the answer is...

In our case we don't have the resources to go for a big bang (and nor would we want to). ITIL is very much about culture change, so it isn't going to happen overnight (more like years, especially in the public sector). Harnessing the support of everyone in IT will be fundamental to the success of the implementation.

To answer my question posed on Tuesday, the service support processes identified to help eliminate our pain areas are:

1. Service Level Management
2. Review maturity of current Service Desk Function and Incident Management
3. Change Management
4. Problem Management
5. Configuration Management

It may be that we can run change and configuration concurrently, I always think they are like the chicken and the egg. You don't want to implement Configuration management with change management otherwise you have no controls over the Configuration items; but if you implement Change with the configuration then you don't have the links to what are you changing... 'A person could go mad thinking about this... (10 points to the person who knows where that is from).

There are of course a lot of things involved from the people side with awareness training and workshops, to benchmarking existing processes, to consideration of the right tools to support those processes.

My intention is to manage the implementation as a 'Programme' of distinct projects, using Prince 2 Lite as the methodology. The high level plan has been drafted, let's see what the coming week holds...

For those of you in the UK - have a good bank holiday weekend!

Drafting the plan.. where to begin?

As an ITIL programme is being included in our proposed IT strategy I've started drafting a plan. Just where does one start when introducing ITIL? Assuming that you are familiar with what ITIL is and the benefits of each process then I think identifying points of pain is a good start. Then you can identify which processes will help you eliminate those. They may not be 'quick wins', but as long as they make a REAL difference then they will help secure the CONTINUED buy-in needed for the other processes.

In our case, with three authorities coming together for IT service provision we have 3 major pain areas:
- High number of incidents and not enough staff to resolve them all within SLAs
- No clear delineation of service support roles and responsibilities across the 3 councils so calls are frequently assigned to the incorrect team which contributes towards breached SLAs
- Seemingly innocent 'It's a 5-minute job' changes made to shared council network infrastructure can create unexpected issues

Before I reveal which processes I'm including in the initial programme; given the information above, which do YOU think would help us and why? Answers on the back of a postcard... (not really, just use the comments!)

ITIL on the horizon, or is it?

Apologies for the infrequency of posts, I've been on holiday :)

There are some exciting developments in my workplace at the moment. Our IT head of operations has recognised the contribution that ITIL could make to improving the way we work. So much so that he organised for an external company to come and present an introduction to ITIL to key IT personnel.

Initially I was a little miffed because I had put together a business case and presentation on my own time that the board had agreed for me to put forward. However, in hindsight it seems that management pay more attention when it is an external company telling them the same thing that you, as an internal person, has been saying for ages! I'm sure I'm not alone on this one; is it a peculiarity of the public sector?

Anyhow, the external introduction seemed to do the trick as I've been asked to write a high level ITIL implementation plan. Perhaps finally I can start putting some of my knowledge to practical use, hooray!