Implementing ITIL for Business Value

Why all the current fuss over IT Service Management (ITSM) and ITIL (the IT Infrastructure Library)? Spurred by new compliance regulations, the rise of outsourcing options, flattened budgets, and calls by senior management to “run IT more like a business,” CIOs are striving to impose formal processes on IT activities. This push for rigor has led many CIOs to begin organizing and managing IT and delivering it to the rest of the corporation in the form of well-defined, tightly-managed services. This is largely uncharted territory for most companies, so it’s no surprise that IT organizations are looking for guidance and direction. ITIL's five books document, in rich terms, a tightly-coordinated set of best practices for organizing all areas of IT under a service paradigm.

ITIL has been referred to by some as the ERP for IT. A chance for IT to get out from the backbreaking grind of constant firefighting by way of careful planning, communication, and structured response. Talking to those who have implemented IT Service Management, it is difficult to overstate its potential benefits: reduced costs; improved productivity, communication, and morale; reduced time-to-market; and competitive advantage.

And so begins the mad dash towards managing IT services -- and ultimately company products and services -- through adoption of ITIL best practices. But what is often overlooked in the scramble to adopt ITIL is that for ITIL to provide the promised returns, it must be applied in a way that leverages and capitalizes on specific strengths and eliminates or minimizes specific weaknesses. All hype aside, ITIL can help your company harness the strategic power of IT, but it can do so only in the context of your company, your customer’s, and your IT department’s personnel, priorities, constraints, and values.

IMPLEMENTING ITIL FOR BUSINESS VALUE

ITIL guidelines are just that: guidelines. They provide a comprehensive -- if generic -- roadmap for achieving IT Service Management. As with all new protocols, the devil is in the details. ITIL defines more processes more prescriptively, than any company could possibly digest at once. Companies that do not exercise discipline and restraint in implementing ITIL will undoubtedly find themselves faced with yet another revolutionary approach that falls short of expectations. After all, a fool with a tool is still a fool.

So where lays the path to wisdom? As in most things complex, it depends. Even beginning from the exact same blueprint, not everyone will choose to remodel their IT "house" in exactly the same way. Some IT "homeowners" will want to do it all themselves, others may feel more comfortable -- and less distracted -- outsourcing to an ITIL contactor. Most will fall somewhere in between. What follows is a brief discussion of potential approaches and the benefits and obstacles associated with each. Obviously, your approach will be uniquely your own and may incorporate elements of each. What's important here is simply to embrace the approach that's best suited to your organization's specific circumstances, opportunities, and constraints.

THE DO-IT-YOURSELFER

Doing everything yourself has the advantage of absolute control over project design, staffing, and execution. Initial cash outlay may be lower as internal headcount will tend to be less expensive per hour than when using outside consultants. Resistance to change will be minimized as headcount is hired and assigned for this specific purpose, design and execution are wholly owned, and personal investment is high. And doing it yourself certainly provides an opportunity for learning and internalizing entirely new skill sets across the organization.

Unfortunately, that learning does not come without cost. What was initially envisioned as a way to save out-of-pocket expenses may result in false starts, mistakes, and rework. In the end, the final cost of independence may far exceed initial expectations and the end result may vary significantly from what was originally envisioned. Another potential downside to this approach is that most IT organizations will find their internal organizations short of the required skill sets. Expertise in process engineering is only the beginning. ITIL team leaders must be able to garner and maintain executive buy-in and visibility, generate widespread awareness and acceptance, recruit and manage business participants, deploy and configure new tools, train end users, and maintain adherence to the system going forward. Unfortunately, ITSM and ITIL expertise is currently in very high demand and it may be difficult to hire and retain experienced professionals.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the pure do-it-yourself approach lies in the area of missed opportunities. Lacking objective outside counsel, organizations may inadvertently fall back into familiar habits and patterns, superimposing new ITIL terminology onto established, but often suboptimal, processes.

THE ITIL OUTSOURCER

In direct contrast to the company that wants to be entirely self-reliant, is the company that wants to outsource ITIL engineering in its entirety. This concept is often promoted by vendors of "ITIL-in-a-box" solutions which heavily leverage generic "pre-fab" templates and process models. This approach can be particularly appealing to executives with pressing audit items. After all, if you need to design and build your IT house quickly, there is little doubt that hiring established professionals is the quickest way to get it done. Like journeymen carpenters, stone masons, electricians, and plumbers, ITIL consultants come to the table with specialized tools, a thorough knowledge of codes and standards, and extensive expertise earned at someone else's expense.

Obviously, such an approach involves significant short-term out-of-pocket costs. Professional counsel isn't cheap and they don’t know your company nearly as well as you do. IT is wholly entwined in the fabric of a company: its customers, employees, processes, objectives, technologies and values. Just as a building must be designed to address intended use, zoning, soil, weather and available material and labor considerations, so must your "new" IT processes. You don't design an igloo for equatorial South Africa, a hospital for a single-family home, or a rope bridge for a four-lane highway.

