Posts from — March 2006

Bruce Silver, who coined the term BPM 2.0 some time ago, has been blogging on the topic at IT|Redux for some time. Bruce has started a new blog BPMS Watch yesterday with the post called “BPM Immaturity Model Unveiled”. Follow Bruce’s thoughts and participate in the BPMS discussion!

I believe BPM 2.0 will be a key enabler of BSM/ITSM and best practice success! Standardized and repeatable IT processes, procedures and activities must be automated, managed and monitored leveraging tried and true technologies available today. Process events, feedback events, business events coupled with infrastructure (network, system, app) events come together to provide complete visibility into e2e processes and activities ensuring success and expected outcome (aligned with business objectives, goals).

I’ve just finished up a training course on the upcoming release of the IBM Tivoli/Netcool RAD 3.0 solution here in Dallas, TX this week. This release brings extended features and functionality to the RAD (Real-Time Active Dashboards) application that can be applied to the toughest and most challenging business and IT service management (BSM/ITSM) problems we see today. Service modeling, SLAs, policies, rules and ease of use continue to improve in this release. This is also the first release including integration into the much touted (2+ years) common GUI for the Netcool suite called the Netcool GUI Foundation (NGF). From what I hear and see, there’s still some polishing required with NGF, but I’m sure they’ll get it worked out by GA time.

After the training, I spent some time speaking with Bill Headlee, one of our lead instructors for the Netcool suite on how we can improve the training. My thoughts were centered on incorporating some of the people and process aspects of BSM / ITSM into the training to complement the technology nuts & bolts side of it. It’s my opinion that any successful BSM / ITSM initiative must include people and process components to be successful and that it can’t be a brute force technology solution.

So, what BSM and ITSM training would complement a technical training course? I mentioned including more discussion on what all of the acronyms are from a business and technology perspective. Just what is BSM, BAM, BPM, ITSM, ITIL, eTOM, etc.? How do these relate to the average Tivoli/Netcool tool guy? I pointed Bill to some of my blog pages (BSM) where I’ve attempted to collect varying definitions and viewpoints as a starting point. We need to teach what IBM Tivoli thinks these definitions are from our perspective!

I think we need to introduce some of the various modeling and flowcharting concepts. Since so much of these BSM, BAM, BPM, ITSM areas focus on monitoring and managing end-to-end processes and services (business or other), introducing Tivoli/Netcool consultants and engineers to these concepts may pay off immensely as they begin the engagement and implementation process. I’m thinking of basic introductions to UML, BPM/BPEL, flowcharting, swimlanes, etc. and how tools like Visio, ArgoUML, and flowcharting can help capture and organize the various inputs, outputs, rules and feedback loops involved in these end-to-end services and processes.

We also need to introduce some of the more basic concepts around topology, dependency, information and data modeling. I’m not saying we need all of the advanced graph theory and stuff for thesis papers, but introduction to concepts like parent-child relationships, containment models, OO/Java programming, ITIL CMDB Configuration Identification guidelines (ITIL Service Support Section 7.6.2), DMTF CIM, Common Data Models, etc. We should give our Tivoli/Netcool consultants and customers the knowledge that will help them engage within their environments and document, cature, model and decompose complex services and processes into their unique components, relationships and dependencies. Maybe some database, metadata, entity relationship diagram (ERD), and normalization concepts as well??? Are the skills, tools and concepts of a Data Architect/Modeler similar to those required of someone implementing something complex within Tivoli/Netcool RAD?

I recommended to Bill that we add more focus on the lab exercises and make them as real as possible. I suggested that we create some scenarios that our Tivoli/Netcool consultants and customers may actually run into when trying to implement RAD. We should create various ways of representing end-to-end services, processes and IT infrastructure from the perspective of IT and business. It could be expected that the tool guy gets a simple Visio diagram or flowchart (with varying levels of detail) that “represents” the critical business service or process. Another scenario could be an actual written description of that mission critical business service (this server has this application that talks to this database where our customer records are that returns a new account number and our customer invoices are created). From these visual and written descriptions, the engineer should attempt to create the representative RAD implementations. We should have examples from our key markets and verticals.

