ITSM Foundation

It is essential, that any good service be built off a strong foundation. Using the popular people, process and technology concept it is thus essential that:
  • The appropriate ITSM structures and roles are defined to best suit the organization's need before any of the ITSM processes are defined.
  • The right people are appointed to the right ITSM roles and equipped with the right set of ITSM and IT governance knowledge. 
  • To acknowledge that any ITSM processes definition cannot be done independent of the underlying service and service management technology. The days of process being defined agnostic of IT tools are over. 
Over the last 10 years, all the ITSM and IT Governance foundations I've built always start with these 3 initiatives: 
  1. Define the important ITSM Roles
  2. Define the mandatory training and certifications the various ITSM roles must take prior to starting any ITSM definition work 
  3. Define and implement a Knowledge Management Framework for the IT Department
Depending on the size of the organization and the level of funding for ITSM initiatives, these 3 steps can take between a month(less than 30 IT staff) to half a year(few hundred IT staff spanning the globe).

These 3 building blocks are covered in detail in
As always, the most effective way to implement ITSM is to treat each logical implementation chunk as a project with a project manager and the project tracked by the Project Management Office.

In summary, once the ITSM structures and roles are defined,  appoint the appropriate people to those roles and send them to the appropriate ITSM courses. Thereafter, introduce to the IT team the Knowledge Management Framework and the ITSM implementation roadmap. As ITSM implementation is about changing the culture of the IT Department, a realistic roadmap can take a minimum of 3 years to be implemented properly.
Updated: May 2012

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