In fact, the single biggest reason why most ITIL projects fail is lack of participation and buy-in from within the organization. Change is uncomfortable and must be lead from the top. Executive sponsorship, communication, and participation are only the beginning. End users -- from Lines of Business (LOBs) and functional departments, perhaps even customers and suppliers -- must provide a clear understanding of their requirements and constraints, and be involved in discussions of trade-offs which will impact their usage. And of course, no outside IT expert can possibly know the company's current infrastructure environment (for better or worse) as well as internal IT management and staff.

Another potential downside of a "hands-off" approach is the likelihood that once a project is complete and the consultant out the door, everyone will fall back to the comfort of doing things the way they did before. Six months down the road, management may find themselves wondering why they are still encountering the same audit items.

THE WORLD IN BETWEEN

Let's face it, when the time comes we can all use a little bit of expert assistance. Engaging specialists in your ITIL project can provide some key benefits. Outside counsel is often viewed as more credible than internal resources (familiarity breads contempt) and can help minimize internal resistance to change. Outside counsel will also tend to be more objective, particularly in the area of assessing established internal processes. The greatest potential benefit of this approach is the experience the right professional organization can supply in assisting in the design and deployment of ITIL processes and technology. While sole ITIL practitioners can provide real value, this value is obviously limited. In today's marketplace it is possible to find highly competitive consulting practices that provide a pool of specialized talent, not only in ITIL, but in complementary disciplines such as Six Sigma, COBIT, CISA and other industry standards and best practices. These firms offer instant access to a rich library of expertise that can be put into play when needed. In many cases, such an approach can be equally -- if not more -- cost effective over the life of a project.

There is no single consulting model which will work for every company. While nearly all would benefit from engaging outside counsel, the extent of that involvement may vary widely. Typically, engagement models tend toward one of the following:

1) Design Leadership
2) Deployment Leadership
3) Team Supplementation
4) Advisor/Mentor

Design Leadership

Companies will tend to look for design leadership if they have limited confidence in their ability to hire up senior ITIL professionals but have comparatively more confidence in their staff's knowledge and ability to deploy and enable IT management tools. These companies will tend to engage outside ITIL counsel more heavily up front to assess current IT processes and technology, rope in senior executives and end users, facilitate requirements discussions, and develop an initial set of recommendations for an ITIL implementation roadmap and methodology. As the project matures and readies for deployment, consultant involvement will tend to ramp down as internal IT staff takes a more prominent role. Ideally your design professionals will remain somewhat involved throughout the design-build process. This ensures continuity and objectivity as the project progresses and ensures that your consulting firm remains accountable for the successful completion of each project step.

Deployment Leadership

Companies that have invested heavily in ramping up internal ITIL expertise may feel confident in their ability to develop an optimal design but considerably less so about hiring internally to deploy enabling technology. Typically, most IT departments are too busy managing and maintaining current solutions to take this on as an incremental effort. This model is commonly used and can be very effective when companies start a separate ITIL initiative. Well-designed processes should be developed with an eye toward enabling technologies. (Many a project has failed which was theoretically elegant, but could not be supported by available technology.) An experienced ITIL solutions vendor can help companies with their initial technology deployments, handing off the project to internal IT staff with a well-documented transition plan and "cut-over" process. As with the previous model, deployment consultants should be involved at some minimal level during the initial design process so they fully understand requirements, objectives, constraints, and tradeoffs, and ensure that the process design is capable of being supported.

Team Supplementation

Team Supplementation is just what it sounds like. Companies split the difference between internal and external staffing, hiring specialized outside expertise and headcount to round out their internal staff. Once an ITIL process has been designed and deployed and administrators and users are fully on board, this external staff can be re-deployed to design and build the next highest-priority process, or they can be eliminated entirely.

Advisor/Mentor

This approach is ideal for companies that are strong do-IT-yourselfers but recognize the benefit of objective outside counsel. It is also useful when hiring internal resources becomes problematic. In today's tight market, ITIL expertise may be tough to come by. Senior ITIL professionals with many years and ITIL implementations under their belt often prefer consulting to working within a single corporate environment. Companies can offset this deficit by hiring internally when possible, and bringing in specialists as needed (e.g., a week per month) to review design and implementation plans and progress and provide suggestions for improving and expediting the project.

The intermittent nature of advisory-style professional counsel may require adjustments. Momentum can be lost and significant mistakes made between visits. Typically, risks associated with this approach can be easily mitigated, either by extending the engagement to more of a full-time advisory position, or simply by making provisions for extensive remote access when issues or questions arise.

IF YOU BUILD IT (SERVICE MANAGEMENT)

If the push towards IT Service Management and ITIL feel familiar, they should. In many ways, the current push is similar to what happened in the security arena several years back: What had once been addressed in piecemeal fashion -- a bit of technology here, a new process there, an occasional self-audit to see if all was well -- rapidly broke down in the face of growing threats and public concern. Today, security is addressed in a rigorous and comprehensive way. Hiring specialists is not only expected, but accepted as a critical cost of doing business. The impetus behind IT Service Management and ITIL adoption is similarly fueled by an external and uncontrollable source of pressure: Newly legislated compliance requirements arising from recent corporate misconduct. As is the case with security, the price for failure here is high. While any of the approaches described above can work (with sufficient effort and backing), some use of expert assistance will almost certainly help companies achieve superior results sooner.