I think it’d be a great idea to give anyone attending the Tivoli/Netcool RAD training a list of pre-requisites to complete in advance of the training. One of these tasks could be to capture a day/weeks worth of Netcool events from their Netcool ObjectServer. This sample should include a wide assortment of events from as many of the different event sources and services, applications, components as possible. What this would allow is importing and replaying these events in the lab and creating more real-life end-to-end service and process models within RAD. You’d have all of the customer’s event fields, naming conventions, etc. available for use. This would go a long ways for the customer in “getting” it and being able to quickly apply what they learned when they return to the shop. I’d also recommend the attendee make an attempt at documenting an end-to-end service or process that’s in their environment either written, in Visio or some other tool. Everyone has an email, Intranet, portal, or similar corporate application that includes numerous infrastructure elements, applications, services, and transactions they could attempt to model in class.

What other ideas do you have that could provide a better rounded training experience on our flagship BSM/ITSM solution? How much time should we spend on the people and process side? What concepts need to be introduced in addition to the new widgets, dials and knobs found in the application? How do we ensure deployment success, customer satisfaction and ROI/Value?

• Executive Support – Perhaps the most critical and obvious.  Almost all implementations hits bumps along the way, so consistent support is a must.   The tougher question is “who are the stakeholders?”  Remember that ITSM is about improving service to business.  If you don’t have the support of business, you’re project is likely at risk.

What I think is critical here is to maintain that executive support and buy in THROUGHOUT these usually LONG initiatives.  It’s one thing to get the initial support and buy in on how the initiative you’re proposing is going to help improve this or that prior to starting the project, but keeping this for the long haul is CRITICAL! You’ll ultimately be faced with justifying resource allocations over months and maybe years. The “what does this person do” or “what value does this person/function provide” questions will be asked. This is closely tied to the scoping of the initiative and alignment with business objectives mentioned below. Make sure to come up with creative ways to ensure that “support and buy in” aren’t just token gestures but are more than skin deep. What does the executive water cooler talk sound like?

• User Involvement — Too many ITSM implementations begin with some ITIL experts in a room developing their idealized process model.  Unfortunately, this Ivory Tower exercise is often a waste of time (see Standardized Infrastructure below) and misdirected.  Early effort should be directed to working with users to understand how processes currently work, gather change recommendations, and measure the ability of the organization to implement those changes.

From what I’ve seen, everyone gets really excited in the beginning with “ITIL Buzz” and takes advantage of the opportunity to get some free training and a new certification for the resume.  What seemed to work in my last initiative was to have named process owners (high level position) and then have named sub-process owners (matrixed to the named process owner) in each part of the organization that contributed to the overall process creation and implementation (got a vote). Those not directly involved seem to take advantage of the free training/certification and then go back into their own “reality” and take a “believe it when they see it” attitude and cease contributing. You should spend as much time as you can comforting those who say this will make their jobs worse or cause more work.  Put these issues to rest as fast as you can — if you can’t, get them off of the project as quick as you can.  Their hate and discontent will spread like a wild fire. Again, what does the employee water cooler talk sound like?

• Experienced Project Management – ITIL certifications do not equate to experienced project management.  Make sure you have project management that has been through an ITSM implementation before and understands more than process.  Seek external, professional help if you can’t meet these criteria internally.

True, so true! Include budget dollars for this up front in your proposals! I think you’ll get more “buy-in” and interest when an outside consultant or expert is involved. Just be careful about “perma-consultants” or hiring them on as FTE’s. I was really impressed with a presentation given by Don Page of the Marval Group at our last ITSMF LIG meeting.  I’m sure other consultancies engage in similar ways, but his message and approach really stuck with me.  It just seemed “real” and full of so much common sense.

• Clear Business Objectives – Don’t fall into a trap here.  “Implement change management” is not a clear business objective.  It is really just a means to the end of improving the service provided to business.  Any project must have measurable goals for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of IT services to risk becoming irrelevant and failing.

Watch out for the hard/soft benefits trap as well.  If you have metrics available from your operations and support teams such as support calls, failed releases, outages, etc. that you can equate to measurable costs, use these as much as you can.  Look to resources from the Help Desk Institute (HDI), outsourcing, call center trade magazines or analysts who have done studies on the costs of downtime/outages and their causes as drivers for aligning improvement initiatives to business objectives (control costs and make money). Also be on the lookout for those emotional metrics that management sponsors may have (tied to compensation/bonuses, etc.) and drive alignment towards those (usually cost or revenue related)..

• Minimized Scope – This is critical.  Just about every successful ITSM project I have heard of starts by implementing an achievable, manageable set of business objectives and their supporting processes.

One of my more recent personal experiences was our attempt at implementing four of the eleven ITIL process areas (SLM/Service Desk/Incident (all rolled into one), Security, Change and Release).  I’d say we were most successful with one of them and the rest were diluted efforts that never recognized any of the stated goals or objectives.  It may be best to focus on one or two at first.  The question becomes which one(s) to do that best support the point above and have the most buy in!

• Standardized Infrastructure – At first blush, this may seem to have more to do with software development than process implementation.  Think again!  The old rule of thumb is that an application is about 80% infrastructure and only 20% new code.  The Chaos Study indicates that virtually all projects that create infrastructure are doomed to failure because it is an inefficient use of resources.   ITSM projects are really no different.  Existing best practice based process models, such as the IBM Tivoli Unified Process (downloadable from http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/features/it-serv-mgmt/itup/index.html ) probably contain 80% of what an organization needs to document their operational processes.  Do your project a favor and use one of these models as a starting point.  You’ll lower cost and risk.

• Formalized Methodology – Yes, ITIL is a formalized collection of best practices observed in the IT industry, but it is infamously quiet on implementation guidance.  If you haven’t already considered it, look into industry models like CMMI or leverage a consultant with proven services for assessing your organizations needs and ability to change, and for developing realistic implementation roadmaps.

Absolutely!  I wish I had known about ITUP three or four years ago! I think the future of ITUP and those who leverage it is extremely promising!

• Reliable Estimates — “We’re changing a few processes, how hard could that be?”  The short answer is “very”.  Change is always hard.  The Chaos Study has shown that the average IT project has a 63% time overrun and a 45% budget overrun.  Bottom line: make sure your staff remains optimistic, but keep your project estimates realistic and conservative.

Spot on here.  Put considerable time into these project management fundamentals. Understand your critical path items.  Have contingencies identified.  Know your risks and how you’ll address them when they arise. Over communicate your progress and delays.

I’d add the following:

• Communicate — Establish a formal communication plan.  Include not only the key stakeholder’s and project team members, but also include those not directly involved but who’ll benefit from your planned improvements (lines of business, technical support, customer care, etc.) Create a weekly/monthly/quarterly newsletter, create posters for the break room or hallway.  Recognize and over communicate successes and small wins.  Highlight improvements frequently!

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I attended my first big IBM tradeshow this week called PartnerWorld. This is where over 1900 of IBM’s key partners from around the world converged on Las Vegas to network and learn about new programs for the partner network. I managed to stay away from the game tables and really take in how powerful the IBM partner network is and how committed to it IBM is. I’d say at least half of the booths/pods in the Solutions Center were exclusively for partner enablement. I’m very impressed.

I also met some great IBMers including Al Zollar (GM, Tivoli) and Alan Ganek (CTO, Tivoli and VP Autonomic Computing). I’m really interested in the IBM Business Innovation and Optimization group and what they’re doing across all of the SWG brands. This is some powerful stuff that crosses all the IT and business buzzwords (BPM, BPEL, Workflow, Process Modeling, BSM, BAM, Dashboards, ITSM, ITUP, ITIL, PRM-IT, etc.). I’ve got to get plugged into what this group is doing!

As I mentioned in a brief post this week, IBM’s new marketing campaign has me buzzing with thoughts. I’m very excited about the IBM “Express” concepts for their products and the focus on the SMB (100-1000 employees) market. I’m not up to speed on all of the plans for delivery of “Express” products yet, but I hope to see an ITSM story of some sort included. An entry level CCMDB to complement ITUP v2.0 would be cool laid out on DB2 Express and WebSphere Express all tied together with a nice SOA or ESB.

Some thoughts I have and would like to collect feedback on for future posting:

- Average staff size of an IT shop in SMB (% or 1:x ratio?)
- Typical demands/pressures on IT shop in SMB (desktop support more than server/app??)
- ITSM success and process maturity within the typical SMB IT shop (time for process??)
- ITSM success stories (or failures/challenges) in SMB?
- Open source, no/low cost ITSM solutions, tools, etc. for SMB?
- Can ITSM implementations help SMB’s differentiate themselves from competitors?
- Can ITSM help an SMB be “best in class” or “out of class”?
- What’s the ROI story for ITSM in the SMB market?
- Is ITSM worth the effort in SMB?
- Is it any easier to implement ITSM in SMB?

Any comments of SMB experiences?

I probably won’t have much time to post this week as I’m at PartnerWorld 2006 in Las Vegas. They had a great kick off session this morning and it left me with some good ideas to investigate further this week.

I hope to meet some of IBM Tivoli’s partners while I’m here and start to ask about how they view ITSM, ITIL, BSM, etc. from their perspectives and how they talk about it with their customers. We need to grow our partner network in this higher level ITSM, BSM, etc. areas.

We saw some of IBM’s new advertising campaign highlights that sparked some ideas around innovation and “What Makes You Special” that I want to think and write more about.

- Innovation for Profit and Results - Collaborative Innovation - What Makes You Special?

• Collaborative Innovation: Being able to take the recommendations in ITUP 2.0 and have a solid and well grounded starting place to begin collaborating within your IT Operations organization about what may work or may not work for your environment
• Innovating for Results: Recognizing results (cost control, quality improvement, etc.) in your IT Operations environment more quickly than starting with ITIL, CoBiT, eTOM recommendations alone when leveraging ITUP 2.0
• What Makes You Special? - Leveraging an IT Operations best practices foundation based on years of industry experience and lessons learned using ITUP 2.0

Write more soon!

Looks like the version 2.0 of ITUP sped through the back-end processes amazingly fast (according to Peter and the ITUP team) and was released for download a week earlier than expected.

Free download (after registration) available here.

Download and review the best practice quick starts for PRM-IT, ITIL, eTOM, CMM, CoBit and more!

In part one of my series on the role of events, Building the Right Event Foundation for BSM introduced some simple concepts for building useful events for upstream processing in BSM and BAM solutions. This was followed up by a posting about how important it is to determine the audience for your events in You’ve Got Events, Now What? Part I: Determining Your Audience. This is a continuation of my thoughts on creating the right events in your environment for driving BSM and BAM solutions, dashboards, reports or other presentations.

As I’ve started networking and meeting some of my new IBM Tivoli peers, I’m digging into some of the exciting activities and solutions we’ve been working on. They have created a tool called IBM Tivoli Unified Process (ITUP) which serves as a knowledge base of various best practices for ITSM. This is the only fast track IT best practice implementation enabler that I’m aware of that’s free of charge (with registration) for anyone to use.

At the core of the ITUP tool is something called the Process Reference Model for IT (PRM-IT) which is deeply rooted in the thousands of real world experiences undertaken by IBM’s Global Services (IGS) business unit. PRM-IT is strongly aligned with ITIL and adds more content outside of ITIL’s service management focus.

While ITIL focuses on the ‘what’ in terms of IT best practices, ITUP focuses on how to implement and align them with the technology and people components. ITUP includes detailed discussion on the following:

• Scenarios: How the various components of ITUP work together to solve IT problems
• Tool Mentors: Hoe to use specific Tivoli tools to implement process activities
• Processes: Strongly ITIL aligned processes for managing IT down to the actual activity
• Roles: Descriptions of the Roles performed in the processes and details of their responsibilities
• Work Products: What is consumed and produced by each process activity

I will be getting much more involved with ITUP as we work to bring the Netcool suite of applications into ITUP. I encourage everyone to visit the ITUP home page and download ITUP version 1.3.1 and take a look at what it can offer. Version 2.0 is planned for release this month and adds more content and alignment/mapping information of PRM-IT with other best practices such as TMF’s eTOM. While ITUP is aligned with the IBM Tivoli family of solutions, it can certainly be adapted and leveraged by anyone starting their ITIL journey - for free!